I’m not extremely informed on the subject. But I heard that most dating apps these days are highly motivated to NOT pair you with someone. Often through subtle means. This way you keep interacting with the site, buying upgrades to get your profile more visible or see more matches. It’s ridiculous.

Is gimp no longer recommended?

Sharing Linux ISOs over BitTorrent requires connecting to other people’s computers to download the file from them.

Ports are what they sound like, ports. Like USB ports on a computer. They are places where data can travel through. But they’re also specific and unique, which can be useful.

I wrote up a big thing explaining it further but it got complicated quickly.

The basic point is, ports are a quick and easy way to determine WHERE a piece of data or request for data should go.

Your computer is on a network, and has an internal address on that network. Let’s say it’s 192.168.1.1. The Internet is a whole separate network, with its own addresses.

Your modem is assigned an address on this Internet network. Let’s say it’s 56.56.56.56.

Ok, simple, right? You have a Linux ISO I want, so my computer sends a message to yours, at your Internet address of 56.56.56.56. Theoretically that should work fine (it probably wouldn’t for complicated reasons but I digress). Your modem gets the message, forwards it to your computer which is the only computer connected to it at 192.168.1.1. Bob’s your mother’s brother.

But wait, you don’t have one computer, you’ve got an Xbox too. So you install a router, a special computer that lets you share your modem with other computers. Your Xbox has been assigned an address of 192.168.1.2. So who gets the request for the file now? The request was sent to 56.56.56.56, but the router has two options to deliver it to, and no way to know, so the request gets dropped.

To solve this, we set up port forwarding. You tell your router that all requests sent to port 5000 should be directed to 192.168.1.1. And then when you broadcast the availability of the Linux ISO, along with your Internet address you also say to use port 5000.

So now when I want a piece of your file, I send the request to 56.56.56.56:5000, and your router sees that and says hey I know where that goes. Then your computer gets the request, and happily sends the file to me.

Now let’s say you use a VPN. You have the same problem. The VPN has one Internet address, but hundreds or thousands of people using it simultaneously. If you don’t have a port assigned to you, then requests for your file will get dropped by the VPN provider, because it’s impossible to know it was meant for you.

In all these examples, you can still download FROM people, even without a pre established port. I’m honestly not entirely clear on how this works. But I’m pretty sure it has something to do with your router remembering that you just sent data (in the form of a request) to the other persons address, so when data returns FROM that address, it knows where to send it. I think. There could be, and probably is, some other trickery going on there. But I’m working from memory here 🤷‍♂️

Now there are other ways around ports, and other complicated details that are probably important. And things like CGNATs that basically break this fundamental function of the Internet. And I might’ve gotten some of the details I’ve told you wrong. I’m happy to be corrected.

But what I’ve said is essentially true, and should help make a clearer picture for you.

Yep. Far superior to DC.

Nopopppooooo yoouulll squish the poor kitty!!! You monster!!

/s obviously. It’s crazy how worked up people get online, how convinced they are that their way is the only right way.

Somewhere between 4 to 8, depending on how productive we are in the morning.

Very cool! I got it running. Though apparently I didn’t need step 6 as it started running after I downloaded it. I was a bit confused, and do was the LLM as it started telling me how the run command works 🤦‍♂️

Good fun. Got me interested in running local LLM for the first time. What type of performance increase should I expect when I spin this up on my 3070 ti?

Those same people only getting paid 5 an hour have literally fought and complained against any attempts to change the law and bring a proper wage. Why? Because they make more in tips than they would hourly. Whole system is messed up.

Cheapest is $5 dozen here the lower West side of Michigan

While you’re not wrong that people should probably shop that way, if they can. It feels tone deaf, as many people can barely afford groceries in the first place, so shopping by cost per weight/calorie is almost a requirement.

At least I think that’s what’s happening.

I was reading along like, that’s dumb but at least I could craft something in my password man-… Oh… oh no…

The problem that I see is that unless that magic semiconductor is 100% efficient, turning all the heat energy into electrical energy, then there’s gonna be some left over, and things are gonna get too hot too fast too furious. So you’ll need to cool the thing, or part of it, maybe similar to a TEG using the Seebeck or Peltier effect?

I have a few of these kicking around somewhere. They work, just not super efficient, at all, with current technology.

My point is I feel like no matter what you’re gonna need extra parts to cool the thing. Water pumps etc etc. Why not just use steam? 🤷‍♂️

Edit: nice diagram though!

Dave is that you? 😏

Amateur radio is fun. Cheap to get into, but gets a bit expensive pretty fast.

But, you can talk to people all over the world with nothing but a bit of wire strung up in a tree. No million dollars worth of computers and infrastructure between you, no. Just two people, two radios, two pieces of wire in two trees. It’s crazy that it works at all but it does!

Getting a license costs something like $30-40 bucks I think. Used to be free even just a few years ago, but now they’ve added fees to get it.

You can get into a handheld radio that’ll let you talk to your local group of people for $20-30, that’ll get you say… 50-100 miles with repeaters. More if they are linked.

If you wanna go further, you’ve gotta go to lower frequencies. A low power HF radio can be had as cheap as $80-100 ish. You can technically talk around the world with it, but at only 5 watts, it’ll be tough to do unless conditions are just right. People do it all the time, but it’s a challenge, a skill to learn.

$300-400 ish gets you into a 20 watt HF radio, that’ll do significantly better, and actually that’s the radio I use most the time when I go out hiking with a plan on operating in the woods. For this price you could also get an older tube or hybrid radio that is 100-130 watts, but the learning curve can be a little steep, they are big and heavy, and even if you know what you’re doing, they can be a but less convenient than modern radios. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, one of my first radios was one of this type, I bought it broken and fixed it, I still own it.

$800-1000 gets you all the radio most people ever need. Modern digital HF radio, 100 watts, plenty of bells and whistles, practically operates itself. People can and do talk all around the world on 100 watts all the time. Though at this point I have to admit, even with this amount of power, it can be a challenge to talk to the furthest people unless conditions are just right.

Ok, so more power, right? Well, yes, you can do that. The legal limit in the USA is 1500 watts. But there’s a few things to consider about that.

First, yes, more power will make your signal go further. That’s true. But when you’re trying to reach the furthest people, often times it’s your ability to hear the other person, that’s more important. In the hobby they say you don’t want to be an alligator, all mouth, no ears. It doesn’t matter how well the other guy hears you, if you can’t hear him, then you aren’t communicating.

The answer? A better antenna. That wire in a tree does wonders. Honestly, one of my first and most memorable long distance contacts was from lower Michigan to Japan, with 100 watts and a wire in a tree. Almost 7000 miles. Honestly, it was amazing. But later I would make similar contacts semi-frequently, by using a directional antenna called a yagi.

They cost about $500-1000 for the smaller ones, bigger and better gets into the thousands, not counting the minimum 30 foot tower to put it on. Thankfully mine was gifted to me, it was in bad condition, stored in a crawlspace under a house. But I cleaned and repaired it with 3d printed parts. And I had an old TV tower that I put it on, instead of buying and building one. All free.

The way it works is by taking the radio energy and focusing it all one direction. Kind of like how the lightbulb in a cars headlamp is very bright by itself, but put inside the special housing in the car, it gets focused so you can see further down the road. It’s the same energy, just focused.

My antenna had a gain of 8dB. What that means is that whatever direction I was pointing it, it took the 100 watts from my radio, and essentially focused it into a 600 watt beam of radio waves. (There’s more to it than that, but I’m fudging some of the details here for ease of understanding).

Now the beauty of this is that it works in both ways. So if I’m pointing it at Japan, and the guy over there is only pumping out 100 watts, then from my perspective, it’s almost like he’s using 600 watts. See how that’s better? Now we’re both louder! (Again, details fudged here).

Now if you take an antenna like that, and pump 600 or 1200 watts into it (those are the sizes of the two amplifiers I have), then your effective output in that one direction is more like 3800 or 7500 watts! That kind of power really does make a difference, a lot of the time. So, why not even more!

Well, here’s where we come back to earth a bit. Yes more power is better. But there are diminishing returns. Radio signals are like sound waves, in the sense that the decibel scale is logarithmic. Twice the power does not get you twice the loudness.

This is too hard to explain without you having a frame of reference, but… basically, the improvement in signal you get by going from a 5 watt radio to a hundred watt radio, well, it’s pretty significant, right? It takes something difficult to hear, and makes it much easier.

Well, the increase between those two powers, is over 13 decibels. Now, in order to get that same “Wow, now that’s much better!” Improvement? You’d need another 13 decibels. But to do that, you’d need to go from 100 watts, to, well, an illegal output of 2000 watts. The next 13 decibels would require jumping up to 40,000 watts! Decidedly illegal. And you wouldn’t want to stand next to it haha.

So while amplifiers do help, especially when paired with good antennas. Most people don’t bother using them because they usually cost around and over a thousand dollars, or more, for the 600-1000 watt ones. The 1500 watt ones are even more expensive. And you have to upgrade everything else in your equipment to handle the extra power. And for what? A bit better signal?

Don’t get me wrong, I use them. But, not always 🤷‍♂️ and I have no desire for a legal limit amplifier, not unless I had money to burn.

A good antenna is a much better investment, though doing that right can get very expensive very fast.

Anywho, sorry for the long post, guess I kind of got carried away. I didn’t even cover half the stuff we do. POTA, SOTA, Field Day, email and SMS, GPS tracking, satellites, moon bounce, meteor scatter, the role of the sun and ionosphere. Grey line propagation. Fox hunting (not actual foxes), including TDOA. Digital modes like FT8 and APRS, FreeDV, SSTV. Morse code is alive and thriving. Building and fixing radios, building and designing antennas. All that and so much more.

If you have any interest in technology at all, do yourself a favor and at least look into ham radio. It’s literally a license to play with science stuff. And while a lot of it can be expensive, as I’ve described. A lot of it really isn’t, and most of the fun I have is with stuff I’ve made, not bought.

Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. This makes perfect sense to me. Overkill? Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know what this guys needs are.

Perfectly valid points,imo.

Same, I loved that show. None of my friends remember it though 🤷‍♂️