Onno (VK6FLAB)
Anything and everything Amateur Radio and beyond. Heavily into Open Source and SDR, working on a multi band monitor and transmitter.
#geek #nerd #hamradio VK6FLAB #podcaster #australia #ITProfessional #voiceover #opentowork
- 233 Posts
- 671 Comments
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioOPto
Amateur Radio@lemmy.radio•Washington Threatens Retaliation Over EU Plans to Restrict American Satellite Operators - https://eutoday.net
2·15 days agoIt’s telling that in this discussion there’s no mention of the ITU, the FCC or any form of discussion about interference or other spectrum users.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Amateur Radio@lemmy.radio•Why does every protocol use 2.4GHz?
5·16 days agoSince radio spectrum is shared globally because radio waves don’t follow political boundaries, it’s coordinated by a UN body called the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union.
There are a few frequency ranges set aside for so-called ISM (Industrial Science and Medical) use.
The 2.4 GHz band was set aside for such use and together with Wifi, Bluetooth and baby monitors, it’s used for all manner of other things.
Since the range at low power is quite short, many devices can share the same frequency and not interfere with each other.
Here’s some background.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Not cool: who hacked France’s supermarket fridges?English
32·18 days agoIf I remember correctly, my understanding is that the fridges were running an ancient version of nginx, had the username admin,
no passwordthe password is reset daily to … the current date and based on the information printed before logging in were easily found with a search engine.The “hack” can apparently be achieved with a single line of bash, using curl to make the connection.
I’ll see if I can find the thread that discussed/announced it, but as an ICT professional, this doesn’t appear to be a “hack”, rather a set of unlocked doors that someone bored enough tried the knob on.
Edit:
Sorry, remembered the password incorrectly.
Source: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/117429502412235079
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Selfhosted@lemmy.world•Why use Proxmox over Podman or Docker?English
7·1 month agoI moved from VMware Fusion after a hardware failure and migrated to Proxmox. I use VMs to isolate client information and to test and use different OS versions and distros.
I have a VM that runs Docker and connect to it via SSH for running applications I don’t want to install on my main workstation.
My main workstation is also a VM.
I came from bare metal Linux for years and found that I spent too much time recompiling kernels to make it work with my hardware.
Now that everything is a VM, changing underlying hardware, and even hypervisor is trivial.
If VMware hadn’t been bought by Broadcom and allowed me to virtualise x86 on Apple Silicon, I’d still be running VMware Fusion. UTM by the way is completely unreliable … I really tried.
As it is, I’m running Proxmox on AMD.
in summary, Proxmox allows me to build what I need when I need it virtually and it’s running on a standard Debian host.
Edit: #$#__# autocorrect (unreadable -> unreliable)
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Compsci grads facing recession-like job prospects thanks to AI - Slinging coffee and waiting tables ain't just for liberal arts grads any more, say Census Bureau economistsEnglish
33·1 month agoThis is not limited to CompSci graduates and gets worse the older you get.
It’s also not limited to CompSci.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioOPto
Amateur Radio@lemmy.radio•SDR Enthusiasts - GitHub repositories
3·2 months agoIt’s a collection of repos for different aspects of using SDR to decode, collate and distribute to all manner of different projects.
There’s plenty of documentation and a set of wikis.
Essentially it’s like walking into your nearest hardware store with the instructions to “build a house” … some assembly required.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Selfhosted@lemmy.world•How do you manage PHP edits across application upgrades?English
2·2 months agoPHP is written in text files which can be managed using any number of version control systems. Pick your poison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_version-control_software
As someone else said, you can document your patches with a Docker file, but you’ll still need to track your changes.
Ultimately, what you’re essentially doing is maintaining a local fork of the code and keeping it synchronised with upstream.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioOPto
Amateur Radio@lemmy.radio•[FoAR] Foundations of Amateur Radio - Global Ionospheric Maps #podcast
1·2 months agoIf you missed it, this is the video: https://youtu.be/CJZyh2EqvkU
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioOPto
Amateur Radio@lemmy.radio•Near Real Time Global Ionospheric Map for 2026-08
2·2 months agoTomorrow my weekly podcast goes into how this map is created. It’s quite the journey.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioOPto
Amateur Radio@lemmy.radio•Article: Meshtastic vs MeshCore: I Run Both, Here's the Honest Truth (2026)
0·2 months agoWhat is your evidence of this?
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Technology@lemmy.world•Company Pulls Delivery Robots From All College CampusesEnglish
21·4 months agoI figured that a good percentage of the delivery robots would simply “disappear” from the map and be rebirthed as battle bots in some arena with chainsaw accessories.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Privacy@lemmy.ml•Whats do you consider the best choice for private mobile browsing?
2·4 months agoFirefox Focus with AdGuard DNS
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Privacy@lemmy.ml•Leave Windows 11 Idle For 24 Hours, It Sends Over 3000 Telemetry Pings To More Than 100 Different Servers.
852·4 months agoMicrosoft … the poster child for Linux migration
I think that unless you have some way to enforce accuracy, it’s meaningless and AFAIK automatic detection tools are no better than chance and to my knowledge, getting worse.
An AI bot operator isn’t going to tag their material as [AI], more likely than not they’d attempt to use [NOT AI].
I’d also point out that while lemmy doesn’t (yet) support hashtags, any “tagging” would probably benefit from using the existing method using a #tag.
Ultimately, you need to ask yourself, is undeclared AI that goes undetected by the community a problem, or the new “normal”?
I’ll note that I’m not a proponent of Assumed Intelligence and think that when the bubble bursts we’re going to be in a world of hurt, but with a little luck the billionaires will have lost their shirts in the process.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radiotoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•If you speak another language besides ENG, are the subtitles terrible?
0·5 months agoWhen you watch a movie in public with native audio and subtitles and you speak or understand the audio language, you’ll often hear scattered laughter before the main audience laughs because often the subtitles have a delay for the punchline of a joke, which means that those who already heard the joke laughed at the moment it happened, not a second or more later when the subtitles arrive.
Most of the time the subtitles match the audio, sometimes they change a cultural reference, or infrequently completely get the translation wrong for no apparent reason which can become a new accedental joke all on its own. Then there’s weird ones where numbers like someone’s age or the time are wrong.
Source: I speak multiple human languages to various degree … and way too many technology ones. I’m also going deaf, so I have closed captioning on most of the time.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radiotoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Has anyone else noticed how search quality on YouTube and Google have worsened?
0·5 months agoBoth have been prioritising “engagement” over “results” because it allows them to advertise to you more.
In case you didn’t realise, if the product is free, you’re the product and both have been doing an amazing job out of extracting value from your eyeballs.
Unsurprisingly, they’re both owned by the same company.
Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radioto
Technology@lemmy.world•This month's Windows 11 update broke the Recycle Bin, OneDrive, and possibly your PC's stabilityEnglish
192·5 months ago… and Microsoft Windows continues its unbroken winning streak as the best advocate for migrating to Linux …






This is what I wrote about this on 2018-01-07:
What is amateur radio? What’s not part of the hobby and what is?
The more you dig into this, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. I’ll start with an analogy to set the scene.
In aviation, Sir George Cayley was the first person to investigate heavier-than-air flying vehicles. He invented the aeroplane in 1799. The first full-sized glider, built in 1849 carried the first person in history to fly, the ten-year-old son of one of his servants. Since then the Wright brothers made their flight at Kitty Hawk. We saw the invention of commercial aviation, the turbo prop, the jet engine, the space-shuttle, helicopters, drones, rockets, hot-air balloons, the Hindenburg, the Goodyear blimps, hang-gliders, gyro-copters and many, many other contraptions.
Each of those are considered aviation and the person controlling the device is considered a pilot.
In amateur radio we talk on the radio.
We also create repeaters and talk on them. We link them together using what ever technology is available. We make it possible to connect to such networks using software such as Echolink, AllStar Link, IRLP and other internet based systems. We create digital networks with DMR, use WSPR to exchange information, make contacts using CODEC2, have contests using CW and Morse code.
We build software defined radios where we use computers to decode and encode radio signals, test back scatter using all manner of signal processing, use packet radio, RTTY, Hellschreiber and bounce signals off the moon and nearby meteors or an overflying aircraft.
We make auto-tuners with a Raspberry-Pi or an SWR meter with an Ardiuno. We build valve based amplifiers and program mp3 voice-keyers, GPS lock radios, map propagation using the internet and have a rag chew on the local 2m repeater.
We investigate 13cm propagation, do experiments with amateur television and we set up radio stations on top of mountains, in light houses and on remote islands.
All of this is amateur radio, and frankly I’ve only just scratched the surface.
There are heated discussions about if a linked repeater using the internet to create the link is real amateur radio or not, whether using your mobile phone as a node on the Echolink network is real amateur radio or not, if using a computer to create contacts on a digital mode such as JT65 is real radio or not.
Each of these questions highlights a misconception about our hobby.
There are no boundaries in amateur radio. We’re a bunch of inventors, mavericks, people who attempt the unthinkable, try the impossible and make progress.
There are people who are passengers on planes, and there are people who fly them. There are people using technology and there are people who invent it. We have a unique perspective as a community. We have the ability to imagine something that doesn’t yet exist. Why would you spend any energy on whether that thing is real amateur radio or not?
Amateur radio is a myriad of things, some of them related to antennas and radio spectrum, some not. This hobby is what you make of it, so go forth and invent something, try something, get on air and make some noise!
I’m Onno VK6FLAB
Source: https://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/foundations/20180107.foundations-of-amateur-radio.txt