Awww this reminds me of the early days of Flickr.

What kind of location are you/the node in? Are you inside or outside? Outside can make a huge difference, or even just being near a window helps.

Yup. It’s why so many died, not from measles, but from other diseases in the 3-5 years after they had measles. IIRC they only really worked this out in the last 5-10 years because of the amount of data to comb through.

Yup. At least a decade ago I used to explain how important interoperability was to legislate for, and used this as the main example of why. Networks are better for everyone when there is no lock in, and the waste of competition for eyeballs could be avoided. It’s sad that most people truly don’t understand this.

There’s a new server planned relatively locally to me and it’s capitalising on the terrifying plunge into fascism that all the Big Socials now have as their badge of dishonour. People have never been “happy” to be on Facebook but the local focus in a pretty leftie iinet city area is a good idea. If people know people irl on Fedi they will maybe have an easier time.

I love Tusky, it is my app of choice for Mastodon

It’s the tusks, clearly.

What we really need (and have always needed) is an update to the legal frameworks that classify what networks are and what protections are in place for users to ensure interoperability. The Internet has been the wild west for too bloody long, and the extractors and their monopolies need to be put away. That’s why they have been so happy to jump in with Donny Diaper at this point, because he’s letting them not only continue with impunity, but bring back company scrip.

They’d shut down large instances, pressure WordPress to remove support, in the US at least, it could be seen as too risky, if they wanted to they would find a way. I don’t think this would happen easily in the EU though.

I think, If we have any credible threat, it’s going to be from the Governmental gross anti-tampering laws, forced moderation, or backup regulations. They could make it legally difficulty for us to exist

This. I have considerable concern that Fascists will straight up ban Fedi if enough people shift to it. They don’t like not being able to control everything, Fedi is far too much actual freedom of communication.

Yup! Meshtastic makes a lot of sense for a whole range of use cases. I am also a festival goer and having text comms can be very useful in those circumstances.

For their size the T1000-E’s are impressive, I think for many people they are the most practical EDC but folks will often have something else as a base station on their roof.

It would be very cool if someone were to release a mobile phone with LoRa built in.

Welcome! I’m a n00b but I’m having fun so far, and I’m interested in the responses you get here as I’m learning as I go!

I am very keen on standalone devices that don’t need a phone to function but haven’t explored that functionality as yet. I got a bunch of T1000-E’s for giving to local friends to test with and as an EDC, and a Station G2 as a home base station (haven’t got a keyboard for it yet but with that it becomes standalone with the canned message module). The T1000-E is super easy to set up and good to demo to people who aren’t too techy that might be interested. The station g2 needs more power but comes with a pretty good stock antenna. I’ve ordered a couple of the SenseCAP Indicators (currently backordered) as they look like they miiight be standalone(?) with the advanced firmware which doesn’t have a release date yet, and look fun even if not.

We only have a small mesh of 3 in our little town but my two friends are both into radio and way more experienced than me, and I think they are both impressed with the ease of use, and one is super keen and going to get a Station G2 as he can use it for HAM stuff too as he is licensed.

While it’s not the mainstream, it’s not everyone that constantly wants more. There are many religious orders that practise asceticism, voluntary simplicity, and other behaviours which are not growth focused. Minimalism as a movement in western society is genuine. People do sometimes reach a point where they stop being seduced by consumerism, realising it doesn’t bring the happiness it falsely promises.

Good suggestion but no active churches no, and very small ex-church that I’m aware of in a, non particularly high location. We would need to be getting nodes ideally at the top of hills and there are quite a few!

The T1000-E is a truly impressively designed piece of kit. I feel like so much I’ve been into when on bleeding edge is janky or too easy to break, these are solid.

Christopher Alexander is brilliant. Regularly return to A Pattern Language, so much inspiration.

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That’s very helpful, thankyou! I am still working out the different modes and we’re just leaving everything as client at this point but good to know for when we get busier!

Yes for emergency services radio is probably better, but have had the conversation that those bands get very busy when there is actually an emergency, and unless you’re directly involved in the emergency response it’s better to keep quiet even if you have the devices. To keep everyone else in the loop a mesh would be really helpful and allows for direct comms between people without radio knowledge. I’ve done enough radio stuff at festivals to know it’s a bit daunting for beginners. But these days pretty much everyone, even your grandma, has a cell phone and most understand apps and text messages. So the learning curve is pretty small.