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I think once you escape the system you don't find games or other distractions enjoyable anymore. When you're fully actualized and are capable of "going your own path", satisfaction then comes from making things and trying to improve the world. That is if you don't want to have children, as is the case with me.

I think we've been conditioned from childhood to get a job, work for the corporate world and chase material goods. All of those further the interests of those in power.

Update: Wild foraging, living with nature, moving to another country, or doing what hunter gatherers did. Running your own business. Camping out in the wild, while still making money from something. There are so many other options, you need to be creative about it...

Anyway @NoMoreNicks I've flagged your post and I'm closing this HN account down (by deleting the password)....

But we have things like the Raspberry Pi, which are very low cost and completely open to tinkering. Add a keyboard and clip-on display then you have a tiny but capable development machine, in a smartphone like form-factor.

Such as tracking you every moment of your waking life. How modern technology has become so evil, looking back. Nowadays every device we have is clearly spyware, from the point of view of 1999.

You could alter the video timings on the Jornada a bit, by writing to the video chip registers directly. That would slightly improve its abysmal contrast ratio.

I had one running NetBSD together with a Cisco Aironet 350 PCMCIA WiFi card for wardriving purposes. With the driver for the WiFi card patched to enable monitor mode. Had two different antennas, a quarter wave dipole, which I made myself, and also an Andrew QD-2402, a 16dBi antenna (!) that could receive WiFi APs from more than 20km away, when on high ground.

You could even develop software on it, compile programs with GCC, write Perl scripts to do various things, e.g. automatically scan for and connect to open access points as you walked around town. I think that script even tested if the access point had Internet access or not, and blacklisted ones that didn't. Worked really well, there were so many open access points back in the day. Also had the "links" / "eLinks" web browser, that was text only.

And you could also overclock the bus to the Epson video chip, to allow for faster display updates. The video chip had 2D acceleration, I might have written an XFree86 driver for that, but cannot be sure about it.

I also wrote a flashing tool for the WiFi card, that let you alter the regulatory domain settings to enable full 100mW power output, and also change the MAC address stored in Flash. I think I have the source code to that somewhere...

It's just so amazing to see that the functionality of that enormous WiFi card has now been shrunk down to a tiny QFN chip, an ESP32.

It would be quite a lot of fun to make such an AI operate on the CB band, supervised and in compliance with the regulations, as a joke. A bunch of hams would quite easily freak out, hearing amateur style operation complete with valid sounding callsigns, that don't actually exist.

But we have to be really careful we don't really use a valid amateur's callsign there.... We don't want to spoof someone, which might be illegal. Again this all needs to be double checked that it's 100% in compliance with the law.

Anyway I'll take my ranting over to places like 4chan, rather than continue to spam this site.... And I'll continue to remain 100% within the law.

I don't really care if it's embarrassing or not. As long as my actions are entirely legal, anything pretty much goes. Encouraging people to install regulatory approved powerline networking adapters is completely legal. As it's likely I'm not the only one outraged about this here, the idea to do that might spread. If that happens it won't be secret anymore.

And we have the right to freedom of speech, to get emotional, angry, and even irrational when we see outrageous punishments being dished out by the government, for people being persistently rude on the radio. Especially so when we hear of other people supporting such draconian punishment.

And even more so when large parts of the amateur radio community agree with these punishments and also behave like they are the radio police and have the right to threaten those who might break the rules. When I see other people threatened in that manner it really strikes a nerve with me, and I vent publicly on the forums in response, as I'm doing here.

And if I want to think it's like a sit in protest then it's my right to do so. Under human rights, freedom of conscience and freedom of thought. I might be wrong about thinking that way, but I have the right to be wrong, to be incorrect. As long as I don't break the law.

It's like sit in protesting climate change, or a particularly bad corporation who pollutes the environment, the blockades are going to cause a nuisance for other people not involved in it, but again these protests are legal. This is how change happens.

Many of these amateur radio stations might pose a health and safety hazard to nearby homes. Having thousand watt power levels in residential neighborhoods, while legal, might not be safe for people, especially children. And the amateur community in general turns a blind eye to that. So yet another reason for protesting. Actually, in that case I feel lobbying to get that prohibited might have a better chance of success.

And if it does become prohibited, we don't need to fine offenders $24,000, the FCC can get a warrant, and come in and seize their equipment instead, if they don't stop when requested.

Especially with social media, the anger would spread throughout society like wildfire.

And mental health issues resulting from the soul-crushing school system itself. From boredom in the classroom, and from grading and testing of students. It's a prison environment that children are compelled to attend.