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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: February 1st, 2024

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  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websitetoRisa@startrek.websitetopical
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    1 month ago

    Open to discussion, but since 2008, the Democrats have won every election where the leadership didn’t “put their finger on the scale” in the primaries/picking the candidate. Obama, Obama; Clinton arguably shouldn’t have been the nominee and Sanders should have; Biden was (?) properly primaries; Harris was picked — obvious pick, but still, not primaried.

    Or the other reason, that the US is too sexist to elect a woman. It’s depressing either way of course.


  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websitetoRisa@startrek.websitetopical
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    1 month ago

    The Democrats, in hindsight, fucked up with the economy and/or the messaging.

    Did inflation happen because of the groundwork that Trump laid down in his term (not to mention global pandemic)? Sure — but did inflation get really bad under Biden? Yes, absolutely. That doesn’t make it his fault, but it makes it a problem that the Democrats probably needed to address more aggressively, an all-out attack on rising cost of living.

    At the start of the pandemic, for me to carry $100 of normal weekly groceries home from the supermarket was a real challenge, but I could do it. Now, I carry $100 no problem, with a toddler on my shoulders. The money doesn’t really matter to me, but from what I’ve been reading, it really mattered to a lot of voters. Again: I think his will be worse under Trump (if it does get better, it’ll be due to some shady tax rebates to supermarkets or big ag or something, IMHO).

    So while the Dems are talking about first time home credits and whatnot, Vance is out there lying about the price of eggs — but it’s a lie that “feels” right to a lot of people, and anecdotally, has some truth to it in that inflation/cost of living increase is real. Nevermind that the R policy is…what, exactly? But they say they’ll fix it, and they point out that Dems are currently in power, and that’s enough for a lot of people.



  • My headcanon for The Matrix’s “humans are batteries” is that it’s the machines’ perverse interpretation of this — killing the humans is off the table, and for whatever reason letting them live with no purpose to serve the machines is also disallowed. But giving their lives “meaning” in the form of a shitty (and thermodynamically dubious) “battery” somehow satisfies the rules.

    It’s a very big stretch, I’ll admit…







  • My method:

    VPS with reverse proxy to my public facing services. This holds SSL certs, and communicates with home network through WireGuard link configured on my router.

    Local computer with reverse proxy for all services. This also has SSL certs, and handles the same services as the VPS, so I can have local/LAN speeds. Additionally, it serves as a reverse proxy for all my private services, such as my router/switches/access point config pages, Jellyfin, etc.

    No complaints, it mostly just works. I also have my router override DNS entries for my FQDN to resolve locally, so I use the same URL for accessing public services on my LAN.


  • It can be daunting to get into the hobby, there are a ton of niches.

    To start: where are you? I’m in the USA, so that’s where my experience is.

    License: required to transmit on the ham bands; you can listen without a license.

    Range: are you looking to talk to people in your city/region? If so, a cheap “walkie-talkie” style (called “HT” in the biz — best avoid “walkie-talkie”) is a good place to start. These VHF/UHF (very/ultra high frequency) radios are affordable — something from Baofeng(~$30) or similar will work just fine, though they are often looked down on (I have one — for the price, it’s great). You will have the most luck if there is an active ham scene in your area, in large part because they may have a repeater, which can greatly extend your range. Many regions will have scheduled “nets” where you just go around and chat.

    If you’re looking for the ability to chat with folks on the other side of the world, you’ll want to look into HF (high frequency). This is much lower frequency, thus longer wavelength, than the handheld VHF/UHF HTs. So…the antennas take up a lot of space. Mine is 52 feet long, in the attic. And the radios are much more expensive (more like $1k new). ICOM 7300, Yaesu FT710 are popular entry level units (but you also need power supply, cables, and antenna).

    That said: if you just want to listen to HF, the antenna doesn’t matter as much at all, and you can use an SDR (RTL-SDR probably works?) for listening. You can probably also find a used shortwave radio that covers some of the HF ham bands.