Although a 4G module like a ublox is pretty easy to throw on a PCB, most of those things are just a couple chips inside so it just seems like there's not a lot of repairs other than just swap out the module. I've seem those modules in the $20 range, seems like a lot of work to get around the licensing fees on a $20 module?
Just curious, what would the advantage of having an "Open 4G USB Dongle" be ? Why not just get a Ublox or similar module ?
Even if it's open you still have to pay usage on the carrier's network.
He reminds me of Scott Adams, Creator of the Dilbert Cartoons started with PacBell way back and got a lot of early inspiration from that experience. Maybe this guy should consider becoming a full time cartoonist as well instead of going to work for another "evil tech giant" ?
Another dumb story from "back in my day". When I was in college way back in 1976, me and my Best friend back then both had graduated early and had to live in the dorm the first year until we were 18. The dorm they made us stay in was 6 stories and had a crappy old elevator. Being a couple of goofy hacker types with nothing better to do on a weekend, we figured out how to get up on top of the elevator and to use the alternate control panel up there. We sat up there and could control it, people would get on, we could listen to them talk, stop the elevator between floors and they would get all scared, we would flicker the lights on and off, make it go to the wrong floor and so forth. Pretty fun stuff for a couple of nerds.
We got bored with that pretty quickly until, 4 gals form the girls floor decided they were going to camp out in there and set the Guinness record for the longest stay in an elevator. Some of the bigger dudes knew that we had hacked the elevator and asked us if we wanted to mess them up. Well... Of course. So we got on top and were listen to them yakkedy yak. Then we took it to between the 6th and 5th floors and locked it in place, then opened the upper doors on the 6th floor where a bunch of guys with big trash cans full of water were waiting.
We thought they were just going to douse them good. So we opened the ceiling trap door to the elevator with the lights off and those gals were screaming and squealing like crazy. Then come dude tossed a string of fire crackers in there followed by two giant Garbage cans of water right after that. Must have been at least a couple hundred gallons of water, who knows.
Then we set the thing to go to the first floor and jumped off. Waiting on the first floor where a bunch of people who were in on it with cameras to capture the whole things as the doors opened it was like the seas parting and flooding out as these poor drenched young ladies came floating out. Picture was on the front page of the school paper "Guinness Elevator Record Attempt Drenched" or something.
They called the cops and all that but no one squealed on us and it was all in good fun but to teach everyone a lesson they shut down the elevators for 3 weeks. Young people don't care, worth a climb of the stairs for all the fun!
BTW, I ended up marrying one of the gals on the elevator and yes I told her I was in on it, later. She loved that for some reason :)
When I was 11 yrs old, me and my best friend who lived about a mile away would stay up late at night yaking on our CB walkie talkies with the lights off in our bedrooms late at night We thought it was the greatest thing ever, our parents could not, or, well, just didn't understand how, to listen in. I guess that was the internet of the say (1970's hehe).
You know, I cannot tell you how many inventions I have been involved with that started out as a few of us just joking around. I bet there is a cool theory or name for this, but sometimes, humor has a way of sort of shaking loose peoples imaginations.
hahaha, you never know :)
It would be hilarious if you guys end up with something cool from it. Shug.
The earlies version I saw of this was way back in my Bell Lab days, there was a program called foggy (I think it actually came with early versions of UNIX), I actually still have the original source someplace I think. It was very basic, lead ins, transitions, objects then randomness. Mine was based on that with some tweaks. But these new ones out there are AMAZING.
Ya, we had a VP who somehow some sales guy got to and showed him a "magical" Network Management system by showing a carefully staged demo. It took forever to talk him down.
This reminds me of a practical joke a co-worker and I pulled some years back, we made up a new project called the LMNOP project (just letters out of the alphabet). We used a program i wrote based on the old foggy where whenever we would see a good BS line from an email or document we put it in the BS generator DB. We had the program spit out several pages of total BS and some fake but impressive looking diagrams made up of a bunch of boxes with random letters as labels and lines between them. We did put some actual sentences of our own in the beginning and end to hype it.
Then we set the trap and left it on the copy machine half copied and walked off. Within a couple of days, bootleg copies were flying around and someone scanned it in and it was being emailed around. A lot of people in our department and even other departments were asking about it. If someone asked us we would say "sorry I can't discuss it" in a very mysterious way. Then we started hearing other people saying that same phrase when they were asked about it.
The whole things started to take on a life of it's own, we joked about how it was like a Dilbert come true and there would be an entire team headed by a director with a budget running a program that was fake.
Of course that never happened, our director called me in and had a copy of the fake document, and said "this looks like something you may have had something to do with ?". I laughed and said just having a bit of fun. She sent out a blast email telling everyone that it was a practical joke gone viral and for everyone to ignore it.
Even so, for a long time people kept coming up with conspiracy theories that was a cover story.
It just shows how people like believing stupid stuff.
I worked for Bell Labs in the 70's (78 - 81) it was really cool and fun. I was a recent masters college grad and they moved me around the country working on a bunch of interesting special projects, from swapping out cord board systems, recording data on cross bar systems, taking interesting data on old IMTS (old wireless) to get data for HC-MTS (later became AMPS wireless, 1G for the uninitiated). It was super fun. But I was working on a special project in Seattle and simply fell in love with the area and requested a transfer to the local company and never left. But, thank you Bell Labs, I think some newer companies like Google try to replicate what was happening back then. But it was pretty special. I hope someone does, not sure Google or others have quite captured it. Anyhow, thanks for the fun pics.
When I was in college back in 1978, a friend of mine who was studying Environmental Science explained it to me, calling it the greenhouse effect. He said that within 40 to 50 years it would cause severe environmental events, droughts, fires, heat waves and so on. I thought, well, 40 to 50 years, we have a lot of time, we won't have to worry about that for a long time. Funny how fast 50 years goes by.
I would say, everyone should listen to the environmental scientists.
are bit coins a measure of value ?
are karma points a measure of anything ?
what is money ?
what is value ?
what is a measure ?
maybe points are points ?
I think this just shows that for most of these guys, the dollars are a way of score keeping, they don't actually care about the trappings of wealth other than making rockets or whatever, which is just another score card, who gets to go in orbit first etc.
So, crazy idea here, what if we set up a way that they can actually give their money to people who actually need it while they get to keep their "dick measuring points".
In other words, here is the score card for each super rich guy, Bezos, Musk, Gates, etc. etc. you keep your points, so you have your bragging rights or whatever, but people who are in need of help get the actual dollars which you obviously can never spend, cannot possibly need etc. etc. You give it to people who need it but keep your dumbass "karma points" just like the dummies on Hacker News who care about that or whatever.
Although a 4G module like a ublox is pretty easy to throw on a PCB, most of those things are just a couple chips inside so it just seems like there's not a lot of repairs other than just swap out the module. I've seem those modules in the $20 range, seems like a lot of work to get around the licensing fees on a $20 module?