@vk6flab@lemmy.radio cover

Anything and everything Amateur Radio and beyond. Heavily into Open Source and SDR, working on a multi band monitor and transmitter.

VK6FLAB

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vk6flab ,
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It's right up there with random requirements to upload government photo id to suppliers in a different legal system. Hard Pass.

(I'm looking at you, PayPal, Airbnb and Stripe)

vk6flab ,
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What can you tell us about your cat and what made it special to you? When was the last time it made you laugh?

vk6flab ,
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Boot from a memtest86 ISO and hammer your hardware. If it crashes, the hardware is the issue, if it doesn't, then start looking at software.

https://www.memtest86.com/

vk6flab ,
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Note that there is no calibration of audio hardware, so the level of usefulness of any such software would be strictly limited.

vk6flab ,
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I don't know, but I doubt that the frequency response of a mobile phone microphone is either linear or consistent across sound level.

I don't even think you could compare two sounds with different frequencies, but I don't know.

I suspect that calibration of any such thing would require a whole lot of infrastructure, consider for example the angle of the phone in relation to sound and the impact of holding the phone in how it affects vibration and noise damping.

You might be able to use a calibrated sound level meter and pair it via Bluetooth with your phone, but I think that's going to be as close as you might get.

In the past I've tried a wired USB microphone, but the OS isn't real-time, so the jitter was horrendous. A pi would give you a more consistent result.

vk6flab ,
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You can change how long a phone rings for. Talk to her telco for both landline and mobile.

In my experience, if someone doesn't want to answer the phone, strapping it to their arm is unlikely to make any difference and in my experience they're more likely than not to leave it on the charger.

Long battery life and tiny battery are on opposite ends of physics. Pick your poison.

Health monitoring is unlikely to be transmitted to emergency services, except iOS fall detection.

iOS and Android are both tracking as much as they can get away with.

Remote management is likely only with devices used in corporate settings.

vk6flab ,
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Only you can answer this.

How often do you take the bus today and will this bike change that and if so, how?

Are you going to have to lift it?

How does warranty and servicing compare?

What range do they have?

How long does it take to charge?

In other words, keep asking questions until you find a deal breaker..

Good luck, stay safe, have fun!

vk6flab ,
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Who cares?

Facebook is a cesspool of spam with an owner who in my opinion appears to think that "Soylent Green" is an instruction manual..

vk6flab ,
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You can reduce the time there by making the water colder. You can also approach the experience as a sequence of steps and work out how you can wash every single part of your body in the least amount of steps.

For example, is it quicker to get all wet, turn off the shower, lather up your body, then rinse it all off in one go, or is it more efficient to do it from top to bottom, one body part at a time?

What's the fastest you've been able to go from sleeping to walking out the door having had a full shower?

Finally, you should probably have a shower once a day if you're around other people or if you get visitors. You might not smell anything, but they definitely will.

Finally, there's absolutely nothing wrong with zoning out in the shower. Some days you luxuriate in the experience, some days you don't.

Good luck!

vk6flab OP ,
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Yes. As I said, I'm aware of Kermit. It's like sendmail, user friendly, just picky who it makes friends with.

I have not discovered a complete language reference for Kermit, neither have I been able to determine if it works asynchronously, since the examples I've found are just polling loops, which is not what I need.

My use case is talking over serial to a CNC to iteratively calibrate it. This requires dealing with asynchronous events, think move, interrupt by edge switch.

vk6flab OP , (edited )
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No, it needs to be serial communication. My use case is talking to a CNC.

Edit: fat fingers: "ea" -> "to a"

vk6flab OP ,
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I started down the bash path but came unstuck when I wanted to create a process that uses a single bidirectional serial port to write a move command, whilst reading the current location and checking to see if an end stop switch was closed to write a stop command.

Ideally, all of it is interrupt driven, but I'm at a loss to see how I can do this with either Kermit or expect. Both appear to use a send, then wait for a response model, even if you can check for different responses.

Of note is that the end stop is external to the serial communication, so I can't check the same stream for that information.

vk6flab OP ,
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That's several recommendations for expect. I'll start digging. Thank you.

vk6flab OP ,
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Yeah, it's already on a pi, connected to my LAN and the USB port of the CNC. The switch is on a gpio pin.

I need to automate the calibration of the three axis. In other words, tell the CNC to move a specific distance, then figure out how far it actually moved, update the number of steps per mm, rinse and repeat.

To implement this, I have a known calibrated distance, a set of three 1-2-3 blocks, so I actually need to move until the switch closes, then ask the CNC how far it thinks it moved.

I intend to run this several times because right now, doing it manually is giving me weird results and I'm trying to figure out the root cause of the error.

So, I need to move an axis, interrupt the move if the switch is closed, and keep moving until the switch is closed.

vk6flab OP ,
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Yeah, I was hoping to avoid that, but it's been heading that way for a few days now :}

vk6flab ,
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The voting behaviour around here is .. interesting.

As for the /s, that's because of how humans communicate. Most of our context cues are subliminal, facial expression, tone of voice, body language, eye movement, etc. These account for the bulk of the actual message.

In text based communication like this, those cues are missing entirely. We use emojis and smiley face brackets to give a clue to what is going on.

Then there's the language barrier, people come from different countries with different languages, but also different cultural ideas of what's funny and what isn't. You can tell when you start looking into swearing for example. The Dutch hurl contagious diseases at each other, the Italians diss each others mother, Australians use body parts.

Sarcasm is a special form of interaction, straddling truth and disbelief in some way. It's not universally recognised in the same way since it often triggers off cultural beliefs which vary across the world.

So, to bring all that together, the simple "/s" shows the reader that sarcasm is intended in a more or less universal way. Of course that too has a cultural impact, but that's a rabbit hole I'm not going down today.

What are these "bass" and "treble" that I see in an equalizer ?

I am not an audio person, so do not have much idea about technical terms - but I hear the words "bass" and "treble" almost everywhere now, especially in the equalizer app that came with  a new bluetooth earbuds that I bought (yes, I am still very much a wired-earbud guy, just dipping my toes in the wireless earbud ocean)....

vk6flab ,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

In addition to the comments made in reply to your question, something else to consider is that all loudspeakers and ears are different.

If you want to faithfully reproduce the original sound, you might need to tweak the audio using an equaliser.

If you have tiny speakers for example, you might need to amplify the lower frequencies, the bass, and suppress some of the higher frequencies, the treble, to compensate.

Deafness is not the only thing that happens to ears. For example, my ears have trouble hearing much above 2 kHz, so I often need to suppress the bass and increase the treble to make stuff properly audible, since otherwise the bass overwhelms everything and I can't understand what a person is saying.

Finally, sound is based on vibration of air. Slow vibration makes low sounds, fast vibration makes high sounds. The speed at which the vibration happens is expressed as a frequency and the name for it is Hertz, or Hz. 1 Hz is once per second. 10 Hz, is ten times per second. 2 kHz is 2000 times per second.

Torrenting exposes your public IP. In a country where government doesn't care, does that pose a risk?

I honestly don't believe I will have any legal trouble because I don't do anything like cp or worse, I just pirate media I like, not even porn. But across users of communities, or on public trackers, is IP exposure something to be concerned about?

vk6flab ,
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I just pirate media I like

In other words, your computer is downloading stuff from other computers, that's potentially receiving stolen property, but a potential argument might be that you didn't know that it was stolen. It's not a good argument, but it's an argument. So you're an individual who potentially broke the law. Depending on how much money you have, you might get a knock on your door.

But then, you also distribute that potentially stolen property to other computers, because that's how BitTorrent works, and now you're part of a distribution network dealing with stolen property. The chances that once you've discovered you come away with just a slap on the wrist are slim to none.

How do they find you?

Through your IP address.

How?

By figuring out who owns that address, who loaned it to you to get online at that specific time. One packet at a time the research will bring them closer to knocking on your door.

So, is it a big deal that your public IP address is linked to torrenting? Yes it is.

Is this the whole story? Not by a long shot, but it's not my job to teach you how to break the law.

vk6flab ,
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If you think that will protect you, there is a lot for you to learn..

vk6flab ,
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In Australia an ISP went to extreme lengths to have a ruling, spending four years in litigation:

https://torrentfreak.com/iinet-isp-not-liable-for-bittorrent-piracy-high-court-rules-120420/

vk6flab ,
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Life is the collection of things you learnt. If you still have all your fingers and toes, this was a cheap lesson to learn :)

vk6flab ,
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My first networked computer, on an AppleTalk network was called "()/)/)()"

It was an Apple Macintosh IIci.

It had that name for less than five minutes. That's how long it took the network manager to find me and demand that I rename it to something that didn't appear at the top of the Chooser, since that's where the ADMIN NetWare server should be.

He suggested "ob1", and that's what it has been and continues to be for the past 32 years. My laptop became ob2.

Servers under my custody are called short words, generally four characters or less unless they're disposable and they don't get a name beyond what the installation process creates.

Edit: Oops, one too many slashes. Fixed.

vk6flab ,
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Take note of my username and then squint at it.

vk6flab ,
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I just spotted an extraneous slash. I fixed my comment. Hopefully that clears up any confusion.

vk6flab ,
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You're going to kick yourself in a moment..

What is my name?

Edit: it seems that names are not always visible on Lemmy. If you're playing at home, my name is Onno.

vk6flab ,
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Thank you, that's not something I knew, the three clients I've used show both the account and the name.

Edit: This is weird, my current client (Connect) shows the name, but only for my account, not for any other account.

vk6flab ,
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It turns out that some clients don't show my name together with my account. My name is Onno.

I had to migrate from Samba AD to Windows Server AD and I'm sad (RIP Samba)

Samba is amazing, Windows server is a lot less so. The problem with Windows server is that it takes tons of steps to do basic things. On Samba I had Samba tool and it was very nice and friendly. On Windows server you have a ton of different management panels....

vk6flab ,
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Why did you need a bare metal anything?

I realise that with the enshitification of VMware, there's one less viable option for virtualisation, but it's not the only one around.

vk6flab ,
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In the same way as if your Windows Server on bare metal doesn't start after an update, via the console.

vk6flab ,
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Bruce Perens is spearheading an initiative that he is calling Post Open to address issues like the sustainability of open source software development.

https://postopen.org/

vk6flab ,
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It's mind bending that there are actual humans on the planet, paid a shit tonne more than software developers, who not only believe the parody highlighted by @SwiftOnSecutity, but treat and share it as gospel, acting on it with nutjob metrics to "increase productivity" whilst salivating over the hyperbole around "AI" that is sweeping the globe, dreaming of a better world.

One without those pesky developers with their brains, thoughts and opinions.

But, what do I know, I've been in this profession for only 40 years..

vk6flab ,
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As an aside, I recall the early days when @SwiftOnSecurity was purposely ambiguous about the distinction between the artist Taylor Swift and their technology tweets. It was delicious to see confused responses.

At some point it changed. Not sure what triggered that. I have a vague memory of a stroke, but I might be misremembering.

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