On 29th October 2022 various countries in Region 1 of the IARU (International Amateur Radio Union) conducted an exercise to test emergency radio communications via the QO-100 satellite. This exercise allowed us to test mobile deployment of our QO-100 stations, do signal checks, and a chance to pass and receive messages using the standardised IARU message form template.

James ZS1RBT deployed his station at Tyberberg Hospital (next to the Disaster Management Centre) on behalf of HAMNET Western Cape. It took about ten minutes to set up the dish and equipment, and align the dish towards the satellite. The station operated without any Internet or grid power.

A particular advantage of a QO-100 station is that as long as it is in the satellite's footprint (Southern Africa up to Europe and part of the Middle East), it has a strong and clear signal from anywhere, and is not dependent upon times of the day which typically affect HF propagation. If properly configured, talking via the QO-100 satellite is as clear as speaking via a local VHF repeater. However, this service is only one of many tools available to radio amateurs, because as conditions or locations vary it may mean that various other modes need to be used, and it is for this reason why exercises are conducted at other times for the other modes of communication.

The Net Controller was based in Chester in England, and messages received and sent were perfectly audible. Although all tests today were voice tests, the satellite can also handle data such as Winlink e-mail, FT8, etc.

When the exercise was concluded at local time 13:10, James spent another 30 to 40 minutes explaining how all the components worked inside his "grey box". As he explained, it is very much a "work in progress" as not only has he adapted quite a few components based on lessons learnt, but he also has a few other plans for further improvements.

In attendance with James today were Michael ZS1MJT (HAMNET Western Cape Director), Allan ZS1AL, and Danie ZS1OSS.

Some photos as well as videos are at https://bit.ly/hamnetwcqo100

#technology #southafrica #HAMNET #QO100 #hamradio

Professor Kathleen Booth, one of the last of the early British computing pioneers, has died. She was 100.

In 1950, Kathleen and Andrew married, the same year that she got a PhD in applied mathematics, again from the University of London. To secure further funding for their work, the Booths again went to the Rockefeller Foundation, which provided it on condition that the APE(C)X worked with human languages as well as just mathematics. The result was a demonstration of machine translation in November 1955.

As well as building the hardware for the first machines, she wrote all the software for the ARC2 and SEC machines, in the process inventing what she called "Contracted Notation" and would later be known as assembly language.

See https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/29/kathleen_booth_obit/

#technology #programming #assemblylanguage #KathleenBooth

What a day to be alive if you're a Pebble smartwatch owner. Although official support for the watch ended ages ago, the device has been kept alive thanks to the efforts of the team at Rebble. This update is substantial, not only because it gets the Pebble working on Pixel 7 devices, but it also provides future support for other Android devices on the horizon. For now, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are the only Android devices to only support 64-bit apps. But in the future, there could be more, which means, any apps that don't have 64-bit libraries wouldn't be supported. Thankfully, for Pebble owners, the latest update to the APK will offer continued support for the foreseeable future.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/pebble-smartwatches-will-now-work-with-the-pixel-7-and-pixel-7-pro/

#technology #pebblewatch #pixel #smartwatch

Smartphones are amazing video cameras—the iPhone, Google Pixel, and Galaxy do a great job at capturing 4K, stabilized video, with great detail and color quality. But these videos are massive in size. That’s okay if you want to view the videos on your phone (provided you’re paying for cloud storage), but what if you need to send them to someone over the internet, or back them up without filling an entire hard drive? That’s where video compression comes in.

Using different apps and websites, you’ll can compress a huge video to a comparatively tiny size—and if you do it right, you won’t lose too much on the quality and resolution front. Here are the best ways to compress video on both iPhone and Android.

It is videos usually that chew up the most space, so getting some good compression done could save enormous amounts of space for you. The videos are also still normally usable, so no need to first unzip to be able to view them.

See https://lifehacker.com/the-fastest-ways-to-compress-video-on-iphone-and-androi-1849523806

#technology #videos #compression #savespace

Many driving video games lock you into rules that can make driving feel stressful, which is great if you're in a competitive mood. But sometimes you might want to just relax and enjoy the ride. That's where Slow Roads comes in. In the game, you can't crash, fail, or lose. The road stretches on forever as scenic landscapes zip by. If you steer off the road, press "R" to reset your car's position onto the pavement. Even roads are optional: Drive off-road or underwater if you want.

The screenshot on the attached article does the game no justice, though. It is well worth exploring the options menus as there are a lot of settings for the driving as well as the environment that can be changed. Pressing FF will put it into auto-drive, and you can just watch the scenery going by.

See https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/slow-roads-offers-a-chill-endless-driving-experience-in-your-browser/

#technology #gaming #slowroads #browser #driving

Using the live bootable medium, we can test the Linux distributions without having to install them on the hard drive. We can also use the live cd for troubleshooting purposes as well.

When you try the Live USB, you can do all sort of things, such as installing applications, downloading files, playing media, creating files and folders, customizing it as per your liking and a lot more.

However once you reboot the system, all of the said changes will be lost. Because, you are working on a live OS.

What if you want to make all changes remain intact even after rebooted the system? That's what we are going to do now using Mkusb bootable creation tool.

You can use the persistent live USB as the way you use the regular Laptop/Desktop system. You can install applications, save files an folders, customize the system as you wish etc.

All the changes you made in the live system will remain intact even after you reboot or shutdown it.

See https://ostechnix.com/how-to-create-persistent-live-usb-on-ubuntu/

#technology #Linux #opensource #Mkusb

When was the last that you updated Python packages installed via Pip? Most of the users tend to forget that those packages also need to be updated, as just updating the system repository is not going to work here.

So let’s take a moment and see how to update old Python packages with Pip.

See https://itsfoss.com/upgrade-pip-packages/

#technology #python #updates #pip

The irony is we have all known this for a long time, and I've posted more than once showing the results from Battery University demonstrating the evidence. But with it finally just having some anecdotal evidence shown on TikTok, looks like many are now ready to believe it.

So many things appear on TikTok which are not true and are often quite dangerous (requiring the main media and governments to issue warnings to citizens).

So when I heard about this one it just brought a smile to my face. Yes maybe scientists too need to start presenting their evidence and rebuttals on mediums like TikTok instead of in scientific journals and papers! Just imagine scientists dancing around and showing all sorts of neat "magic" tricks etc

See https://www.techadvisor.com/article/1358418/stop-charging-your-iphone-every-night.html

#technology #TikTok #battery #charging

The Flipper Zero is the ultimate multi-tool for pentesters, geeks, ethical hackers and hardware hobbyists alike. One pocket-sized device combines multiple tools: RFID, RF, Infrared, HID emulation, GPIO, Hardware debugging, 1-Wire, Bluetooth, Wifi and more.

The Flipper Zero is able to read and emulate RFID / NFC / Infrared etc. This makes it super easy to clone the RFID off a credit card you have used to lock an RFID hotel safe, or your NFC front door, etc. It shows how well an RFID blocking card can work, and why you do want to protect your bank cards if they have RFID on them.

Watch https://youtu.be/VF3xlAm_tdo

#technology #security #RFID #FlipperZero #hacking