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

  • 2 Posts
  • 89 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: March 4th, 2024

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  • I moved to Linux over 25 years ago and I miss absolutely nothing.

    The joy of not having to update your OS when Microsoft forces it, even whilst you’re working, or the way Apple still cannot do window tiling despite decades of examples on how to achieve this, or installing applications and finding files splattered all over the file system with no way to remove them except manually, or the endless user agreements, licence fees, expiring licensees, or the notion that you cannot run a new OS on an old machine that’s in perfect working order.

    So, no, it was the best decision I’ve made.

    I wish that I’d made the same good decision when it comes to my accounting software.




  • The question is even more fraught than you might have considered.

    What if you report them to your rideshare company and they do nothing?

    As a passenger of a private vehicle where you observe or experience dangerous behaviour, are you required or obligated to report the behaviour to the police?

    What if that driver came to collect your teenage child?

    I don’t envy your situation, but their income is not your responsibility, your personal safety is.


  • It goes well beyond bother.

    In my opinion, the biggest issue is that software with a GPL licence is not permitted to be distributed without making the source code available, which Red Hat restricted to only paying customers, and in doing so added a licence restriction which is not permitted by the GPL.

    They are now profiting off the work of every developer who ever contributed to the software they’re selling and none of those people are getting paid.




  • I use Debian for anything that matters. The release cadence means that stuff just works and keeps working. You cannot beat the documentation and I’ve been using it for 25 years.

    I’m not touching anything Redhat / Fedora with a barge pole.

    Not sure what the attraction to Mint is.

    Never used OpenSUSE.


  • Black Friday is a marketing exercise to get you all riled up about the massive savings you will receive if you buy something RIGHT NOW.

    Suffice to say that the actual bargains on the day are far and few between.

    If you actively track pricing you’ll discover that the price goes up before the event, then drops to the same or slightly lower pricing on the day. The “bargain” is notional at best.

    Then there are the “pre Black Friday” sales, and the “Cyber Monday” ones afterwards. It’s all just marketing.

    If you want an actual bargain, find what you’re looking for, set a price watch on it and track it for as long as you have patience. When you’re ready, buy it from your preferred supplier and get them to price match the amazing price.

    As far as refurbished goes, ask yourself what is the upside for the supplier to give away any bit of return on their spend to refurbish the item in the first place?











  • There are at least three legal ways to do this. CB radio, ISM frequencies and amateur radio. I say legal because the radio spectrum is heavily regulated because every transmitter affects everyone else to more or lesser extent.

    You can buy CB or ISM band radios and get started.

    Amateur radio is a better option in my opinion. There are many more frequencies to experiment with, people who can help and people to talk to.

    Amateur licensing is different in each country, but an introductory licence is often no more than a weekend course and exam. I know of nine year olds who have done this. It’s not hard. No Morse code required either.

    With such a licence in hand you can use things like JS8Call, CODEC2, Olivia, WSPR and hundreds of other protocols to communicate using just a radio and a computer.

    Disclaimer: I’m a licensed amateur in Australia and have been since 2010. I hold an introductory licence, here it’s called a Foundation licence, and have been having an absolute blast with all that I can do.

    If you have specific questions, don’t hesitate to ask.