The Christmas time, aka the time that Pawel took a longer off period and has time to go down various memory lanes, will probably lead to development of new, personal traditions such as digging up tons of vintage tech resources. This year I present GSM Online, a news site from Poland which originated as a regular source of the latest telcom and cellular phone related news from Poland, Europe, sometimes Japan, US and other places where the technology was booming. Today it's one of many tech portals but in 2000 when it started, it reported on every little thing happening in the cell phone world, including deals, new services, experimental tech that never saw the light of day outside of small pilot test environments etc. The excited eight-year-old wanted his dad to copy every new article onto Kajetek, a Polish notetaker with Braille input and voice output, so that those could be read any time without sighted assistance. Turns out their news archives date back to the early 2000 and are still available. Everything's in Polish but worth an automatic translation if you'd like to experience what kinds of tiny details the industry would focus on back then and which solutions were thought of but never fully implemented. gsmonline.pl/newsy?page=2008 #Mobile #Phone #Retro #Tech
Oh yeah, the reason I looked this up in the first place was me being reminded of Cell Broadcast, solution used today for the emergency alerts but having more entertainment-related purposes in the early 00's. Phones back then had a section of the regular messages feature where channels could be subscribed to, kind of like the CB radio. You would enter the channel numbers and your device would listen for messages delivered to the nearest cell tower matching that channel. Those messages could be delivered instantly as they targeted specific cells, not recipients, and didn't have to wait in the regular SMS queue. Example services run by my carrier included jokes, horoscope, a newsflash, something called Graffity where anybody could post anything and some dating channels because what could possibly go wrong. I think the 050 channel was a standardized one for broadcasting the name of the nearest tower which was the equivallent of accessing your current location. Many Nokia phones had a dedicated setting for that one. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Bro… #CellPhone
Tonight at 6 pm eastern, Join Robin and I for Christmas unrapped, where we hear from anyone who wants to talk about how Christmas went for them, play some final tracks for a bit of post-Christmas cheer, and if we have time, ponder the possibility that Gianluca's latest goal may become Santa Clause! all on HKC @radio. www.hkcradio.com
The main reason I will not go back to Jabber/XMPP is unfortunately the amount of aggressive fanbois here and elsewhere that immediately try to kill any discussion on messaging/chat solutions with their "why not jabber/XMPP?" replies. Same for the DeltaChat fanbois, BTW.
Same with Signal. I can't write anything remotely viral on #XMPP without some self proclaimed security expert stepping up to explain to me how much better Signal is.
I'm afraid that's just how the Fediverse works.
And since you seem to be advocating primarily for Signal you get to experience the XMPP fan boys and I get to enjoy the 'security experts'.
@daniel It's been like that since the beginnings of the internet. And it will never change, I fear. We just find more names for this behaviour :) Sealioning is the current fav :)
@daniel exactly my experience, and while they got to attack decentralization with "the system is moving" oh boy "don't you dare to talk bad about signal" and point to any disadvantage or the fans will get really mad at you
@adbenitez @daniel Interesting that I can see your replies on my timeline, jwildeboer actually blocked me because I pointed out some of Signal's flaws (centralisation, US-centric, requiring mainstream mobile OS+phone number, AWS-hosted) and hoped for some discussion about it, a while ago.
I'm strongly debating converting my primary Windows physical OS install, and all data it encompasses to a KVM virtual machine, installing Debian on my currently primary Windows box, which is a pretty shweet machine, and running the Windows VM on top of it. The box has an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16Core, 32Thread CPU from 4.0-5.2GhZ, 64GB DDR4 3200 MhZ RAM, 10 gigabit networking add-on card, 2.5 gigabit networking onboard, gigabit networking onboard, an Asus Xonar Essence STX II sound add-on card, NVIDIA RTX 3060 TI GPU add-on card, 1TB NVMe, four 4TB HDD, 800 Watt power supply, and a full-tower case.
I can't do that if I wanted to. I need ultra low latency audio, and I have never seen a virtual machine on any operating system do that right. No working Asio would be an absolute dealbreaker for me.
@BorrisInABox Yah, makes sense. You can pass hardware directly to a VM, but that probably doesn't negate the latency issue, since it has to go through at least some of the VM abstraction layers, thus adding latency. I'll be taking a full bit-per-bit image of my NVMe as it is currently, so when the inevitable, Windows VM prooving that it sucks starts, I can go back.
I have never once seen hardware pass-through actually work for audio hardware like that. It inevitably breaks in spectacular fashion in some way or another.
@BorrisInABox Ah. I guess I had made an incorrect assumption that passthrough audio was actually usable by now. But no getting around the extra latency issue, no matter how its sliced. And if it does still totally break, obviously that makes it entirely useless. LOL. Audio is way more your thing than mine, but I don't think I want broken audio, LOL. I've successfully passed through a port from my quad-10-gigabit Intel NIC to a VM with full performance, but it has features designed for VM stuff written all over the manual, so clearly, they really went the extra lengths to make it stable and usable. I suppose not so with audio devices. I can't say I'm all that surprised, really.
@BorrisInABox That was my reaction. I have no clue how to solve this problem, it's a huge problem and would be a major victory if the audio on the VM could be made even comprable to the audio on hardware. Leave ASIO aside for a minute. The normal thing is bad, the thing can't even crawl, let alone walk.
@clv1 Kind of... I'm thinking of a small kernel written in C / zig / rust, with either an abi or lua for extension. I want the extension to be available to users of the operating system, so that they can tinker with it. I think it might look like minix, but with support for user code execution in the kernel (probably like a lisp machine). This is my first time hearing about lisp machine and I think it's interesting. I'm thinking about what having a gabage collector in the hardware means.
I like ideas like these too. I know a few authors that could interest you. See for example the 3 links below. the two firsts are by the same author, and the third is an operating system written in the Forth language: loper-os.org/?p=284 loper-os.org/?p=8 duskos.org/
Staňte se předplatitelem a získejte kompletní recenze telefonů a podpořte můj kanál.Vyberte si jednu z následujících možností:▶️ YouTube členství: https://ww...
@jan @Unreed já měl kvůli tomu jednou i disciplinary, měl jsem tady babu, co řvala na celý autobus, tak jsem ji dvakrát slušně napomenul za jízdy a když to nepomohlo tak jsem zastavil na benzince a “tiše” na celý autobus jsem jí oznámil, ať to okamžitě položí, nebo si vystoupí, že my fakt nemáme zájem sledovat její posraný život (doslova). Je, to byla v office mela, tak jsem se odkázal na přepravní podmínky. Nakonec jsem dostal napomenutí za slovník 🤷♂️ ale pomohlo to, takže vlastně výhra.
@jan @Unreed máš 50 lidí v autobusu a to je jak trubka. Když někdo vzadu mluví, já mu u předního okna rozumim. Nikdo, a už vůbec ne dalších 40+ lidí, není povinnej poslouchat tvoje problémy. Tříhodinová cesta. Ani náhodou.
Jos sulla on tarpeettomana niin opiskelija lapseni etsii seuraavanlaisia härpäkkeitä: kasettidekki, 2 kanavainen dj mikseri, rumpukone, syntetisaattori, kontaktimikrofonit, ”jotkut lelut jotka pitää ääntä”, efektiprosessorit (kitara&basso, ei särö tai kompressio ja ”mitä kämäsempi sen parempi”) #musahommelit #musa #musiikki
My phone has this reminders app, which is probably what normal people use to remind themselves to do things, and maybe I should play around with it one of these days and figure out how to use it, but, because I'm lazy/weird/whatever, I instead edit a file called .reminders on my vps, jot down a date and an hour and a note, and I have a script that cron runs that reads the file, emails the note to me when the date/time has passed, and rewrites the file to remove the note that it just sent. But, anyhow, here we go--if I mean 2026, then I'm going to have to remember to write 2026, not 2025, or things won't work the way I expect.
Thanks to those who helped out with my mindly.social issue earlier today, which turned out to be strictly my issue. Mindly.social didn’t seem to like what I was trying to change my user handle to. It appeared to object to the term “radical left scum” after my name, so after three attempts to change it to that resulted in an error message every time that went by too fast to read I settled on “antifa member” which I think makes the point almost as well.
@MikeGorse Yeah that’s what I figured as well. Probably a good thing anyway, it was one of those things that seemed like a great idea in the moment but wouldn’t have been so hot longterm.
Why would you use AI to lookup up something as basic and safety critical as tides? How have people lost the capability of just using a search engine? I don’t understand why so many people want to be spoon fed by a chat bot spouting bollocks.
Just insane, stupid, and risky as hell.
Use reputable sources for critical information. Weather and tide information are a solved problem. (Weather is not always perfect!)
Jemand meint, dass mich "Deine Augen sehen sehr weiblich aus" (hellblau und eher lange Wimpern) und "good girl" provozieren würde... Nun gut, wünsche viel Durchhaltevermögen.
I think my favourite software purchase of 2025 was a lifetime license for AdGuard. I mean, yes, I could have used one of my Raspberry Pi systems to do something similar, but, it literally took me 5 minutes to setup, while a Raspberry Pi configuration would have taken me more and then I'd have to baby it. Besides, it appealed to my inherent laziness and now I can read articles without all the ad fluff.
I've been using Pihole for 10 years, and I like that it works on literally everything on my network, even smart TVs. No need to install or configure anything for each client. My Ubiquiti gateway also has Adguard support built-in, but I've never used it.
Yes, at least until they catch up, then you get to play the cat and mouse game. There are some blacklist specifically for smart TVs, and you can set up lists in groups and assign different types of devices to different groups to apply content filtering to only those devices with specific lists and stuff. It's really neat.
@BorrisInABox It's also worth noting that Pihole is a bit misleading as to the name. I think the last time I used it on an actual pi was in 2019. I now use it on a VM sitting on one of my desktops. I know I can use docker, I'm just too lazy. The VM doesn't have to be looked after, even if the underlying hardware blows up for some reason, I just put the backup on some other thing and am satisfied. That hasn't happened yet.
@techsinger Yeah, you can run it on damn near anything, really. I am still running it on rPis because my space is just too squished to consider much else.
What happens if you stick an ebow on a mandolin? You're really supposed to use these on electric guitars, but since I don't have one here, I did this instead.
"Moderates, those with a prior of 4, made the most valid model choice and are therefore most likely to obtain the correct estimate. Hence, pro-immigration researchers in particular appear to have reached their conclusion by making less valid choices in their analysis, thereby reaching a biased conclusion. If anti- and pro-immigration researchers were similarly frequent, such a bias may cancel out. However, pro-immigration researchers outnumber anti-immigration researchers and moderates, whose analyses are most reliable combined. The results is a literature containing mainly a small share of moderates doing rigorous research and a larger group of ideologically motivated pro-immigration “researchers” who torture the data until they “find” a pro-immigration message."
How long would it take a group of motivated individuals to make a modern computer, if they were sent to Earth as it existed in e.g. the 18th century, and given an artifact to communicate with Earth as it exists now.
Just got an email saying, "Hello, your book is amazing, is this inbox active for discussion?" If I replied, then I'd have to ask, "what book?" Maybe I have amnesia and have a book that somehow I have no memory of writing.
We had a fantastic Christmas with our chosen family. The Boxing Day head cold is something I could certainly do without though. Throat and sinuses are killing me!
Please boost for reach. I had a conversation with a friend last night, and we agreed it is about time my website got a massive reorganization. As part of this, some files will be removed for various reasons, mostly because they have little to no practical value and aren't worth keeping around. Over the next several days, I will be reorganizing on my local side, and the changes will go live starting January 1st of 2026. I would like to apologize for broken links that will be present in the future, however I feel that is a small price to pay considering the circumstances.
@cubic What about the various pieces of vintage software? I'm particularly thinking of things in utilities, old jaws versions, window-eyes and tts folders? A lot of it isn't hosted anywhere else that I know of. Also the BGZ audio archive. Either way thanks for all the work you've put into hosting this site for all this time
@pitermach @cubic Thanks for the support. Nothing with major historical significance such as the things you mentioned are going away. I am mostly removing things such as audio files that make myself and other individuals cringe.
If you just got a computer (holiday or otherwise) and are thinking of installing Linux on it, shoot me your questions!
I'm going to collect a bunch of them for an upcoming livestream, maybe this weekend after holiday parties are wrapped! Either that or next week sometime.
You can ask me here or ask (at) veronicaexplains (dot) net.
Not so happy. Financially, 2025 was probably the worst year I had since I started translating for a living. I lost most of my long time clients - retirement, sickness etc. - and new ones are hard to find. So I am on self promotion now - anyone here who wants his English book translated into German? No option for you? Talk to me. Most of my authors are glad for the additional income. References on my blog - see profile. #translations #books #writing #author
In some cases you may want to remove an application entirely from your phone. If you are a bit tech-savvy you can enable USB debugging, plug your phone to the computer, install ADB (android debugger) and then remove the APK (best case) or if that's not possible, totally disable it for your user.
Here's the command to do it for Google's password manager, for instance:
let me give you the best options 1 use canta with shizuku app and uninstall all goo(💩) gle things like : maps, browser, files, messages, Google, playstore, play services (if possible or just disconnect full internet connection a'd no update) Gmail, gemini, photos, utube, utube music, Google contact & dialer Now remove all unnecessary permissions from gallery phone message. Remove location permission Set camera & microphone permission to ask everytime Use opensource apps from f-droid
8. Disable google advertising ID in phone settings
9. Install F-Droid where you can discover many FLOSS apps deliberately not published on google play
10. Switch from a fingerprint to a pin (added bonus that police in several countries can legally force your thumb onto your phone but cant legally force you to give up a pin)
11. Switch from google notification servers to something else like microg and/or set notifications to not display message content or at least not display message content when the phone is locked (Im pretty sure all that can be done from notification settings)
12. Switch from googles keyboard app to an open source alternative from f-droid (google has been fined millions before for illegally and secretly tracking geolocation it wouldnt surprise me if they do the same with keystrokes, and also mic and camera)
13. There's a bunch of other phone-home features spread across the settings but mostly under privacy category and accessibility category that you might want to turn off if you have no use for
every new phone I already do this 1st before turning on Wi-Fi. Disable everything I can. Install brave, Vivaldi, fossify apps, netguard (block everything I can), nova launcher, OSMand + CoMaps....
Your smartphone surveils you by design. GrapheneOS transforms a Pixel into private hardware you actually control. Here's why it matters and how to do it.
I am slowly shifting to using a reductionist definition of phone ("an implement for transferring voice across a distance, and only for that") and thinking of the rest of the modern "phone" as some kinda distraction rectangle. :D
I have had one issued, and it gives me trust issues. Strictly speaking it is unneeded. Makes for a handy notepad and online communicator (within my personal/work device separation rule) - though I could just use an actual notepad and call people using the IP phones that we got everywhere anyway.
Am I missing something really obvious, or is there no way to create an aggregate audio device on Mac OS Tahoe? I can't find the button to add a new device in Audio MIDI Setup.
Is the feature actually removed or is it just not accessible? In the latter case there's at least some hope to get it back eventually... Not going to upgrade until that happens.
@tuukkao @klittle667 It's still there, try tabbing from the audio device table. For some reason the VO cursor can't reach it. I nearly got a heart attack when this first happened.
.
Hubert Figuière
in reply to Stéphanie • • •Stéphanie
in reply to Hubert Figuière • • •Hubert Figuière
in reply to Stéphanie • • •