As Twitter descends into hellhole that Elon Musk is making it into, more hams are showing up on Mastodon, a “non-profit, abuse-free social network based on open web standards and principles.” I am @[email protected]. Mastodon.Radio is a space for the amateur (ham) radio community and anyone interested in shortwave listening (SWL). It’s run by Christopher, M0YNG. Thanks, Chris!
I’m finding it actually more interesting than Twitter for ham radio kinds of things. Here are three things that were in my feed yesterday.
FutureSDR WebAssembly SDR Live Coding
The author of FutureSDR, Bastian Bloessl, describes FutureSDR, as:
An experimental asynchronous SDR runtime for heterogeneous architectures that is:
- Extensible: custom buffers (supporting accelerators like GPUs and FPGAs) and custom schedulers (optimized for your application).
- Asynchronous: solving long-standing issues around IO, blocking, and timers.
- Portable: Linux, Windows, Mac, WASM, Android, and prime support for embedded platforms through a REST API and web-based GUIs.
- Fast: SDR go brrr!
Here, he does a little live coding that some of you might find interesting.
Open Ear
OpenEar is an open source ear training app for musicians that runs on Android phones and tablets. It includes exercises to help musicians master recognizing musical patterns. I’m wondering if it might also help those learning Morse Code. If you do download it and try it, let me know.
WTF?
Flashdancer (@[email protected]) shared this photo, noting, “I’m assuming that 403 years ago this person died very unexpectedly.”
Craig KD9UQE says
I will have to pass on Mastodon and continue with my decades long social media network that works just as well as before.
The blatant and contentious creation of Mastodon on the basis of political idealogy and association with the DNC and all things Progressive or Liberal is not in keeping with the neutrality and good ethics of the Amateur Radio Operator going back 100 years as a stated position. Twitter has not made itself aligned with any particular political party or ethos nor should it be. Equality and Free speech is meant to encourage good natured debate and free exchange of ideas and philosphy. When any group seeks to take control of that venue and limit a particular group on the basis of not liking them or even to go so far as to adopt the culture war position of canceling those we don’t agree with, then regardless of the validity or ethical position that party falls on the wrong side of history comfortably in the league of Germany 1930s Socialists, 1950s McCarthy and currently the Communist party of China.
We of the community of Amateur Radio should never espouse religious, political or pop culture in our association both on the air and in social media lest we drive future operators away from the joy and service opportunities we experienced with a neutral and welcoming society of radio geeks.
I take no umbrage with Elon Musk unless he seeks to marginalize us for not becoming aligned with any contentious groups currently battling for control over society, especially with us so called older and wiser members affecting novice and younger operators and even those who are not typically attracted to radio like YL, grandmas, and other non traditional operators. I hope you can see the wisdom of not being associated with current groups in society.
Dan KB6NU says
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I disagree. There are a lot of liberal thinkers on Mastodon, but the #hamradio discussions are interesting and more engaging than I’ve found Twitter to be lately. To each his own, I guess.