I resisted WhatsApp until we started cruising with our sailboat. So many processes require WhatsApp. In many places you can't do customs and immigration without it.
Well, maybe not 100% true. There might still be the remnant of an old paper-based process around, but since nobody uses it, it would be a recipe for spending days queuing in random offices.
Once we're back in Europe, it will be a happy moment when I can finally uninstall the app.
I will be trying git over Reticulum for my next project. Fully peer-to-peer including issue tracking and releases. Reticulum itself already moved over, maintaining GitHub just as a mirror
I think the reasonable way to look at LLMs is similar to how you'd work with junior developers. They can churn out code, but do need constant guidance. Of course, (some of the) real juniors will eventually become seniors. It remains to be seen if LLMs will.
The traditional longer-range P2P is HF radio and maybe Winlink email on that. APRS over HF is also possible, and Reticulum would be too if hams were allowed to use encryption.
On the passage from Panama to Polynesia we had daily HF radio contact with Hawaii and California. Sometimes radio weather was pretty bad, but generally it worked out.
In practice nowadays passage communications for 99% of boats is WhatsApp over Starlink, with maybe Garmin InReach as backup.
I think there are people playing with Halow with Reticulum. That's one advantage of having a multi-transport system. There is also a Bluetooth transport now:
https://salemdata.net/johnpress/?p=720
I'm looking at setting up rngit mirrors of all my repos on our boat NAS. Conceivably it also allows issue tracking and collaboration without centralized infra
A few boats, yes. But it is still a "new thing". Before leaving Panama I ordered a stack of cheap Heltec V3 Meshtastic boards so we can give some to our buddy boats
We are in the South Pacific with our sailboat, and are using Meshtastic every day to talk between ourselves and with various buddy boats. The boat has a solar-powered repeater (CLIENT_BASE) on the mast that increases communications range significantly.
This all works great with no local SIM cards or other subscriptions or infrastructure needed.
We plan to run experiments with Reticulum when we stop for the cyclone season. Reticulum would open a lot more possibilities with both LoRa and internet-based comms. The Columba app seems to do a lot to bridge the usability gap, but work will need to be done to integrate Reticulum with our boat systems the way we have with Meshtastic (alerting, telemetry, digital switching control).
The salaries are indeed lower, but you get so much more for the money. Better healthcare, better food, livable cities. Lots of major cost items like a car (or three!) are things you can simply skip.
> a person working with a bunch of agents is a lot more productive than just a person
[citation needed]
I try LLMs for something every couple of months, and I have yet to see them produce anything actually correct. Calling non-existing library methods, confabulations, etc.
But sure, they produce a lot of stuff in a short while. The utility of any of that another question.
Now, I think the author would consider it "solutionism", but the other day I spent a bunch of time browsing Reticulum's NomadNet sites (using the Columba mobile app).
And while aesthetically it was more early 90s than 1999, it filled me not only with nostalgia, but also with some optimism for the future of the Internet. Something I haven't felt in a while...
More on http://bergie.iki.fi and https://lille-oe.de/
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/bergie; my proof: https://keybase.io/bergie/sigs/94Ea8rkF51hWAkqI5uBmafa01SABlUwEamPyaPswvoM ]