IcedRaktajino

EAS (emergency alert system) alerts are issued for various local and/or national emergencies, and are frequently issued for severe weather events. As we enter tornado season in the US, I wanted to be able to receive and relay those over Meshtastic, specifically severe weather alerts, as an extra precaution since cell service often goes out after big storms.

I first setup a prototype setup on my laptop, but am planning to move the setup to a PiZeroW2 or a Banana Pi if the Raspi isn't up to the task. In addition to monitoring/relaying EAS alerts, I'm also going to pipe the audio to an Icecast source and then to an Icecast server so anyone on the local network can listen to it.

Got lucky in that today was the day they did the weekly EAS alert test and that I happened to have this running during the test. Everything surprisingly worked, which was nice. However, I wanted to tweak some things and needed a way to run my own tests. So I grabbed the audio sample from the Wikipedia page for SAME and piped that in which worked beautifully.

Requirements

• A Pi or other computer than can run rtl_fm
• A RTL-SDR dongle and antenna that can receive in the ~160-170 MHZ range (i.e. pretty much any FM radio antenna)
• A Meshtastic node connected over USB or TCP

Sending Test Alerts

If you want to test the setup without having to wait for a weekly test, you can download a sample SAME audio clip from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Same.wav). You'll need to convert the sample rate before you can use it, though.

$ ffmpeg -i Same.wav -ar 48000 same48.wav
$ cat same48.wav | Meshtastic-SAME-EAS-Alerter --test-channel 0
2026-04-02T15:32:31.172Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Successfully connected to the node.
2026-04-02T15:32:31.175Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Loaded locations CSV
2026-04-02T15:32:31.175Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Monitoring for alerts
2026-04-02T15:32:31.175Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Alerts will be sent to channel: 0
2026-04-02T15:32:31.175Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Test alerts will be sent to channel: 0
2026-04-02T15:32:31.201Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Begin SAME voice message: MessageHeader { message: "ZCZC-EAS-RWT-012057-012081-012101-012103-012115+0030-2780415-WTSP/TV-", offset_time: 47, parity_error_count: 0, voting_byte_count: 69 }
2026-04-02T15:32:31.201Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] No location filter applied (locations empty) or no locations in alert
2026-04-02T15:32:31.201Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Attempting to send message over the mesh: 📖Received Required Weekly Test from WTSP/TV, Issued By: Broadcast station or cable system, Locations: Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Sarasota
Connected to radio
Sending text message 📖Received Required Weekly Test from WTSP/TV, Issued By: Broadcast to ^all on channelIndex:0 
Waiting for an acknowledgment from remote node (this could take a while)
Received an implicit ACK. Packet will likely arrive, but cannot be guaranteed.
Connected to radio
Sending text message  station or cable system, Locations: Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, to ^all on channelIndex:0 
Waiting for an acknowledgment from remote node (this could take a while)
Received an implicit ACK. Packet will likely arrive, but cannot be guaranteed.
2026-04-02T15:33:11.227Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] End SAME voice message
2026-04-02T15:33:11.251Z WARN  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Program stopped, no longer monitoring

Working Prototype

This is the bash one-liner to start rtl_fm, tune it to the local NOAA frequency, and set the rate. That gets piped to tee which does 2 things currently:

1. The audio is piped to play so that I can listen to the broadcast on the laptop's speakers. This will eventually be piped to an Icecast source
2. Pipes the audio to the Meshtastic SAME EAS Alerter program (the project linked in this post) and configures its settings

When a SANE message is detected, the program decodes it and broadcasts it to the configured channel. Fun fact: the Screech. Screech. Screech you hear before a severe weather alert is actually the encoded version of the emergency alert and what this program decodes.

When I move this all to whatever flavor of Pi I end up using, that'll be wrapped in a systemd unit file so it can run headless and unattended.

$ rtl_fm -f 162.400M -s 48000 -r 48000 | tee >(play -q -r 48000 -t raw -e s -b 16 -c 1 -V1 -v 4 - sinc 125-3.2k) >(Meshtastic-SAME-EAS-Alerter --host 192.168.1.236 --test-channel 0) > /dev/null

Found 1 device(s):
  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Tuner gain set to automatic.
Tuned to 162652000 Hz.
Oversampling input by: 21x.
Oversampling output by: 1x.
Buffer size: 8.13ms
Exact sample rate is: 1008000.009613 Hz
Sampling at 1008000 S/s.
Output at 48000 Hz.
2026-04-02T14:20:49.702Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Successfully connected to the node.
2026-04-02T14:20:49.704Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Loaded locations CSV
2026-04-02T14:20:49.704Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Monitoring for alerts
2026-04-02T14:20:49.704Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Alerts will be sent to channel: 0
2026-04-02T14:20:49.704Z INFO  [Meshtastic_SAME_EAS_Alerter] Test alerts will be sent to channel: 0

Modern cars are packed with internet-connected widgets, many of them containing Chinese technology. Now, the car industry is scrambling to root out that tech ahead of a looming deadline, a test case for America’s ability to decouple from Chinese supply chains.

New U.S. rules will soon ban Chinese software in vehicle systems that connect to the cloud, part of an effort to prevent cameras, microphones and GPS tracking in cars from being exploited by foreign adversaries.

The move is “one of the most consequential and complex auto regulations in decades,” according to Hilary Cain, head of policy at trade group the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. “It requires a deep examination of supply chains and aggressive compliance timelines.”

Carmakers will need to attest to the U.S. government that, as of March 17, core elements of their products don’t contain code that was written in China or by a Chinese company. The rule also covers software for advanced autonomous driving and will be extended to connectivity hardware starting in 2029. Connected cars made by Chinese or China-controlled companies are also banned, wherever their software comes from.

Comcast's attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn't stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports:

The Q4 net loss is more than the 176,000 loss predicted by analysts, although not as bad as the 199,000-customer loss that spurred [Comcast President Mike Cavanagh's] comment about Comcast "not winning in the marketplace" nine months ago. The Q4 2025 loss reported today is also worse than the 139,000-customer loss in Q4 2024 and the 34,000-customer loss in Q4 2023.

"Subscriber losses were 181,000, as the early traction we are seeing from our new initiatives was more than offset by continued competitive intensity," Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said during an earnings call today, according to a Motley Fool transcript. Comcast's residential broadband customers dropped to 28.72 million, while business broadband customers dropped to 2.54 million, for a total of 31.26 million.

Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, "consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines." Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly "for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing." Comcast Connectivity & Platforms chief Steve Croney said the firm is facing "a more competitive environment from fiber" and continued competition from fixed wireless. "The market is going to remain intensely competitive," he said.

There have been a couple of posts somewhat recently asking what can be done to attract new users to the Fediverse. My answer was basically "make it something new people would want to see and stick around for". The crux of that was basically less news, less politics, less rage and more, well, anything else.

So, I would like to propose a challenge to all: Let's try that. At least for a week.

Sound good? Here's how you can participate:

1. If you're one who posts a lot of news/politics...stop or at least slow down. Post literally anything else. Or try to post less rage-inducing news and try to dig up the good news that's happening. Sorry !upliftingnews@lemmy.world but it's the regular news communities that are flooding the zone with every single bad thing that happens anywhere in the world, so we may be stealing some of your content with this one.

2. Think before posting something. Are you only posting it because you're mad about it and you think other people should be mad about it too? If so, maybe post something else. Is there already similar coverage of that? Chances are, we don't need more of it.

3. If you're a lurker, post something. Add your voice.

4. Refrain from upvoting / booting all the negativity. Yes, it may feel good to upvote for visibility because "people need to know this" but the end result is the feed turning into a list of things to rage about. If you see good/non-rage news, upvote that for visibility. I've seen many posts like that languish with a few tens of upvotes at most while the rage-inducing news gets hundreds of upvotes.

5. Post what makes you happy rather than what you're angry about.

6. Avoid dogpiling on people if they express a different opinion. I'm not saying feed the trolls or pat them on the head, just merely "disengage" or avoid the impulse to virtue dump on them and such.

7. If you have a hobby, share it! There's plenty of hobby communities that would greatly benefit from additional contributors. If you're boring like me, well, there's !Dullsters@dullsters.net or !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world (the latter welcomes all as the name is just a reference to the original)

8. If you're already doing the above: THANK YOU ❤️. Maybe consider posting a little more unless you think additional contributions would be spammy.

9. Anything else you can think of to make the homepage/experience feel more welcoming and less like an angry mob (suggestions in the comments are more than welcome).

I know not everyone will participate, and that's okay. Simply adding more positivity and posting/boosting less rage can have a positive effect on what shows up on /all which is what potential new users see by default.

So, let's try this for a week and see what happens. Who knows? Maybe the established userbase will find it refreshing as well.

Who's with me?

After dying a painful death at the hand of the iPhone’s revolutionary capacitive touchscreen, the QWERTY smartphone is rising up from the graveyard this year.

Whether it’s nostalgia for a physical keyboard, frustration at iOS’s ever-worsening software keyboard, or just plain boredom with glass slabs, companies are rebooting QWERTY phones this year for some reason.

At CES 2026:

• Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a “second phone” with a QWERTY keypad
• Unihertz also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff but with a bizarre square screen on the backside.

[T]wo QWERTY phone announcements in this still very new year suggest there may be some kind of trend. Maybe after 19 years of the iPhone and touchscreens defining the mobile experience, it’s time to go back to the physical keyboard and its more tactile typing.

Folks, we have some revolutionary sociological research to share with you today.

After making a guy dressed as Batman stand around in a subway car, a team of researchers found that the behavior of people around him suddenly improved the moment he showed up. No longer was everyone completely self-involved; with the presence of a superhero, commuters started helping each other more than they would’ve without him around.

Behold: the “Batman effect.”

The industry keeps echoing ideas from bleak satires and cyberpunk stories as if they were exciting possibilities, not grim warnings.

In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael Henry argues that today's tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi aesthetics and ideas -- often the parts that were meant as warnings -- and repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were originally cautionary tales to avoid. "The tech industry is delivering on some of the futuristic notions of late-20th-century science fiction," writes Henry. "Yet it seems, at times, bizarrely unaware that many of those notions were meant to be dystopian or satirical -- dismal visions of where our worst and dumbest habits could lead us."

You worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy," America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film about social decay.

The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety, with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the tech industry's boldest visions of the future.

The latest must-have accessory is a "stop-scrolling bag" -- a tote packed with analog activities like watercolors and crossword puzzles. We spend hours glued to our screens. "Analog bags," as they're also called, are one way millennials and Gen Zers are reclaiming that time. "I basically just put everything I could grab for instead of my phone into a bag," including knitting, a scrapbook and a Polaroid camera, says Sierra Campbell, the content creator behind the trend.

The 31-year-old keeps one bag at home in Northern California, carrying it from room to room, and another in her car. The trend has quickly spread on social media, part of a bigger shift to unplug. Roughly 1,600 TikTok posts were tagged #AnalogLife during the first nine months of 2025 -- up over 330% from the same period last year, according to TikTok data shared with Axios.

"It speaks to an incredible desperation and desire for experiences that return our attention to us, that fight brain-rotting, that are tactile ... that involve creating over scrolling," says Beth McGroarty, vice president of research at the Global Wellness Institute.