Nothingburger. For the vast majority of users the audio was already getting sent to the cloud for realtime processing. Nothing here changes that.
For a few devices, some amount of processing was getting done on-device. Now, with the fancy LLMs, it has to revert to sending it all to the cloud.
Just turn on the feature to delete the recording after each processing. Best you can get if you want to keep using these devices and not run an NVidia processing cluster in your kitchen.
Excellent insights. You’ve given me a lot more new things I’ve never heard of to look up and investigate (ARES, ARK, POD).
There’s a registered Meshtastic node near me that places it on the side of a mountain in an open space. Going to get in touch with them. It has line of sight to half the city from that high up.
I’m going to use all this info to find out what the local municipality has already set up for DR at the next CERT class. Also what gaps need to be filled. Lots more to learn.
Much appreciate all the info. Anyone reading this, please keep it coming.
I believe that over the past several years, A.I. systems have started surpassing humans in a number of domains — math, coding, and medical diagnosis, just to name a few — and that they’re getting better every day.
This is why I stopped reading the columns and unsubscribed from the podcast.
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Thanks for the tip, will also look into ARES.
I’ve only taken one of the CERT classes. Will have another next week and am signed up for three more. My understanding is that CERT is targeted at civilians who form a neighborhood first response team in case official services are inaccessible or stretched thin.
The material leans heavily toward self-help (medical triage, food/water/medicine caches, etc) until help arrives. My thinking was the official channels already have access to UHF/VHF for their own comms. But CERT trainers kept repeating that if a big disaster hits, neighborhood groups should plan to make do for 10 days (and maybe up to 30) before outside help can come in.
Assuming 10 days without power, gas, or water and maybe closed roads, seemed like Meshtastic might be a good way to coordinate inside these neighborhood groups and across them.
The LilyGo T-Deck (https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck?variant=44907372413109) with a 3D printed or IP-66/67 enclosure seems like an inexpensive civilian-friendly device to offer CERT groups without requiring a radio license. But the repeater network needs to be there and configured for redundancy. TBH, I don’t know if it’s a good solution, but I’m going to ask the instructors this week if there are any alternatives already in place. Meanwhile, I’m trying to learn as much as I can (hence the post).
We’re in earthquake terrain (a fault line runs through the middle of town). My concern would be what happens in case of a Loma Prieta scale quake. Going to do some research on fault tolerance, redundancy, and avoiding single points of failure.
Have a buddy who works at a FAANG and has been doing a lot of work on DR. He showed me a picture of his stash of prototypes. Turned out all were built on top of Meshtastic. Going to hit him up for tips next week.
That’s actually a great clip to show the CERT training folks here. Will share it with them this coming week at the class. Thanks!
Awesome tips, thank you!
The highest peak around here has a communication tower on it. Pretty sure some of it is for municipal services. Will do research on what it will take to stick a router up there, if there isn’t one already.
This shows how one company (li-cycle) that claims they recycle 95% of the lithium does it: https://youtu.be/s2xrarUWVRQ
99.99% doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
Not a formal audit, but a more recent review of the protocol: https://soatok.blog/2025/02/18/reviewing-the-cryptography-used-by-signal/
They can take Fort Ross, but they can’t pry Clam Beach from our cold, dead hands.
My kid was told to fill one out, even though we knew we didn’t qualify. After a LOT of paperwork, it came back with an offer of a $2K loan.
That last one was just people shooting at magic suits.
If you right-click and View Source, it all fits on one screen.
I use the same tool. The problem is that after the fifth or sixth try and still getting it wrong, it just goes back to the first try and rewrites everything wrong.
Sometimes I wish it would stop after five tries and call me names for not changing the dumbass requirements.
Most IoT devices that died did so because the vendor went out of business and had to shut off the servers. Most lived in hope that a last minute investment would keep them afloat. In a few other cases, it was the middleware software provider (like Google IoT) that shut down and bricked a device.
This legislation might apply to a big company that decides to discontinue a product line and could then send notices out, but most startups won’t know (or admit defeat) till the last possible moment. By then it’s too late.
I used to work with big companies collecting IoT data. 90% were collecting telemetry without knowing why. Or having business goals they could easily achieve in other ways, without hoovering everything and violating our privacy.
The rest were doing it so they could sell it to data brokers and make money.
None of them were trying to push privacy as a competitive advantage.
So many ways…
Still locked out, but posted a comment upthread that you may want to consider.
You may want to do some research into Japanese wood joinery. There are some amazing techniques out there. Just one of them…