gkak.laₛ

TIL about “lockdown mode”

https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/what-is-lockdown-mode-iphone-mac-spyware-when-use-it

When you enable Lockdown Mode, Apple applies a strict set of rules that block or limit the riskiest paths attackers use to get in:

• Messages: Most attachment types are blocked; link previews and some features are disabled.
• Web browsing: Certain complex web technologies (like JIT compilation) are restricted – you can whitelist trusted sites if needed.
• […]

for the given constraints (low-power, cheap, low-bandwidth) it works pretty well.

Of course! I’m just curious about 1) what are the real world use cases (e.g. my farm example) and 2) how come Meshtastic™®© is so popular with people who experiment with RF but don’t have these constraints; how come that having a couple of points of failure (either in the nodes or the technology) and not being able to experiment outside of LoRa™®© is not more of an issue

(For example I found:)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NB-Fi

Reticulum

I was looking into it, seems more like what I have in mind, thank you!

What is “too far away”?

Hmm, you’re right, I guess I don’t mean the distance of the link by itself, but rather the fact that the number of hops and the dependence on central (?) high-power long-range nodes limits how far a message can go

While technically a mesh network, I’m not sure that with 3-7 hops it provides the benefits of one; in theory, just by being mesh it should be able to have a much larger (unlimited?) reach, just like the Internet.

Instead, from what I understand, user nodes are recommended to not participate in the routing, = they are just clients, but by being “mesh” they would be expected to actively participate in the network.

In this sense of “peer-to-peer”, we could say that my ISP is also a peer, and if it lost the connection to all other ISPs it could still continue working within the reach of its infrastructure, = my ISP is off-grid as well, and my connection to the ISP is independent since they own the fiber

Instead, I think the focus should be on building a distributed mesh network that is resilient and can’t be taken down by the failure of a couple of nodes. Similarly, with the dependence on LoRa radios: if e.g. the import or usage specifically of LoRa™®© chips is banned, the nodes who chose to use alternative technologies would not be affected and the network could continue to operate normally

Hello, sorry for the random question, but I’m new and still trying to understand the benefits of joining the network and how it works

What is the point of a network that:

• Is off-the-grid but can’t connect nodes that are too far away
• Is independent, but forces people to use LoRa which creates a dependence on LoRa-licensed radios
• Is decentralized, but obviously needs few centralized higher power backbone nodes in order to function (e.g. in this case)
• Is peer-to-peer, but from what I read it’s recommended to not have your node accessible at all times (or have it read-only?) in order to not have the TTL expire
• Cannot connect remote networks together, but also can’t bridge them in some other way

Is the main use case just connecting e.g. a couple of sensors on a remote farm a few kilometers away from your house, and have 2 neighbours relaying the messages to you along the way? 🤔 Why does that need a decentralized peer-to-peer network if it can just be done by simple repeaters?

That’s not what my objection is about 😅 Of course low power consumption is important

My point is about depending an independent peer-to-peer off-grid network on one specific technology

E.g. imagine if TCP/IP, BGP, or HTTP were proprietary (instead of owned by standards organizations), and in order to connect to the Internet you would need to buy a network card that is licensed from the TCP/IP company! But since that’s not the case, people can connect to the Internet using any technology they want (Wi-Fi, Ethernet), but as long as their device uses TCP/IP, anyone can connect with anyone

(PS maybe there is a better physical layer or routing example than the above 🤔 But I think the principle still stands)

You don’t have to pay meshtastic any money

They can still profit indirectly from providing services etc (which is fine)

But even just the fact that in order to use the word “Meshtastic” ™®© I have to read https://meshtastic.org/docs/legal/licensing-and-trademark/ shows that it does not have “community” vibes but “Meshtastic™®© is ours and we’re just letting you use the source code etc for now” vibes

Again, the fact that it is owned by someone means that the community (probably) does not have control over it, and one day we might need to fork the whole network and migrate every node

there’s nothing they can do to stop you using it as you see fit

If a specific radio is illegal, it’s easy to just find where it’s transmitting from and fine you; they already do this with pirate radio stations

There is no way to be completely free of dependence on others

But why be dependent on 2 companies instead of having the option to buy a radio from any company? Why is competition and diversity bad for an independent and off-grid network that we don’t want it to have a single point of failure? 🤔

Not only it can make the network more resilient (which is supposed to be one of the goals), but it allows for experimentation and innovation in new technologies, which you can’t do if you’re locked into using LoRa™®©

Why lock every user into a single technology just because some users want to have a long-lasting battery? (Which btw is probably important for very remote nodes and not the home and portable nodes that I think are more common).

you’re going to want to buy some LoRa devices anyway

Yes, but you’re not forced to; you can have nodes in your city that use any radio they want to communicate to each other, and e.g. your local hackerspace can have a node with multiple radios that bridges them to other nodes on the global network

With Meshtastic™®©, if your country bans LoRa™®© radios you simply don’t have any other option, so the whole network is just done. With Reticulum or any other agnostic network they can’t ban all radio modules that can be used

Reticulum is pretty much developed by a single person.

Hmm that’s unfortunate, I didn’t know that 😕 But that’s a chicken-and-egg and network effect problem; we shouldn’t be “forced” (network effect) to use something that is not ideal just because more people use/develop it, otherwise we will never have a better alternative, because no one wants to develop it because no one is using it because no one wants to develop it

At least for me, dedicating energy to build a Meshtastic™®© node would feel like I’m making something that profits LoRa™®© and Meshtastic LLC without trusting the “independence” of its every aspect. It transfers the dependence from the ISP that brings the wire to the home, to the companies that make Meshtastic™®© and LoRa™®©, but it’s still a dependence on one or two external companies instead of an independent community like I’ve seen with other local WMNs over the years

(I don’t have the experience to say that Reticulum is the best option, but it’s the main agnostic network I’ve seen with the little search I’ve done; people reading this feel free to make suggestions! 💚)

There seem to be many Meshtastic® nodes around, it’s pretty popular

https://meshmap.net/

However, it seems that in order to join the network you are forced to buy hardware that uses patented trademarked radio modules (LoRa®)

The website also says:

Meshtastic® is a registered trademark of Meshtastic LLC.

I don’t have relevant experience, but I’m looking to maybe join such a network, and being forced to buy specific hardware to join a network that is ran (/developed?) by a single LLC company is not very appealing for a network that is supposed to be resilient, off-grid, peer-to-peer, etc

So I’ve started looking into https://reticulum.network/ and Nomad network 🤔

TIL https://headamame.com/

3d-printed headphones (the kit is €110)

Immich is developed by FUTO

https://drewdevault.com/2025/10/22/2025-10-22-Whats-up-with-FUTO.html

Not OP, but at least for me when I tried it:

There was no way to use or even just mount and migrate my existing storage (btrfs+LVM). LVM wasn’t even installed, and when I tried to install it, I got an error saying that apt was disabled on the system, which means I was basically locked out of doing anything more than what they allow you to do on your own hardware.

It seems like it’s technically open source, but having all the vendor lock-in features and lack of control of a proprietary solution

The only use case seems for it to be used as a black box appliance:

• on a new system
• with empty hard drives
• only with ZFS
• without having any control on your own system, except enabling samba etc and maybe installing the predefined Docker containers that they allow you from the web interface

I knew it is supposed to be only an appliance, but with how much people recommended it, I didn’t thing it would be this closed of a system; I think I’ve read about people doing more things with even just their Synology hardware

Then you’re looking for mouse settings software;

The default system mouse settings might be enough, or else you could just change the sensitivity

What kind of mouse are you using?

Unfortunately I don’t have a source, but I remember reading that some Debian packagers prefer using Arch, because doing the packaging there was easier for some reason 😅

The renewable energy stuff is expected, but these I find more… interesting:

• International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
• UN Democracy Fund
• International Law Commission
• Peacebuilding Commission
• Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children
• International Tropical Timber Organization
• UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries;

“We explicitly state that we don’t care about peace, democracy, and violence against children”

• Permanent Forum on People of African Descent

“Also, f*ck African people in particular”

• UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

“… and women”

• https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
• https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat
• https://www.tubearchivist.com/
• https://github.com/alexta69/metube
• https://freetubeapp.io/

I don’t know about this one specifically 😅 but people probably have the need for these debates anyway, so it’s just better to express them (on the Fediveree)! 😁

It’s like, how in some movies and shows people have “meaningless” discussions in a bar about random trivia etc; if people don’t behave in a toxic way, it’s just a way to connect and share ideas!

And in some (most?) cases, the discussion might be more important than the result of it, since you see in practice more about how people can approach this type of curiosity about a subject, which might apply to many other topics we think about every day 😁

More importantly though, where am I supposed to go to debate if water is wet, if not to the Fediverse? 😄

Do you mean that you’re trying to reproduce it? 🤔 If so:

• hello

• • one
  • two
  • three

• world

is

* hello
* > * one
  > * two
  > * three
* > world

(Btw also, you can check if your client has the option to show the source of a comment 😉)

TL;DR:

Price:

“Under $100”:

After [the preorder], it will go up to $99.

Battery is not rechargeable:

And what happens when the battery runs out? You just send the ring back to be recycled.

Runtime:

The integrated battery will power the device for 12–14 total hours of recording. The designers estimate that to be roughly two years of usage if you record 10 to 20 short voice notes per day.

• “Roughly two years” = lets say that’s 20 months
• 12 hours = 43.200 seconds = 72 seconds/day
• “10-20 short voice notes” = 3.6-7.2 seconds per note

Features:

• Records only while pressing the button

• The recording is converted to text and fed into a large language model (LLM) that runs locally on your device to take actions. The speech-to-text process and LLM operate in the open source Pebble app, and no data from your notes is sent to the Internet. However, there is an optional online backup service for your recordings.

• A model small enough to run on your phone has to focus on specific functionality rather than doing everything like a big cloud-based AI

• • Create or add to notes
  • Set reminder
  • Create alarm
  • Create timer
  • Play/pause/skip music track (via button press)

• also designed to be hacking-friendly. The audio and transcribed text is yours […] You can route it to a different app via a webhook, and the LLM supports model context protocol (MCP), so you can add new functionality that also runs locally. The AI model will also be released as an open source project.

I don’t think that there is a need for that 🤔

I haven’t used Addy so I don’t know specific details, but I guess you could forward the emails to addresses with a prefix, e.g.

addy-site1@domain.com
addy-site2@domain.com

You can then just use sieve filters to categorise them in the folders you’d like:

Inbox
Sent
Addy
- Site1
- Site2

The only reason I’ve been thinking that you would need a separate domain, is if you are self-hosting a service like Addy: if websites realize that your domain is used for “random” addresses, your main domain might end up in a blacklist as a spam precaution (whereas with a dedicated forwarding domain, only the forwarded emails would be at risk)

(Ohh sorry, I didn’t notice!)