Back to farming kale, then. :)

Looking at the beatiful show, I cannot avoid thinking: “each of them a potential weapon”.

So in fair weather, when communication is smooth and all navigation systems are working, it’s entirely feasible to coordinate a swarm of 10 000. Wow. :)

Soon enough, they will be coordinating each other in the presence of electronic warfare, and swarms of 100+ fly already, so 1000 is the next step. Anyone doing air defense is probably designing energy weapons (lasers, masers, etc) at a pace approaching madness, besides making ever-cheaper drones.

As for the environmental footprint - if each drone withstands 10 performances, they will probably save resources. :)

Relays: my use for truck relays is switching on heaters in my thermal storage water tank. Not big ones, though - I use relays rated for 24V and 40A of current. Since they are old, I have applied a safety margin and only let 25 A flow through them, so each of them handles 24 x 25 = 600 W.

As for using DC appliances: benefits do exist. If a household has a low voltage DC battery bank (some do, some don’t) then dropping the battery voltage a few times to power car parts comes with a smaller efficiency loss. In my household, DC appliances are used for lighting, communications, computing, cooling food, pumping water and soldering electronics. The rest goes via AC. I think a car air conditioner could cool some small storage room decently. With big living rooms, it would have difficulty since it’s a small device.

Relays can be used for anything, and a car contains a fair number.

You can make a pulse jet engine from a muffler parts, but a solarpunk society would probably not do that. :)

Copper brake pipe and cooling radiators can be used as heat exchangers for other stuff.

Air conditioner parts can be reverse-used for Stirling engines or to pump heat in other contexts.

Regarding infiltration of the police - a similar theme played out in Greece during the 2008 economic crisis, when Golden Dawn vied for power - they tried hard to infiltrate the police, and succeeded to a considerable degree.

At some point, they made a mistake, though - GD thugs killed a popular leftist rapper named Pavlos Fyssas. He was able to point out who stabbed him. His death caused widespread rioting. Rioting incapacitated GD temporarily by blocking and damaging their party offices while the security service raided high-ranking members for evidence (apparently they didn’t manage to infiltrate counterintelligence and in the confusion probably couldn’t dispose of evidence even if they knew of incoming raids) …and evidence was plentiful. They were banned and leaders got meaningful sentences in courts.

Only in a country where entering the police force requires lengthy studies to obtain a diploma (and background checks), is there some chance of random bozos not worming their way in. Most states of the US aren’t such a place, sadly.

Yep, indeed, I’m already discovering differences too. :) A good document for techies to read seems to be here.

https://reticulum.network/manual/understanding.html

I also think I see a problem on the horizon: announce traffic volume. According to this description, it seems that Reticulum tries to forward all announces to every transport node (router). In a small network, that’s OK. In a big network, this can become a challenge (disclaimer: I’ve participated in building I2P, but ages ago, but I still remember some stuff well enough to predict where a problem might pop up). Maintenance of the routing table / network database / <other term for a similar thing> is among the biggest challenges when things get intercontinental.

Interesting project, thank you for introducing. :)

I haven’t tested anything, but only checked their specs (sadly I didn’t find out how they manage without a distributed hashtable).

Reticulum does not use source addresses. No packets transmitted include information about the address, place, machine or person they originated from.

Sounds like mix networks like I2P and (to a lesser degree, since its role is proxying out to the Internet) like TOR. Mix networks send traffic using the Internet, so the bottom protocol layers (TCP and UDP) use IP addresses. Higher protocol layers (end to end messages) use cryptographic identifiers.

There is no central control over the address space in Reticulum. Anyone can allocate as many addresses as they need, when they need them.

Sounds like TOR and I2P, but people’s convenience (easily resolving a name to an address) has created centralized resources on these nets, and will likely create similar resources on any network. An important matter is whether the central name resolver can retroactively revoke a name (in I2P for example, a name that has been already distributed is irrevocable, but you can refuse to distribute it to new nodes).

Reticulum ensures end-to-end connectivity. Newly generated addresses become globally reachable in a matter of seconds to a few minutes.

The same as aforementioned mix networks, but neither of them claims operability at 5 bits per second. Generally, a megabit connection is advised to meaninfully run a mix network, because you’re not expected to freeload, but help mix traffic for others (this is how the anonymity arises).

Addresses are self-sovereign and portable. Once an address has been created, it can be moved physically to another place in the network, and continue to be reachable.

True for TOR and I2P. The address is a public key. You can move the machine with the private key anywhere, it will build a tunnel to accept incoming traffic at some other node.

All communication is secured with strong, modern encryption by default.

As it should.

All encryption keys are ephemeral, and communication offers forward secrecy by default.

In mix networks, the keys used as endpoint addresses are not ephemeral, but permanent. I’m not sure if I should take this statement at face value. If Alice wants to speak to Bob tomorrow, some identifier of Bob must not be ephemeral.

It is not possible to establish unencrypted links in Reticulum networks.

Same for mix networks.

It is not possible to send unencrypted packets to any destinations in the network.

Same.

Destinations receiving unencrypted packets will drop them as invalid.

Same.

P.S.

I also checked their interface list and it looks reasonable. Dropping an idea too: an interface for WiFi cards in monitor/inject mode might help some people. If the tool gets popular, I’m sure someone will build it. :)

As a rule of the thumb, the longer your stomach (and its bacteria) have to work to get calories extracted from a food (this has a big correlation with the food not being excessively pre-processed, and also has a big correlation with lack of additives) - the better it is for you. :)

We will surely learn the precise reasons later. Until then, acting upon that information is possible without knowing why. :)

The interesting part: Democrat officials made public statements about going silent for a while, and those statements reached headlines even in Europe. You can go silent and still have your statements in headlines.

Also, as far as money and efficiency are involved - if they save money now, they can advertise more later. Currently, advertising against Trump would have a low efficiency, since he currently receives positive attention. I think their current action plan is “let’s wait for Trump to open his mouth”.

Knowing psychology, almost any PR advisor will advise to temporarily cease media attacks against a person who’s been shot.

As a minimum, messages may need to be reworded, because Trump is likely to change his messaging after his narrow escape.

Some notes:

• almost no doubt: this will have a mobilizing effect for Trump supporters (“our great leader is being attacked”, etc)

• possibly: this will improve Trump’s ratings among voters with no clear political preference (a big story where he’s not the villain is what he needs)

• pattern: historically, surviving an assassination attempt has improved a candidate’s chances of getting elected; in the most recent example, Slovakia’s prime minister Fico enjoyed a boost in ratings while in hospital after being seriously wounded

I don’t blame Democrats for temporarily ceasing campaign advertisement. Two principles dictate this: “you don’t kick a person who is already down” (Trump was incredibly lucky and isn’t) and “you don’t attack someone who has martyrdom effect”. Generally, you wait until the dust settles. Democrats too will wait until the dust settles. They will also check the popularity ratings and decide how to proceed.

In my opinion, Democrats would strongly benefit from a younger candidate. I would advise getting someone under 55 to run. Among the wider population, not enough people understand that, as things are, the Democratic candidate is Kamala Harris, her name is just currently Joe Biden. :o

Overall, it seems that Trump has considerable chances of getting elected president. Preventing that will require exceptional effort and considerable luck. Only if the Democrats manage to paint a clear picture of what a Trump presidential term would bring about, and only if that picture causes their voters to show up and vote nearly without exception - only then will things turn out differently.

My personal view from Eastern Europe - contingency plans for a Trump presidency ceasing aid to Ukraine have a very high probability of occurrence now (estimated time: early 2025). Over here, everyone and their cat will researching cheap weapons systems to replace things that only the US can provide. I think that group will now include myself.

I would add:

• if you wanted direct and low-latency access to cameras (for machine vision)

Thanks for the news, but also - thanks for posting a proper summary. :)

(So many videos have only the YouTube-compiled summary, which is typically totally off topic.)

Nice to hear. :) The process seems doable in a suitably equipped factory. :)

The transfer to electricity could be done by using the heated mass to heat a hot pumped liquid or using transfer rods made of a solid material with a high heat transfer coefficient.

Alternatively, heat can be extracted by pumping liquid metal (sodium, tin, low-temperature eutectic alloys) in a pipework of copper (if there is chemical compatibility with copper). But handling liquid metal with a magnetic pump isn’t typically done on the DIY tech level.

To be honest, I tried a fair number of experiments on the subject, including low-temperature Stirling motors. They’re difficult to build well. I would recommend plain old steam turbine. Steam means pressure, pressure means precautions (risk of bursting, risk of getting burned), but modern approaches to boilers try to minimize the amount of water in the system, so it couldn’t flash to steam and explode.

I have superficially researched both options (with the conclusion that I cannot use either, since my installation would be too small, and would suffer from severe heat loss due to an unfavourable volume-to-surface ratio - it makes sense to design thermal stores for a city or neighbourhood, not a household).

I’d add a few notes:

1. A thermal store using silicate sand is not limited by the melting point of the sand, but the structural strength of the materials holding the sand. You can count on stainless steel up to approximately 600 C, more if you design with reserve strength and good understanding of thermal expansion/contraction. Definitely don’t count on anything above 1000 C or forget the word “cheap”. I have read about some folks designing a super-hot thermal store, but they plan to heat graphite (self-supporting solid material) in an inert gas environment.

2. Heat loss intensifies with higher temperatures, and the primary type of heat loss becomes radiative loss. Basically, stuff starts glowing. For example, the thermal conductivity of stone wool can be 0.04 W / mK at 10 C, and 0.18 W / mK at 600 C.

3. Water can be kept liquid beyond 100 C. The most recent thermal stores in Finland are about 100 meters below surface, where the pressure of the liquid column allows heating water to 140 C.

4. However, any plan of co-generation (making some electricity while extracting the stored heat) requires solid materials and high temperatures.

It sure is possible.

A typical “obscenely bright” LED chip might be Cree XML, but many similar chips exist. You’d need a plano-convex or equivalent Fresnel lens - shorter focal lengths favour compact design. Then you need a driver. Some are fixed while some adjustable with a tiny potentiometer. You’d need an 18650 cell holder (it can be made too, an 18650 will go into a leftover piece of 20 mm electrical cabling pipe with a spring-loaded metal cap engineered of something).

Myself, I bought a nice head lamp, but it broke after one year. The driver board failed. Being of the lazy variety, I replaced the board with a resistor to limit current and now it’s been working 3 years already. Not at peak luminosity, the resistor wasn’t optimal of course. :)

Wow, that’s a nice one. :)

Also, both of your links to solar-powered tool projects were educational. I knew this could be done, but I had never read about peope doing that. :)

Thanks, that looks like something I might have to try. :) Myself, over the network, I still don’t do filesystem level incremental backups, sticking to either directories or virtual machine snapshots (both of which have their shortcomings).

I’ve been hearing about ZFS and its beneficial features for years now, but mainstream Linux installers don’t seem to support it, and I can’t be bothered to switch filesystems after installing.

Out of curiosity - can anyone tell, what might be blocking them?

Edit: answering my own question: legal issues. Licenses “potentially aren’t compatible”.

Due to potential legal incompatibilities between the CDDL and GPL, despite both being OSI-approved free software licenses which comply with DFSG, ZFS development is not supported by the Linux kernel. ZoL is a project funded by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop a native Linux kernel module for its massive storage requirements and super computers.

Source: https://wiki.debian.org/ZFS