gkak.laₛ

Community declines Oracle proposal for using MySQL

(*radii 😅)

Throughput metrics

Phase Sanitization 67-85 Melem/s

😆

(Turns out it does exist! But it’s just a chemical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melem )

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.
• […]

Source: https://www.unisq.edu.au/news/2026/01/earth-meets-mars

(Nice!)

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 🤔

Immich is developed by FUTO

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

I could’t find anything with a quick search, but maybe you could run the API server in an application container (e.g. Docker)? 🤔

For more simple use cases, some apps on Flathub might be enough, for example Comaps

(Also, I haven’t used JOSM in a while, but it might be worth checking that out as well to see if it can do want you want)

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 😅

Maybe not about your main employment, but I don’t understand why some people feel forced to do some other things:

• They love web advertisements, get attached to specific products, prefer using company names instead of general words
  • e.g. “I’m in Zoom call”; just say “a voice/video call” or whatever, why do you have to advertise the company and perpetuate the mentality that “voice calls” → "Zoom calls“ and that there’s only one product people should use
  • same with sodas, medicine, browsers, search engines, tissues, copy machines, cleaning products, etc
• Social media posts: they feel the need to advertise themselves (I’m not just talking about work-related stuff); some people can’t just post a nice vacation photo, and need to use it as an opportunity to act as influencers etc
• I would say that some types of “I have to do a bad thing to someone else, otherwise they will do it to me” could be classified as capitalistic as well; no, Bob, no one is forcing you to undercut your coworker (except if you work in a company that uses KPIs etc maliciously)
• The mentality that your hobbies can/should be used for profit, and that profit is the main reason anyone would do something that requires some time to do
  • I’ve written some open source stuff (code.gkak.la), and when I mention something I made to some people, their first reaction was “that’s great; so how are you going to sell it?”; and when I try to explain about open source (especially for personal scripts etc), they just can’t comprehend why would anyone do something like that, if not for profit
  • I’ve seen the same mentality online, around people being makers (e.g. knitting, 3d printing)
• People adding advertisements to their super low-traffic personal blogs, and people arguing about the “lost income opportunity” or sth (??)

https://xyproblem.info/

What would you like to achieve by doing that? 🤔

I always set it (mobile client, Thunder), because I find it pretty annoying when I see posts in my feed that I don’t understand (so it’s only fair that I don’t cause it to others)

Fortunately it hasn’t been much of an issue on Lemmy, but Mastodon is pretty much unusable for me partly for this reason (last time I tried to curate my feed, ~50% of the posts I saw were in languages I cannot understand – and I don’t follow language-specific topics or people)

It seems it has now been “solved”, with a popup for users posting from the website, reminding them to select a language: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/25568 I think users (including me) will always make mistakes, and, as you note, not all clients support this setting, so I don’t think relying on the UX of everyone’s clients is a permanent solution 😕

In the meantime, the best I can do is set the tag manually when I’m posting 😔

Thank you very much! 🩵