Technology
Taking Back The Internet With The Tildeverse
solrize 28 minutes ago • 100%
If only there was a way to communicate without videos. The Mesopotamians had something like that but the technology was unfortunately lost.
Programming
Safe C++
solrize 24 hours ago • 100%
Dependent types only make sense in the context of static typing, i.e. compile time. In a dependently typed language, if you have a term with type {1,2,3,4,5,6,7} and the program typechecks at compile time, you are guaranteed that there is no execution path through which that term takes on a value outside that set. You may need to supply a complicated proof to help the compiler.
In Ada you can define an integer type of range 1..7 and it is no big deal. There is no static guarantee like dependent types would give you. Instead, the runtime throws an exception if an out-of-range number gets sent there. It's simply a matter of the compiler generating extra code to do these checks.
There is a separate Ada-related tool called SPARK that can let you statically guarantee that the value stays in range. The verification method doesn't involve dependent types and you'd use the tool somewhat differently, but the end result is similar.
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
Look on Starlink.com. I don't expect it's much worse than your typpical evil ISP or phone caerrier in terms of privacy. Certainly you could route everything through a VPN and that might help a little.
Edit: oh wait, I confused this thread with a different one when I looked at my inbox. Starlink is a high speed service with a roof antenna. For satellite phone stuff, look at https://skylo.tech.
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
I'd either get an older model for cheap, or get a 9 because of the satellite capability. I wonder if GrapheneOS supports the latter, and for that matter whether it supports the 9 at all yet.
Ask Lemmy
How cheap/expensive is your cost of living in a low-cost area and a small paid off home?
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
I've never owned a home but what people have told me is that you will spend 13 or 14 monthly payments per year, 12 of them on the loan, and the other 1 or 2 on the related expenses. Insurance has gone up a lot around here since then though.
I know you can rent a tiny home plot with water and sewer in the (expensive) SF Bay Area for $800/month including some amenities (deltabay.org) so that is sort of an upper bound. This includes an electric hookup but you have to pay by the KWH for power. You can order a 400 sq foot tiny house (container home) on Amazon for about $20K (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9Q3391S) though that's just for illustration purposes. I don't know enough about them to actually recommend that approach, plus I hate Amazon. So I would try to buy direct if I pursued that.
Mobile internet coverage is pretty good now, unless you're waaay out in the boonies to the point where you have to ask whether there are even roads to get there with. So if you don't use a lot of data, that gets you online fairly inexpensively. The next thing after that is Starlink, which is way less expensive than I thought, $300 for the dish tranceiver plus around $150/month for "unlimited" service.
The deal with well water depends a lot on the location. In the western states there are often legal restrictions. In drier places you have to drill very deep, which is expensive. If there is surface water, it's less bad. In the desert (Joshua tree), a 1000 gallon truck delivery is around $100 (10 cents a gallon) iirc. I looked into this because a friend was interested in building a biodome there. So you are ok for careful usage but typical suburban use with frequent laundry and toilet flushing could get expensive. If you use a well, you might have to process the water to get rid of dissolved metals and solids, some of which can be toxic.
Propane, again, some company delivers a 400 pound tank every few months, which means there has to be a road that can get it there, or you need some other way (ATV) to move it. I guess you can use smaller tanks if that's easier. A friend of mine had this and I think they swapped the tanks around, as opposed to refilling stationary tanks from a truck, but I can ask her. It's possible that I'm confused.
Solar electricity and solar hot water are very doable now. You can buy a pretty good ready-made battery bank from Home Depot or similar, almost as cheaply as you can DIY without serious scrounging. Again I know a guy with around 10KW of solar panels and 10KWH of batteries iirc. He may have spent around $15K on this though he DIY'd. There is a substantial tax credit against solar expenditures here in CA, plus he gets paid when he feeds surplus power back to the utility (net metering), so he is doing pretty well with it. I think that setup is enough to run all normal household stuff most of the time. Maybe you want a backup generator around.
There is a really good old reddit post about solar hot water. I think it is here: https://old.reddit.com/r/diySolar/comments/b5leqm . The person made a huge coil of black PVC tubing exposed to the sun, with the water circulating through a big tank, and this was enough to give him plenty of hot water year-around with a few K$ worth of stuff, plus electricity to run the pumps.
Lately there are developments in ways to extract water directly from atmospheric humidity, even in the desert. I like to say that this is just like the moisture farming I used to do back on Tattooine ;). Web search: "atmospheric water harvesting". Maybe this will become practical soon.
There are a lot of homesteading forums that might be better places to discuss this stuff.
Is there a location you are thinking about? For now, my own interest is sort of academic, but I have been following stuff a little bit.
All told though, I always hear that city and suburban nerds like me often think this lifestyle sounds great, but they get sick of it quickly when they actually attempt it.
Programming
Safe C++
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
In Ada? No dependent types, you just declare how to handle overflow, like declaring int16 vs int32 or similar. Dependent types means something entirely different and they are checked at compile time. SPARK uses something more like Hoare logic. Regular Ada uses runtime checks.
Technology
Wtf is this bullshit? Why can't i update to ios16 on my iPhone 7+? Now how will i buy my french fries at a discount price?
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
Nobody intentionally creates vulnerabilities, but more complicated software is more error prone and therefore more likely to be vulnerable. Fast release cycles also get in the way of good testing. The most complicated piece of software on most phones is the web browser, and its complexity is imposed by the web and its advertisements, rather than by what the user wants or needs.
IOS and Android face pretty much the same issues on the OS developer and phone manufacturer sides. Therefore, the IOS and Android worlds could both clean up their acts in about the same way if the incentives were right. That they don't do so might be a bad situation that we have to cope with, but we shouldn't pretend that it is a good situation.
I wonder what apps require IOS 16 in some meaningful way. I know there is a situation with Android apps requiring OS upgrades unnecessarily.
Why do companies like McDonalds want you to run an app anyway, instead of e.g. using a web page? There are a few sites or products where I currently give up the equivalent of a french-fry discount rather than run their stupid app. It's just a minor annoyance so far, but it doesn't make sense to me. Do those apps usuallly keep running the background so they can track you, or what?
Technology
Wtf is this bullshit? Why can't i update to ios16 on my iPhone 7+? Now how will i buy my french fries at a discount price?
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
Those security vulnerabililties are because of buggy old software, and updating the software in the old devices does as good a job of fixing the vulnerabilities as selling you a new device does. A significant e-waste tax on every new device, accompanied by credits for keeping old devices working, might help with that. Anyway, if it's an app (rather than OS) vulnerability and you can't fix it with an update because the new version of the app requires a new OS, that's mostly likely an app that you don't need to use. I'm getting by ok with F-droid apps instead of Play Store apps, for example.
Best still would be to debug the software before shipping it, so it wouldn't have those vulnerabilities in the first place. There are various forces that get in the way of that, but a significant one is that web development is now driven by delivering more advertising rather than useful information to the user.
Technology
Wtf is this bullshit? Why can't i update to ios16 on my iPhone 7+? Now how will i buy my french fries at a discount price?
solrize 1 day ago • 100%
I wasn't aware of the USB-C adapter with pass through charging, but still, it's extra crap plugged into your phone. Yes I have a Moto G series phone which is Motorola's budget to low-midrange line. It has a headphone jack and it is full size. Flagship phones have a few more features but none seem important.
Technology
Wtf is this bullshit? Why can't i update to ios16 on my iPhone 7+? Now how will i buy my french fries at a discount price?
solrize 1 day ago • 72%
The laptop (Thinkpad X220) that I'm using is much older than the iphone 7 and it runs current Debian just fine. Lots of people are running current LineageOS on similarly old Android phones. Why can't the phone vendors do the same? Planned obsolescence doesn't change by wrapping it with nice marketing words.
I have figured that if I needed to get an iphone for some reason, it would be a 6+, since that is the last version with a headphone jack (similarly for Pixels, it would be a 4A). But I guess that strategy won't work any more.
memes
Programming
Safe C++
solrize 2 days ago • 100%
In Ada, the overflow behaviour is determined by the type signature. You can also sometimes use SPARK to statically guarantee the absence of overflow in a program. In Rust, as I understand it, you can control the overflow behaviour of a particular arithmetic operation by wrapping a function or macro call around it, but that is ugly and too easy to omit.
For ordinary integers, an arithmetic overflow is similar to an OOB array reference and should be trapped, though you might sometimes choose to disable the trap for better performance, similar to how you might disable an array subscript OOB check. Wraparound for ordinary integers is simply incorrect. You might want it for modular arithmetic and that is fine, but in Ada you get that by specifying it in the type declaration. Also in Ada, you can specify the min and max bounds, or the modulus in the case of modular arithmetic. For example, you could have a "day of week as integer" ranging from 1 to 7, that traps on overflow.
GNAT imho made an error of judgment by disabling the overflow check by default, but at least you can turn it back on.
The RISC-V architecture designers made a harder to fix error by making everything wraparound, with no flags or traps to catch unintentional overflow, so you have to generate extra code for every arithmetic op.
Programming
Safe C++
solrize 3 days ago • 73%
It's very hard for "Safe C++" to exist when integer overflow is UB. Rust also gets it wrong, though not quite in the same way. Ada gets it right.
No Stupid Questions
Every show with a suicide now has a disclaimer with a suicide hotline at the beginning. Is there any evidence that these warnings make a positive difference?
solrize 3 days ago • 100%
They need "This show depicts stupidity" but they will never have it.
Open Source
Photo Solution Suggestions Needed
solrize 3 days ago • 100%
I think if your photos are on any kind of public website, AI idiots will scrape them regardless of the provider. So at minimum you have to password protect them. That said, I'd feel ok using this:
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share/
It basically runs NextCloud. You'd configure it so that only logged-in users can view the pictures, and give accounts to your friends and family. I don't think Hetzner is likely to train AI with it, though you could check through their privacy policy. Part of the issue with eg. Google Drive is that everyone wants stuff for free, so Google recovers some of its costs by advertising, AI training, etc. Hetzner charges enough to actually make a profit, while still being IMHO affordable at the level we're discussing. That means they don't have to do crap with advertising etc. I have 5TB in their Storage Box product and am happy with it.
If you want to be more hardcore, you could set up a dedicated server with an encrypted HDD, but now you have to deal with the hassles of self hosting, including backups. It still wouldn't be end to end encryption, which would require your users to run some kind of special client, or maybe use some awful javascript client.
Technology
Longi achieves 34.6% efficiency for two-terminal tandem perovskite solar cell prototype
solrize 4 days ago • 100%
Interesting. Cost is also very important for large scale deployment of course. I wonder if this stuff can become competitive in $ per watt with the current silicon cells.
Open Source
Photo Solution Suggestions Needed
solrize 4 days ago • 100%
It would help if you gave some numbers. How much data, within a factor of 1000 say? A few megabytes? A few gigabytes? A few terabytes? A few petabytes? The approach you need will change depending on the level. What is your budget?
What bothers you about cloud storage? Are any of the photos edgy?
Anyway it sounds to me like you would be fine with a decent web hosting plan and a basic photo gallery app.
solrize 4 days ago • 100%
So, Professor Jenkins, my old nemesis! We meet again, except this time, the advantage is mine! Quack!!!
Fediverse
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves: Cohost and the Fate of Centralized Platforms
solrize 5 days ago • 66%
I don't know what Cohost was but I'm pessimistic about Lemmy these days. Note that the link is to an article moaning about the centralization of sites like Reddit and that Cohost (whatever that was) failed because it was run by the same type of people. At first I didn't click on the link because it says "audio" so I expected it to be audio and I didn't feel like listening to one. It's a written article though.
196solrize 5 days ago • 100%
Chess has always been overwhelmingly male. In the old days there were separate men's tournaments and women's tournaments. That changed in the 1980s when Susan Polgar was by far the strongest female player in Hungary. She didn't have any serious opposition in women's tournaments there, and wasn't allowed to enter men's tournaments, so she started a big fight. The result was that men's tournaments were abolished and they are now "open" tournaments that anyone can play in, though they are still overwhelmingly male. Women's events exist basically so that female players don't have to endure the gauntlet of a socially inept nerd sausage fest in order to play chess.
For a while there was also something called "centaur" tournaments, where a centaur was a human player assisted by a computer. The idea was that the computer could outcalculate humans, but humans still had better strategic judgment, so a human-computer team could outperform either member individually. After a while though, computers became strong enough that human interference just made them play worse. The current strongest chess tournament in the world is called TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship, tcec-chess.com) and it is always running, 24/7/365 unless something happens. Some really incredible games have come out of it.
Ask Lemmy
Are there previous historical examples of cult-like followings of US political candidates?
solrize 5 days ago • 100%
I was young then too, but it seemed to me that while Reagan was popular among Republicans during his Presidency, he didn't get an actual personality cult til after he left office. His popularity came from evoking nostalgia, so afterwards, he himself became an object of nostalgia. He died in 2004 and his funeral was turned into a tremendous media event glorifying him. It was sometimes called the "Reagasm".
It seemed to me that Barack Obama had a personality cult of his own, at least during his campaign and early time in office. I think that his followers got disillusioned after that, but he retained some popularity and got re-elected despite intense opposition from the other side.
Technology
The latest version of ChatGPT has a feature you’ll fall in love with. And that’s a worry.
solrize 5 days ago • 100%
This exact same thing happened with the very simple ELIZA chatbot back in the 1960s. Joseph Weizenbaum (ELIZA's author) wrote about it in his book "Computer Power and Human Reason". He was shocked and scared. He had written ELIZA as a cute demo, and people treated it as if it were human.
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
I wouldn't bother with the upgrade unless your T440P is falling apart like my X220 is. You can put in a 4TB SSD pretty cheaply. If you want to do heavy transcoding or something like that, use a remote server rather than a high temperature, power hungry laptop.
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
Ding Liren is the current human "open" world champion, but there is also a women's world championship, currently held by Ju Wenjun. Plus there is a world junior championship, world rapid championship, world blitz, etc. Magnus is probably still the world's best human player, but he decided to drop out of the WC cycle because he got tired of winning it so often, basically.
The strongest chessplaying entities in the world are entirely machines, which have surpassed humans by enormous and uncrossable margins. The top engine for the past few years has been whatever the latest version of Stockfish is. The top human players spend enormous amounts of time studying machine analysis of various openings and game positions.
Privacy Guides
please help me with some arguments for my wife
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
You're broadcasting to family who will likely be using gmail, so what difference does it make? Google will get all the emails either way. Anyway, logical argumentation is completely useless in a personal situation like that.
If you want the address to be stable in the long term, you should probably use your own domain name instead of gmail or proton, if you're not already doing that. After that, it's possible to switch the hosting without changing the email address.
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
Never heard of U-prove but for what you are asking, is FIDO2 similar?
Linuxsolrize 6 days ago • 96%
This seems terrible. You can get a nice laptop for a lot less, including some that you can configure as a tablet, e.g. Lenovo Yoga.
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
It's up to the moderators whether to allow those kinds of posts. Sometimes I'll look at the linked article and post a summary (often just the first sentence after the headline) but I'd rather that the original poster was required to do that. I started !savedyouaclick@lemmy.world and made a few posts there, but no one else posted anything, there so it's deserted for now.
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
I saw a minute or so of it because someone else had it on, but I wasn't interested in watching, I'll catch a summary online later, or will look at this thread now and then Will try not to reload obsessively. I need to protect my fragile brain from this crap ;).
solrize 6 days ago • 63%
That was Harris's request, I thought. In the original terms for the Trump/Biden debate, each person's mic was shut off except when it was their turn to speak. Harris asked for that to be changed to allow interruptions, and Trump went along with it. If that's not working out for Harris, she should probably talk to her own team that wanted it, instead of whining about the moderators.
solrize 6 days ago • 100%
Sounds good, thanks.
raspberrypi
automated camera for daily photos of construction site
solrize 7 days ago • 100%
Is an extension cord really out of the question? Keeping a power bank running 24 hours a day means you will have to recharge it quite often, even if it is large, since the power bank circuitry itself consumes current proportional to its size, more or less. And a solar panel would have to be at least 1 foot on a side, maybe bigger, and facing the sun. Maybe not that practical for a window installation.
You might be better off scripting a phone. Maybe the phone can completely power itself off except for the minute or so per day where it would boot itself, take a picture, and power off again.
solrize 7 days ago • 100%
I looked him up and he is English. Weren't English sailors called Limeys because of the lime juice in their rations, specifically for scurvy prevention? He should have signed up with the Admiralty instead of the pirates.
solrize 7 days ago • 100%
Ah ok. I only use SMS in very basic ways, so if it's going to stay around then I'm glad. Thanks.
solrize 1 week ago • 100%
The thing about SMS is that it sometimes worked in low signal situations where voice and internet didn't get through. That is a virtue that shouldn't be given up easily. If anything its reliability should be enhanced. It's fine to also support a fancier chat scheme as well, but a robust, 1-to-1 text-only mode is important.
Selfhosted
Free encrypted read-only cloud storage with cancelled google drive and rclone?
solrize 1 week ago • 100%
I wouldn't count on google drive doing anything in particular after expiration, unless that is expressly part of the product description. Just because you can observe it happening now doesn't mean you can expect it to keep happening. For that matter, Google cancels products all the time. So I wouldn't even rely on the paid plan not being withdrawn at some inconvenient moment. If you really want to use it, then best strategy is probably use it as long as it lasts, but have some plan B in mind if it goes away.
Oneprovider.com shows lots of offers in Istanbul, though servers are expensive there compared to a place like Hetzner:
https://oneprovider.com/search?&cities[]=62&price=0&price_max=9999999999999999&price_any=0
Selfhosted
Free encrypted read-only cloud storage with cancelled google drive and rclone?
solrize 1 week ago • 100%
1.1 USD/mo for 2TB is basically a giveaway or free plan, i.e. you're the product not the customer. So I'd be suspicious. How much storage are you looking for? Hetzner unfortunately jumps from 3.2 euro/1TB to 11 euro/5TB. So 2TB is kind of a bad spot on that scale. But if google drive is working for you and your stuff is encrypted, why not keep it?
Selfhosted
Free encrypted read-only cloud storage with cancelled google drive and rclone?
solrize 1 week ago • 100%
Tbh you get jerked around less with paid plans. I'm happy with Hetzner Storage Box. I have 5TB there for 10 euro/month. I'd never use Google Drive. borgbase.com has a 10GB "free forever" plan and I could see parking some stuff there, but 10GB is pretty small and IDK the conditions. Why not use a VPS provider with better storage options?
solrize 1 week ago • 5%
- why an ios article on c/android, 2) why RCS? SMS was a good system for what it did, so does that automatically create an obligation to mess it up?
A Boring Dystopia
Alabama is farming out incarcerated people to work at hundreds of companies
solrize 1 week ago • 100%
There is some analysis described here: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-violate-fundamental-human-rights-new-report-finds
blog.cryptographyengineering.com
Blog post by crypto professor Matthew Green, discussing what Telegram does (I wasn't familiar with it) and criticizing its cryptography. He says Telegram by default is not end-to-end encrypted. It does have an end-to-end "secret chat" feature, but it's a nuisance to activate and only works for two-person chats (not groups) where both people are online when the chat starts. It still isn't clear to me why Telegram's founder was arrested. Green expresses some concern over that but doesn't give any details that weren't in the headlines.
electronupdate.blogspot.com
This is a good blog post, with die photos of the new RP2350 chip and a brief description of what they show. There is a link to a 12 minute youtube video that is also very good, that discusses the die shots in more detail and also goes over the rest of the Pico 2 circuit board, including die shots of the QSPI flash chip and the voltage regulator chip.
This is a technical but quite informative article, nominally about which elliptic curves have good security properties, but also discusses the intentions behind using EC instead of older systems like RSA (basically, EC is safer against some known classes of attacks). Posting partly because EC vs RSA came up here a few days ago.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18617290 > The National Institute of Standards and Technology has finally published the world’s first three official post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, tools designed to protect key systems against future quantum computers powerful enough to crack any code generated by a modern computer.
Basically more everything. 2x Cortex M33 cores with floating point, 520KB ram, more PIOs, bunch of secure boot stuff (I have mixed feelings about this), and can boot to a mode with risc-v cores instead of the M33s.
www.advocate.com
I get spammed by them all the time but have so far resisted and stayed with my crappy, slow, and expensive ADSL provider out of principle. But the ADSL provider just raised prices on me AGAIN and it's ridiculous. What do I do? Is Google Fiber as invasive as other Google stuff? What if I just use it to tunnel a VPN to a non-Google endpoint? This is sure annoying. It occurs to me that Comcrap might be available here as an alternative, but that must be as evil as Google. At least the ADSL company is reasonable about privacy, as such companies go. Thanks for any thoughts.
It's a pain that search results on lemmy show by default ordered by some useless relevance ranking. I can't think of a single time I didn't want newest first. I couldn't find a preference to request that. It would be great if there was one. The suggestion on c/support on lemmy.world was to make this kind of request on github, but it seems anti-FOSS to me to require a Microsoft account for a fediverse request, so I'm posting here and hoping for the best. Thanks for any consideration!
Example (spam post containing an amazon affiliate link, post hopefully deleted by now but I assume mods/admins can see it): https://lemmy.world/post/15846936 Also there are tons of links people post legitimately but have tracking parameters, gclid=this, fbclid=that, etc. Those can be cleaned up too. By editing out these parameters automatically when the link is posted, people's privacy can be protected and the incentive to post affiliate spam can be decreased. It could be a server config parameter and/or put into the posting UI: "your post contains [link] with flagged parameters, choose between a) post cleaned up version (shown), or b) post link without changes (may go into moderation queue depending on community settings)."
Voyager 2.3.1 on Android. I visit a community and select "hide read posts" and those posts disappear a they should. But there is no apparent way to undo this. The pulldown still has "hide read posts" instead of "unhide" them.
Sofirn confirmed by email that it is discontinued. No idea about other LT1 series models. A shame. I like the Mini and kind of wanted another one. Oh well.
www.aalto.fi
New study shows that the default apps collect data even when supposedly disabled, and this is hard to switch off
Any idea why? I've been using it for months. I probably had to grant permission when I first installed it, but haven't had to again since then, until just now. Also, some of the time, when F-droid updates an app, the update just goes through. But other times I get a dialogue asking "do you want to update this app?". It seems random. Any idea? Phone is a Moto G5 Stylus 2023 and it recently got a security update from Motorola, but I think I've done some F-droid updates since then. However, this may be related. The other possibility is that something might have happened to F-droid's code signing credentials, e.g. someone messed with them? That thought is basically why I'm asking here.
He passed on March 20. One of the greatest "hard" science fiction writers, author of *True Names*, *A Fire Upon The Deep*, and other cyberspace classics. Link is to his death notice in the old school fanzine File 770. Moment of silence please. RIP.
And, any idea how to use them? 3 pins is perplexing.
G Stylus 2023 - went from $119 to $199, no longer attractive since 5G stylus is still $249 5G Power went from $179(?) to $299, lolwut? The 5G Stylus is a higher model and still $249 G Play 2023 is still $99 and a good deal but quite limited with 32GB flash and Mediatek CPU G Play 2024 introduced at $149, a nice incremental upgrade to the 2023 model, has 64GB flash, but get this, they have dropped the SD slot. The last bit is disturbing since no other 2024 models are yet announced. I wonder if they will drop the SD slot in all of them. Not good. I got a 5G Stylus a couple months ago and still like it a lot. I had been thinking of getting one of the lower models for my brother since he doesn't care about 5G. The 2023 non-5G Stylus looked great at $119 but lame at $199. The 2023 and 2024 G Plays are both still of interest. https://www.motorola.com/us/smartphones-moto-g-family
Phone is Moto G Stylus with Android 13. Whenever I launch the built in photos app, it now gives me a nag screen to download a version upgrade. When I click "upgrade", nothing happens. It's conceivable that I have network permission disabled for the app. I better check. 1) Is this a familiar thing? How do I make it stop, either by installing the upgrade or by shutting off the nag screen? 2) Is there a FOSS photo viewer that anyone recommends instead, that I can install from F-droid? I'm reasonably satisfied with the UI of the Google one. It allows sharing photos, moving them into subfolders, seeing the metadata, and some minor editing, all of which are useful. I don't care in the slightest about cloud sync or google drive so it's ok if the replacement app doesn't have those. Thanks!
Thanks Moto, just 2.5 months behind. I think they will do a major version update sometime, then 1 more security patch and that's it? That's what they did with my previous phone. It wasn't ideal but tbh it didn't bother me that much. All this is pure FYI.
I don't have a google account and don't want one and really prefer to not upload my contacts to someone else's server as a matter of principle. I have a personal nextcloud server so could use that if it helps, but it's not clear that it does. I tried exporting the old contacts as a .vcf file and importing the .vcf to the new phone, and that MOSTLY worked, but it seems to have lost the labels on the phone numbers. E.g. my entry for XYZ Bank had separate phone numbers for payments, credit card, and so on. Those got transferred to the new phone as home, mobile, work. I.e. .vcf doesn't seem to handle custom labels. Is there some kind of workaround? The vcf scheme seems like about the best, except for the issue of losing the contact labels. To complicate matters a bit, I've been using the new phone for a couple weeks now, so I have added or edited some contacts on it. That means if I do another transfer, I'd prefer to not wipe out the contacts database on the new phone, though if that is unavoidable I guess I can survive. Old phone is Android 7 and new phone is Android 13 if that matters. I haven't examined the .vcf file in an editor but I guess I should try that. Thanks for any advice.
www.motorola.com
It's cheap and it's the only one of the G family that supports Boost Mobile (don't know why the other ones don't). It would be for a family member who may need to replace an Android 8 phone. For stupid reason I have a couple of prepaid Boost cards, so being able to use them is a plus, but the phone's low up front price is also a big attraction. I have the G Stylus 5g and like it a lot, so am imagining the Play as a less fancy version. Is that reasonable? Thanks.
Is it a rule imposed by the phone carriers, who want you to buy a different plan with no voice service if you have a tablet? It can't be the phone makers since the are so many. It can't be Android software licenses since Apple seems affected too. I'd be pretty interested in a tablet sized phone. But they seem to have maxed out in the current tall skinny format that is not really big enough for some things. Just wondering. Edit: aha, I managed to get rid of the stupid photo. Thanks for the help.
I mean the functionality where it guesses what word you are trying to type, after seeing a few letters, or when you type by sliding your finger over the keyboard instead of pecking individual keys. I have all the custom dictionary and self-training stuff shut off on my old Android 7 phone (didn't want to upload data to Google) and it still worked pretty well. Is it my imagination or is Android 13 a lot worse? Amusingly, Android 13 seems more willing to use NSFW words. I tried to type "furosemide" (a prescription drug that a family member uses) and the phone sas "fu" and suggested "fucking". Android 7 also had those words but wouldn't use them until it was out of alternatives. I'm not offended but I think that change is funny.
www.unihertz.com
Ok it's 4G and Android 12, so a little bit behind the times, and weighs over a pound, but it has 65 watt fast charging and a built in 1200 lumen flashlight (I wonder if that doubles as a video light). I found out about it a few days ago and have been fascinated by it since then. The weight isn't so bad if you consider that it gets rid of the need to bring a power bank. Not gonna buy real soon but wow. Maybe they will do a 5G version sometime. I posted in another community that I want to be able to pull it out and say "that's not a phone, THIS is a phone". Any thoughts?
and it would also be nice to make the link symbol bigger. Also, at least on Android, the "share" icon should be the traditional 3-node graph thing rather than a download symbol. I don't know whether ios has different conventions. Thanks ;)
Wondering if anyone is here. I have a question about software decoding of Morse code. I keep being told that is harder than it sounds, so I'm wondering what the issues are. I have a use for it right now. Thanks.
[The 60.4g one is here.](https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-pro) It has a 2.45 inch screen, 1100mah removable battery, has been around for a while, and runs Android 8.1. By its dimensions it MIGHT fit into an Altoids tin (which would of course block RF signals from reaching it, good or bad depending). I emailed the company and they replied there are no plans to update it, unfortunately. They have a newer "Jelly Star" version that runs Android 13 and has more features, but is 2x as heavy. I suspect the lighter one didn't catch on because the battery was too small, but it might be ok if you don't actually use the phone much. [The 560g version is here](https://www.unihertz.com/products/tank). It is that heavy because it has a 22000mah(!) non-removable battery. It also has a built-in 1200 lumen flashlight, 6.81" screen, accepts 65 watts USB PD fast charge, and generally looks like a capable modern (8gb ram, Android 12) phone, though it is 4g only. They do have some 5g models that are smaller. Why is a 560g phone ultralight? Well on Reddit r/ultralight they always talk about power banks, and the lightest 20000mah power bank is around 300g and it is popular there. This thing combines the power bank and a phone, so saves the weight of a separate phone. They also like to spend days on the trail and then duck into a restaurant for a recharge, so they like fast charging. Most phones and power banks recharge at 15 watts so you don't get that much in an hour, even with separate chargers for your phone and PB (i.e. 30 watts using both at once). This thing supposedly takes an almost full charge in under 2 hours. Finally, it is good to get rid of the cable between the power bank and the phone. Not for weight (you still need to bring a cable) but because USB connectors are way too fiddly and they break all the time. So the less often you plug and unplug a phone, the better. Huge batteries from that perspective are good. I should also mention, the above is supposedly a ruggedized phone. If that means you don't need an add-on protective case, that saves some more weight. I have never used or seen either of these phones (just heard about them last night) and don't feel likely to buy one (especially the Tank), but both are interesting enough that I thought I'd post here. Update: there is an even bigger (666g, 31mm thick) follow-on with Android 13, 5G radio, 16GB ram, and 120 watt charging: https://liliputing.com/unihertz-tank-3-smartphone-has-a-23800-mah-battery/
Yes they are terrible and enthusiasts should use rechargeables. But for others, there are sane reasons to want to have a few alkaleaks on long term standby. Is the fridge better for this than room temperature? What about the freezer? Related: Countycomm's 1C and 1D lights are on sale again. That is what prompted this question.
Battery Junction sells these for $1 each or sends you one for free with any $20 order: https://batteryjunction.com/titanium-keylight-colors They look like generic and slightly crappy 2xCR2016 keychain lights of the type pioneered by LRI/Photonlight and its users. The intriguing thing about them is the mention of a microcontroller. Its purpose is to give click-on click-off functionality that I guess is more convenient, or maybe lower costs by using less precise plastic molding than the Photon II and its mechanical switch requires. But of course it makes me think of running Anduril in the light ;). The product page has decent pictures of the assembled light, so I have posted a crappy photo of the disassembled light and its PCB. The MCU is the little potted chip-on-board thing. It might be possible to replace it and painstakingly rewire the PCB traces, or else possibly make a new PCB. The pushbutton itself is a little spring contact in the center of the board, going to an MCU pin. I haven't tried to measure the idle current drain. There is another SMT component on the board that I don't recognize. It's about 2mm*3mm and is thicker than I'm used to for SMT resistors, and it's marked "W4". A capacitor? Inductor? Hmm. There is no PWM and no multiple modes, just on-off. I haven't yet disassembled a Photon Freedom to see if that has more parts inside. Changing or reprogramming the MCU in this thing is probably not practical, but the electronic switching is interesting in its own right. Another idea that I had is to replace the led with one with full length leads that could be bent to 90 degrees, making a right angle light that could be used as a tiny headlamp. That is not really possible with a Photon II or clone ("Fauxton"), because those use the flexing LED lead as the on-off switch. In fact I got about 3 feet of sticky-back Velcro at Daiso for something like $1.50. So that suggests a truly tiny headlamp with no strap. Just stick a velcro dot on the back of the right-angle light, and a bigger velcro dot of opposite "polarity" on your forehead, and plop the light there or remove it as needed. The idea is for the velcro to stay on your forehead like a band-aid through an outing of up to a few days, while not causing too much skin irritation. But, I have not tried this crazy scheme ;).
www.nature.com
About using ultraviolet LEDs instead of fluorescent tubes in a bug zapper. PWM'ing them saves power and catches more bugs. I figured it could be of interest here.
Deleted, I got confused, this was about a problem I was having on lemmy.ml rather than here.
Pace beads (see the linked article) are a low tech navigation aid for hikers that are basically a small abacus-like device made of paracord. You hang the set from a pack strap and use it as a manual pedometer to track the distance you have walked in a given direction. You count off 100 paces in your head while walking, advance 1 bead on the "abacus", count off another 100, etc. The usual 1 strand setup goes up to 50 counts on the beads, i.e. 5000 paces or about 3 miles, at which point you start over. While out walking yesterday it occurred to me that I already had the right hardware in my pocket (an Anduril light) to support an electronic version of that. Just program a counting function into the light, click the button every 100 paces (or maybe 10 so it is harder to lose track), and read out the pace count afterwards. My thought is to include it in the existing 4C lockout mode. During lockout, 1C advances the count and 3C reads out the count using blinks. 4C unlocks the light as usual and leaves the count unchanged. You reset to zero by temporarily disconnecting the battery. Does anyone else like this idea? Does the proposed UI sound ok? I think I can code it, if it sounds useful.
Being able to measure open circuit battery voltage is great, but it would also be useful to measure current while the light is running. That in turn can map to battery runtime and/or lumens. I wonder if any existing boards can do this, e.g. if they have adc pins connected to the relevant sense resistors. If not, it could be a cool feature in future boards.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2163520 > 18.5mm diameter, 7.7mm thick + 3.7mm for the flange on the back (see photo on mfgr page https://niteize.com/ziplittm-led-zipper-pull ). Output is about 1 lm, wide flood, similar to using a phone screen to light your way. Definitely a functional light not just a location marker. Smallest light that I actually know where to buy. Drops ok edgewise into NDUR match safe and of course you can use the space around it. Weight incl battery and non removable pull cord, around 2.5g or 3g. More later.
18.5mm width, 7.7mm thick + 3.7mm for the flange on the back (see [photo](https://niteize.com/media/wysiwyg/NZL_Feature_04.jpg) on mfgr page, https://niteize.com/ziplittm-led-zipper-pull ). Height is 21.1mm because of the little tab where the (non-removable) pull cord goes. Weight is around 2.5-3g. You could file that tab off if you wanted it smaller, then drill a small hole in the rear flange and run some paracord inner strand or dyneema thread through the hole, if you still wanted a lanyard attachment. Without filing the tab, it fits ok "edgewise" into an NDUR match safe (20mm ID), which seems ok because the space around the light is still usable for matches, tinder tabs, etc. The output is about 1 lumen in a wide flood pattern, so it's like using your phone screen to see your way around. We've all done that, it's not super bright, but it works. It is definitely a (minimal) functional light and not just a location marker. I calculate (but haven't yet tested) that the little CR927 lithium cell inside should be able to run the light for several hours at that level. You can remove the "pill" (16.5mm dia, 6.1mm thick, plus flange) from the outer housing if you want the light smaller still, but you may give up waterproofness and protection of the (0203 sized surface mount) LED. A layer of clear nail polish (what McGizmo used to call "poor man's conformal coating") might help with that. I don't have a precise scale nearby but the pill weight (incl. battery) must be under 2g. Unfortunately the CR927 battery is a bit hard to find, especially from recognizable brands. Exell is one brand that is supposedly legit, and there is a decent ebay offer [here](https://www.ebay.com/itm/275436191582) (search for "Exell CR927"). I will probably order some of those. It seems to me that with a little careful sanding of the battery compartment, you could squeeze in the more common CR1025 and get a little bit more runtime in the process. But I haven't yet tried this. I think if you want a zipper pull light or small light for practical use, the venerable Photon II is a better bet. There are also "dog collar" lights that can work as zipper pulls, that use a CR2032 cell that has around 10x the capacity of the CR927. But this thing is nice if you have extreme space constraints. It is the smallest light that I actually know where to buy. Suggestions for Nite-ize if they see this: * Enlarge battery compartment to use CR1025 cell. I think this is doable while keeping external size the same. * Change black zipper pull cord to a more visible color like orange * Put some GITD paint around the led if that doesn't increase cost too much. I might try that as a mod for my own units. * Add a bigger version to the product line, using a 2032 cell and maybe 2 or 3 of those tiny LEDs.
The SC02 is a not so interesting lipo powered rechargeable light, around 2x the size of the Rovyvon A5x which has higher specs all around. I got it because it was super cheap (on promo, and tipped my Sofirn order to the free-shipping threshold, giving further effective discount). I don't recommend it though I won't call it terrible. 1lumens' review is pretty accurate: https://1lumen.com/review/sofirn-sc02/ Holding it reminded me of the venerable Tekna Splash-lite, a classic 1x CR123A backpacking/diving/survival light that goes back to the 1980s or earlier, when it used a #222 screwbase penlight bulb of around 3 lumens. Current versions use LEDs and [you can still get them](https://www.tek-tite.com/proddetail.php?prod=Tekna_Splash_Lite_LED). I wouldn't spend $30 on one today, but it is still a functional minimalistic light. I have the one in the pic (older ~10 lumen LED, received as a gift) and an incandescent one in clear plastic (bought from a CPF member in maybe 2005). I tested the black one when I took the pic and it lights up fine despite the 10+ year old battery. It was a nice reminder! I hope you liked the pic and the walk into history. Pic background is 5mm grid paper if you care.
I remember using them as a kid and leaking wasn't unknown, but it seemed less frequent than now. Have they gotten worse, and why? Cost reduction? Thinner casings due to capacity races like happened with NiMH in the early 2000s? Changed formulations from earlier less safe materials? Just my imagination and they always leaked like now? Or what? Thanks.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1594047 > Left, LRI Photon II, using 2x CR2016 coin cells. Middle, junky 2x CR1616 squeeze light, source forgotten. Right, 2xCR1220 "Fauxton", and AAA battery for scale. Background is graph paper with 5mm grid. > > I got the CR1220 light on Deal Extreme some years back, but can't find them on DX or AliExpress now. Anyone know where to get more? It actually works decently. It's a scaled down Photon II with a 3mm led. > > More small light pics coming. :) For you ultrLighters, the Photon II weighs about 6.5g and it is really all the flashlight you need unless you are night hiking or whatnot. It's plenty for finding stuff in your tent at night etc. The CR1220 light might weigh 3g, idk. I will weigh it when I get a chance. But I don't know where to get them now. Photonlight.com has the Photon lights.
Left, LRI Photon II, using 2x CR2016 coin cells. Middle, junky 2x CR1616 squeeze light, source forgotten. Right, 2xCR1220 "Fauxton", and AAA battery for scale. Background is graph paper with 5mm grid. I got the CR1220 light on Deal Extreme some years back, but can't find them on DX or AliExpress now. Anyone know where to get more? It actually works decently. It's a scaled down Photon II with a 3mm led. More small light pics coming. :)
blog.lon.tv
This is about broadcasters wanting to encrypt over-the-air TV so you need an HDCP enabled screen to view it. Basically DRM for broadcast television over public airwaves. FYI.