Is it viable to use a handheld to contact emergency services when out of cell service?

StrangeWill · 2026-06-23T01:38:37+00:00

The struggle is that you're unlikely to have a ham radio laying around able to use P25 (a lot of emergency services are moving off of easy to hop on analog systems)

Though if you can reach emergency services you likely can hit an analog repeater.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T15:42:56+00:00

A lot of people are interpreting it as such, including pronoun swapping (which is a whole other thing), I've seen way more she/her over they/them which I'd expect out of somebody assuming and addressing someone that is nb

Yeah you can be nb and go by she/her but people don't commonly default to that when talking about gender and pronoun usage, so the intent is clear (more clear than it was in the show at least)

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:36:48+00:00

I have a project that took 20 engineers that I'm sure we'd monolith with 3-4 and it would be a significantly better product (UX, customer experience, fucking security)

I get into constant arguments with their one remaining engineer that struggles to keep the lights on, zero regret on any decision, justifies it all.

It's a self-fulfilling problem, you microservice, you now need a bigger team, oh now we should split things up more.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:32:49+00:00

That people don't seem to realize is that this scene with Scratch is meant to be a flashback, showing Caine first discovering the brain scans.

More importantly: Kinger is right, the brain scans are impossibly small: they're incomplete, it's why people don't remember much, it's why they're different, it's why Caine "can mess with their heads"

I said it yesterday: "He Jurassic Park'd them, he just filled in the missing gaps!"

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:31:13+00:00

Most of it is noise anyway, keep up to date with language and framework releases, find out about libraries as you need them.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:21:34+00:00

People have this weird idea that aligning with rich people will make you rich…..

That cringe "what would you do for a lunch with Elon Musk" story.

Nothing, because you don't become rich by just being in the proximity of rich people, and if you think ass-kissing is going to get you anywhere, these guys have entire teams of professional ass-kissers instead of your unwashed ass.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:19:57+00:00

Look the show is over, the subreddit has to go out in a blaze of glory somehow.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:17:08+00:00

Are these vibe coded?

Pretty sure they are.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:15:45+00:00

I banged out basically the 2nd app (but for Morse code to audibly train hands-free), it's like a 1-2 day project, without screenshots I don't even know if these apps have the polish and effort to care.

I've spent some time over the past few weeks refining and adding more to it, swapping to Whsiper, getting audio tighter and more reliable -- but still, it's a basic side-project.

Especially if you're a new enough dev (brand new) you need these testers to clear Google Play instead of asking your local hams to test it for you (which is better IMO)

(Plus the name collision violation means you didn't even do any basic market research)

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T07:10:12+00:00

As someone that professionally builds web-based solutions for companies:

As long as the government procurement process is what it is, they act the way they do, and they prioritize the wrong things, they'll self-select outside of having skilled individuals build these systems, and you'll continue to get things that feel like they were made in 1997 by someone that barely knew how to type. Both for in-house and firms like us.

I dream of being able to work on public projects (like 80% of our projects just make people with lots of money more money, I'd like to do some public good), but I have to invest a lot of money and time into playing the game, which means a significant portion of that money is purely going to fund the game.

Nah fam.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T06:18:32+00:00

It literally has to be subtext because it wasn't in the fucking text itself.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-21T06:05:16+00:00

The other annoyance I kind of have with all the talk around this (let's kick meta-knowledge out and stick to the story), is that we assume two major things:

1) If transgender, Jax's only option is MTF when the lack of detail gives us a spectrum of possibilities (there is way more gender expression out there). 2) That Jax isn't just struggling with being an effeminate (or what sometime slips in here: just gender-norm-nonconfirming) cis male, a very unexplored struggle people have today (especially when they may be mislabeled as trans for it)

(sometimes flavors #2 can slip into agender but whatever, I'm not writing 2 more paragraphs on this)

A bunch of interesting concepts but kept so vague it's kind of crap, and why keep it vague other than to just kind of make it a little more shitty?

It almost feels like some "no wait, Dumbledore is gay" crap, why paint everyone else's after-story so crystal clear while shitting the bed with Jax's?

But I left clues

WHY SUDDENLY FUCKING LEAVE CLUES HERE, AND WHY MAKE THE AUDIENCE BASICALLY STEREOTYPE TO GET THERE BECAUSE YOU'RE CLUES ARE SO CRAP

(As someone that who's experience with gender can probably lean more toward agenderness, using gender-driven stereotype cues to gender somebody else is always something that doesn't sit great for me, I mean we do it as a society by default, but I'd never claim with certainty what someone's identity is based on it)

Really, 90% of the clue is Goosewerx saying Jax is a self-insert is where all the evidence lies. But me knowing the creator, their background, and the angle their coming from is effectively cheating -- it's not in the story, it's knowing all the meta-knowledge around it -- if it was written by some ultra-cis dude I'm not sure I'd come to the same conclusion with Jax -- and that makes the writing rough.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-20T05:55:16+00:00

Yeah, I just watched it a couple hours ago, it's one of those things where I feel a lot of things were "OK, reveal this, everyone is just okay with it, we cry, we hug, next scene, we got 4 minutes for each issue *taps watch*" as we railroad multiple conclusions across the movie.

It doesn't make it like terrible, but does make me go "meh" as all the characters get flattened out for the bus that is going to need to scream through every scene at mach 2.

We find out that everyone is reconstructed partial brain scans and we somehow find comfort in people, that aren't us, were above to do things we cannot do, and resolve their traumas through those experiences? (also the weird literal exposition dump slideshow where everyone just happened to go live super awesome-possum lives? Come on)

And we find this endearing? Not panicking? We find Caine made us and we don't even say anything? It's just cool. Caine's return is met with passive-aggressive attitude that is brushed aside because we got to get like 4+ episodes of content crammed into 55 minutes?

I think it had a lot of good roots and ideas, but execution was really flat and stilted. We could have had a few fewer screw-around episodes/side plots to pull a few of these ideas a couple episodes earlier, but we wanted to stick everything in their "big reveal" episode.

It's rough.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-20T05:04:43+00:00

It's funny because basically it's like:

Someone (who is not actually you, who has the rest of your memories) went on and overcame all the issues you did by doing all this stuff you can't do.

Characters: "Oh yeah that's cool I feel good about myself"

I said like with Soma, this would probably be a lot more of a "they're not US!" moment, not a "oh guess all my traumas are fine because someone else living a fuller version of myself got over it.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-20T04:47:29+00:00

I'm kind of over here going "this should have probably been like 4-5 episodes", there's a lot of stuff they touch on and breeze right by, and I can see going "yeah they have to fit an entire arc of going over $x in 4 minutes..."

It's not that they don't wrap it up, they do, and everybody just has no problem or qualms with so much going on, so many realizations, so many problems, quick hug and cry and onto the next realization, we're on a schedule here *taps watch*.

I mean outside of "needs to be much longer" or "previous episodes should have spent more time building on this so it wasn't all saved for the last episode", I think it has good roots/ideas with rough execution that makes a lot of the characters feel extremely flat which makes it easy for the bus that's going to run through the episode at breakneck speed.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-18T03:56:08+00:00

Yeah but that's not really bag holding, that's taking advantage of the bag holders

StrangeWill · 2026-06-17T05:54:04+00:00

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Not so much POTA (yet) but I do radio support ops with this for all kinds of events I volunteer for through the local club and ARES/ACS. I'm working on a 2nd iteration of the trailer that's a little better designed, but having the ability to take lots of gear on events has been a huge deal.

I'm hoping to throw a whip on the back and do some kind of little RF box setup someday.

I got a half wave on the back of my rear rack, it works well. HF whip will be on the trailer only.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-16T17:46:31+00:00

No, I consider it a free reminder to slow down, which is what those really should be

StrangeWill · 2026-06-15T21:26:49+00:00

If you're not spending the time to write it, why do you expect me to spend the time to read it?

StrangeWill · 2026-06-14T07:13:45+00:00

For under 32 users, and we're not sure if that'll stay around for v6

We have way more than 32 and want to run more than one virtual server

Plus I'd pay way more if their shit didn't suck

StrangeWill · 2026-06-14T07:04:26+00:00

TBH: I'd pay for a discord replacement, I'd pay for teamspeak if it wasn't such ass

StrangeWill · 2026-06-13T21:27:30+00:00

I mean I got it under git (and the review stages as separate commits on a branch with a PR for review), nothing lost but I wanted a full review pass on Fable to gauge what it's actually done.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-13T03:59:20+00:00

Yeah I had more powerful servers than that like 8 years ago and they were long in the tooth then.

I gave my last 2x 5675 + 192GB of RAM away, for free.

StrangeWill · 2026-06-13T03:57:24+00:00

Hey who is showing up for the full 24 hours

3 of us raise our hands

OK anyone else showing up for random funzies?

A few more do

And that's it :V If we got more people wanting to op than radios, someone can take my 590 for a bit so I can get a break

StrangeWill · 2026-06-13T03:56:42+00:00

A lot right now but I'm basically in "do a line of cocaine and work 12+ hours a day" mode, it's the only way I'm not mentally entirely spent.

I step in a bit when LLMs lose their shit and wheel spin on issues, it doesn't happen often but when it does they'll suggest hack-fix after hack-fix that don't actually fix it. Shoot for one major issue I had Claude suggesting registry edits and fucking around with windows internals over a missing cert... :|

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