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MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

blog.meshcore.io

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Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#161

Post by doom2 »

walrus01 wrote: post #141
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's unique to american hams. Most of the world just collects dx entities like pokemon, pota/sota locations, backpain complaints on nets and argue if ft8 counts or not for anything.

Collecting replies like pokemon seems like a real waste of time in my opinion. I can send an ICMP ping to something I know is in Svalbard Norway across the regular Internet and get a reply, but I don't pin a postcard to a cork board on my wall celebrating my amazing technical accomplishment. Similarly, for all the effort that people put forth to do EME and get bidirectional traffic with some tiny data payload bounced…

I really don't understand this line of argument and why you seem to be taking offense at an entire hobby. It's like asking why people who maintain home networking labs spend so much time and effort doing that when they could be putting those skills to better use at companies like Cisco. Or why people assemble computers at all when you can just get one from Best Buy. Why do people waste time with Raspberry Pi when you could do something cool with a real, existing exascale supercomputer?

There are many different niches in the amateur radio hobby. Some people want to buy off the shelf radios and antennas to make contacts over the air. Some people want to experiment with their homebrew designs and see how far their signal reaches. Some people want to experiment with very low power radios. Some people (including a Nobel prize winner!) want to experiment with new digital communication protocols for amateur radio use. And yes, some people want to use amateur radio for emergency communication purposes.

Why is it so wasteful for any of these groups to do what they're doing instead of applying their skills to something "useful"? Why is it any more wasteful than participants in other hobbies? That also ignores the fact that many amateur radio operators _do_ apply themselves to "useful" things: they're electrical engineers, physicists, software engineers, educators, military or emergency personnel, etc.

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#162

Post by axegon_ »

nonethewiser wrote: post #149
axegon_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree: I applaud them for doing this. Anyone that says they've reviewed the 1000 lines of slop any AI has spit out is simply lying to everyone and even potentially themselves and has never done a single extensive code review in their life. Reading 1000 lines of text is one thing, reading and analyzing the complexity implications and edge cases in code - no chance. The "I've reviewed the slop" response is the reaso…

>Disagree: I applaud them for doing this. Anyone that says they've reviewed the 1000 lines of slop any AI has spit out You're assuming the thing in question - that it's just AI slop. They dont offer any insight on that - they merely say he used Claude Code a lot. It shows a real lack of understanding of AI tools to equivocate those two things.

No, it shows responsibility and critical thinking: I don't care if it's slaupecode, alanturingai++ code or whatever other slop machine anyone uses. It's the fact that no one and I mean NO ONE is capable of code reviewing that much crap and everyone that has written any code that was meant to last knows it: pouring a ton crap of code, even as a human, is the easy part if you learn the basics. The hard part is analyzing the problem, considering and addressing edge cases, exploits, memory leaks, resources, constraints and limitations - this is what a programmer is fundamentally responsible for and this is the only skill that matters. The code is just an abstraction, which was never the issue. Sloppers wash their hands with "look at how good it works" and "look at how beautiful the code is" and it's all fun and games before a production system crashes because, as I said, no slopper or an actual programmer has the ability to review 6000 line merge request so they hit "lgtm". Or better yet, outsource the problem to another slop machine. Anyone who believes that "AI tools" are in any shape or form viable for production, clearly do not understand a fundamental concept, called propagation of uncertainty[1].

"Sooo productive", sure, buddy, and when it breaks you have no idea why it broke and ultimately you don't know the codebase. Instructions.md containing:

``` * make no mistakes * don't hallucinate ```

Is the clear-cut evidence that we are speed running towards a technological apocalypse. Ironically, I'm in favour of it: if the house has to burn down for things to get better and people to get back to using their brains, I'm all for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagation_of_uncertainty

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#163

Post by doom2 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #119
walrus01 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a person who works professionally in fcc part 101 licensed point to point microwave systems carrying IP data, I have less than zero patience for the BS and shenanigans of analog ham radio enthusiasts. They always want to posture as if they'll be some critical service every emergency responder comes running to in a major disaster and it rarely if ever happens. In the interests of not reinventing the wheel,…

That's unique to american hams. Most of the world just collects dx entities like pokemon, pota/sota locations, backpain complaints on nets and argue if ft8 counts or not for anything.

From personal experience, I'd just say that the number of emcomm-focused hams I've encountered in the hobby has been quite small but even when I have, they are no more or less annoying than anyone else I've met who are involved in emergency management. I guess I don't understand where people get the impression that the whole hobby is focused on emcomms. Do people really think every American amateur radio operator drives a Ford F-450 packed to the gills with antennas and radio equipment?

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#164

Post by 405nm »

jubilanti wrote: post #103
forkerenok wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of entry points available now [0], and I get thousands of announcements every day. https://rmap.world/ It's so much fun with little pages, message boards and random people hitting you up for a chat. I brought up my own transport node and propagation node too to contribute to the mesh.

> There are tons I'm sorry but are you serious? That map shows 224 nodes in the world, fewer than 30 in the entire Western hemisphere. And only 24 in the world are using LoRa? Meshcore has 38,000 nodes, Meshtastic 10,000. Those two projects can actually be said to have "tons" of nodes. It hurts your credibility. I trusted you, spent time trying to debug the map, thinking that something was wrong on my end... why am I…

that map on rmap.world is only showing nodes that run dicoverable=yes in their configurations or something like that.

based upon the announce stream coming through my local node, i am seeing around 14k unique identities advertising over 21k unique application endpoints (destinations) over the course of the past month or so that i’ve been tracking it.

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#165

Post by walrus01 »

austinthetaco wrote: post #154
walrus01 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a person who works professionally in fcc part 101 licensed point to point microwave systems carrying IP data, I have less than zero patience for the BS and shenanigans of analog ham radio enthusiasts. They always want to posture as if they'll be some critical service every emergency responder comes running to in a major disaster and it rarely if ever happens. In the interests of not reinventing the wheel,…

Not sure why you're denigrating HAM radio folks. They have in fact historically already been useful and critical in emergencies, most recently in 2024 for hurricane Helene. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean its not. I mean RACES is even a whole thing explicitly outlined because the government realizes the value of some ham radio operators.

It takes real money and infrastructure to build resilient emergency communication networks on a county or state sized scale. And HAMs just don't have it.

Go look at the budget documents for the tower sites and entire radio communication networks that support public safety networks (police, fire, ambulance) on a scale of somewhere the size of King County, WA. Properly engineered hilltop tower sites with well maintained generators, redundant radio links, etc. Amateurs just don't have the resources to do these things properly and are a distraction at best.

My opinion is not new or novel - the people who built the att long lines microwave network in the pre fiber optic era very rarely if ever had anything to do with ham radio. Persons concerned with actual mission critical emergency communication systems learn the hard way that amateur dilettantes just don't have the financial resources or time to do it properly.

If you want to build an emergency communications network, it's going to cost money in real equipment and paying for the man hours of full time equivalent employees to build and run it.

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#166

Post by rho138 »

Levitating wrote: post #79
405nm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don’t forget that although it already works fine on lora, it’s a protocol that’s transport channel agnostic, and is gonna do great with other transports (halow, optical, wifi, whatever) when people finally start realizing that lora is never going to be able to keep up with bandwidth/speed requirements of anything much beyond simple text messaging. although, i’ve already done real time voice calls over 1 hop of reticu…

> simple text messaging Also great for position tracking, sensor data or motion detection etc.

This for days. Cheap sensors that anyone can churn out for days and deploy to anywhere for weeks to years. No longer do I have to know if the garden beds need to be watered.

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#167

Post by austinthetaco »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #160
austinthetaco wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the rules arent clear, which is why 97.403 and 97.405 have been argued nauseam for a VERY long time. It's intentionally vague so that some people cant claim being out of soap as an emergency. But during a real emergency (someone had a heart attack on the floor, you're being chased by an axe murderer, etc) every single representative has said that the spirit of those parts covers the person. I don't disagree that peop…

It's not actually vague, if they wanted "everyone" to do that, they'd use "everyone","anyone" or some similar wording, not specifically limit the exception to amateur station. Someone chose that for a reason, and it's a good reason... even licenced hams can cause trouble (eg. forget to turn off a simplex repeater on a radio, "mars mod" it and then jam the fire department frequencies with it,... a few weeks ago), and…

You're arguing for why people shouldn't buy a ham for prepping without a license or weirdly arguing that someone who is totally unprepared should've just happened to have a garmin on them. Realistically most people aren't toally prepared. A wife went to a remote cabin with their husband who is a ham op and has a heart attack, someone falls off a cliff while taking a photo of someone with their phone and the only thing is a mobile vhf/uhf radio in their car, etc etc etc. there are countless reasons why someone unlicensed might end up needing to transmit on amateur bands in an emergency, which again is why it's vague. You're claiming its not even though FCC enforcers themselves have said otherwise, so you should probably go argue with the fcc instead of strangers on the internet.

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#168

Post by austinthetaco »

walrus01 wrote: post #165
austinthetaco wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're denigrating HAM radio folks. They have in fact historically already been useful and critical in emergencies, most recently in 2024 for hurricane Helene. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean its not. I mean RACES is even a whole thing explicitly outlined because the government realizes the value of some ham radio operators.

It takes real money and infrastructure to build resilient emergency communication networks on a county or state sized scale. And HAMs just don't have it. Go look at the budget documents for the tower sites and entire radio communication networks that support public safety networks (police, fire, ambulance) on a scale of somewhere the size of King County, WA. Properly engineered hilltop tower sites with well maintaine…

You're moving goalposts here. They have already been involved in emergency communication numerous times, its not the most optimal emergency communication, but critical nonetheless because of it's decentralized and among-the-people nature. Some elmer with 80ft tall tower in his backyard sometimes has a better chance at communicating with random operators that are at the location of a post-disaster scenario. If you don't want to look at helene, look at 9/11 where they became the primary communication for some red cross, medical facilities and personnel, and even new york's OEM.

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#169

Post by [deleted] »

pluralmonad wrote: post #145
RobotToaster wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda, most hams are very rhadamanthine about following every tiny rule to the letter, or their even stricter interpretation of the spirit. The type of people who complain about young people not joining the hobby while insisting on maintaining strict licensing rules and tests. It's very much the polar opposite of hacker ethic.

The two biggest ham people I've known both, independently and separated by years, discussed enjoying war driving looking for "pirate" radio signals that they can report to the FCC. Amusing to find this is a cultural aspect of ham radio licensees.

[deleted]

Re: MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

#170

Post by RobotToaster »

ctime wrote: post #142
RobotToaster wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda, most hams are very rhadamanthine about following every tiny rule to the letter, or their even stricter interpretation of the spirit. The type of people who complain about young people not joining the hobby while insisting on maintaining strict licensing rules and tests. It's very much the polar opposite of hacker ethic.

Off topic but rhadamanthine? Is this word zeitgeist now?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Rhadamanthine

It's just a word I like to use, it has a nice sound to it.

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