I'm away from home and stumbled onto some kind of global net controlled today by a Scottish guy. It was probably 4pm Chicago time, so 2200 UTC. What is that, how is there a global net? I think they said something about EchoLink but I'm new and really only recognize the name but not how it works.

Organic Maps is available on Linux! It's on flatpak and several package repos (but not apt). I don't know how long it's been there — I just discovered it.

The splash screen cautions that this Linux beta doesn't have parity with the mobile apps yet, but it's still a huge leap over Gnome Maps. Vector rendering, so you can zoom in as far as you want, and free / open source / not shitty (notwithstanding the big scary EULA, which just contains all the OSS licenses for all the pieces).

I have a license whose ink is still wet and a shiny Yaesu HT with that new ham smell. I can see my 2m repeater from my window - maybe a couple of miles away - but I have to be in that window to hear anything. I assume actually mashing PTT and saying anything will just sound like static.

That window is attached to an HOA-governed apartment, so outdoor antenna no va. What I've read so far is that my rubber duck might not be terrible by rubber duck standards, but that an N9TAX Slim Jim might be a good deal better, even inside the window. But that's 2m. I also like to listen to aircraft, just below 2m. Will an antenna tuned for 2m make it easier or harder to hear TRACON?

As a Truly Casual Taylor Fan Honest™, I've been amused at just how many news categories she's dominating by not even quite being there. Every macho man in the U.S. is wound up about her either for politics (or rather, the fear that she'll say something about politics) or for football (or rather, the idea that she'll be a distraction from Real Football).

I wish I could find some way to twist all this attention and use it for good evil. I will spare you all the Macho Man GIF, which you know I was thinking about.

In the web UI, OSM can't be zoomed in far enough to see the names of POIs in reasonably dense areas. I can get around this by going into edit mode, and mobile apps don't have this restriction. But the out-of-the-box experience, for non-insiders just using the web site, doesn't reveal all that OSM has to offer.

Does anyone know what the rationale for this is?

with the simple tools suite being sold to a purveyor of non-foss things, remind me of your favorite lists of recommended apps? i was using simple contacts and am not immediately sure of a good replacement. i would want one without internet permissions, which was why i disabled the google builtin.

I had reimaged my old Samsung on LineageOS as it seemed to be the only alternative that supported my model. It was fine until I installed OSMAnd, which couldn't get a location. Shame on me for not noticing that I would need microG for that. Not feeling comfortable with all the rooting and flashing needed to shoehorn microG into an existing image, I figured I'd try LineageOS for microG.

Having loaded a lot onto this phone already, I wanted to try a dirty flash first, knowing full well it might not work. The first prerequisite is to use an image of LOS/µG that is dated higher than the image in the phone. I had just updated, so I needed to wait for the next one.

The docs say that LineageOS for microG will be updated "a couple of times a month". But the latest LOS/µG image has remained at 11/2/23. This means I haven't had an opportunity to try the dirty flash, but it's also a security warning sign for me—LOS updates weekly like clockwork. Irregular and slower-than-promised updates make me a bit nervous for this aspect of device safety. It's not just my model either; most of the images are backdated more than two weeks.

https://download.lineage.microg.org/

(Yes, I know my boot loader is unlocked, and no, Calyx and Graphene don't support me, so I made my choice between physical insecurity and Google insecurity.)

The Molly fork of Signal now has a variant that supports UnifiedPush, but it requires a helper called Mollysocket to be installed on a server somewhere. I can't get my head around the (we'll call them 'lean') docs, and I've never encountered such a helper for other UP apps. They just ask what to attach to, and they attach.

Has anyone fought through this?

i hadn't fired up my python project in an age, probably two vscodium updates. when i did, i had no more syntax checking and the alert window showed errors reaching the 'jedi' server.

downgrading the vscode-python extension to 2023.16.0 was seen as the surefire way to clear this. it worked for me, too - got my syntax error highlighting back and no pesky errors in the alert pane.

they created a new issue against the extension, or the packaging system, or something, which was closed immediately though the problem still persisted. the chatter was about a cache, somewhere, with a lot of 'perhaps' and 'if'. one day i'll try bumping this back up, maybe after vscode-python passes the problematic 2023.18.0 version.

A few updates ago Pop started nagging me to accept firmware updates. My layman's reading of the release notes is that it's a Microsoft package that can block boot based on an ever-increasing number of packages they don't like.

Is it safe to take an update like this? Unlike a kernel change, I don't know how to recover if this goes wrong.

Chromium derivatives like Vivaldi and Brave decried the Google Web Environment Integrity… um, 'feature', at varying volumes, back in the summer when it became widely known.

But can any Chromium-based browser actually avoid implementing this? Have there been more recent statements?