Tech Talk on ABC Radio - Apple goes low

This week on ABC Nightlife I spoke with Rod Quinn about Apple's new MacBook Neo, a sub-$1000 laptop that competes very well with Windows laptops in that price range. Apple has made some compromises but kept their quality standards up.

We discussed the US AI controversy where Antrhopic, makers of Claude, asked the Department of Defence to not use its products for widespread domestic suveillance or autonomous weapons. DOD would not agree to those limitations and has done a deal with OpenAI, who presumably are ok with that.

Finally, the ban on social media for Australians under 16 introduced in December seems to be spreading with Indonesia announcing they'll introduce it gradually from March. They join Denmark, France, Germany, Malaysia, Spain, the UK and Greece in either announcing or at least considering a ban.

Too early to know how effective it's been in Australia but we do see that VPNs are booming...

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/nightlife-tech-talk-with-peter-marks/106439260

FreeDV Sunday net - Good rollup, four states

The Russian FSK transmissions were very strong this morning which ruled out using 7045 so I parked the net on 7177 and didn't expect too many stations to find me but there was no problem. 

Stations heard: VK2AGU, VK2AWJ, VK2KNC, VK3GTP, VK3KEZ, VK3PCC, VK3PTR, VK3ZD, VK5AG, VK5KVA, VK7DMH, VK5ST, VK3CDH, VK2KO, VK5ST, VK2BLQ and me, VK3TPM.

A warm shout out to Joe VK3SRC who several stations credited with helping them with various aspects of getting FreeDV going nicely. Thanks Joe!

Also a shout out to Dave who's OpenWebRX+ is now decoding FreeDV RADEV1 over at Normanville.

FreeDV Sunday net - conducted with C client

I've been working on my C port of the FreeDV app's main functionality over recent weeks. It's really just a proof of concept but yesterday I got reporting to qso.freedv.org working which made it practical to run today's net. That feature, combined with a minimal implementation of Hamlib, just enough to read transceiver status and turn transmit on and off, has made the app quite usable.

The app worked smoothly and the following stations were seen: VK5RT, VK5LN, VK5LO, VK5KVA, VK5AG, VK5ABE, VK3ZUM, VK3XCI, VK3UBK, VK3PCC, VK3KEZ, VK3GTP, VK3CDH, VK3BAL, VK2KO, VK2DWG, VK2CJB, VK2BLQ, VK2AWY, VK2TTL and me, VK3TPM.