Same old story of a community-driven site resorting to ads for revenue. After feedback they started a subscription-based version called totalFark that didn’t have ads. Then they introduced ads on totalFark as well, but didn’t vet their advertisers. So some of the banner ads were running malicious code on users browsers.

Love the idea! Kinda like fark.com before they got all shitty.

No worries! If you’re starting out you can’t go wrong with a T1000-E. It’s water resistant, has GPS built-in, and ties everything together in a neat package for ~$35. There are plenty of other nodes out there but it’s more of a build your own kit situation. If you’re into microcontroller programming and stuff like arduino/RP/etc then Heltec v3 Lora boards are good tinker hardware.

We also have a community here on mander for meshtastic.

Yes! If you leave the default channel enabled it will join the public meshtastic network. But you can run eight channels at once, and the others can have different encryption keys.

The default setting is also to forward any received packets to the mesh, even ones it can’t decrypt.

For a good compromise, use Meshtastic. Long-range radio mesh network for texting that phones can use instead of cell networks.

Great article! It was nice to see some mentions of older projects as well, instead of just things currently (de)funded.

It looks like that first link just references the original article. Seems to be an AI generated summary, too.

No idea about bike licenses.

High power radios in the hands of people who don’t know what they’re doing can cause a lot of issues. FRS/GMRS radios under 2 Watts in the U.S. don’t need a license. Licensing is a way to make sure people using them know how to do so effectively, and provides for stiffer penalties if someone unlicensed causes issues.

Welch’s Fruit Snacks. The Halloween packs are small and very snacky, only $0.10 each at costco.