Yup. It's why so many died, not from measles, but from other diseases in the 3-5 years after they had measles. IIRC they only really worked this out in the last 5-10 years because of the amount of data to comb through.
Yup. At least a decade ago I used to explain how important interoperability was to legislate for, and used this as the main example of why. Networks are better for everyone when there is no lock in, and the waste of competition for eyeballs could be avoided. It's sad that most people truly don't understand this.
There's a new server planned relatively locally to me and it's capitalising on the terrifying plunge into fascism that all the Big Socials now have as their badge of dishonour. People have never been "happy" to be on Facebook but the local focus in a pretty leftie iinet city area is a good idea. If people know people irl on Fedi they will maybe have an easier time.
What we really need (and have always needed) is an update to the legal frameworks that classify what networks are and what protections are in place for users to ensure interoperability. The Internet has been the wild west for too bloody long, and the extractors and their monopolies need to be put away. That's why they have been so happy to jump in with Donny Diaper at this point, because he's letting them not only continue with impunity, but bring back company scrip.
They'd shut down large instances, pressure WordPress to remove support, in the US at least, it could be seen as too risky, if they wanted to they would find a way. I don't think this would happen easily in the EU though.
I think, If we have any credible threat, it's going to be from the Governmental gross anti-tampering laws, forced moderation, or backup regulations. They could make it legally difficulty for us to exist
This. I have considerable concern that Fascists will straight up ban Fedi if enough people shift to it. They don't like not being able to control everything, Fedi is far too much actual freedom of communication.
Yup! Meshtastic makes a lot of sense for a whole range of use cases. I am also a festival goer and having text comms can be very useful in those circumstances.
For their size the T1000-E's are impressive, I think for many people they are the most practical EDC but folks will often have something else as a base station on their roof.
It would be very cool if someone were to release a mobile phone with LoRa built in.
Welcome! I'm a n00b but I'm having fun so far, and I'm interested in the responses you get here as I'm learning as I go!
I am very keen on standalone devices that don't need a phone to function but haven't explored that functionality as yet. I got a bunch of T1000-E's for giving to local friends to test with and as an EDC, and a Station G2 as a home base station (haven't got a keyboard for it yet but with that it becomes standalone with the canned message module). The T1000-E is super easy to set up and good to demo to people who aren't too techy that might be interested. The station g2 needs more power but comes with a pretty good stock antenna. I've ordered a couple of the SenseCAP Indicators (currently backordered) as they look like they miiight be standalone(?) with the advanced firmware which doesn't have a release date yet, and look fun even if not.
We only have a small mesh of 3 in our little town but my two friends are both into radio and way more experienced than me, and I think they are both impressed with the ease of use, and one is super keen and going to get a Station G2 as he can use it for HAM stuff too as he is licensed.
Yes please! More of this sort of thing!
Best case scenario frankly is minority govt with greens holding balance of power. Much more chance of getting better legislation passed when greens have to be listened to.
I'm encouraging every little one of us to stop sending money to US companies wherever possible. People here already are likely to be less dependent on US digital services, but pay attention. Support Fedi servers in AU or EU. Kick big tech to the curb. Think about where stuff comes from. There's some things very hard to give up but people can live quite fine without Bezos Musk and Zuckerberg. Fuck all of them.
While it's not the mainstream, it's not everyone that constantly wants more. There are many religious orders that practise asceticism, voluntary simplicity, and other behaviours which are not growth focused. Minimalism as a movement in western society is genuine. People do sometimes reach a point where they stop being seduced by consumerism, realising it doesn't bring the happiness it falsely promises.
Good suggestion but no active churches no, and very small ex-church that I'm aware of in a, non particularly high location. We would need to be getting nodes ideally at the top of hills and there are quite a few!
The T1000-E is a truly impressively designed piece of kit. I feel like so much I've been into when on bleeding edge is janky or too easy to break, these are solid.
That's very helpful, thankyou! I am still working out the different modes and we're just leaving everything as client at this point but good to know for when we get busier!
Yes for emergency services radio is probably better, but have had the conversation that those bands get very busy when there is actually an emergency, and unless you're directly involved in the emergency response it's better to keep quiet even if you have the devices. To keep everyone else in the loop a mesh would be really helpful and allows for direct comms between people without radio knowledge. I've done enough radio stuff at festivals to know it's a bit daunting for beginners. But these days pretty much everyone, even your grandma, has a cell phone and most understand apps and text messages. So the learning curve is pretty small.
My mesh beginnings
So I was interested in mesh comms years ago. Serval mesh and other wifi meshes were of interest, but never seemed to actually... work.
Then I got a couple of Gotennas. Used them once at a festival and then they went in a box.
Got them out about a year ago and tried to use them, discovered the company who made them decided to stop support for the common plebs who got them kickstarted, and now only do commercial / military apps. Greeeat. Look into HAM radio for the APRS, but hear from a friend that used to do it that in our country it's a higher level license to do any data, lot of expense and time, and thus there were few people actually doing it, so decide not to go that route. They mention Meshtastic briefly.
Skip forward and see a mention of the T1000-E... yes, I think this is the solution. Buy 4, and then a few days later see mention of the Station G2. Buy one.
They arrive and I get them set up and have a tinker... now it's time to start telling other people and ask if they can help me test.
I live in a really small rural town of 300 people at 500m on a sortof plateau (small gradients around town) in a mountainous region, couple of hours from a major city. The power fairly regularly goes out, usually from trees dropping power lines in heavy wind, and this is only going to get worse with climate change. Power out means no broadband. If the power is out more than a few hours, no cell connection either (which isn't great to begin with). So here is a clear use case for local comms in emergencies a few times a year at least.
So I contact two local friends and ask if they would be interested in testing a new radio mesh thing. Unbeknownst to me, BOTH of them actually have experience in HAM / CB radio.
They both are keen to have a play and I give the first a T1000-E a few days back, and with a bit of trial and error, we get a stable connection between our houses that are about 400m apart. This is without even getting antennas on roofs. Then yesterday other friend comes over and I give them a T1000-E and he pops back home - only about 200m to his place. Easy connection, no issues. Other friend is away during the day but I announce on LongFast that we have grown the mesh, but I go to sleep before he gets back.
I wake up this morning to find a smatter of conversation between them after I went to bed, and this is my favourite comment:
"I look at the s/n ratios and think it's impossible, but it works. Some very clever design and tech."
😀
So hopefully, we will get more people interested and even potentially a connection to two other towns nearby. Both have significant hills in the way and one is in a twisty windy valley, so we'll need to get creative or maybe need to set up private mqtt server to relay between key nodes but aware that won't be useful in emergency situation with no internet/cell data, but we're learning as we go: I'm happy to have two people on board with more experience than me too.
#meshtastic