squarefoot

This may explain why they banned DeepSeek: competition from China is catching up quickly and western AI companies fear they'll never recover their losses.

It's inspired by BattleZone which I loved/hated back in the day at the arcade for being too hard. I never imagined I would become much later a regular BZFlag league player. Come take a look, the community shrank over the years but we're still having fun.

Closed source was perfectly acceptable when planned obsolescence and government mandated kill switches/backdoors weren't a thing.

Interesting, also sounds great. Any chances it could run on other embedded boards than the Rpi, or it uses some low level hardware stuff not found elsewhere? Also would be nice to be able to operate it from real knobs and buttons.

I have surplus/military bare cables dating from the 1970s or so, extra shiny silver plated copper with PTFE jacket: a joy to solder, then more "normal" ones from the late 80s and 90s, then "old" modern ones, that is, power/audio/data cables usable with recent stuff. I'll never throw away any of them because unlike most crap they bundle with consumer devices today, they're made of real copper. Take a cheap cable bought today and chances are that it either sticks to a magnet, meaning it's copper plated steel or other crappy alloy, or it doesn't and it's super light which indicates it's made of aluminium; in all cases not good where power dissipation can be a problem or where resoldering may be necessary. Keep old cables!

The main concern isn't much about privacy, we have our share of crazy laws as well, age id, etc. sadly, that's where the society is heading, but mostly because of the worries about depending on a service where someone could decide to pull the plug because of international politics, affecting users in the process.

How does it compare to neocities.org, which is sadly not EU?

True, but they can't use directional antennas nor lots of power, and once they're far enough from the transmitter inverse square law does the rest. Ground stations always have an advantage because of higher gain antennas and more power available.

Brute force wide band jamming would be easy too and would make hopping ineffective. Unless drones use self tuning antennas to overcome losses, they can't hop too far away from the antenna resonance frequency, which makes jammers job easier.

> You can publish to both and even better your own domain that simply points to your video hosting provider.

That one is likely the best use case while one monetizes on YT waiting for FreeTube to gain more popularity. Worth also for keeping a safer online accessible backup in case things go south with the YT channel being taken down for any reason, be it bogus copyright claims or else. What I'm not sure of though is how long until Google changes YT rules to disallow linking or even mentioning competing, or perceived as such, services. Companies always do that: I'm a Ebay user since 2008, 100% feedback both as seller and customer, hundreds of positives not a single negative or neutral in 18 years, but a while ago Ebay in their infinite wisdom blocked a listing of mine because I added the links of the documentation needed to use the device I was selling; no way to appeal successfully or have it restored, they evidently either used a monkey or AI to detect what they identified as an attempt to contact the customer outside of Ebay, for a €30 item nonetheless. Years ago they didn't enforce such idiotic limitations, so I wouldn't put any trust on YT to remain consistent with their current rules.

Totally agree on the atrocious landing page. The technical one is much better, although the power supply circuit by using a resistive balancer and a linear regulator wastes some good power for nothing.

I read somewhere years ago of panic ensuing when a pilot greeted a colleague on the radio with "Hi, Jack". Whether it happened for real or not, the idea of a simple word causing fighter jets to scramble is just crazy although fully understandable in the world post 9/11.

This swill split entire families, more likely forcing those in the US to follow those who need to leave. Of course this has nothing to do with immigration. They're indeed feeding their racist voters some candy, but the goal is rather to reduce population among the poor to counter the inevitable unrest that is happening soon, when tens millions of families will be left with nothing to put on the table because of recent technological advancements that happened too fast before society could adapt.

A $499 phone? Hah! Then what about a $11,500 Donald Trump autographed guitar that is actually made in China?

https://gettrumpguitars.com/products/american-eagle-electric...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lITeteouppU

AM radio, like other frequencies in the low HF spectrum, travel using ground waves then ionospheric refraction during night which can let the receiver pick stations several thousands of Km away. FM and generally VHF frequencies require mostly the transmitter to be in line of sight. When a disaster occur, you can pick AM radio emergency transmission from behind a mountain or from much far away than a FM station. This allows the elimination of any dependency on repeaters which are a weak link, especially in less than free countries that censor radio transmissions, whose listener couldn't pick a station from another country if it needed a repeater in theirs. AM is for freedom, not for music.

In an emergency situation, you can build a CW transmitter off parts reclaimed from a broken PC power supply, connect a diy antenna made with a simple wire and be picked up from another country; a walkie talkie will stop at the 1st hill.

There have been multiple reports of Flipper Zero devices being seized because they're known as burglars and black hat hackers tools. If I had to design a successor, first requirement would be to let go the popularity brought by its name+form factor and find different ones. Among my favorite is the LilyGo T-Deck Plus or something along the same look; worse that can happen is being laughed at for still using a Blackberry in 2026. https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1

If you're worried about that, Dangerzone might help.

https://dangerzone.rocks/

   Nothing aside a normal PC. I was the slow human in the middle swapping cards and typing/copying/pasting commands and results; I admit being far away from being able to do that myself; tried a few years ago and failed, then AI happened. The board SoC (Allwinner A20) is already well supported by Linux but there was no image available and the on board hardware wasn't documented, but at least I had a working system to probe the hardware with.  The hardest part however was finding the pins used to turn on and off peripherals since reading the Android script.bin and other boot files brought some inconsistencies anyway, so it took long probing sessions. It took weeks before I could have a working video output for example.

  Here's an excerpt from a Claude snapshot, probably too long to post entirely (I don't have a GH account, thinking of opening a Codeberg one some day). I later moved everything to Deepseek because Claude became unusable giving just one single prompt before hitting the daily limit; I was about to subscribe to a paid plan but paying users started complaining about shrinking limits as well, so I left.

First came Armbian, then I wanted to have a lighter OS and ported Alpine which boots from a Armbian kernel that then gives control to a full Alpine userland. Feel free to ask if you need further details. I'm sure the same process could be automated by removing the incredibly slow human and building an interface that would let the AI probe, try and fail, essentially brute forcing unknown hardware until it responds.

  GIADA NI-A20 - BOARD SNAPSHOT 2026-03-21

========================================= Board: Giada NI-A20, Nano-ITX form factor SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i) - see snapshot-soc-allwinner-a20.txt RAM: 1GB Storage: SD card (primary), NAND (data only), SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2

  STATUS:
  Armbian: COMPLETE
  Alpine:  COMPLETE

  HARDWARE
  --------
  SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i), dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Mali-400 MP2

RAM: 1GB Storage: 8GB NAND (data only, NOT bootable), SD card, SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 PMU: AXP209 on TWI0 (I2C address 0x34) RTC: PCF8563 on TWI1 (I2C address 0x51) Ethernet: GMAC (Gigabit), interface end0 WiFi: AP6210 (Broadcom BCM43362), SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n Bluetooth: BCM20710 on uart2 (NOT YET ENABLED in DTS) GPS: unknown chip, power enable PC22, UART on ttyS1, NMEA at 9600 baud USB Hub: GL850G on EHCI1, power enable PH7 IR receiver: /dev/lirc0 SATA power connector: JST PH 2.0mm 4-pin (pin1=12V, pin2=5V, pin3=GND, pin4=GND) LVDS: 30-pin dual channel 8-bit, max 1920x1080 COM2: RS232 Tx/Rx/CTS/RTS 4-wire (DB9 connector) COM3: RS232 Tx/Rx 2-wire only VGA: available via J4 14-pin header (non-standard connector) Mini-PCIe: present, intended for 3G module SIM card slot: present, for use with 3G module

  GPIO MAP
  --------
  PH1  - SD card detect, active LOW

PH4 - USB OTG ID detect PH5 - USB OTG VBUS detect PB9 - USB OTG VBUS drive, active LOW PH6 - USB Host1 VBUS, active HIGH PH7 - USB Hub power enable (GL850), active HIGH PH17 - SATA power enable PH19 - Ethernet PHY power (vcc3v0 regulator), active HIGH PH25 - USB Host2 VBUS, active HIGH PI1 - WiFi WL_REGON, active HIGH (mmc3 pwrseq reset gpio) PI14 - WiFi WL_HOST_WAKE (input) PI20 - GPS UART7 TX (uart7_pi_pins) PI21 - GPS UART7 RX (uart7_pi_pins) PB5 - Bluetooth BT_REGON, active HIGH PC22 - GPS VCC_EN power enable, active HIGH PC00-PC16 - NAND bus

  DTS FIX - MMC3 WIFI PINCTRL
  -----------------------------

The mainline A20 DTS was missing pinctrl for mmc3 (WiFi SDIO). Without it sunxi-mmc driver silently skips mmc3 initialization.

  Fix applied to:
  ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.12/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts

  Added to &mmc3 node:
  &mmc3 {
      pinctrl-names = "default";
      pinctrl-0 = <&mmc3_pins>;   /\* <-- this line was missing \*/
      vmmc-supply = <&reg_vcc3v3>;
      mmc-pwrseq = <&mmc3_pwrseq>;
      ...
  };

  DTB recompiled manually (Armbian build used cached version):
  cd ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/cache/sources/linux-kernel-worktree/6.12__sunxi__armhf/
  sudo touch arch/arm/boot/dts/allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts
  sudo make ARCH=arm allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb

  CRITICAL: DTB lives in /boot/dtb/ not /boot/ on this board.

U-Boot boot.cmd looks in ${prefix}dtb/ directory. Correct location: /boot/dtb/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb

  WIFI - AP6210 (BCM43362)
  -------------------------

Chip: Broadcom BCM43362, SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n only Driver: brcmfmac + pwrseq_simple Firmware: brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin + brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt Location: /lib/firmware/brcm/ Board-specific symlinks (created by build-image.sh): brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.bin -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.txt -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt

  No CLM blob available for BCM43362 (chip predates CLM blob requirement).

Result: limited to channels 1-11, TX power 31dBm. The driver logs "no clm_blob available" - this is normal, not an error.

  P2P error at init is harmless - BCM43362 does not support P2P mode.

  WIFI BOOT SEQUENCE:
  1. eudev starts at sysinit runlevel
  2. pwrseq_simple loads from /etc/modules
  3. mmc1 (SDIO) initializes, BCM43362 detected
  4. brcmfmac loads from /etc/modules
  5. eudev firmware rule instantly rejects missing clm_blob (no 60s timeout)
  6. wlan0 appears, wifi OpenRC service starts wpa_supplicant
  7. dhcpcd obtains IP on wlan0

  eudev firmware rule (/etc/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules):
  SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", \
    TEST!="/lib/firmware/$env{FIRMWARE}", ATTR{loading}="-1"
  Purpose: instantly rejects missing firmware requests instead of waiting
  60 seconds per file for a userspace agent that never comes.
  Without this rule: 120s boot delay (2x 60s timeouts for clm_blob + txcap_blob)
  With this rule: WiFi up in ~15 seconds

I used Claude, back then when the free tier was usable, to port Linux on a obsolete, unsupported and undocumented board whose manufacturer didn't publish any info aside binary only Android images, which fortunately were enough to obtain some info.

This tickled my imagination and I wondered about a AI assisted reverse engineering platform with a complete build system in which the AI is connected to ports (serial console, gpio, i2c, spi, etc) normal physical switches (on/off, reset, etc) of the target board and a logical switch that can rotate among multiple SD cards either to the development PC and to the board so that the AI itself can download, build in parallel and test images and software freely offloading the most time consuming parts.

Does it apply to the meshcore.io app as well? From what I know (not a meshcore user currently) there has been a kerfuffle recently when a developer decided to fork and vibe code the project using Claude, then silently trademark the name and move everything to his own website. The original and legit site should be meshcore.io while the .co.uk site was created by that developer and isn't considered official nor reliable by the community.

Not my field so I'm likely using the wrong name for the concept, anyway, don't stepping (bistable) brakes exist? I mean, one pulse to one pin engages and one pulse to another pin disengages, just like step relays, with the current consumption being zero when it's not operated so that the robot can be kept indefinitely in resting position without wasting energy to keep motors stalled.

Ebay is also down. https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/ebay.com.html

It redraws it every minute, and some models give quite different results although the prompt is exactly the same.

Same for teleport, time travel and warp drive.

Don't forget civil forfeiture, which can (an does) happen whether they think you're an enemy or not.

https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/freq...

Access control and pervasive surveillance has been the plan since day one; child protection is the leverage. Also, I don't expect people who repeatedly hide the contents of certain files to care about children.

When the internal non replaceable battery dies the product dies; that's also one reason to prefer wired over wireless. I wrote product instead of headphones because the principle is applicable to every product whose battery can't be replaced by design. All those discarded single use vapes are a good example of that, and... surprise! All of them actually contain rechargeable cells but no recharging circuitry and port, the reason being that rechargeable Lithium cells are much cheaper than primary non rechargeable ones because of economies of scale. Just another example of greed being so damn efficient at producing e-waste.

Probably next generations of kids being fed PragerU studying material will. Something tells me we didn't see a fraction of what's going to happen in the decades to come.

"All lawful uses" has no meaning when a malignant narcissistic sociopath in power controlled by ruthless rich psychopaths can now rewrite every law at will.

I'm not from the US as well but that's true: those tactics are used on both sides, although they may be more visible where protesting happens more often, which is the case today with the Trump administration. It's part of the way governments attempt to reduce support to protesters by painting them as all violent.