Hacker News: womod

New comment by womod in "Windows Server 2025 Runs Better on ARM"

womod — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:47:58 +0000

Yup, thanks big M for making things fun as usual. I deal with the same thing on the P25 side.

New comment by womod in "Converting a $3.88 analog clock from Walmart into a ESP8266-based Wi-Fi clock"

womod — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:21:38 +0000

There's quite a few clocks available that get their time over the air from the NIST WWVB radio station[0]. They usually have a little switch on the back if your area does/doesn't observe daylight savings.

[0] - https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-di...

New comment by womod in "Everything from 1991 Radio Shack ad I now do with my phone (2014)"

womod — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 21:36:45 +0000

Right, but more specifically they are most often used for scanning stuff like air-band and VHF/UHF two-way radio traffic. Nowadays with a lot of public safety being digital P25 (requiring more expensive scanners) and online streams being so easily available, there's not a lot of reasons to buy a scanner unless you're really passionate about it.

New comment by womod in "Transmission Grid Mapping in OpenStreetMap"

womod — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 21:28:41 +0000

https://openinframap.org/

New comment by womod in "Removing data transfer fees when moving off Google Cloud"

womod — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 03:16:42 +0000

That's due to the DOCSIS standard for cable modems. They specced out more channels for downstream than upstream because of the limited bandwidth of copper and consumer priorities. With fiber there's an order of magnitude more bandwidth available, so the uneven split is much less (if at all?) common with the big backhaul lines between datacenters. For consumer fiber you'll usually get symmetric but for the most part it doesn't make sense as the vast majority of consumers just don't make use of their upstream bandwidth.

New comment by womod in "Timeline to remove DSA support in OpenSSH"

womod — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 21:22:26 +0000

You'd be suprised, the shear amount of black box vendor nonsense out there borders on astronomical. Weird telco stuff, old cisco hardware, BMCs in servers, it would mean gutting probably millions of dollars of equiment. It's stupid, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater over openssh won't make anyone happy.

New comment by womod in "Show HN: FrameOS – operating system for single function smart frames"

womod — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 16:37:30 +0000

You can unlock the bootloader of the 2018 Fire HD 8 if you force it into download mode by opening it up and shorting the CLK test point to ground. Older tablets don't need to be opened up, it's all just software. Everything after that though has been unable to have the bootloader unlocked.

New comment by womod in "Sony debuts first PS5 controller for disabled gamers"

womod — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 01:24:34 +0000

No. The last "mainstream" console to use hall effect sticks in the first party controller was the Dreamcast, and that was in 1999.

New comment by womod in "Sony debuts first PS5 controller for disabled gamers"

womod — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:32:58 +0000

Controllers that use hall effect sensor sticks last much longer than the conventional potentiometer sticks. The pot sticks are subject to physical wear while the hall effect sticks are not because there is no contact.

There's some guides on aftermarket modifications of controllers to convert them to hall effect sensors, as well as 3rd party controllers made with hall effect sticks. If you want something to use on PC and/or switch the KingKong 2[1] from GuliKit is pretty good.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QJN8ZD9

New comment by womod in "A Grocery Chain Just Fired Its Self-Checkouts – They're Bringing the Humans Back"

womod — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 09:31:21 +0000

Gasoline is absolutely not that dangerous, at least relative to the risk involved every time one drives a car. For igniting gasoline fumes, a spark is almost always necessary. Realistically speaking, a lit cigarette has a better chance of setting a nearby trash can on fire than igniting the gasoline fumes. If a person were to spark a lighter to light a cigarette that'd be a different story.

https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2010/03/gas-pump_fire_that...

https://content.nfpa.org/-/media/Project/Storefront/Catalog/...

New comment by womod in "Pixel 8 to have seven years of Android updates"

womod — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 15:59:40 +0000

MicroG is an option, it's an open source implementation of a good portion of play services, though not everything "just works". But for the bare minimum like functional push notifications, location services, etc it's not half bad. There exists a fork[1] of lineage with MicroG installed from the get-go, otherwise installing it can be a little painful.

[1] - https://lineage.microg.org/

New comment by womod in "Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)"

womod — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 16:34:54 +0000

That's funny, there exists a similar issue with the LG G7 that a friend of mine ran into several years ago. The fingerprint sensor on his phone just straight-up completely stopped working, and subsequent OS updates did nothing to fix it. At first we assumed it was hardware failure, and he was ready to send it to a repair shop. While investigating it I saw a comment somewhere that it had something to do with the light sensor, and after holding my thumb over it for 10 seconds it "magically" started working again after 4 months of being completely non-functional.

New comment by womod in "CCC Talk: All cops are broadcasting Obtaining the secret TETRA primitives [video]"

womod — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 22:57:21 +0000

In the two-way radio world, most protocols are open (P25, DMR, LMR, etc.) but almost every digital protocol uses the AMBE[1] voice codec, which is not.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Band_Excitation

New comment by womod in "Magic Earth: OSM based map and routing with crowd sourced traffic data"

womod — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 17:47:55 +0000

Google Play Services implements a lot of increasingly vital features and interfaces on Android. Not having it kills a good number of things people consider important, like push notifications (some apps are designed to still send push notifications like Signal, but it's kind of a hack and does drain the battery). If you're looking for almost the same functionality without google play services, MicroG[1] is an open source implementation of Google Play Services and its' associated components. I don't think it works on GrapheneOS unfortunately, but GrapheneOS already sandboxes all the Google Play Services components, so you should be fine as is. "Normal"/stock Android roms aren't set up the same way however, so you pretty much need either Google Play Services or MicroG for push notifications, location services, etc.

[1] - https://microg.org/

New comment by womod in "What is mini FM"

womod — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 17:44:54 +0000

Such multi-site, same frequency broadcasting setups are usually called Simulcast, and are still used for some public safety trunked radio systems in the U.S. The biggest issue with simulcasting is the need for extremely precise clock synchronization and the audio carrier generation, to the point where something like using a slightly different soundcard can result in massively distorted received audio due to the effects of FM doubling. Clock synchronization is usually achieved via GPS, there's a good number of off-the-shelf solutions available. But when it comes to the audio path, it's typical to use the exact same hardware across all sites because otherwise controlling for even the smallest of differences when attempting to troubleshoot becomes an huge hassle. At the beginning of this blog post[1] is a brief overview of some things to take into consideration when building a simulcast system.

[1] - https://www.hamradiodx.net/building-a-simulcasting-voting-re...

New comment by womod in "Bill introduced to replace HF symbol rate limit with bandwidth limit"

womod — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 19:01:26 +0000

Have a listen to USA CB Channel 6 (27.015 MHz / 27105 KHz) if you'd like a taste of what true freedom is like. Best way to listen in without an actual receiver is a WebSDR, here's one[1] that can tune to it.

[1] - http://kiwisdr1.sdrutah.org:8073/

New comment by womod in "LoRa: Field Testing Antennas"

womod — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 20:13:11 +0000

Antenna type and design can make all the difference in the world with regards to performance. Even plain-old 2.4GHz or 5GHz WiFi can work great over large distances provided that you use a parabolic reflector, yagi, log-periodic, etc. Microwave linking is all the rage nowadays, with WISPs popping up all over the place and large commercial operators using microwave links as backhaul between internet-connected sites (usually cell tower sites). But LoRa is still really awesome for low-bandwidth data with minimal antenna considerations, and having it be such a convenient standalone package with some of the boards available is just icing on the cake.

New comment by womod in "You can hook your MIDI keyboard up to a website with Firefox 108"

womod — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 08:51:54 +0000

A good number of stage lighting controllers have the ability to interface with and handle MIDI, but the vast majority of stage lighting equipment is controlled using DMX[1]. The two have a lot in common, being pretty much ubiquitous and rock-solid even given their age.

[1] - http://www.dmx-512.com/dmx-protocol/dmx-protocol-basics/

New comment by womod in "Microsoft acquires startup developing high-speed cables for transmitting data"

womod — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 20:10:17 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveguide_(optics)

New comment by womod in "Unihertz Tank – 22000mAh Phone"

womod — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:35:46 +0000

I agree that the lack of a microSD slot is annoying, though not entirely unreasonable with the whole value proposition of a "ruggedized" phone.

The FM radio is entirely baked-in to the MediaTek MT6789 SoC, and uses anything connected to the 3.5mm jack as the antenna for better reception. Assuming this thing is intended for use at jobsites, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that having a functional FM radio and 3.5mm jack would be desired.