infrastructure

I turned, iPhone and MeshCore tracker in hand. “Okay,” I told my best friend, all geared up to infodump, “look at this.” I extended my phone toward her. “That’s the public channel. And here’s where you make a private encrypted channel, for friends and family. Like, uhh, IRC.” There are antennae all over our area, I explained—on rooftops mainly—but some people hang a solar antenna in a tree when they go camping, creating a temporary canopy of radio coverage. “My GPS is turned off right now,” I continued, “but I’d share my location with you. And I think that’s the difference. I don’t want to share my location with Apple, I don’t want my location to determine whether my insurance premiums go up. I want you to know where I am, not… Adam and Eve and all their descendants to know where I am.” My friend was laughing. I’d texted her the night before. “I’m going all-in on a new hobby,” I’d started. Oh, how cool! Her husband had been trying to get her into ham radio, she explained. (“Girls…