I was surprised by that, too. When I went looking for a way to decode them with RTL-SDR, I assumed it wouldn’t be parsing the audio but a narrowband data stream. TIL also.

Edit: It does kind of make sense with it being AFSK encoded in-band, though, or maybe I’m just so used to it being that way. I always thought the screeches were there to demand attention (and also be something that headend equipment can pick up and respond to). So it’s interesting they’re doing double duty as both an unmistakable audio cue to pay attention as well as containing the actual alert data.

Plus there are NOAA stations all over the country rather than centralized like the time signal transmitters. It was probably cheaper to do it in band at that scale.

That’s what I’ve done for years. Makes managing things much easier, and I run multiple APs (all with the same SSID/PSK) and you can just roam to the best one. One upstairs, one downstairs, one in the weird dead zone in my office, and one on the back patio (it’s not hardwired and uses the mesh connection for uplink).

These are all old Aruba APs running OpenWRT but that’s the plan for this Cudy Model. I may pick up a few more and just replace all of my trusty but very old Arubas.

I bought this one last month when it was on sale for $39: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRK3CYY3

Haven’t deployed it yet, but it’s fully supported by OpenWRT. I would only be using it as an access point, though. My router is a USFF Optiplex with an extra NIC and runs OpenWRT.

I used to have one of those. Think it was 600W on highest setting. Only problem with it was it was tiny and barely anything fit in it. Pretty sure it was meant for RVs but it was $10 at a garage sale and I needed a microwave at the time.

Can confirm, lol. For breakfast, I heated up some leftover spaghetti and meatballs I made last night, and 5 minutes at 60% was the perfect amount.

I’ve largely moved to using the air fryer / toaster oven to heat things up, but the biggest “life hack” for microwaving is doubling the time and halving the power. That, and stirring halfway through.

No idea, but once I was feeling extra awkward and started singing along with the rest of them.

My standard is “Fast Draw”. F-Droid

The only limitation is you can only have one widget. So if your home screen is typically widget-heavy, this probably isn’t for you.

It also only sorts apps alphabetically, but that’s how I like it, so isn’t an issue for me.

And the trend of that same design trickling down to FOSS projects because “that’s what people want, apparently” is also (mildly) infuriating.

It’s not an “or” situation. It is and always has been an “and”.

My gripe is with people refusing to do anything on a personal level because “what does it matter when X industry pollutes more in 5 minutes than I do in a year?”.

As a current web developer I’m with you except for the tables. I hate tables with a burning, fiery passion.

I do like responsive design to account for mobile, tablet, and desktop so I try to blend that with classic “just works / just here for the data” layouts and generally minimize the flash in favor of the content. In other words, my projects go to a lot of work to look that simple lol.

No one seems to know exactly what “modern” means when it comes to “modern design”. If you ask ten different developers, you get 11 different answers.

My rule of thumb when I see “modern design” touted as a feature is that the developer chose form over function at every turn.

I get what you’re saying and the “individual carbon footprint” is often used to blame shift to regular people just living their lives, but we do still have a carbon footprint. It may be a tiny, rodent-sized footprint compared to the Kaiju-sized ones of big industries, but our actions and choices do have an effect (especially collectively).

I just don’t like dismissing the individual carbon footprint as total propaganda because it’s not wrong (though I acknowledge it is abused). Dismissing it like that just puts out a defeatist “nothing I do matters” message when our individual choices do matter and add up.

Can you live a totally carbon-neutral life in the modern age? No, probably not. But we also shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and do nothing.

Yep, that’s the one.

I’ll reserve a phone but not a truck, lol. Looks like those are scheduled to be out late 2026, so probably at least next year before I can even think about getting my hands on one.

At least it’s still a thing.

I used to drive a 2004 Ranger and loved it. Would absolutely love an EV version even if the range isn’t super great. Mostly need a truck occasionally and for hauling stuff from the home improvement store or if I find furniture at a garage sale or something.

Need to check and see if that $20,000 no-frills EV truck is making any progress.

I used to buy their stuff and use tuya-convert to flash Tasmota onto them. But they kept updating the firmware to lock that out, and I ended up returning a batch of 15 smart plugs because none of them would flash. They were too much of a PITA to try to crack open and flash the ESP8266 manually so I returned the whole batch as defective, left a scathing review, and blackballed the whole brand.

New U.S. rules will soon ban Chinese software in vehicle systems that connect to the cloud

Seems to me that the easiest way to get into compliance would be to not make the car connect to the cloud/internet. I’m gonna drive my 2017 model until I can buy a new car that isn’t a smartphone on wheels.

Loops finally seems usable now. I tried the beta a while back and it was kinda “Meh” but it’s improved significantly since. And you can browse on the website now, too. I’m not into short form videos, but credit where it’s due.

Well, I do like short form videos, but I hate panning for the gems and just let my friends send me the ones that rise to top.

It’s so common for “anti-censorship” to be code for “Nazi-friendly” that I’m immediately suspicious of any platform that uses that as a selling point.

I’m similarly suspicious, but it’s not just code for “nazi-friendly” but also crackpots, maladaptives, etc. Rational people who read and say “anti-censorship” in this context know it means that it’s not beholden to corporate or government interests. But everyone else seems to want to interpret that as “I can say whatever I want! How dare you mod anything I say?! Freeze-peach, y’all!”

I wish they’d pick a different term for these non-corporate alternatives, but I don’t have a better suggestion to offer right now.