You can call yourself anything you want, and no one will stop you. Calling yourself a Christian, while violating every tenet of Christian teachings, does not qualify you as a Christian. I finally coined the term Hypochrists for people like that.

There are plenty of Christians who do follow Christian teachings, to one extent or another, and are generally trying to be decent people. Unfortunately, there are also large numbers of “Christians” who just use the name to justify their selfish behavior, hatred, and cruelty.

All large religions have, or have had, groups like that. Any social institution that can provide credibility is going to be abused as a tool to gain power by someone. It is appalling that the Hypochrists have become large enough, and powerful enough, to have taken over the popular image of what Christianity is.

Sam Altman is a huckster, not a technologist. As such, I don’t really care what he says about technology. His purpose has always been to transfer as much money as possible from investors into his own pocket before the bubble bursts. Anything else is incidental.

I am not entirely writing off LLMs, but very little of the discussion about them has been rational. They do some things fairly well and a lot of things quite poorly. It would be nice if we could just focus on the former.

If you want to have communication available at any kind of protest, and you would rather not provide the authorities with your name and address, Meshtastic can be quite useful. In the US, we have reached the point where that can be a serious issue. In other parts of the world it can be a matter of life or death.

meshtastic@mander.xyz is the largest, but there are a few. Just go to Communities, select “All”, and enter “meshtastic”.

This is the perfect time for LLM-based AI. We are already dealing with a significant population that accepts provable lies as facts, doesn’t believe in science. and has no concept of what hypocrisy means. The gross factual errors and invented facts of current AI couldn’t possibly fit in better.

That’s the beauty of modern corporate capitalism. The upper tiers of management are shielded from any responsibility by their subordinates. Their subordinates then have a strong incentive to shift the responsibility elsewhere so it doesn’t fall on them. Paying someone else to take the responsibility does not actually benefit the company, except may be in the short-term, but it does benefit the people who get to make the decisions about it.

And if the service provider really screws up, and loses too many contracts, they either sell out to another company just like themselves, make further profit, and go back to doing what they were doing, or they shut down, form a new company, and go back to what they were doing.

The only people who can be hurt by all of this are the regular employees, who lose their jobs as part of the cycle, and, occasionally, the shareholders, who are never adequately represented by the board. It’s a prefect system where bad decisions only affect those who have no part in them.

“The Cloud” just means “someone else’s sever”. A lot of people who should know better just don’t get that.

It’s entertaining to take almost any internal memo or external press release and substitute “someone else’s server” every time “the cloud” appears. They all suddenly look insane.

I’ve always found that “DO NOT DO THAT” works pretty well. :-)

Financially ruining the AI industry would be an awesome side-benefit.

Late stage capitalism rewards management for any appearance of change. It really doesn’t matter whether the results of that change are good or bad. And even a CEO who keeps destroying companies can always find a similar position elsewhere. The feedback loop is hopelessly broken.

AI is not universally bad. There are some things it does well. The problem is that there are a lot more things it does badly, often in harmful ways, and most people using it have no idea how to tell the difference.

You seem to be using it the right way, with caution and awareness.

Actual computer scientists should also be included with those groups.

I have tried to charge my Samsung watch on all kinds of Qi devices. They don’t work. The newer Samsung phones can charge them, but only because they have a separate set of coils that support watches.

The new model is SAAH (Software As A Hostage). You would think that overpaid CTOs and CEOS would be able to anticipate something as obvious as this. “The Cloud” just means “someone else’s server”.

I don’t think any of the current Meshtastic radios can be used in the usual way via ethernet. Some support WiFi, but not the RAKs that I know about. That leaves USB and Bluetooth.

There is a very neat option that allows you to set up to remotely administer a node via radio. That has saved me a lot of trouble with my repeater. You can’t do everything that way that you could with a direct connection, but you can do most of it.

The repeater will automatically forward messages from your personal radio to anyone who is outside your direct range. You don’t have to do anything special to make that happen. Likewise, any node, including your repeater and your personal radio, will automatically forward encrypted messages without knowing what’s in them. Only the endpoints need to have the encryption keys. Anything in between just forwards the raw data.

I’m glad it was useful to you!

Easiest and least expensive are a little different, so I’ll talk briefly about both.

The easiest is to go on Etsy and search for Meshtastic. You will find plenty of people who will build you a ready-to-go unit, both individual radios and solar-powered repeaters. (If you plan to put your repeater somewhere with power you can use any radio as a repeater, just put a good antenna on it.) Pre-built units start at around $60 and can go up into the hundreds, but $60 to $90 will get you a great personal radio.

The least expensive is to order a kit from one of the many companies that sell them. If the kit does not come with a case, check Etsy for cases that match your kit. Most kits do not require soldering, you just have to plug in various cables and connectors, then fit everything into the case. Some actually come fully assembled. This approach generally costs somewhere between half and two-thirds of what a pre-built setup will run. Kits start as low as $10, although most or $20 to $40, and cases are mostly $20 to $35.

One of the harder parts is to figure out which radio kit you want, but there are just two major types. Those built around the ESP32 processor tend to be a little less expensive and offer the option of WiFi, but they have a much shorter battery life. Those built around the nRF52 processor cost a little more, do not offer WiFi, but have nearly 10 times the battery life. WiFi is only used in a few specific cases, usually by repeaters and not personal units, so you may well not need it. Battery life is not usually an issue for personal radios, since nearly all of them will go for a full day between charges, but sometimes you may want more than that. Stand-alone repeaters that run off solar panels are almost all based on the nRF52 because of the battery life.

The most common starter radios are based on the Heltec V3 kit, which is based on the ESP32. It has been around a long time, it is relatively inexpensive, and it can do pretty much everything. The only downside is battery life, which may or may not matter to you. Unless that’s a concern, you can’t go wrong with a V3. My personal favorite is the T114 kit, also from Heltec, which is based on the nRF52. It is much like the V3, but without WiFi and with much better battery life.

I would wait until you’ve played with a personal radio before buying a repeater. Every Meshtastic radio acts as a repeater, so you don’t necessarily need a dedicated repeated. Find out how many nodes are in your area and what kind of coverage you get. If there aren’t many nodes, or distance is limited, you can consider a dedicated repeater.

Basically, a repeater is just a node with a good location that’s put in a good location, up as high as possible. Because Meshtastic radios use very little power, it is practical to make completely self-sufficient solar repeater units that never require charging. You can put one of those on your roof, up in a tree, or on top of a nearby hill or mountain, without having to worry about regularly climbing back up there.

I strongly recommend that you go to meshtastic.org and read through the Getting Started documentation. It provides a lot more detail (and less personal opinion). And check out the Meshtastic communities on Lemmy. Have fun!

My wife and I each have a radio, as do several of my friends. They’re handy for anything where you may not have cell coverage, like camping. We also use them at protests, to avoid the heavy surveillance that’s being done on cell networks. Even if the authorities start looking at Meshtastic, everything except the public channel uses PGP end-to-end encryption, and there is no middleman that has access to the unencrypted data.

We have also put up a repeater node. It’s on top of a house at the top of the highest ridge near us. Before it went up we rarely saw more than our own nodes. Now we see several dozen, and sometimes a lot more. And the repeater serves the whole community, not just us. The beauty of a mesh is that everyone contributes to everyone else’s coverage.

The mesh in our city is growing rapidly right now. Not only are there a lot of people getting their own nodes, there are a surprising number of people putting up repeaters to help spread the coverage. It’s amazing to watch our whole neighborhoods suddenly appear as gaps are filled in.

I came here for this!

And “No step on snek!” is still ours.

Actually saying that they want slave labor is considered bad public relations.