HakFoo

@HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Can We Do to Get Youth into Ham Radio?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if the way to go is to start with the premise of “It’s a way to communicate” and work backwards. Better tooling could make it more amenable to new users, and also help make specific use cases more compelling. Once users have he reason you want to be in the ecosystem-- which I suspect, for many people, might look more like a community than a bag of one-off contacts-- then it justfies going deeper into better equipment and technique.

  Discoverability is a huge thing. For example, a cheap SDR, even receive-only, is a magical thing, but you end up getting a waterfall full of “what’s this weird burst” and jumping around the dial trying to chase where the action is. I suspect better software could really help there-- a UI that decodes digital modes and CW in the right place, and archive received signals might make it easier to track the activity and reduce the problem of “I tuned elsewhere and missed something interesting”

  If you start with one of the cheap 2m/70cm HTs, you might be able to find a local repeater, and once you work your way through the fidgety UI, even send a transmission. but are you just going to find empty air much of the time. Again, it’s hard to find the action, and make sure you’re actually being a positive contributor. I think this has been a problem for me; I got licensed, got my little HT, but now I have the choice of either listening to static, or waiting for a conversation and hoping I have everything configured right enough not to be an annoyance. Maybe better guide websites and scheduled events can help minimize “listening to static” disappointment times.

  I could see a fun community project being an autoresponder bot-- in idle times, it would listen to an advertised frequency, detect speech and CW signals and respond with signal quality reports quickly and conveniently to make it easy for a new user to make sure they’ve got their equipment set up right without barging into a conversation. I know there are ways to test propagation, but a lot of it is “go find a second device and pull up a tracking website”

  I admit some of this could be seen as “dumbing down” or steering towards specific narrow paradigms, but that doesn’t have to be the entire universe. It could be the equivalent of AOL or Compuserve to the open internet-- making sure that you can get value out of the experience early on, so people can transition to the broader open platform as their needs and skills grow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's wrong with a technocracy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’ve seen decentralized education and it tends to have problems with resourcing and economies of scale, and content policies get easily hijacked by loud people with personal vendettas.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hypothetically, if you were a billionaire that suddently had a change of heart and wanted to go against trump, how dangerous would it be to resist?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s what baffles me with the DOGE fracas. How long will solidarity hold when there are some very clear winners and losers within their own class?

  There are a lot of billionaires who have fat revenue streams coming out of the federal budget, and I don’t think they’re all eager to trigger some sort of Mad Max/Medieval social collapse just so they can be the Archduke of San Jose after America implodes. I doubt they all bought the Network State story.

  A fair number of them, expecting to live for more than 10 years and wanting to remain rich, probably invested aggressively into “skate where the puck is going” businesses that are now being slaughtered in the name of doubling down on fossil fuels and uncompetitive domestic manufacturers. Will Elon eat their losses? Of course, he’s committing financial seppuku too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How is the Stock Market keeping it's value after *points to everything*?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Our new defacto president is the avatar of bubble economics.

  Even the other oligarchs, thry made something at dramatic scale to justify their wealth. Microsoft did sell a lot of software. Facebook got 176 billion people on board to blast adverts at. They’re trillion dollar firms that do correspondingly large run rates.

  Tesla is still a minor player in its space, and SpaceX is inherently a narrow business. Even PayPal, where the horrors all came from, isn’t a major value add, it’s a thin mask atop the clunkiness of American payment rails that should have been replaced by something like FedNow by 2003.

  But he’s taken these tiny fundamentals and convinced Wall Street to puff more air into them than a fresh bag of Lay’s.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act Re-Introduced⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s some shared delusion that without a HOA to block it, everyone is just champing at the bit to leave a rusted out Pontiac on blocks in their front yard, which will totally cause their neighbour’s property value to fall.

  Personally, the next model-home exhibit I visit, I’m asking up front if they mind my plans for a 1:3 scale reconstruction of the Westward Ho

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Romance scammers are now in the fediverse⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I never seem to get appropriately coded romance scams.

  I guess the RFI from my computer is jamming the gaydar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Reeve Musk⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you using a shell replacement for the XP style titlebars and taskbar?

  Calmira was pretty impressive for a taskbar-based shell, but I don’t recall doing a titlebar swap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Perfectly clear instructions HP⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I read about this. They make the printer WITH a perfectly good USB port and then stick a “no USB” label over it and attempt to force you to use their wireless setup.

  post.lurk.org/@yaxu/110833261398955782 for more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wasn't the future of tech much more interesting in the 90s? LGR comments on '93 CES⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s also the Ploopy, which is modern-oriented but a competent DIY trackball.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what was the last game you played in 2024?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Vampire’s Dawn 3. I suspect I’m exhausting my opportunities to powerlevel through the content, being that my party reached level 86 and never having seen any zone tagged at a level over 85. I might have to use gasp strategy to finish it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Think twice before gifting someone an M dwarf this holiday season⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I though dwarf stars had far longer lifespans than solar-type stars, and conversely the largest giants last only tens of millions of years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I guess I'm just a cubicle monkey now⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Right there that’s where we went wrong. Back when Dracula was in charge the prices of groceries were reasonable, and he only needed a few virgins a year sacrificed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Upgraded my setup (for x86 asm of course)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not nasm? Are you actually targeting DOS?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Happy birthday, peon⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My company originally said you got two free days off per year, outside the accrued PTO: one for your birthday, and one for parity because office #2 got a state holiday that #1 didn’t.

  Now they moved to the “unlimited PTO” gimmick which has no right answer for how much time you can take off, so I follow the old PTO accrual schedule for my seniority as a guide.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why virtual desktops always have same background?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  CDE supports it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just to be clear, the chicken sandwich itself holds no ill will to the homosexual community. Sandwiches are generally incapable of hate.

  Sadly, the ghouls that own the company that makes the sandwiches are incapable of reaching the same level of human empathy that an inanimate foodstuff can.

  Aside from that, you ain’t missing much. It tasted weird and sweet 20 years ago when they started selling them here, before the controversy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hot take⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder where “same language, different encoding” turns into “new language”

  The morse-derived shorthand used by radio enthusiasts might be similar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When you die, what do you want to be done with you?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is vampirism or zombification an option?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scalper economy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Would thry?

  The ticket seller doesn’t care if there’s an empty hall, he got paid early on.

  You’re hoping that the scalpers don’t get enough return to be able to justify continuing to play their role.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic Games is officially cool with the Internet Archive preserving early Unreal games⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But GOG is alresdy the Steam with Principals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mine was the fact that Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr were both born in 1929 😭⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Apple II’s big selling point, compared to the other two big brands introduced in 1977 (the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Commodore PET) was colour.

  But it was a weird and colour scheme that took advantage of clever Wozniak hacks to make it viable on a cheap machine. Good video hardware, and enough memory for the colour display, were spendy. That’s why even into the 1980s you’d have machines like the ZX Spectrum with limitations like “every 8x8 block can only have 2 colours” which used less memory, and 40-column screens that were readable on TVs instead of dedicated high-res monitors…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Orac⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was always disappointed that celebrity and character voice packs weren’t a thing for the voice-assistant platforms. I’d pay literal ones of dollars for a voice assistant with a Sebastian Michaelis intonation and theming.

  Cortana for Windows Phone came closest, I think they did use the same voice actress as the game character.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Random question for today: Considering people who are not amateurs, if you wanted to create increased visibility and participation in amateur radio, what would you do?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a bit late, but here’s my upvote. Ground the site for a few weeks, and took my Technician and General exams today, holed up in my bathroom.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ain't nothing a dollar anymore⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Ten Bits” seems viable, although nobody cares much about the Spanish real anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be weird if I took something my neighbor put out for trash?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I put out one of those big plastic storage units with like 30 little drawers recently, figuring although 2 were missing, someone could still use it. I stood it next to the dustbin, on trash day where it would be optimally visible for anyone who wanted to scrounge it.

  The bloody HOA took a picture and sent a nastygram.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Sundae⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Cute!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon finds a flashdrive⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My idea was a worm that just torrents random shit and dumps it on your desktop like a cat bringing you a dead bat with “I broughted you a pwesent ^w^” energy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would a brigade effort to "engage" with Trump ads in streaming services force the campaign to waste extra money, and make a viable psyop when they measure their telemetry?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Can we get the politicians to shift from illegal aliens to Sasquatch? Build a wall across Washington state and make Canada pay for it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Ticketmaster Doesn't Want You To Know: Concerts Were Cheap For Decades⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The experience could be somewhat tamed by a lottery process.

  Accept a token deposit for a week or two, and then draw from people contending for a given seat, then give them another week to pay the balance. Any unclaimed seats are put up at will call night-of-the-show. Limit the number of deposits taken from any given card to prevent “I’ll claim 30 seats and only buy 1” gaming of the lottery.

  There’s probably some more complexity about it (if you want N seats together), but I think that would dramatically cut back on the frustration for “the tickets were only available for 14 seconds and the server was being DDOSed by scalper bots.”

  Having to put down a deposit with no guarantee of a ticket also makes “buy All The Seats” scalping theoretically impossible and economically riskier. If there’s 5/1 contention for a ticket, you’d have to find a way to get 3 lottery slots for a better than even chance of getting it. If the deposit was $10, you’re spending $30 for the chance to buy a $50 ticket-- so if you can’t resell the ticket for at least $80, you lose. Under current policies, if you can sell that $50 ticket for $51, you’re ahead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Level 5 Gyatttttt⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I never realized the tattoos were photoshopped.

  I assumed they used a random stock photo that had a convenient pose to add the shirt onto, that happened to have a tattoo.

  Of course, I also figured using a photo with too much ink would 1) distract from the merchandise and 2) make the stock photo model too recognizable. (Oh, they clearly used Getty #8675309, “Fat White Guy With Mediocre Barbed Wire Tattoo”), but plenty of the pics are identifiable enough to use for a police report.