Nice article on Meshtastic. The problem is that, like anything, the actual distance is a lot more dependent on line of sight and the actual mesh existing. Which means we’d need a LOT more people to adopt these and put up repeaters for them to be useful. Which is doable, but not cheap.
At that point, given the extremely small bandwidth, we might as well just use a massive wifi, everyone already has the required hardware for that instead of producing more trash for a pretty much non-existing use case.
Funny thing about Wi-Fi, it overlaps with an Amateur radio band (the 2.4GHz spec does) and so hams are allowed to run Wi-Fi with no encryption but a tremendous amount of power and high gain antennas on like the highest channels.
A portion of the 5GHz WiFI band overlaps with the 5.8GHz ham band too. There are also a few WiFi radios that will also work above the US WiFi band where they can operate without interference from other license free devices. Those are used in the HamWAN network.
In trying times you're missing the big picture. If they were more commonplace, you'd have a decentralised communication network that can't be shut down by the government.
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
Yes. LoRa (from "long range", sometimes abbreviated as "LR") is a physical proprietary radio communication technique.[2] It is based on spread spectrum modulation techniques derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology.[3] It was developed by Cycleo, a company of Grenoble, France, and patented in 2014.
Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That's pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don't feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you're passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn't have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then... I'm not really interested in what they think.
Or more to the point, the ISP fails. A Wi-Fi router isn't that much more difficult to power than a meshtastic node, but my old ISP, I don't think they even bothered to install UPSes, if the power was out, so was the internet. I could keep my Wi-Fi up indefinitely, but it's basically useless outside my house.
We are in talks to build one for a local power utility. These are cheaper for nice-to-have sensors that aren't critical. Most electricity meters in Victoria use a mesh network provided through silverspring devices to collect usage readings.
I've also heard about a rural water utility using a mesh network to connect water meters together to reduce the number of times an onsite reading is required.
Telcos are already trying to compete with mesh networks by providing low bandwidth LTE-M services that are lower cost for utilities. Nokia are pushing 450connect, 450 alliance, etc as more competitors also.
There are plenty of use cases for low bandwidth systems and services. Isolated network is great when the telcos have pages too.
I worked for Vint Cerf back in the early 90's. I became aware of the politics around it when Al Gore pushed for funding so the Internet could grow into something bigger than a University/Military communication system. Rush Limbaugh was on the radio daily railing against Al Gore's Boondoggle. Clinton/Gore secured funding and the Internet exploded in use.
During the 1999 Presidential election, Republicans took Al Gore's greatest political accomplishment, getting Congress to fund the creation of the Internet, and made it a joke.
Eisenhower had probably the worst foreign policy record because of the Dulles bros. Almost all the CIA government coups that happened occurred during Eisenhower and ended up in disasters decades later.
Sucks you can’t charge it and have to instead go to a central bank to exchange minted coins for notes that you can exchange for the commodity that is the radio.
Yeah, I’ve seen some clever stuff where they take a solar powered light and wire in a Heltec V3 for $30-$40. But I thought one of the new upcoming standards (WiFi? Cell?) incorporated a mesh capability.
Have a look at meshmap.net. That shows people who have voluntarily put themselves on a map.
Although it can be a serious underestimation, for example in my area, I'm the only one who lists myself on the map, but there are about 10 other nodes that don't
Edit: Also, the number of nodes on MeshMap has pretty much doubled in six months since I started playing with it.
Hmm, more than I expected actually. None in my town but one in a nearby town and the nearest city.
Is there a limit to how far can you communicate through multiple nodes? Also is there anything special for setting up a repeater compared to just communicating on the network?
Though i don't know anyone else that would be likely to use something like this sadly.
They've set the maximum at seven hops, but depending on weather conditions, that can easily be several hundred miles.
Nothing special is needed for a repeater except that you probably will want a node with a solar panel such as the seeedStudio solar. You would put it up as high as you can get it. I generally say if it's more than 100 feet in the air, use router mode. If it is less than 100 feet but above 20 feet, use client. If it is less than 20 feet, use client mute.
Your node in your pocket or in your car should be on client mute mode since them broadcasting will not get the signal much farther and will just cause more channel utilization on high nodes.
That's pretty much exactly what they are. Text message in walkie-talkies. With the added benefit that if your friend can't hear you, but another friend is in between, your message automatically gets relayed through their walkie-talkie.
Everything I learn about this project is so cool. I can’t go through the docs right now, but I’m assuming it can prioritize things like emergency communication over sensor data.
There’s no public nodes in a 200+ km radius around me on that site someone linked, so something tells me I’ll have to do a lot of guerilla solar panel installation if I want to anonymously set up something.
I’ve thought about it on and off over the past two years, more of a private network for family and friends than anything, for emergencies and so on. The real, big problem is that I could be accused of espionage and thrown into jail forever if I do this. So I don’t think I’ll see anyone putting any nodes up for the foreseeable future. At least not public nodes.
It is cool! The barrier to entry is relatively low. The only thing to really worry about is:
What band/frequency is appropriate for you country.
Are there others around to which you can connect?
If there's not a lot of people around it's not the end of the world. Nodes can connect over the Internet via MQTT servers. Yes, this defeats the purpose of having an offline/decentralized communication platform, but it is a good stop gap until more nodes are put up.
Here's a sample of what I can see in a somewhat large-ish Midwest City in the US (there's about 63 nodes I can reach by hopping through relays).
Elecrow ThinkNode-M2 is a high-performance LoRa signal transceiver. It uses the ESP32-S3 module as the main processor and supports Bluetooth. Users can easily configure and monitor the device through their mobile phones.
It allows us to make a mesh network (interconnected nodes where you can contact a node even if it's not in range for you, by using other nodes) with Lora radio devices. Lora is slow but has long range. I think it works better when you have line of sight, like if someone can put a node on a mountain, it would help everyone.
I think people might have sent audio with it but it's mostly useful for text messages. It could be useful if the Internet is down, maybe, but it's more like a toy.
Definitely clickbait. The phrase "send texts" as it's been used for the past quarter century means "sms texts" or maybe "text messages to other people on mobile phone networks", which is not at all what this is.
Exactly. I was hyped because I'd like to send and receive SMS w/o a mobile phone. I was hoping someone implemented the protocol so I could integrate it into my desktop, the "no wi-fi or cell service" was merely a bonus.
But no, this is just a way to communicate over a different radio protocol than mobile phone standards.
What is the range of a device like this? Is there any chance of using a mesh system like that if you're not in a city? I'm about 30 miles away from a few towns, so there's little chance for repeaters to be nearby.
Theoretically you can get 50 ish miles or more with line of sight. In practice, you can get around 10 ish with repeaters. With around 30 devices, our city has effective coverage.
You also have options to use MQTT if you want to make sure a message gets through. But that requires an internet connection.
What about without line of sight? If I get one of these is it going to work while it's sitting on my desk, or am I going to have to mount some antennas on the roof to actually make it usable? The maps only show like three other people in my city with one, so I'm not sure how useful this will actually be for me.
Honestly, its a fun side project, but without enough nodes its more of a hobby. If you want to make it usable, its probably better to use internet or higher power devices (like ham). Or buy a metric ton of these and throw them up high.
As long as you have a node in sight, it should be good for at least some communication. My little window node gets 20+ nodes.
How does this differ from IP over ham radio? It seems like in general, it would just be lower distance and greater reliance on nodes near you, with the trade off being smaller equipment.
Its biggest + in my book is that you don't have to be a ham to make it work. There are better systems if you want more reliable communications. But its a fun side hobby and, in the event of a power outage, a decent little communicator. Although from personal experience, most of the devices piggy back of your existing cell phones and bluetooth. So ironically as long as the cell towers aren't blown to hell, your still fine either way.
There may be some miscommunication. I ment that in order to use a majority of the meshtastic devices, they require the android or ios app + bluetooth. Not all, but a vast majority. And most of those will have access to a cell phone tower that will likely not go down, even in the event your neighborhood power goes off. At least where I am at. The devices have often been alluded to a disaster proof communications device. And an alternative to instant messaging. Its not as reliable as some other tech that is out there, but its a fun hobby!
The phones are one reason I don't think Meshtastic is good for emergency communications. My main Meshtastic devices run off a battery pack that can run them for 2-3 weeks, but I'd also have to keep a phone charged throughout the disaster to use them.
What kind of data rate can they provide? Can it support audio? Low bit-rate video?
I've seen LoRa when Pine64 announced some related products some years back, but I haven't really gotten into it. If the community is big enough and the bitrate reasonable enough, I might get one to connect my home to my parents home (about 10 miles away, so at the edge of the range) for fun. It would be cool to set up some smart home stuff at both ends that I could host on my own so I can keep an "eye" on my parents stuff when the travel (mostly just door and occupancy sensors, no video).
In theory the protocol can support those formats. With meshtastic it's only designed for text. You can get some really basic emojis though since they are Unicode.
If its simple enough, I could probably abuse it to send binary data by encoding everything in base64 or something, and writing a simple translator for whatever my app is.
But what does the usable bandwidth look like, and what about latency? If I'm going just out of range from direct communication, I assume I'd be going through other peoples' nodes, but is that intelligent enough to route messages through efficiently? Or could I see crazy latency spikes?
You are at the edge of what I know 😀 If you find out, let the rest of us know. I only have vague and hand wavy knowledge at this point of lora slow means lots of latency. GL!
What is the typical power requirement on these devices? Can it be used to set up IoT sensor nodes in the wild where they work off solar, or do they need periodic tuning/care?
My wife and I each have a radio, as do several of my friends. They're handy for anything where you may not have cell coverage, like camping. We also use them at protests, to avoid the heavy surveillance that's being done on cell networks. Even if the authorities start looking at Meshtastic, everything except the public channel uses PGP end-to-end encryption, and there is no middleman that has access to the unencrypted data.
We have also put up a repeater node. It's on top of a house at the top of the highest ridge near us. Before it went up we rarely saw more than our own nodes. Now we see several dozen, and sometimes a lot more. And the repeater serves the whole community, not just us. The beauty of a mesh is that everyone contributes to everyone else's coverage.
The mesh in our city is growing rapidly right now. Not only are there a lot of people getting their own nodes, there are a surprising number of people putting up repeaters to help spread the coverage. It's amazing to watch our whole neighborhoods suddenly appear as gaps are filled in.
Easiest and least expensive are a little different, so I'll talk briefly about both.
The easiest is to go on Etsy and search for Meshtastic. You will find plenty of people who will build you a ready-to-go unit, both individual radios and solar-powered repeaters. (If you plan to put your repeater somewhere with power you can use any radio as a repeater, just put a good antenna on it.) Pre-built units start at around $60 and can go up into the hundreds, but $60 to $90 will get you a great personal radio.
The least expensive is to order a kit from one of the many companies that sell them. If the kit does not come with a case, check Etsy for cases that match your kit. Most kits do not require soldering, you just have to plug in various cables and connectors, then fit everything into the case. Some actually come fully assembled. This approach generally costs somewhere between half and two-thirds of what a pre-built setup will run. Kits start as low as $10, although most or $20 to $40, and cases are mostly $20 to $35.
One of the harder parts is to figure out which radio kit you want, but there are just two major types. Those built around the ESP32 processor tend to be a little less expensive and offer the option of WiFi, but they have a much shorter battery life. Those built around the nRF52 processor cost a little more, do not offer WiFi, but have nearly 10 times the battery life. WiFi is only used in a few specific cases, usually by repeaters and not personal units, so you may well not need it. Battery life is not usually an issue for personal radios, since nearly all of them will go for a full day between charges, but sometimes you may want more than that. Stand-alone repeaters that run off solar panels are almost all based on the nRF52 because of the battery life.
The most common starter radios are based on the Heltec V3 kit, which is based on the ESP32. It has been around a long time, it is relatively inexpensive, and it can do pretty much everything. The only downside is battery life, which may or may not matter to you. Unless that's a concern, you can't go wrong with a V3. My personal favorite is the T114 kit, also from Heltec, which is based on the nRF52. It is much like the V3, but without WiFi and with much better battery life.
I would wait until you've played with a personal radio before buying a repeater. Every Meshtastic radio acts as a repeater, so you don't necessarily need a dedicated repeated. Find out how many nodes are in your area and what kind of coverage you get. If there aren't many nodes, or distance is limited, you can consider a dedicated repeater.
Basically, a repeater is just a node with a good location that's put in a good location, up as high as possible. Because Meshtastic radios use very little power, it is practical to make completely self-sufficient solar repeater units that never require charging. You can put one of those on your roof, up in a tree, or on top of a nearby hill or mountain, without having to worry about regularly climbing back up there.
I strongly recommend that you go to meshtastic.org and read through the Getting Started documentation. It provides a lot more detail (and less personal opinion). And check out the Meshtastic communities on Lemmy. Have fun!
Thank you for the detailed reply! Yeah I realize now Mestastic.Org has everything I need.
Planning to prolly get:
A rak wireless kit for a local repeater on my roof powered via PoE, and then a TTGO TEcho for my personal device.
I know that I should just get the latter and play with it first, but I live high on a hill with a great vantage point of the city so feels like a disservice to the community if I don't also host a repeater.
One thing I'm curious about, is if I use it via poe, can I also send messages via the repeater? I.e. locally from my network initiate a message through my repeater?
I would want it in repeater mode so it would forward any message even ones I don't have the encryption key for.
I don't think any of the current Meshtastic radios can be used in the usual way via ethernet. Some support WiFi, but not the RAKs that I know about. That leaves USB and Bluetooth.
There is a very neat option that allows you to set up to remotely administer a node via radio. That has saved me a lot of trouble with my repeater. You can't do everything that way that you could with a direct connection, but you can do most of it.
The repeater will automatically forward messages from your personal radio to anyone who is outside your direct range. You don't have to do anything special to make that happen. Likewise, any node, including your repeater and your personal radio, will automatically forward encrypted messages without knowing what's in them. Only the endpoints need to have the encryption keys. Anything in between just forwards the raw data.
LoRa has been around for a while trying to break through with different devices, some of it does seem useful, but it's a tough sell to invest in something without knowing where the network will go. A carrier model or something else, maybe subsidies, is needed.
I just picked up a 2pack of devices from the Amazon link in that article. Planning on messing with them this weekend. I figure I've spent more than $60 on random projects that went nowhere before, so this can't be that bad.
I sent this link to a friend who's really into internet radio (like CB used to be cool for nerds) who also loves to 3d print. He lives in a plains state, where this should work really well.
A power struggle between two rival generals has effectively split Sudan amid a 27-month civil war that has left some 150,000 people dead.
Deepening the crisis in civil war-torn Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Saturday announced the formation of a rival civilian-led government, raising fears of permanent division in the country.
At a press conference in the RSF-controlled city of Nyala in South Darfur, the paramilitary announced a 15-member presidential council with RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, as its president.
Rebel leader Abdelaziz al-Hilu, head of the SPLM-N, was named vice president.
Mohamed Hassan al-Taishi, a civilian politician, was appointed prime minister. He was a former member of Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council from 2019 until the 2021 military coup.
New regional governors, including one for Darfur, were also announced. The region now has rival governors from each side.
Basem Naim, another senior #Hamas official, told Drop Site, “#Trump is playing a strategic game of deception,” adding that the #US and #Israel were seeking to increase pressure on Hamas to capitulate. He said Trump’s comments, and similar ones made by Witkoff, were intended to apply “more pressure before the next round” of negotiations and to buy time for Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu “to reorganize the internal situation.”
Trump and Netanyahu threatened to launch even more violent “alternatives” to ceasefire negotiations as Hamas political leader blasts U.S.-Israeli “blackmail."
Basem Naim, another senior #Hamas official, told Drop Site, “#Trump is playing a strategic game of deception,” adding that the #US and #Israel were seeking to increase pressure on Hamas to capitulate. He said Trump’s comments, and similar ones made by Witkoff, were intended to apply “more pressure before the next round” of negotiations and to buy time for Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu “to reorganize the internal situation.”
Basem Naim, another senior #Hamas official, told Drop Site, “#Trump is playing a strategic game of deception,” adding that the #US and #Israel were seeking to increase pressure on Hamas to capitulate. He said Trump’s comments, and similar ones made by Witkoff, were intended to apply “more pressure before the next round” of negotiations and to buy time for Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu “to reorganize the internal situation.”
Trump and Netanyahu threatened to launch even more violent “alternatives” to ceasefire negotiations as Hamas political leader blasts U.S.-Israeli “blackmail."
The German state of Baden-Württemberg's deputy speaker stepped down after admitting he drew a swastika on a ballot beside an AfD lawmaker's name. Daniel Born said he had made a "serious mistake" during a vote.
I am pretty sure he stepped down to protect his parliamentary group. If he hadn't taken one for the team the AfD would've scandalised this topic even more and may have damaged the SPD and / or the Green party.
He drew a swastika next to a AfD candidates name. Not sure what the big deal is, they are straight up Nazi's. Doesn't seem like he should feel compelled to resign for calling a spade a spade.
How does one discern support or protest. 2 people can stand on the street holding a sign with a sign with a politicians face and a swastika background.
One could mean this is a NAZI, don't vote for him.
The other could mean this is a NAZI, vote for him.
Politician says oh I don't identify as a Nazi 😉, at their rallies and you legally have a Nazi party running openly again.
Note, obviously you could hang flags and banners on your house, business, etc... because it is just saying that guy is a spade.
I don't know what the fuss is about. It'd be a different matter if the person who had drawn the swastika had voted for the AFD candidate. However, clearly this was done in a disparaging manner
The Swastika is a forbidden symbol in Germany. That’s why he gets grilled. If he would have written “Those are Nazis” he probably would have gotten away.
Yeah, this is some weird ass US defaultism/eurocentrism or whatever. Like there is no center of the world, this is still relevant to tons of people even if not to westerners.
By their logic why post any local news related to france/US, since it doesn't affect most of the world?
An interim update from the EHRC, published in May, said that “trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities, as this will mean that they are no longer single-sex facilities”.
However, a response from Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS), which supports around 455 non-national museums and is funded by the Scottish Government, said EHRC’s proposals may “force some museums to close”, or “risk leaving trans people with no facilities at all” if changes could not be made.
I mean you could do separate lines or something for that— but at the same time maybe that just means you need more bathrooms if there is a significant line. Also maybe making a separate powder room would reduce the lines by directing those who want to do make up or something to a different place.
I think their idea is a good idea for freeing up sink space, but as far as decreasing the line? That's not gonna happen.
For those unaware - those long lines you see outside the door? They extend into the bathroom. As soon as a stall opens up, the next person goes in. We're not waiting for sinks or mirrors.
The fun thing is tha t by combining them you reduce the waiting tolime overall for everyone together, while making it a bit longer for the now privileged.
This. Most of the time women have to wait in long lines while men's room is empty. There were times women would loose patience and just went to man's room because why not.
This is why it's now becoming standard design practice in the design of restrooms for large public buildings to simply build the women's restroom larger than the men's. This is really the classic "equality vs. equity." Equality means building both restrooms the same size. Equity means realizing that to deliver the same level of service - the same average wait time, the women's restrooms probably should just be built larger and with more total stalls. So you build out your restrooms with the number of stalls in the women's room being about 40% or so greater than the total number of stalls and urinals in the men's.
Wouldn't designating a stall or two in the women's as pee only, so that the pee'rs can go quicker without having to wait for people doin other stuff, basically rectify that.... without needing to gum up the more efficient urinal situation men get? That way they'd have that 'fast lane' option, just like guys, while guys could still have the more convenient-for-their-body urinals to use. Maybe get an engineer to make like a pee-troth for women to squat along for peeing en masse, and designate half the bathroom to that, like how urinals are done in mens rooms.
Equity should generally be about improving the situation for the disadvantaged demo, without dragging everyone else down, no? Not causing added issue for existing people / setups is also an argument for lettin trans people go wherever they're comfortable -- cause it wouldn't make sense to have to setup a bathroom for every gender identity out there.
Maybe get an engineer to make like a pee-troth for women to squat along for peeing en masse
I think the word you're looking for is "trough." I can't see that working out well for most women. We'd still have to take off our pants and underwear, and asking us to do that in a room full of people is more than many would be comfortable with.
Besides, it seriously underestimates how many of us are on our periods at any given time. Consider that periods last about a week and occur every month. Not counting those with medications or health conditions that prevent periods, are currently pregnant, or are post-menopausal, that means about 1 in 4 women are actively menstrating at any given time. We're going to prefer private stalls to take care of such needs. If somebody on their period chose to use such a trough, seeing blood splattered over it would probably discourage the rest of us from using it anyway.
Yeah, stalls take longer. But they help keep private things, well, private.
Can't they make all toilets unisex? In Sweden a lot of them don't device in male and female. You have your toilet with a sink to wash your hands and a mirror behind a closed door, problem solved.
There is a school in the US that converted stalls into actual rooms, which was good. But the way the law was written, the area outside the stalls was considered a prohibited, unisex "changing area' because it was private rather than public. The solution was to make it a public handwashing area. But the way they did it was by cutting a window into the former "changing area" to make it public rather than private.
So it got reported by Republicans as a Democratic attempt to spy on kids in the bathroom. And since it was one of the bathrooms intended to accommodate trans students, it got reported as Republicans trying to spy on trans kids.
Basically, they did everything right, but pissed off everybody in the process.
Scottish museums are objecting to an anti-trans judgement from the UK. They are saying that if trans-women can't use the women's bathroom, and trans-men can't use the men's bathroom, then they have to close. They're being allies.
It's based on a recent case where Scotland's highest court stated that a person's gender could change based on a doctor's authority, and this was overturned on appeal by a UK judge.
But that might mean there's only room or plumbing connections for (as an example) two or three toilets when there was a room that allowed 4 or 6 toilets. And now the reduced capacity runs against the rules set out in other building codes. I'm not going for or against just saying, see the problems?
That’s clearly not possible, because although unisex toilets have functioned just fine for forever some TERF’s with a lot of money behind them have decided that the moment a man enters a bathroom a woman could also be in the poor damsel’s are in distress and faint due to shock or something.
Reminder - because trans men are almost always treated as invisible in these conversations - UK law makes it illegal for trans men to piss anywhere at all. Trans women can use the men’s, but trans men cannot use the women’s or the men’s.
trans men are almost always treated as invisible in these conversations
Seconded. There's almost zero solidarity most of the time in the trans community when it comes to trans-men, who often get treated as though they should just vie for themselves. It's almost like some sort of reflexive trauma of not wanting to associate with anything remotely masculine post-op.
I've seen trans-men literally get berated and put down for being enthusiastic about anything remotely masculine, be it sports or clothing, 24/7 by other trans people. They fucking hate them.
We should move onto a 'by function' system, where there's one section with urinals, another with toilet cubicles, another could rooms for the handicapped. If women can piss decently into the urinal, more power to them.
Now that I think of it, maybe we should have tissue paper dispensers and bins for people to dab dry their genitals at urinals. Just sticking it back in after flicking it thrice?
Anyone and everyone can use any facility. Although it would be an asshole move to take up the handicap cubicle if there's one waiting. But it would be idiotic to wait in a long line for regular cubicles if it's empty.
One of the libraries at my university has bathrooms for everyone which simply has solid floor-to-ceiling stalls (as opposed to the flimsy barely standing things that are common in the US).
That's the way they divide it at the building I trained for my job in (which isn't a unique facility, it's just where the training room is located.) Adults there have two bathroom choices - stalls, or urinals and stalls. The stalls are real stalls that actually provide privacy. There's no gender requirement for either and it works fine for the dozens of people who work and train there. The kids still have gendered rooms, since they are at an abundantly curious age (and some parents have gender requirements for who diapers/potty trains their kids, especially the little girls.) We can honor parents' wishes for their kids, but as adults we can still choose which grown-up bathroom to use for ourselves.
As a bonus - there are white noise machines in each bathroom, which helps decrease awkwardness across the board.
Pendant le mois de juillet 2025, une nouvelle moisson de liens a circulé sur notre groupe Signal. Lectures critiques, enquêtes, positions politiques ou anecdotes percutantes, voici une sélection de ce qui a nourri nos discussions et nos réflexions ce mois
Pendant le mois de juillet 2025, une nouvelle moisson de liens a circulé sur notre groupe Signal. Lectures critiques, enquêtes, positions politiques ou anecdotes percutantes, voici une sélection de ce qui a nourri nos discussions et nos réflexions ce mois-ci.
📺 Médias, culture et liberté d’expression
Crise des médias romands – Le Temps « Aujourd’hui, c’est encore le papier qui nous fait vivre ». Mais jusqu’à quand ?
Crise dans la presse régionale vaudoise – RTS Un licenciement collectif qui en dit long sur la fragilité de l’information locale.
Annulations d’émissions satiriques aux USA – Rolling Stone Plutôt que de devoir envoyer les animateurs dans des camps, on coupe leur micro : pression économique, menace politique et disparition programmée des voix critiques sur CBS. C’est inquiétant pour la dictature aux USA…
Hiatus – hiatus.ooo Certains trouvent que ça rate sa cible, d’autres que ça tape juste. À vous de voir.
Édito sur la liberté et le choix – Grisebouille On a pas tous les mêmes problèmes en tête, l’essentiel c’est de la garder sur les épaules…
🧠 IA, automatisation et société
IA et santé mentale – Stanford / The Independent Les IA-thérapeutes sont présentées comme une réponse bon marché à la pénurie, mais selon l’étude et les articles, c’est un danger sans appel : confusion, manipulation, manque de fiabilité. Une alerte claire sur la marchandisation de la santé mentale.
Vidéo : les IA thérapeutes, une illusion ? – Mastodon / YouTube Dernière vidéo de Caelan Conrad sur les IA thérapeutes : dense, percutante et à voir absolument.
Deepfake, droit d’auteur et dérive juridique ? – Le Grand Continent Une proposition danoise d’étendre le droit d’auteur aux voix et visages pour contrer les deepfakes IA… mais la faisabilité reste floue.
Remplacer les travailleurs du clic… par d’autres précaires ? – Next / TheNextWeb L’économie de l’IA est une mise en abyme : les travailleurs du clic sont à leur tour remplacés, pendant que les biais sexistes des IA persistent. Pas sortis de l’auberge.
Automatisation et droit suisse – Droit du travail en Suisse Le droit rattrape l’automatisation, mais à quel prix pour les travailleurs ?
Modèles de langage et inférence – Droit du travail Les risques liés à l’inférence par l’IA en matière de données personnelles.
L’EPFL et son futur LLM souverain – Le Temps Un projet ambitieux : créer un modèle de langage suisse, éthique, souverain, et aligné sur le bien commun. L’EPFL veut se positionner à contre-courant des GAFAM.
Surveillance numérique suisse – Tuta Une lecture inquiétante sur leur vision des ambitions sécuritaires suisses…
Pétition et lettre ouverte : démocratie plutôt qu’un État de surveillance – Campax / Société Numérique Une pétition de Société Numérique. Une lettre ouverte à Beat Jans, pour demander un moratoire sur les ambitions sécuritaires suisses.
Fuite de données France Travail – Bluesky Les données de centaines de milliers de chômeurs français se retrouvent exposées. Ils auraient dû engager… Cybercriminel: métier d’avenir?
Le pape contre l’IA déshumanisante – RTS Quand même le pape s’inquiète de l’intelligence artificielle, c’est qu’on a franchi un cap. Dignité humaine, souveraineté morale et machines « sans âme » : tout un programme.
💼 Travail, société et politique
Fractures numériques et cohésion sociale – RTS – RTS L’émission explore les inégalités numériques en Suisse : accès, usages, fractures sociales. Emmanuelle Germond, membre de HTTPS-VD, y intervient aux côtés de Daniel Balestrini de l’UniGE pour évoquer les causes profondes de ces fractures et leurs effets sociaux et politiques.
Amazon : plus de robots que d’humains ? – Le Grand Continent Une réflexion sur l’automatisation dans les entrepôts, entre dystopie logistique et mutation du travail.
Union européenne, syndicalisme et dépolitisation – Monde Diplo (blog) « Le politique », c’est les élections, les partis, la buvette de l’Assemblée. Mais les questions sociales ? Ce n’est pas politique, voyons. Un long texte qui revient sur cette dépolitisation du social, avec des passages percutants… et d’autres moins convaincants.
Promesses et actes – Le Courrier Un plaidoyer pour la cohérence entre discours et réalités politiques.
🌱 Santé, inclusion et environnement
Parentalité numérique – CNIL Un kit très clair et bien fait pour sensibiliser aux usages numériques en famille : Un kit très clair, proche d’un projet qu’on aurait pu faire nous-mêmes : c’est la CNIL qui pirate les pirates !
Cures de repos pour les mères épuisées (ou pour tous ?) – Le Temps Trois semaines de cure payées par l’assurance maladie pour les mères en Allemagne — une politique qui pourrait inspirer la Suisse, à élargir à toutes les personnes épuisées. Et si on en faisait un levier pour le tourisme 4 saisons ?
Forum Inclusion – Pro Infirmis Un lieu d’échanges et de documentation sur les pratiques d’inclusion en Suisse. Les ressources partagées permettent de repenser concrètement l’accessibilité et la participation dans tous les domaines de la vie sociale.
Tesla, accidents et boîte noire – The Guardian Des crashs inexpliqués, des portes qui ne s’ouvrent pas, et une opacité totale sur les données : l’article dresse un tableau glaçant d’une technologie à huis clos. Plus de 5 millions de véhicules concernés, et toujours aucun contrôle démocratique sur leurs algorithmes embarqués.
+10 % d’électricité solaire : cap franchi – Greenpeace Un seuil historique est atteint pour le solaire suisse.
🏛️ Institutions, administration et régulation
LPNum – Projet des Verts sur la modération des plateformes – Curia Vista / GitHub (texte complet) Un modérateur fédéral, un droit de réponse, des amendes jusqu’à 500k CHF… et pas mal de flous à clarifier : définition du contenu problématique, application aux mineurs, identification des auteurs. Un projet ambitieux qui interroge autant qu’il intrigue.
E-ID : entre public et privé – Solidarités Un argumentaire pour un contrôle public fort de l’identité numérique.
Projets IT fédéraux défaillants – Le Temps Quelqu’un a le rapport ? Je me sens concernée… C’est bizarre… 😇
Swiyu : 62 300 francs pour un nom – 24heures Et sinon, vous auriez trouvé un meilleur nom pour moins cher ?
Comment les États-Unis ont gagné la guerre d’Internet – Le Temps Un retour sur les logiques de pouvoir dans l’histoire du réseau.
OpenData MétéoSuisse – MétéoSuisse Des données météo publiques et locales en libre accès.
La Poste et la fin des lettres – 24heures Une page se tourne dans le service public.
Des mots, des mots… Démocratie ? – YouTube Un Data Gueule stimulant qui interroge notre usage du mot « démocratie » et invite à en raviver le sens.
📆 En conclusion
Cette revue de presse est le reflet de ce que nous partageons, commentons, découvrons et remettons en question collectivement. Elle témoigne des enjeux qui nous traversent, des luttes numériques qui nous animent et des paradoxes que nous observons avec une attention critique.
Chaque lien est une porte ouverte : à nous de les franchir, ensemble.
La numérisation bouleverse le modèle traditionnel de distribution du courrier. Avenir Suisse propose la fin du monopole et des subventions pour les journaux d’ici à 2035.
In Ghost 6.0 we're introducing another new distribution channel: The social web. Now, millions of people can discover, follow, like and reply to your posts from any supported social web client - including Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, Ghost, WordPress, Surf, WriteFreely, and many more
Seriously this is super cool. With Ghost and WordPress on the fediverse we're that much closer to connecting the social web and the world wide web together.
There's some concern that this doesn't really apply to the threadiverse, but it does, and I will work my damned hardest that it does. WordPress blogs already show up as communities here. Ghost blogs don't, but I will continue to advocate for it.
Anyone here using it? I am not sure I understand their pricing model. Is it just "the more users you have, the more likely you are making money from this and therefore the more you can afford?"
not using it but i heard that compared to substack there's a fixed price (9€ x month) instead of a fixed % of the revenue . so if your revenue grows you don't own them more and more
Hello all, recently signed up for yoinked.org, but stupidly only saved my email in my password manager, instead of my username. The site allows you to to reset your password, but you're still on the hook to remember your username. From my searching, there is no support email for this site, and tickets must be made internally.
Something sort of related: Can anyone here validate the legitimacy of yoinked and yuscene? I ran into an odd situation with these sites:
I have an existing account with yoinked. I recently went to sign up for yuscene recently and found that I was already registered to that site with the same credentials. When logging into either site, the UX/UI is essentially the same. Quite odd to me. Almost to the point that points to a honeypot situation.
I recently went to sign up for yuscene recently and found that I was already registered to that site with the same credentials.
This is highly unlikely, I'm guessing you're probably misremembering something.
When logging into either site, the UX/UI is essentially the same. Quite odd to me. Almost to the point that points to a honeypot situation.
This is because both of those sites share the same codebase which is UNIT3D, developed by HDvinnie. UNIT3D is a popular codebase for trackers along with Gazelle.
I assure you that I'm not misremembering this as I recently started seeking out private trackers and only have applied to yoinked. Your follow up with the code base is reassuring though. Thank you for the information.
in the non-tech version, they suggest purchasing distressed properties with tenants and then raising the rents; without a single mention that you'll become a parasitic slum lord, but in the middle of nowhere usa where they allow shit like it to happen.
Other non-tech version is selling things that sounds exactly the same but by some roundabout explanation, they can assure you it isn't multi level marketing. Also drop shipping, storage unit flipping, whatever buy/sell eBay store empire
This shits so stupid. In a rare turn of events, I'm actually doing the whole "compete with saas and undercut" thing right now. And yenno what? Its fuckin hard. The thought that its a "beginner strategy" with no coding experience is retarded
This is just an information for users to let you know that (and why) several Fedora services are currently not reachable or only with a very bad connection.
Not just flatpaks, same with .deb and .rpm, bloat files. Actually, all packaged binaries suck too, they're unoptimized. The only decent solution is to compile every binary yourself. Actually, that's a waste and sucks because what if the developer didn't code with the oversight of god himself? So we should write the software ourselves in C, because Rust is bloat. But wait, then we're using a premade compiler, so we just need to write raw x86 machine code (only a bad dev needs 64 bit registers).
Actually, x86 has too many instructions that are pointless which complicates the architecture of the CPU. Do we even need a CPU? What's the point of half of this system anyway? I don't need a computer to do the math. I can do it myself. I don't need programs.
Wait, but even just myself has bloat. You're telling me that 15-20% of my body is just wasted energy, never to be used? Need to get that down to 0℅. What's the point of 2 lungs when I can function with 1? Two kidneys? Eyes? Ears? Why do we have duplicates when one works just fine? What's the point of an appendix or a gallbladder?
Well, it seems that even the human body alone isn't a bloat free native replacement. So it's time to ascend beyond the mortal flesh. But even then, we're confined to 3 dimensions. Stupid sandbox, what's the point?
Unfortunately I can't think of any further solutions so it looks like for now I'm gonna be stuck with the oh so terrible flat pack
Honestly, IBM deserves to get DDoS'd for their actions. This is because of the push for Wayland, PipeWire, Systemd and some other things they want to shove down our throats.
The problem is that we don't know how to DDoS anything (which is a good problem to have). We already use a different distro, and stay away as best as we can from the above described.
Nel mentre che, in questo nuovo round dell’estate attuale (“mese di agosto – inizio”), praticamente tutte le persone sulla faccia della Terra di stato socioeconomico comparabile al mio si divertono, io rimango inevitabilmente in questo mio stato di sofferenza semi-indefinito… ma non sono da sola. Infatti, a farmi compagnia, sulla base della mia sempreverde necessità […]
Nel mentre che, in questo nuovo round dell’estate attuale (“mese di agosto – inizio”), praticamente tutte le persone sulla faccia della Terra di stato socioeconomico comparabile al mio si divertono, io rimango inevitabilmente in questo mio stato di sofferenza semi-indefinito…ma non sono da sola. Infatti, a farmi compagnia, sulla base della mia sempreverde necessità di sviluppare ancora nuovi progetti magici (top secret!!!) così come migliorare quelli esistenti, c’è da un lato il fottuto CSS… e dall’altro i generatori di siti per documentazione basati su JavaScript, che mi trovo a dover usare ma mi lasciano semplicemente esterrefatta. 😾
Il punto bello di questi affari è che sono molto più comodi dei generatori di siti statici più classici, per creare documentazione di roba frontend, incluso il testare tutto strada facendo… usando rendering sia client-side che server-side, la robetta che si scrive cambia in automatico nel browser, senza ricaricare la pagina, così come anche gli stili e la struttura effettiva della pagina: è goduria. Purtroppo, il brutto è che, chissà perché, sono (quasi) tutti fottutamente rotti!!! E non generatori mezzi sconosciuti e abbandonati (perché ovviamente quelli non escono proprio, cercando tra consigli o classifiche), o applicando temi di terze parti vecchi e marci (quelli danno problemi pure sui generatori della Madonna)… ma la roba più popolare. Ma non c’è nemmeno molto da dire a riguardo, perché il modo in cui è tutto fuori posto è semplicemente così anticlimatico… 💔
Per esempio, per una roba adesso (…cioè l’altra sera, abbiate pazienza) volevo tentare VuePress, perché sembrava abbastanza rapido modificare il layout a partire dal tema di base… e si, di per sé funziona, ma ho dovuto buttare via tutto appena ho visto che qualsiasi HTML indentato io inserissi in pagine di documentazione Markdown veniva renderizzato come blocchi di codice formattato. Lo specificare blocchi di codice con la sola indentazione, anziché con i caratteri di contenimento (```), è una funzione di Markdown, però non dovrebbe attivarsi per dell’HTML innestato prima in un contenitore HTML che non è indentato… e, dovrei poter disattivare la funzione completamente… Purtroppo, non solo nessuna IA ha saputo suggerirmi una via che funzionasse per farlo, ma la documentazione di VuePress passa dall’incompleto al rotto: le spiegazioni su queste cose più specifiche sono parziali e poco comprensibili, e la documentazione in sé è per qualche motivo copiata su più siti, alcuni più o meno aggiornati, da cui si hanno link a pagine interne non più esistenti… WTF??? ☠️
A seguire, come seconda idea, avrei provato VitePress — che è praticamente un mezzo clone di VuePress, usa le stesse tecnologie — ma quello invece attualmente è proprio rotto e basta: qualunque configurazione io scegliessi, con lo script di creazione rapida, il sito risultante dava errore 404 ad ogni cazzo di pagina, sia con la home che i miei file Markdown… vai a capire che minchia hanno rotto in upstream! E poi ne ho trovato un altro apparentemente simpatico, RsPress — che, come suggerisce il nome, è basato in parte su Rust, anche se non ho ben capito in che misura — che però da errore ad installarsi su Termux, perché vuole usare npm per tirarsi appresso dipendenze native (EW!), ma per la stringa della piattaforma (android-qualcosa-aarch64) non trova niente… (E menomale che per questo caso ero fuori casa, quindi da telefono e non da PC come per i due prima; sarebbe stato un problema se avessi scoperto che su Android non gira solo dopo averlo visto funzionare su desktop!) 🦧
Quindi, alla fine dei conti, tra tutti questi generatorini, quello su cui finisco sempre per ripiegare è Docusaurus… che, grazie al cielo, funziona e basta. Non perché è scritto in React, ma perché è mantenuto da Meta, anziché da dei completi scappati di casa (e menomale che i prodotti open-source li fanno curati, a differenza di quelle lote fumanti di Facebook, Instagram e WhatsApp!). Tenderei a pensare sia meno personalizzabile, perché sembrano esserci pochi temi di terze parti in giro… eppure, pur col solo meccanismo interno dello swizzle, senza duplicare l’intero tema (che è sempre una cosa grossa in più da mantenere personalmente), ho fatto in un attimo quello che mi serviva — e poi ancora altre cose uscite strada facendo. Quindi boh, dai, bene così, che almeno una (1) cosa che funziona c’è a questo mondo… (oltre ad alcune librerie JavaScript per creare questi siti, che però di per sé non sono programmi già pronti, e io tempo da perdere non ne ho.) 🦖🦕🐊🐉!!!
VuePress, Vue-powered Static Site Generator:
* https://vuepress.vuejs.org — https://vuejs.press (why are there 2 and are different?)
* https://github.com/vuepress/core
* https://github.
Sorry if this is a rookie question, but most of what I've downloaded over the last decade was nowhere near this obscure. I'd like to think this community could benefit from a corpus of Q and A, if this breaks rule 4, I'll gracefully accept if this post is removed.
I am downloading through Mullvad, which I know doesn't let you forward your ports. So I can appreciate that that seeder's settings and mine might not be super compatible.
Is there any flag or anything I can do to let the seeder connect at all, besides finding some other way to exit with port forwarding. Seedbox is on my horizon, but it is far out there.
If I understand correctly, port forwarding has no effect on download. It's only a factor in seeding. So if that's the case, there's likely nothing you can do. Your download rate is entirely dependent on the behavior of the seeder you're downloading from. If they give priority to other media that is more popular and increases their seed ratio while relegating the source you're trying to download, then you're at their mercy. This is why using VPNs that are capable of port forwarding is so important. You may be the only person who manages to download whatever it is your trying to grab. If the seeder you got it from goes offline, anyone else wanting that material is shit out of luck unless they happen to use Mullvad. Mullvad is great. Their privacy and pricing is very strong. I'd recommend it to anyone, but for the purpose of information availability and preservation through torrenting, a VPN capable of port forwarding is a requirement.
It has an effect on downloading because it at least one end has to have port forwarding exposed. A seeder without port forwarding can connect to you if you have port forwarding enabled. If neither side has their port exposed, no connection can be made.
Right, but the poster did mention that they were making a connection and transferring at least some data, so I just kind of inferred that the seeder has port forwarding.
There's flags set in the torrent tracker that might be getting in the way here in combination with the port issue.
There might be a seed, but he can't forward ports.
The data getting updated from "last seen" is the tracker telling your client a check in happened from a seeder I believe.
Some trackers also won't play nice and tell the seeder about you properly if your client has a history of leeching perhaps. Enforcement of ratio etc.
You could try another client perhaps, but if multiple behave the same then you are not going to get anywhere. Perhaps try getting a temporary vps to torrent into and then pull from there. Seed boxes can solve many issues, just be mindful of cost over time.
I am downloading through Mullvad, which I know doesn’t let you forward your ports. So I can appreciate that that seeder’s settings and mine might not be super compatible.
Are there any other peers in that torrent swarm? If it's just you (leeching peer) and the lone seed (seeding peer), and neither of you have ports open, then you won't be able to download any torrent data.
If there is another peer in that swarm, or another peer joins later, and that new peer happens to be fully connectable (port forwarded) then you'll be able to download the torrent data through them. If this is your situation then all you can do is try your luck and wait for another peer to come by.
Or if we rule all of that out - it's possible that lone peer just has a very busy torrent client. They could be the lone peer on tons of other torrents so it would take quite a while before their torrent client gets around to sending you torrent data. If this is the case then it's the same as above, just have to continue waiting.
So, there are other peers, some of which gave me all of the data that I have so far, a small number of them. They can connect just fine to me, so their ports are open.
There are other peers with only a small percentage of the total torrent that are permanently connected, which might mean that they only wanted to download some of the files, but looking at the file list availability when they were the only connected peers, they had scattered chunks of data and not one continuous folder.
Now the convoluted part that I feel needs its own post:
In my quest to get the data, I’ve done some digging on BTdig, and added a few torrents with what seemed to be almost identical content. Most of these were completely inactive, but it seems like my client figured out that there’s overlap with this torrent, somehow. It now shows one of these inactive torrents as having a small % completion, despite also showing that 0 bytes were downloaded. I suspect it was able to match some of the data.
I wish I better understood that part of torrenting, a lot of what I want is relatively obscure and I love nothing more than seeding files that took months to complete. Being able to stitch together torrents and make rarities a bit less rare is exactly what I want to do.
Blue collar jobs are not a holy grail of safety from ai or refuge for prior white collar workers who have been displaced.
You can't just suddenly become an expert in a physical job, electricians require trade school and apprenticeship, heck even the easiest jobs in the construction world, painting or hanging drywall, require expertise and a random qa engineer will be genuinely terrible at the job.
The culture of blue collar work generally incredibly misogynistic and requires a very hardy insensitive personality for women especially. There's this sort of cultural inertia that has seeped into many blue collar jobs that sees a lot of love for trump and hate for soft handed people (the irony is incredible)
Supply and demand are not just principles of product sales, a sudden massive influx of blue collar workers will push down wages for everyone, an economy requires balance and adaptation, there is never a single golden answer
some blue collar jobs are more likely to be replaced with ai than others, but pretending that all blue collar jobs are perfectly safe from the impending storm is an uninformed and irresponsible take. Are indoor painters of new builds safe for now? Yes. But you can feel quite comfortable assuming that if some company comes out with a bot you can rent that does a phenomenal job at painting and costs 1/5th of a human painter the owners or managers of the companies who were contracting out the humans will absolutely switch to bots. Money talks and maybe some will hold out for a while but eventually other companies will offer their services for cheaper because of the cheaper labor and the human workforces will be unable to compete.
blue collar jobs generally pay less and the future prospects compared to white collar jobs are significantly different. You don't start out as a framer and end up as a partner, the attitudes of the managers of construction companies and similar often simply view the laborers as replaceable machines.
blue collar workers sucks, for many you work in crazy harsh weather conditions (outside in 100 degree f) the jobs often require heavy physical labor, your coworkers are often drugged up conspiracy theory nutjobs, there are no watercooler breaks at 10am, you work hard or you get yelled at or fired. Imagine being an hvac repair technician in the peak of summer. Where exactly do you think you're going to be? In the hottest part of the house in stifling conditions with all the pink fiberglass insulation without any ppe, all goddamn day.
*Laughs in working for an AI company being a Mechanical Turk.
Seriously, we are all gonna just end up with jobs fixing AI mistakes as we burn down the planet with it. It's so absurd. Accurate LLMs are literally a Mechanical Turk supported by large teams of humans fixing their work for them.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Tesla’s board is giving CEO Elon Musk another huge pay day.
The company’s latest CEO pay package, worth about $29 billion, comes several months after a Delaware court rejected for a second time Musk’s 2018 performance award following a shareholder lawsuit. Musk is currently appealing the order.
My friend is looking for a resource to become fluent in French, he is forced to work with it. Asked to find a certain book, but it is not yet pirated on the resources of the wiki. My guess is that pirates have better alternatives for such a thing, so I'm launching a discussion.
I only ever heard about the book "Minna no Nihongo" in the context of learning Japanese.
I think the whole premise of Duolingo that learning a language means translating to and from it is bonkers. I know multiple languages at various levels, and every time to speak I create my sentences in the target language directly. Translating is a totally different skill set
Not really about piracy, but doing language exchanges is a great way to learn a language. You teach someone your language, they teach you theirs. It's free and it gives you more knowledge than any book. Natural languages don't work with strict rules usually, natives speak by feel, the only way to learn that feel is by interacting with people.
There are some limitations though: often native speakers don’t have a deep understanding of the grammar rules they use, because they use them intuitively. So sometimes learning this way makes it a bit foggy. I often use this technique when I’m already familiar with the target language, At a basic level.
That's exactly why you want to do this. When people speak casually or are making jokes, nobody speaks with grammar in mind. Gathering this intuition for the language is exactly what I'm looking for when learning.
And a lot of native speakers just straight up use incorrect grammar. eg loads of native English speakers say things like "could of", use "then" instead of "than", use punctuation incorrectly, do incorrect sentence structure, etc.
I don't mean to be prescriptive about language. Of course it evolves based on usage. But in any formal environment, such as an academic environment, there are still certain defined and canonised English grammar rules that you would be penalised for breaking, and most learners want to learn those rules even if most casual speakers don't follow them.
You just look for people who are interested to learn your language, any place where people communicate can work. Maybe hit some groups for learning the language you know and try to find people who speak the language you want there.
I personally play VRChat, there are a number of language learning groups there. Though, the culture of the place is certainly not for everyone.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I used to use HelloTalk but it's a bit annoying now due to trying to lock more things behind paywalls. Italki is another common one. Just find any language learning/exchange discord, like TheMoeWay and others.
What is the book called? I can try searching for it.
As for learning languages, I find that a combination of structured lessons (from an instructor or recommended course book) with speaking practice (with someone you know or through a language exchange program) works best. Other things that help are watching films or series in your target language, listening to music and translating the text.
There are a lot of language learning resources on the site i use. I did a whole Michel Thomas advanced audio course for portuguese that helped me learn the basics. What's the title of the french book your friend is looking for?
If you visit enough russian warez sites you will learn what Скачать means. Usually that's the second language of the pirate world after broken english.
I just hung out with spanish speaking people and used duolingo (back when it was good) until I could speak and understand spanish. That way takes years though. I would recommend including structured classes for anyone who isn't an auditory learner.
They've changed it a bunch and they rely on AI more now. When I took it it was more like sentences and conversations repeated over and over. It may still be ok but I don't think it's as good as it was.
I had already written at length about the topic, but the OP I had replied to seems to have deleted their post so I'm just going to do it again.
My native language is Turkish. I reached basic English fluency when I was ~14 years old and I'm currently doing Japanese immersion with my comprehension rate of the Japanese content I consume being around 90% (mostly video game content and anime). I achieved this primarily by consuming interesting content in my target language. I didn't go to any language classes at all in both cases, and school itself likely only made my English skills worse.
This technique essentially aims to replicate how people acquire their first language when they're babies, which essentially means lots of comprehensible input and no output initially. Input comes first, output comes a few thousands of hours later, similar to how it takes 4 years for a human baby to have acquired the language just enough to be able to start speaking. How language acquisition itself works can be explained like this.
Though in the case of adults this can take much less time with the help of flashcards, dictionaries, and reading (you should not start reading from the get-go though). And getting that much input is thankfully much easier in our age because of the Internet, and essentially all you need to do is watch interesting, comprehensible (visual cues help a lot) content in your target language. You should aim for 10,000 hours of comprehensible input for basic fluency, which would take around 4 years at 7 hours per day, or more unrealistically 1.5 years at 18 hours per day.
I haven't yet come across any guide other than Tatsumoto's that promotes using only libre tooling for language acquisition, so that's why I primarily recommend his website.
Well, everything depends on balance and what is easy for him. If he likes reading more than watching/listening, then maybe a textbook is the way to go, or vice versa. Sorry that I can't provide specific language tips, I'm a Japanese learner 😅
General Tips:
Decide if a textbook is right for you. Check online reviews and YT videos of people going through/teaching based on that textbook. If you like it, get it. For me, I value textbooks solely for teaching grammar, structured learning, and giving me a few prompts to follow. I feel it's hard to just learn grammar from reading in my case, as a lot of rules I would've flew over my head or been hard for me to comprehend on my own without isolating is first. Beginners might not even know how to ask a question about a grammar point.
YT is your friend (unfortunately) to find all kinds of videos, both for learning and for immersion
Immersion might take a bit to reach, but you can start with simple children's books. Some countries might have free to read online books if the copyright has expired on it. Play games, watch TV, listen to songs, literally do anything involving the target lang. As I said though, people preach immersion from day one, but it might be hard. I like to think of textbooks, YT tutorials, and learning material as the crutches that help to prepare you for immersion. If you start reading kids books and wanna pull your hair out cause you can't understand everything, then pick up some learning material. There might be a website specific to your language for graded material based on difficulty.
Find a local or online community to practice and learn with. Could be a forum board and weekly discord calls like I do. Libraries and local classes probably exist too. There's one I was too shy to use that encourages in-person meetups in your city.
No single resource is gonna solve your problems. If an app or textbook or YT channel claims they alone can get you fluent, and worse, in a few months, run away. It's a marathon (at least fluency anyway), so don't worry if you're not doing the most optimized learning routine. All languages take a certain amount of time, and you can only slow yourself down, not make a new record. But don't spend all week fretting if you picked the best method or not, cause you'll fall into the pit of "learning about learning" instead of "learning a language."
Specific Tools:
Yomitan: Browser extension that lets you do dictionary lookups on a word on any page you're reading. Supports several languages, just download dictionaries for your language (these can be found without needing to pirate, at least in my case)
Anki: I keep gushing over it lol. Free flashcard tool that uses SRS to help you memorize better. I use it to make flashcards of frequently used words I encounter in the wild.
YouGlish: Various languages, checks YT vids for the word you entered to figure out how natives say it. I also use this to make flashcards sometimes.
I was studying French too (I really should get back into it). My plan was to learn all of the most used vocabulary, the grammar and then aggresively use the language. Read books, watch YouTube videos, chat with folk online. Best way to learn a language is to use it.
I learnt French through textbooks and then once I had a good grasp of grammar, reading French children's literature with a dictionary. I don't know if that's the "best" way, but it worked.
Fwiw I mostly learnt English by just reading English books and not having a clue what was going on for a couple years but eventually got it. However I was a young child when I did that, so my ability to learn new languages was much better. I could probably do the same as an adult, but it would take me a lot longer. Don't underestimate the brain's ability to learn even without direct "teaching" like a textbook gives you.
Pirate Rosetta Stone software. Then fund cideos of people speaking the language slowly so that you can learn the sound of it. They say learn the most common 1000 words.
After years of legal skirmishes, an ambitious strategy by film studio Voltage Pictures, to sue alleged BitTorrent pirates through a reverse class action in Canada, has been permanently shut down. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled that these cases, where IP addresses are the main initial evidence, are unsuited to this legal approach. Furthermore, the proposed methods for mass notification are deemed unlawful.
In occasione del festival Perlanera 2025 ho finalmente avuto il piacere di conoscere di persona Franco Schirone. Abbiamo avuto un’amabile conversazione, spesso interrotta dalle giuste e rimostranze di altr* compagni* che, gentilmente, mi facevano notare come stessi “monopolizzando” l’attenzione di Franco; attratto dalle comuni passioni e dalla sua disponibilità nella condivisione delle conoscenze.
Il festival “I senza Stato” mi ha offerto anche l’opportunità di ottenere una copia de “Il popolo tiranni più non vuole – Leggi eccezionali e domicilio coatto nell’Italia di fine Ottocento”, scritto dallo stesso Schirone e da Mauro De Agostini per Zero in condotta. Il libro è un prezioso strumento di lotta e apprendimento utile a riconoscere le brutte intenzioni di cui è lastricata la strada verso uno stato sempre più repressivo. In tal senso è inquietantemente attuale. Le similitudini tra i decreti sicurezza che si susseguono negli ultimi anni e le leggi speciali di oltre un secolo fa sono troppo evidenti per essere ignorate.
Chi legge vive cinquemila anni
Ma la storia che voglio raccontarvi oggi è diversa. Potremmo quasi dire che legge tra le righe o meglio nell’immagine della copertina. È una storia che spiega bene quella “immortalità all’indietro” caratteristica dei libri, di cui parlava Umberto Eco. Appena preso il nuovo libro ho effettuato i soliti, abituali gesti. L’ho rigirato tra le mani, attivando i meccanismi di piacere stimolati dal profumo e dal suono delle pagine fino a soffermarmi sulla copertina. Ed è stato proprio in quel momento che il viaggio ha avuto inizio.
La copertina è una foto dei relegati politici nell’isola di Lipari inviata all’«Avanti» in data 28 gennaio 1899. Nell’osservarla sono stato attratto da una faccia diversa dalle altre. Forse per la bombetta british o per l’espressione scanzonata. Fortunatamente Schirone e De Agostini hanno provveduto a inserire tutti i nomi dei relegati rappresentati. Vi lascio immaginare la sorpresa nello scoprire che il volto che aveva attratto la mia attenzione corrispondeva a un conterraneo; riportato nella trascrizione come “Poni di Pizzo Calabro”.
Chi era “Poni”
Ho subito voluto saperne di più e mi sono lanciato alla ricerca di chi fosse Poni. Qual era la sua storia? Perché era stato relegato? Era socialista o anarchico? Qual era stata la sua attività politica? Cosa aveva fatto prima e dopo del confino a Lipari? Molte domande ma pochissime risposte. Si, perché nonostante l’accuratezza del libro, comprensivo di un’appendice con l’elenco dei relegati nelle varie isole, non trovavo nessuna informazione aggiuntiva su Poni di Pizzo Calabro.
Una prima relazione, forse!!!
Nell’elenco in appendice di cui sopra trovai, oltre al Poni, un altro calabrese. Anche lui relegato a Lipari e addirittura reggino, come me. Un anarchico su cui invece risultano molte informazioni a disposizione; Giovanni Battista Olandese. Era lui il Poni? Magari aveva dato delle generalità approssimative nel momento in cui la foto era stata inviata all’«Avanti»? Se si per quale motivo? Perché dire Pizzo se era di Reggio? Ma soprattutto chi era Olandese?
Giovanni Battista Olandese
Grazie al lavoro della Biblioteca Serantini vengo a conoscenza di alcuni importanti elementi. Olandese era nato a Reggio Calabria nel 1868. Dal 1892 al 1914 fu sempre attivo in azioni e agitazioni anarchiche per le quali subisce diverse incarcerazioni. Il suo sostegno alla causa del deputato Giuseppe De Felice, vittima della repressione di Crispi, gli costa financo il domicilio coatto a Lipari dal quale verrà prosciolto nel 1900. Il suo nome risulta anche in un elenco stilato e pubblicato da Errico Malatesta su «L’Agitatore».
Su Olandese devo aprire un’ulteriore e affascinante parentesi. Io e Schirone siamo legati anche dalla recente pubblicazione di una mia raccolta poetica “Fondamenti di Utopia” per la quale Franco Schirone ha curato la prefazione. Questa raccolta mi ha permesso di conoscere – grazie all’interesse comune per l’anarchico di Palizzi “Bruno Misefari” – il colto Domenico Principato, autore di due tesi di laurea sulle società segrete e propagatore di cultura locale nell’area grecanica. Domenico è una fonte inesauribile di informazioni e conoscenze storiche che riguardano anarchici e socialisti calabresi del passato e gli ho chiesto qualche aiuto nella ricerca.
Franca Olandese Versace
Domenico mi racconta una storia interessante che ancora una volta mi fa rendere conto di quanto poco i reggini sappiano della propria città. Giovanni Battista Olandese nel 1920 ebbe una figlia, Franca Olandese. A Reggio Calabria, Franca è conosciuta semplicemente per essere stata “una sartina, madre di Gianni Versace, da cui il figlio apprese le doti sartoriali.” Ma era molto più di questo.
Franca Olandese Versace, era infatti, a cavallo degli anni 50’ del 1900 una donna di grandissima cultura esoterica. Custode di segreti e di conoscenze a cui si affidava l’alta borghesia reggina dell’epoca. Domenico la definisce come paragonabile, per cultura, alla più famosa e cronologicamente precedente Helena Blavatsky. Grande donna della seconda metà dell’800 che affermò anche di essere stata ferita durante la battaglia di Mentana (3 novembre 1867) tra le file dei garibaldini. Conoscendo le passioni e la vastità del sapere di Gianni Versace (che prese il nome dal nonno materno) è probabile che oltre alle doti sartoriali, Franca avesse trasmesso al figlio anche le conoscenze esoteriche a sua volta probabilmente apprese dal padre. Scoperte affascinanti che dimostrano quante vite si possono vivere entrando nei dettagli di un libro…ma da dove eravamo partiti?
Chi era Poni?
Olandese e Poni erano la stessa persona? Quando una strada è troppo forzata per dare i risultati attesi forse è il momento di provarne un’altra, partendo da zero. Ovvero dal libro.
Anarchici di Calabria
Nel flusso della ricerca e consumato dal piacevole tarlo del mistero da risolvere, decido di cercare altre storie di anarchici e socialisti calabresi dell’epoca. L’obiettivo era trovare compagn* attiv+ politicamente e impegnat* nelle necessarie lotte per un mondo più giusto. Necessarie allora come oggi. Da una ricerca generica mi imbatto in un anarchico di cui avevo letto nel libro come narratore delle torture da lui subite durante il confino ma, stranamente, assente nel famoso elenco dei relegati di cui abbiamo già parlato. Il suo nome era Francesco Perri.
era stato confinato a Lipari nel periodo della foto;
usava firmare i suoi articoli sull’«Avanti» con dei pseudonimi.
Sembrava fatta. Mancava solo una conferma. Trovare un articolo di Perri sull’ «Avanti», sull’ «Avvenire Sociale» o magari su «La Gogna» nel quale si fosse firmato con lo pseudonimo Poni. Niente di tutto ciò. Resto comunque convinto della possibilità che Poni e Perri fossero la stessa persona e decido di mettere a conoscenza della mia ricerca proprio Franco Schirone.
Dopo qualche scambio ricevo finalmente il messaggio tanto atteso…
Risolto il problema: ho ingrandito a 400 la foto, NON È PONI MA PERRI
Sono ancora pervaso da un senso di autocompiacimento quando Franco mi chiama spiegandomi che i nomi erano stati trascritti con un piccolo errore a causa della scarsa leggibilità nella fotografia originale. Come si evince dalla copertina, i nomi dei relegati sono scritti a mano proprio in calce alla foto e Perri – poco visibile – era stato riportato come Poni.
Conclusione
Come scrivevo all’inizio, questa piccola e divertente ricerca ci insegna la bellezza e la magia dei libri. Ogni pagina può contenere infinite storie. Nei libri anche un “errore” può portarci a seguire il maestro dubbio sulla cattiva strada. La cattiva strada della libertà e della conoscenza che può elevare la nostra condizione umana solo se impariamo a goderne i passi, vedendone gli incroci come prospettive per nuove illuminazioni.
Francesco Perri (anarchico) [Pizzo Calabro (Vibo Valentia), 22 gennaio 1879 - Roma, 6 maggio 1935] Figlio di Rocco e di Caterina Tarsia, famiglia di condizione sociale abbastanza agiata.
“Fondamenti di Utopia” di Daniele Fiorenza è una raccolta di poesia militante che non cerca compromessi, ma colpisce dritto al cuore dell’ingiustizia. Versi potenti che incitano alla disobbedienza e alla lotta, svelando le ipocrisie del potere e celebrando l’urgenza di un’utopia concreta. Un’opera che brucia di rabbia lucida e solidarietà, perfetta per chi cerca una voce autentica e ribelle nella poesia contemporanea.
Fondamenti di Utopia di Daniele Fiorenza
Una raccolta di poesia sociale, politica e ribelle
“Fondamenti di Utopia” di Daniele Fiorenza non è una semplice raccolta di versi; è un manifesto poetico, un grido di disobbedienza che non ammette compromessi. Lontano dal lirismo fine a sé stesso, ogni parola è un colpo diretto al cuore dell’ingiustizia, inserendosi con forza nel solco della poesia anarchica e militante. È una voce che incarna un’urgenza profonda, sia personale che collettiva: quella di rompere il silenzio, di reagire e di lottare.
Qui, la poesia sociale prende corpo, si fa rabbia visione audace. Le parole si trasformano in strumenti di liberazione, torce accese in una notte di indifferenza. Fiorenza non si limita a denunciare o a raccontare; egli immagina, ma soprattutto incita: a non cedere alla rassegnazione, a custodire la memoria, a rifiutare la delega, a riconquistare dignità, tempo e spazio. Come recita un verso emblematico della raccolta, “l’utopia non è un’illusione, è un orizzonte in fiamme da raggiungere con le mani sporche di vita e il cuore libero da catene.”
Daniele Fiorenza, figura attiva nell’ambito anarchico come membro del collettivo intersezionale ControCultura e collaboratore del blog Magozine.it, infonde nella sua opera una profonda consapevolezza sociale e politica.
Apre il volume l’introduzione di Franco Schirone, libero ricercatore la cui profonda conoscenza della storia dell’anarchismo e dell’anarcosindacalismo è testimoniata da opere come “La Resistenza sconosciuta” e “Per la Rivoluzione Sociale. Gli anarchici nella Resistenza a Milano”.
Struttura del libro: due anime, un’unica voce di resistenza
La raccolta si articola in due sezioni distinte, eppure intrinsecamente connesse, che riflettono la duplice natura del progetto poetico: da un lato la rabbia collettiva, dall’altro la radice personale e territoriale. Entrambe le anime si fondono in un’unica, potente voce di resistenza.
Oltre lo steccato: Il Fronte Lirico Politico e Sociale Questa prima parte si presenta come un vero e proprio assalto lirico ai centri del potere. Le poesie di “Oltre lo steccato” denunciano con veemenza le violenze sistemiche, lo sfruttamento indiscriminato, il razzismo dilagante, il cinismo mediatico, la repressione statale e le inquietanti complicità tra poteri economici e religiosi. La scrittura è diretta, impellente, pensata per scuotere le coscienze. Qui la poesia politica diventa autentico linguaggio di lotta, la poesia libertaria uno strumento di disvelamento, e la poesia di denuncia sociale si erge a voce corale degli emarginati. I versi sono colpi precisi contro le gabbie ideologiche, inviti a insorgere, testimonianze di un’umanità ferita ma indomita.
Radici: Un Viaggio nell’Identità, Territorio e Coscienza Anarchica Nella seconda sezione, “Radici”, il tono muta, ma l’intensità non diminuisce. È un viaggio più intimo, che si immerge nel vissuto personale, nel legame profondo con la terra d’origine e nella memoria familiare e storica. Le poesie esplorano il significato complesso dell’essere anarchici nel mondo contemporaneo, frammentato e spesso disorientante, partendo da un’identità meridionale troppo spesso oggetto di marginalizzazione e stereotipi. È una poesia personale che non rinuncia alla lotta, ma la nutre di una consapevolezza radicata, di un senso di appartenenza e di un amore tenace per tutto ciò che resiste: luoghi, volti, storie. La radice, in questo contesto, non è un mero rifugio, ma uno slancio vitale verso un futuro da reinventare, libero da ogni forma di padronanza e confine.
Temi centrali: rabbia, insubordinazione e solidarietà
Le poesie di “Fondamenti di Utopia” sono animate da una rabbia lucida, da un’insubordinazione consapevole e da un profondo senso di solidarietà umana e politica. I temi affrontati attraversano i conflitti sociali del presente con un linguaggio tagliente e radicale, senza mai perdere l’empatia verso chi subisce l’oppressione.
L’opera è una denuncia frontale al potere in tutte le sue manifestazioni: economico, statale, religioso, patriarcale. La poesia anticapitalista di Fiorenza svela impietosamente le interconnessioni tra dominio e complicità mediatica, tra profitto e devastazione sociale. In testi come “Il titolista”, “Padrone bianco, lavoro nero” o “Insorgiamo”, la rabbia si trasforma in strumento di lotta, la parola in barricata. Le condizioni di sfruttamento dei lavoratori, il razzismo istituzionale, la criminalizzazione del dissenso vengono smascherati con versi duri e visionari, all’interno di un progetto poetico che è anche una lotta sociale dichiarata.
Fiorenza intesse con forza la memoria storica con le tragedie contemporanee: dalla strage di Cutro alla Palestina, dalla Resistenza antifascista alle lotte per i diritti dei migranti. La poesia diventa così un atto di attivismo culturale, capace di resistere al tempo e di decifrarlo. In componimenti come “Oltre lo steccato” (dedicata a Cutro), “Umani nel vento”, “Garibaldi, che hai fatto!”, l’autore rilegge la storia dal basso, con uno sguardo profondamente antifascista, decentrato e solidale. È un invito a ricordare, ma anche ad agire: la poesia, qui, è una voce collettiva che reclama giustizia e dignità per ogni essere umano.
Stile e linguaggio
Il tratto distintivo di “Fondamenti di Utopia” è senza dubbio il suo linguaggio diretto, popolare, viscerale, che si nutre di ironia pungente, sarcasmo dissacrante e una spiccata musicalità. Daniele Fiorenza non edulcora né abbellisce; la sua scrittura mira a ferire l’indifferenza, a strappare il lettore dalla comodità del giudizio passivo. La sua voce poetica è tagliente e militante, eppure profondamente umana, modulandosi con efficacia sulle diverse sfumature del vissuto.
Tra dialetto, ironia e forza musicale
L’inserimento del dialetto calabrese in alcuni componimenti, come “E ritorno alla lira” o “Oltre lo steccato”, non è una mera scelta linguistica, ma un vero e proprio atto politico, un richiamo viscerale alla terra, alla marginalità e alla dignità di chi è stato storicamente escluso. Il tono è spesso ironico, parodico, dissacrante, come emerge chiaramente in poesie quali “Il titolista” o “Armando Zecconia”, dove la comicità si tramuta in feroce denuncia.
La musicalità dei testi, evidente anche nelle “cover poetiche” ispirate a canzoni popolari come “La canzone del bambino nel vento” o “Il pescatore”, rafforza il legame con l’oralità e la tradizione popolare. Questo approccio rende la raccolta un contributo originale nel panorama della poesia contemporanea italiana, rifiutando l’accademismo e schierandosi apertamente dalla parte degli ultimi.
Poesie esemplari da non dimenticare
Versi che lasciano il segno
In Fondamenti di Utopia ci sono testi che si imprimono con forza nella memoria, veri e propri emblemi di una poesia sociale d’autore capace di restituire senso alla parola “impegno”. Alcune poesie si ergono come monoliti: documenti emotivi, storici e politici di un presente che brucia sotto i nostri occhi.
Oltre lo steccato: la poesia per Cutro
Tra le più toccanti, Oltre lo steccato è una poesia scritta in dialetto calabrese e dedicata alla strage di Cutro. Il testo mescola disperazione, denuncia e lirismo amaro. L’uso del dialetto non è solo stilistico: diventa carne e territorio, dolore e identità. È un lamento funebre e una rivolta, un’accusa contro le responsabilità istituzionali e l’indifferenza sociale. Non è solo poesia per ricordare, ma per non permettere che l’orrore venga normalizzato.
Per (Gino) Strada: il lutto che si fa lotta
Un altro testo memorabile è “Per (Gino) Strada”, omaggio a una delle figure più radicalmente umanitarie del nostro tempo. Fiorenza scrive con affetto, rabbia e gratitudine, evitando qualsiasi retorica. La poesia smaschera l’ipocrisia dei politicanti che disprezzano in vita ciò che celebrano ipocritamente dopo la morte. È un testo che commuove, ma anche scuote, ricordandoci che la coerenza ha un costo, e che la vera eredità di Strada risiede nelle mani di chi continua a disobbedire con amore.
Altri testi emblematici
La settimana santa, Insorgiamo, Il titolista o Alla fiera ammazzagenti sono altri esempi potenti di una poesia che non si accontenta di raccontare: grida, accusa, rifiuta. In ognuno di questi componimenti, Fiorenza mostra come la poesia possa ancora essere atto politico, strumento di memoria, voce collettiva.
Valore politico e culturale dell’opera
Poesia come strumento di trasformazione
Fondamenti di Utopia non è solo una raccolta poetica: è una dichiarazione di intenti, un terreno fertile dove la poesia e l’impegno civile si intrecciano in modo indissolubile. Daniele Fiorenza non scrive per abbellire il mondo, ma per trasformarlo. I suoi versi non cercano consenso, ma coscienza. Ogni poesia è una crepa aperta nel muro dell’indifferenza, un invito a riscoprire la forza del dissenso.
In questo senso, l’opera apre una prospettiva culturale rilevante nel panorama della poesia politica italiana contemporanea, fungendo anche da strumento pratico di riflessione e azione. Il richiamo all’autogestione e al rifiuto della delega è costante: la voce lirica incita a prendere parola, a organizzarsi, a resistere al potere che disgrega e divide. La poesia diventa così azione collettiva, gesto comunitario, possibilità concreta di costruire un’alternativa.
Verso un’utopia politica concreta
Quella che Fiorenza propone non è un’utopia astratta, ma un orizzonte di lotta da raggiungere con “le mani sporche di vita”. Le sue poesie richiamano la giustizia sociale, la dignità dei lavoratori, la solidarietà tra oppressi, ma anche la libertà come pratica quotidiana, l’antifascismo come dovere etico, la comunità come risposta al disfacimento individualista.
In un tempo in cui il linguaggio è spesso neutralizzato dal marketing o ridotto a slogan di propaganda, Fondamenti di Utopia restituisce alla parola la sua carica più sovversiva: quella di poter cambiare il mondo. Con dolore, sì, ma anche con ostinata speranza.
L’utopia come orizzonte possibile
La poesia come atto di insorgenza
Fondamenti di Utopia è un libro che non si limita a descrivere il mondo com’è, ma si ostina a immaginare come potrebbe essere. In un presente segnato da fratture, disuguaglianze e paure normalizzate, la poesia di Daniele Fiorenza si fa insorgenza consapevole: non urla nel vuoto, ma prende posizione, semina visioni, apre passaggi.
Qui la resistenza attraverso la poesia non è una metafora, ma una pratica concreta: ogni verso oppone il gesto creativo alla violenza sistemica, ogni parola cerca di strappare la realtà all’apatia. L’utopia politica evocata non è evasione, ma tensione concreta verso una trasformazione radicale, da costruire con lucidità e determinazione, giorno dopo giorno.
In un tempo in cui anche l’immaginazione sembra colonizzata, Fondamenti di Utopia difende il diritto di sognare con i piedi piantati nella terra. È un libro che non si legge soltanto: si attraversa, si ascolta, si porta con sé. E ci ricorda, senza retorica, che la poesia militante non ha bisogno di alzare la voce per farsi sentire. Basta che continui a dire la verità.
Russia, China conduct joint drills in Sea of Japan — Ukrainian drones target Shahed storage site, industrial facilities in Russia; Strikes hit oil depot in Sochi — [vlog] Trump runs out of patience with Russia — General Staff: Russia has lost 1,056,130 tr
Medical Supplies for Ukraine’s Hospitals. Partnering for global health equity.
Russia’s war against Ukraine
Fire breaks out after a Russian attack in Kherson, Ukraine on August 2, 2025. (Kherson Regional Military Administration/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Ukraine’sdrone strikereportedly sparks fire at oil depot in Russia’s Sochi. A drone strike resulted in a major fire early on Aug. 3 at an oil depot in Russia’s resort city of Sochi, setting ablaze a 2,000-cubic-meter fuel tank, local authorities said.
Ukraine imposessanctionsagainst 94 individuals, 5 entities, including captains of Russia’s shadow fleet. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on Aug. 3 imposing sanctions against 94 individuals and five legal entities, primarily targeting the captains of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” vessels.
Zelensky appointsnew headof Ukrainian Air Force after year-long vacancy. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the appointment of Lieutenant General Anatoliy Kryvonozhko, who has been serving as the Air Force’s acting head since the end of last August.
‘Work on lists is ongoing’ — Ukraine, Russia preparing toexchange 1,200 POWseach, Zelensky says. Work is ongoing between Ukraine and Russia as the warring parties prepare to each exchange 1,200 Prisoners of War (POWs), President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Aug. 3.
Ukraine’s law enforcement uncovers drone procurementcorruption schemeinvolving lawmakers. Oleksii Kuznetsov, a member of parliament who belongs to Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, allegedly accepted kickbacks for inflating military contracts. He has been dismissed from his parliamentary faction pending the outcome of the case.
Trump saysenvoymay visit Russia ahead of peace deal deadline. U.S. President Donald Trump said that his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, may travel to Russia on Aug. 6 or 7 — just days before a deadline for Moscow to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or face secondary tariffs targeting its oil exports.
Read our exclusives
Ukraine war latest: Ukrainian drones target Shahed storage site, industrial facilities in Russia; Strikes hit oil depot in Sochi
A series of drone attacks targeted industrial facilities in Russia’s Ryazan, Penza, Samara and Voronezh oblasts overnight on Aug. 2, Ukraine’s General Staff reported. In Ryazan, an oil refinery was reportedly struck, with videos shared on social media showing a large pillar of fire near the site.
Photo: Serhii Mykhalchuk / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
General Staff: Russia has lost 1,056,130troopsin Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022
The number includes 920 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day.
Russian missile strike againstMykolaivinjures 7. A Russian missile strike hit the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv overnight on Aug. 3, injuring seven and damaging homes and civilian infrastructure, according to Ukrainian officials.
Trump runs out of patience with Russia | Ukraine This Week
International response
Trump aide accusesIndiaof financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. In an Aug. 3 Fox News interview, senior Trump aide Stephen Miller accused India of helping fund Russia’s war in Ukraine by continuing to import oil from Moscow.
German politician calls for reduced benefits forUkrainian refugees. Markus Soder, Prime Minister of the German state of Bavaria, has called for an end to citizen’s allowance payments for Ukrainian refugees, proposing that new arrivals instead receive reduced benefits under the country’s Asylum Seekers Benefits Act.
In other news
Russia, China conductjoint drillsin Sea of Japan. The Russian and Chinese navies are conducting joint military exercises in the Sea of Japan, the Kremlin said Aug. 3, just days after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of nuclear submarines in a show of force toward Moscow.
‘Armed withbats and metal pipes‘ — Casualties reported after civilians allegedly attack draft officer in Mykolaiv Oblast. Civilians allegedly attacked a recruitment officer in the village of Buzke in Mykolaiv Oblast on Aug. 3, the regional Territorial Recruitment Center reported.
This newsletter is open for sponsorship. Boost your brand’s visibility by reaching thousands of engaged subscribers. Click here for more details.
Today’s Ukraine Daily was brought to you by Lili Bivings, Kollen Post,Dmytro Basmat, Lucy Pakhnyuk, and Abbey Fenbert.
If you’re enjoying this newsletter, consider joining ourmembership program. Start supporting independent journalism today.
The unidentified civilians "armed with bats and metal pipes, damaged a vehicle and inflicted bodily injuries on a soldier" as the officer was attending to enlistment activities, officials allege.
Rockstar Games are gearing up to add age verification methods to GTA Online. Following the UK's implementation of the Online Safety Act services such as Reddit and Xbox and have to verify the age of its users to make sure they are over 18 for certain…
As the global population ages, older adults face growing psychological challenges such as loneliness, cognitive decline, and loss of social roles. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including chatbots and voice-based systems, offer new pathways to emotional support and mental stimulation. However, older adults often encounter significant barriers in accessing and effectively using AI tools. This review examines the current landscape of AI applications aimed at enhancing psychological well-being among older adults, identifies key challenges such as digital literacy and usability, and highlights design and training strategies to bridge the digital divide. Using socioemotional selectivity theory and technology acceptance models as guiding frameworks, we argue that AI—especially in the form of conversational agents—holds transformative potential in reducing isolation and promoting emotional resilience in aging populations. We conclude with recommendations for inclusive design, participatory development, and future interdisciplinary research.
Despite QUIC handshake packets being encrypted, the Great Firewall of China (GFW) has begun blocking QUIC connections to specific domains since April 7, 2024. In this work, we measure and characterize the GFW’s censorship of QUIC to understand how and what it blocks. Our measurements reveal that the GFW decrypts QUIC Initial packets at scale, applies heuristic filtering rules, and uses a blocklist distinct from its other censorship mechanisms. We expose a critical flaw in this new system: the computational overhead of decryption reduces its effectiveness under moderate traffic loads. We also demonstrate that this censorship mechanism can be weaponized to block UDP traffic between arbitrary hosts in China and the rest of the world. We collaborate with various open-source communities to integrate circumvention strategies into Mozilla Firefox, the quic-go library, and all major QUIC-based circumvention tools.
Since April 2024, the Great Firewall of China (GFW) has been censoring QUIC traffic to specific domains. Our findings show the GFW decrypts QUIC Initial packets at scale and employs a unique blocklist.
Despite the extensive, highly detailed and good-faith engagements by rightsholder communities throughout this process, the final outcomes fail to address the core concerns which our sectors – and the millions of creators and companies active in Europe which we represent – have consistently raised. The result is not a balanced compromise; it is a missed opportunity to provide meaningful protection of intellectual property rights in the context of GenAI and does not deliver on the promise of the EU AI Act itself.
The feedback of the primary beneficiaries these provisions were meant to protect has been largely ignored in contravention of the objectives of the EU AI Act as determined by the co-legislators and to the sole benefit of the GenAI model providers that continuously infringe copyright and related rights to build their models. In 2024, the cultural and creative sectors across Europe welcomed the principles of responsible and trustworthy AI enshrined in the EU AI Act, intended to ensure mutually beneficial growth of innovation and creativity in Europe.
Today, with the EU AI Act implementing package as it stands, thriving cultural and creative sectors and copyright intensive industries in Europe which contribute nearly 7% of EU GDP, provide employment for nearly 17 million professionals and have an economic contribution larger than European pharmaceutical, automobile or high-tech industries, are being sold out in favour of those GenAI model providers. The deployment of GenAI models which also make extensive use of scraping is already underway. The damage to and unfair competition with the cultural and creative sectors can be seen each day. The cultural and creative sectors must be safeguarded, as they are the foundations of our cultures and the Single Market. We wish to make it clear that the outcome of these processes does not provide a meaningful implementation of the GPAI obligations under the AI Act.
We strongly reject any claim that the Code of Practice strikes a fair and workable balance or that the Template will deliver “sufficient” transparency about the majority of copyright works or other subject matter used to train GenAI models. This is simply untrue and is a betrayal of the EU AI Act’s objectives.
EPC joins a broad coalition of European and global authors, performers, publishers, producers and other rightsholder organisations, to formally express our dissatisfaction with the published GPAI Code of Practice, the GPAI Guidelines, and the Templat…
Is Briar a good option for encrypted messaging and file transfer?
After the Matrix file upload limit thing, I'm looking to move away from the messages stored on a server paradigm both to avoid having to pay for file uploads and because it doesn't make sense to host files on a server indefinitely if they're only intended for one other person and don't need to be kept for very long.
In Briar, it's only possible to send images - not any other file, as of this writing.
They have a very clear stance on not rushing releases, and focusing on security and stability rather than features, which is laudable, but on the flip side that means one must probably wait for months, if not years, for new features.
you connect with people like a normal app that isn't going to scare your family off, not trying to get them to put in GUIDS
it has all the creature comforts, attached/embedded photos, markup, attached files, attach pictures, share your location for 10 minutes (I'm on my way), history editing, deleting
it has concurrent multi device support, so you can get messages on your phone, tablet, and desktop at the same time
There's a full desktop client (Electron, i think 🤮 but it works)
the dev team is small and they seem to like to work more on features than user issues. development is slow
multi-person groups work fine
It's still the best E2E messaging system I've found; the only one my mom, wife, and sisters-in-law reliably use.
I just want them to focus on fixing the sketchy DHT that seems to cause every problem.
Good for certain scenarios but not for the everyday use, I would love to see that adaptability improved for the "chilling common situations" in the future.
SimpleX is my main atm, it can transfer files effectively.
“Non posso credere che tu l’abbia fatto di proposito.” Peter Hall si avvicinò al fratello, prendendo in mano il cappello da vigile del fuoco in segno di rispetto, mentre sottili strali di fuliggine s’inseguivano a vicenda nell’aria autunnale del prim…
I have uploaded the photos I took at Saturday’s DCI Williamsport show in Williamsport, PA to my Smugmug account. You can view them at this link or via the galleries below.
Sacramento Freelancers
Bluecoats Rhythm in BLUE
Hawthorne Caballeros Alumni
Sun
I have uploaded the photos I took at Saturday’s DCI Williamsport show in Williamsport, PA to my Smugmug account. You can view them at this link or via the galleries below.
In order to prevent a quorum, state representatives in the Texas House are leaving the state to combat what one Democratic lawmaker called "the rot at the core of our broken political system."
The UK government programme to force AI into everything has reached the Ministry of Justice, with the ‘AI Action Plan for Justice’! If they can bodge something with AI, they’re going to. [Ministry …
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
TryingSomethingNew
in reply to jwr1 • • •like this
giantpaper likes this.
Eheran
in reply to TryingSomethingNew • • •FartsWithAnAccent
in reply to Eheran • • •Captain Aggravated
in reply to FartsWithAnAccent • • •cmnybo
in reply to Captain Aggravated • • •HamWAN
www.hamwan.orgilovepiracy
in reply to Eheran • • •Korhaka
in reply to ilovepiracy • • •artyom
in reply to Eheran • • •Some people already are
map.nycmesh.net/
But the point of LoRa is in the name, long range. Wifi barely reaches outside my house. Also a WiFi mesh is dependent on a variety of complicated and proprietary networks and systems while meshtastic is entirely independent.
Captain Aggravated
in reply to artyom • • •artyom
in reply to Captain Aggravated • • •Captain Aggravated
in reply to artyom • • •wireless communication technology
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)artyom
in reply to Captain Aggravated • • •deafboy
in reply to Eheran • • •Ever since I switched to lemmy, I constantly stumble upon people trying to guilt other people for their hobbies. That's pretty unhealthy.
Whoever reads this, don't feel guilty living your life. Spend time on whatever you're passionate about. Build new things, even if they do not have a rational use case at the moment. They might play an important role in your future.
MangoCats
in reply to deafboy • • •WiFi goes down and people sometimes NEED to communicate instead of streaming Netflix.
This is just an alternate channel, if Eheran doesn't have the imagination to understand how low bandwidth can still be extremely valuable, as compared to, say, screaming at the top of your lungs to attempt to be heard 5 miles away, then... I'm not really interested in what they think.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge
in reply to MangoCats • • •MangoCats
in reply to Vanilla_PuddinFudge • • •Captain Aggravated
in reply to MangoCats • • •"WiFi goes down"
Or more to the point, the ISP fails. A Wi-Fi router isn't that much more difficult to power than a meshtastic node, but my old ISP, I don't think they even bothered to install UPSes, if the power was out, so was the internet. I could keep my Wi-Fi up indefinitely, but it's basically useless outside my house.
MangoCats
in reply to Captain Aggravated • • •0x0
in reply to Eheran • • •...for you.
I can see a use-case where a low-powered off-grid communication device can be useful.
notgold
in reply to 0x0 • • •We are in talks to build one for a local power utility. These are cheaper for nice-to-have sensors that aren't critical. Most electricity meters in Victoria use a mesh network provided through silverspring devices to collect usage readings.
I've also heard about a rural water utility using a mesh network to connect water meters together to reduce the number of times an onsite reading is required.
Telcos are already trying to compete with mesh networks by providing low bandwidth LTE-M services that are lower cost for utilities. Nokia are pushing 450connect, 450 alliance, etc as more competitors also.
There are plenty of use cases for low bandwidth systems and services. Isolated network is great when the telcos have pages too.
SatansMaggotyCumFart
in reply to TryingSomethingNew • • •Blue_Morpho
in reply to SatansMaggotyCumFart • • •You can't expect me not to reinvent the wheel.
As we post on Lemmy, which is a reinvention of a reinvention of a reinvention of Usenet from 1979.
SatansMaggotyCumFart
in reply to Blue_Morpho • • •Blue_Morpho
in reply to SatansMaggotyCumFart • • •Ok, rant time!!!!
I worked for Vint Cerf back in the early 90's. I became aware of the politics around it when Al Gore pushed for funding so the Internet could grow into something bigger than a University/Military communication system. Rush Limbaugh was on the radio daily railing against Al Gore's Boondoggle. Clinton/Gore secured funding and the Internet exploded in use.
During the 1999 Presidential election, Republicans took Al Gore's greatest political accomplishment, getting Congress to fund the creation of the Internet, and made it a joke.
Vint Cerf wrote this letter as a result:
web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/mi…
SatansMaggotyCumFart
in reply to Blue_Morpho • • •Blue_Morpho
in reply to SatansMaggotyCumFart • • •SatansMaggotyCumFart
in reply to Blue_Morpho • • •MrSpArkle
in reply to SatansMaggotyCumFart • • •Blue_Morpho
in reply to SatansMaggotyCumFart • • •shortwavesurfer
in reply to TryingSomethingNew • • •Thwompthwomp
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •TryingSomethingNew
in reply to Thwompthwomp • • •TryingSomethingNew
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •shortwavesurfer
in reply to TryingSomethingNew • • •shortwavesurfer
in reply to TryingSomethingNew • • •Have a look at meshmap.net. That shows people who have voluntarily put themselves on a map.
Although it can be a serious underestimation, for example in my area, I'm the only one who lists myself on the map, but there are about 10 other nodes that don't
Edit: Also, the number of nodes on MeshMap has pretty much doubled in six months since I started playing with it.
JustEnoughDucks
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •shortwavesurfer
in reply to JustEnoughDucks • • •Remember, that map is volunteer and only shows nodes of a day or less.
For example, I am the only node in my area who voluntarily puts myself on the map, but there are 10 others who do not.
Korhaka
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •Hmm, more than I expected actually. None in my town but one in a nearby town and the nearest city.
Is there a limit to how far can you communicate through multiple nodes? Also is there anything special for setting up a repeater compared to just communicating on the network?
Though i don't know anyone else that would be likely to use something like this sadly.
shortwavesurfer
in reply to Korhaka • • •They've set the maximum at seven hops, but depending on weather conditions, that can easily be several hundred miles.
Nothing special is needed for a repeater except that you probably will want a node with a solar panel such as the seeedStudio solar. You would put it up as high as you can get it. I generally say if it's more than 100 feet in the air, use router mode. If it is less than 100 feet but above 20 feet, use client. If it is less than 20 feet, use client mute.
Your node in your pocket or in your car should be on client mute mode since them broadcasting will not get the signal much farther and will just cause more channel utilization on high nodes.
IllNess
in reply to TryingSomethingNew • • •I always thought these were more like walkie talkies for messaging than telephones that you can call anyone.
Like it would be good if cell serivce goes down.
shortwavesurfer
in reply to IllNess • • •MangoCats
in reply to shortwavesurfer • • •Anivia
in reply to MangoCats • • •That is entirely up to the whim of your neighboring nodes to decide
Rentlar
in reply to MangoCats • • •meshtastic.org/docs/configurat…
SENSOR is one of the defined device roles. And whether for personal automation or public information, it is a reasonable use case for the network.
Device Configuration | Meshtastic
meshtastic.orgggtdbz
in reply to Rentlar • • •Everything I learn about this project is so cool. I can’t go through the docs right now, but I’m assuming it can prioritize things like emergency communication over sensor data.
There’s no public nodes in a 200+ km radius around me on that site someone linked, so something tells me I’ll have to do a lot of guerilla solar panel installation if I want to anonymously set up something.
I’ve thought about it on and off over the past two years, more of a private network for family and friends than anything, for emergencies and so on. The real, big problem is that I could be accused of espionage and thrown into jail forever if I do this. So I don’t think I’ll see anyone putting any nodes up for the foreseeable future. At least not public nodes.
brunoqc
in reply to jwr1 • • •TimewornTraveler
in reply to brunoqc • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to TimewornTraveler • • •Lost_My_Mind
in reply to brunoqc • • •Ok.......what's meshtastic? I still haven't clicked the article, and know nothing of which you speak.
I'd say this title is for people like me. I think it sounds cool.
pezhore
in reply to Lost_My_Mind • • •It is cool! The barrier to entry is relatively low. The only thing to really worry about is:
If there's not a lot of people around it's not the end of the world. Nodes can connect over the Internet via MQTT servers. Yes, this defeats the purpose of having an offline/decentralized communication platform, but it is a good stop gap until more nodes are put up.
Here's a sample of what I can see in a somewhat large-ish Midwest City in the US (there's about 63 nodes I can reach by hopping through relays).
Elecrow ThinkNode M2
muzi ᴡᴏʀᴋꜱ0x0
in reply to pezhore • • •pezhore
in reply to 0x0 • • •brunoqc
in reply to Lost_My_Mind • • •It allows us to make a mesh network (interconnected nodes where you can contact a node even if it's not in range for you, by using other nodes) with Lora radio devices. Lora is slow but has long range. I think it works better when you have line of sight, like if someone can put a node on a mountain, it would help everyone.
I think people might have sent audio with it but it's mostly useful for text messages. It could be useful if the Internet is down, maybe, but it's more like a toy.
0x0
in reply to brunoqc • • •Since LoRa devices use very little power this can be useful when there is no electricity.
friend_of_satan
in reply to brunoqc • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to friend_of_satan • • •Exactly. I was hyped because I'd like to send and receive SMS w/o a mobile phone. I was hoping someone implemented the protocol so I could integrate it into my desktop, the "no wi-fi or cell service" was merely a bonus.
But no, this is just a way to communicate over a different radio protocol than mobile phone standards.
Dogyote
in reply to friend_of_satan • • •mesa
in reply to jwr1 • • •Bubs
in reply to mesa • • •mesa
in reply to Bubs • • •Theoretically you can get 50 ish miles or more with line of sight. In practice, you can get around 10 ish with repeaters. With around 30 devices, our city has effective coverage.
You also have options to use MQTT if you want to make sure a message gets through. But that requires an internet connection.
shadshack
in reply to mesa • • •mesa
in reply to shadshack • • •Honestly, its a fun side project, but without enough nodes its more of a hobby. If you want to make it usable, its probably better to use internet or higher power devices (like ham). Or buy a metric ton of these and throw them up high.
As long as you have a node in sight, it should be good for at least some communication. My little window node gets 20+ nodes.
hansolo
in reply to mesa • • •How does this differ from IP over ham radio? It seems like in general, it would just be lower distance and greater reliance on nodes near you, with the trade off being smaller equipment.
themodernham.com/ip-over-ham-r…
IP over Ham Radio via New Packet Radio - TheModernHam
Billy Penley (TheModernHam)mesa
in reply to hansolo • • •RattlerSix
in reply to mesa • • •mesa
in reply to RattlerSix • • •There may be some miscommunication. I ment that in order to use a majority of the meshtastic devices, they require the android or ios app + bluetooth. Not all, but a vast majority. And most of those will have access to a cell phone tower that will likely not go down, even in the event your neighborhood power goes off. At least where I am at. The devices have often been alluded to a disaster proof communications device. And an alternative to instant messaging. Its not as reliable as some other tech that is out there, but its a fun hobby!
Hope that makes more sense.
RattlerSix
in reply to mesa • • •Gotcha. I read your post wrong.
The phones are one reason I don't think Meshtastic is good for emergency communications. My main Meshtastic devices run off a battery pack that can run them for 2-3 weeks, but I'd also have to keep a phone charged throughout the disaster to use them.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to mesa • • •What kind of data rate can they provide? Can it support audio? Low bit-rate video?
I've seen LoRa when Pine64 announced some related products some years back, but I haven't really gotten into it. If the community is big enough and the bitrate reasonable enough, I might get one to connect my home to my parents home (about 10 miles away, so at the edge of the range) for fun. It would be cool to set up some smart home stuff at both ends that I could host on my own so I can keep an "eye" on my parents stuff when the travel (mostly just door and occupancy sensors, no video).
mesa
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to mesa • • •If its simple enough, I could probably abuse it to send binary data by encoding everything in base64 or something, and writing a simple translator for whatever my app is.
But what does the usable bandwidth look like, and what about latency? If I'm going just out of range from direct communication, I assume I'd be going through other peoples' nodes, but is that intelligent enough to route messages through efficiently? Or could I see crazy latency spikes?
mesa
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •DontNoodles
in reply to mesa • • •mesa
in reply to DontNoodles • • •I'm running about 1w per device ATM.
So yeah it sips energy. There's a lot of nodes in the mountains that are solar powered. They work.
douglasg14b
in reply to mesa • • •Curious Canid
in reply to jwr1 • • •My wife and I each have a radio, as do several of my friends. They're handy for anything where you may not have cell coverage, like camping. We also use them at protests, to avoid the heavy surveillance that's being done on cell networks. Even if the authorities start looking at Meshtastic, everything except the public channel uses PGP end-to-end encryption, and there is no middleman that has access to the unencrypted data.
We have also put up a repeater node. It's on top of a house at the top of the highest ridge near us. Before it went up we rarely saw more than our own nodes. Now we see several dozen, and sometimes a lot more. And the repeater serves the whole community, not just us. The beauty of a mesh is that everyone contributes to everyone else's coverage.
The mesh in our city is growing rapidly right now. Not only are there a lot of people getting their own nodes, there are a surprising number of people putting up repeaters to help spread the coverage. It's amazing to watch our whole neighborhoods suddenly appear as gaps are filled in.
MrTolkinghoen
in reply to Curious Canid • • •How do I do this? Shats the easiest way to get started?
Both a personal device and a repeater on my house
Curious Canid
in reply to MrTolkinghoen • • •Easiest and least expensive are a little different, so I'll talk briefly about both.
The easiest is to go on Etsy and search for Meshtastic. You will find plenty of people who will build you a ready-to-go unit, both individual radios and solar-powered repeaters. (If you plan to put your repeater somewhere with power you can use any radio as a repeater, just put a good antenna on it.) Pre-built units start at around $60 and can go up into the hundreds, but $60 to $90 will get you a great personal radio.
The least expensive is to order a kit from one of the many companies that sell them. If the kit does not come with a case, check Etsy for cases that match your kit. Most kits do not require soldering, you just have to plug in various cables and connectors, then fit everything into the case. Some actually come fully assembled. This approach generally costs somewhere between half and two-thirds of what a pre-built setup will run. Kits start as low as $10, although most or $20 to $40, and cases are mostly $20 to $35.
One of the harder parts is to figure out which radio kit you want, but there are just two major types. Those built around the ESP32 processor tend to be a little less expensive and offer the option of WiFi, but they have a much shorter battery life. Those built around the nRF52 processor cost a little more, do not offer WiFi, but have nearly 10 times the battery life. WiFi is only used in a few specific cases, usually by repeaters and not personal units, so you may well not need it. Battery life is not usually an issue for personal radios, since nearly all of them will go for a full day between charges, but sometimes you may want more than that. Stand-alone repeaters that run off solar panels are almost all based on the nRF52 because of the battery life.
The most common starter radios are based on the Heltec V3 kit, which is based on the ESP32. It has been around a long time, it is relatively inexpensive, and it can do pretty much everything. The only downside is battery life, which may or may not matter to you. Unless that's a concern, you can't go wrong with a V3. My personal favorite is the T114 kit, also from Heltec, which is based on the nRF52. It is much like the V3, but without WiFi and with much better battery life.
I would wait until you've played with a personal radio before buying a repeater. Every Meshtastic radio acts as a repeater, so you don't necessarily need a dedicated repeated. Find out how many nodes are in your area and what kind of coverage you get. If there aren't many nodes, or distance is limited, you can consider a dedicated repeater.
Basically, a repeater is just a node with a good location that's put in a good location, up as high as possible. Because Meshtastic radios use very little power, it is practical to make completely self-sufficient solar repeater units that never require charging. You can put one of those on your roof, up in a tree, or on top of a nearby hill or mountain, without having to worry about regularly climbing back up there.
I strongly recommend that you go to meshtastic.org and read through the Getting Started documentation. It provides a lot more detail (and less personal opinion). And check out the Meshtastic communities on Lemmy. Have fun!
GaMEChld
in reply to Curious Canid • • •Curious Canid
in reply to GaMEChld • • •MrTolkinghoen
in reply to Curious Canid • • •Thank you for the detailed reply! Yeah I realize now Mestastic.Org has everything I need.
Planning to prolly get:
A rak wireless kit for a local repeater on my roof powered via PoE, and then a TTGO TEcho for my personal device.
I know that I should just get the latter and play with it first, but I live high on a hill with a great vantage point of the city so feels like a disservice to the community if I don't also host a repeater.
One thing I'm curious about, is if I use it via poe, can I also send messages via the repeater? I.e. locally from my network initiate a message through my repeater?
I would want it in repeater mode so it would forward any message even ones I don't have the encryption key for.
Curious Canid
in reply to MrTolkinghoen • • •I don't think any of the current Meshtastic radios can be used in the usual way via ethernet. Some support WiFi, but not the RAKs that I know about. That leaves USB and Bluetooth.
There is a very neat option that allows you to set up to remotely administer a node via radio. That has saved me a lot of trouble with my repeater. You can't do everything that way that you could with a direct connection, but you can do most of it.
The repeater will automatically forward messages from your personal radio to anyone who is outside your direct range. You don't have to do anything special to make that happen. Likewise, any node, including your repeater and your personal radio, will automatically forward encrypted messages without knowing what's in them. Only the endpoints need to have the encryption keys. Anything in between just forwards the raw data.
benny
in reply to jwr1 • • •3abas
in reply to benny • • •Korhaka
in reply to 3abas • • •benny
in reply to Korhaka • • •swelter_spark
in reply to benny • • •pfizer_dose
in reply to jwr1 • • •ouRKaoS
in reply to pfizer_dose • • •some_guy
in reply to jwr1 • • •