Dave V. ND3JR @ND3JR@social.coop
#intro time!
I'm a 36 year-old cis #gay man living in western Pennsylvania. I currently work as a #Unix and (unfortunately) backup #sysadmin. I love the #BSDs and am primarily a #NetBSD user.
I'm also into amateur radio, a.k.a #hamradio, and that's where my username comes from: it's my call sign.
My other interests include #videogames, #books, #hiking, #media (which I used to work in) and #cats, especially my own named Freyja.
I'm glad to be here. This is my first coop membership!
In a somewhat ironic twist considering my tweet about the 13 Colonies stations, I finally made my first contact using my new small magnetic loop — with K2K from New Hampshire on PSK31.
Can We Trust Crime Forensics?
How trustworthy are DNA and other crime scene tests?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-trust-crime-forensics/
A good but too brief article on bias in forensic science.
It pisses me off that the Nib now requires Javascript to view their cartoons. This only started about a month ago. Now, among other things, I can't use the Save for Offline app to download them & view them later.
https://blogs.harvard.edu/vrm/2018/06/23/matters
ham radio, US politics/"patriotism" Show more
Gmail messages 'read by human third parties'
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44699263
"In the tradition of their founders, #cooperative members believe in the #ethical #values of #honesty, #openness, #SocialResponsibility and #CaringForOthers"
All it costs to fulfill the average person's needs for digital services is a $5 per month VPS instance. It's even cheaper if you buy a single board computer and host your services at home.
We've been letting companies steal our personal data and sell it to the highest bidder and destroying democracy in the process all to save what? A coffee a month?
This is one of the worst deals in history.
Attention international convention organizers: Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" is not the appropriate music for introducing a bunch of filthy rich old geezers, 92% of them white.
I finally got my orientation flight with the Pittsburgh Soaring Association set up. The date: July 4, this Wednesday. So yes, I'm going to spend part of Independence Day soaring 3000 feet above it in silent flight.
I can't think of a better way to spend Independence Day.
As for the dinner and the riverboat cruise itself, the dinner was okay, but I'm glad a bunch of us went up on the roof because that's where I met three other nerdy men. One of them had a really cute face and was really into chess.
Honestly we could use more lesbians, trans people, and enbys at these events. Sometimes I think they're too dominated by us gay men.
Last night's LGBTQ Singles Night was on one of the Gateway Clipper riverboats. I bought this as a souvenier and also because I could get free soft drink refills in it. All four of my refills were ginger ale and one of the bartenders called me the "ginger man."
Facebook filed to patent a system that can remotely activate the mic on someone’s phone using inaudible signals broadcast via a television.
“The technology in this patent has not been included in any of our products, and never will be.” - Facebook 🤔
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/28/facebook-patent-phone-mic-listening-tv-shows source: https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1012783229089304577
Reclaiming RSS
“Before Twitter, before algorithmic timelines filtered our reality for us, before surveillance capitalism, there was RSS: Really Simple Syndication … As we move away from the centralised web to the peer web, it’s time to rediscover, re-embrace, and reclaim RSS.”
anyway, cat snuggles
got my wobscale sticker today
Brought the small magnetic loop to Skyview tonight and used it in the small pavillion. Forgot my laser projector so no digital, just CW and phone. Almost worked KD9GDY but apparently couldn't get my call sign out of the noise.
Maybe next time.
Got sent this by another ham in the Skyview Radio Society:
https://www.eham.net/articles/40866
My thoughts:
* FT8 isn't for me and I love to ragchew, but I don't think it will kill ham radio
* KC7MF holds the views that I agree with the most, namely that young people do know how to communicate and ham radio is changng but not dying
* The most vocal hams tend to be the old farts who want to live in the past & decry anything new. They're the true albatross around ham radio's neck.