Month: October 2019

Enlarge / Lostik is plugged in to the left USB port of this Samsung Chromebook running GalliumOS Linux. It's currently transmitting packets, using the sample sender.py utility, from a basement about 15 feet underground. (credit: Jim Salter)

A lot of readers commented on our earlier report on Sure-Fi long-range, low-bandwidth RF chirp communicators that we should test generic Lora gear. Lora is the open standard that Sure-Fi began with and built on top of, and it's available in a variety of inexpensive kits. Most of those kits are aimed at low-level maker-style integration with IoT gear like Arduino, but I found a couple of preassembled kits with generic USB interfaces suitable for use with regular x86 computers. One of those, Lostik, had consistently better user reviews and glowingly boasted of its "extensive documentation," so we picked a pair up for $46 apiece and got to testing.

We should be clear about one thing up front—nobody should claim that any Lora device has "extensive documentation" with a straight face. Lostik seems to have more documentation than any of its competitors, but figuring out exactly what it would do felt like learning to play pirated video games in the 1980s. What we eventually discovered was that Lora devices are sort of like dial-up modems all connected to a single party line—they run on serial interfaces over which they can be issued commands and can send or receive data.

It's possible to use a generic terminal emulator (at 57,600bps, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity) to communicate directly with Lostik, but you'll need to understand its commands—analogous to the Hayes AT modem commands of yore—if you do. That was a bridge too far for us, so we said the heck with it and just lightly modified the ./sender.py and ./receiver.py sample scripts from Lostik's Github repository and used them for some simple range testing. These scripts don't require (or offer) any kind of authentication or pairing; any Lora device running receiver.py will successfully receive data from any Lora device running sender.py within its effective range.

Enlarge / Taika Waititi plays a young Nazi boy's imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, in his new film Jojo Rabbit. (credit: YouTube/Fox Searchlight)

There's a very fine line between successfully mining Hitler and Nazi Germany for laughs and distasteful "jokes" that land with an ignominious splat. Director Taika Waititi navigates that treacherous tightrope perfectly in Jojo Rabbit, his bittersweet new dramedy based on the novel, Caging Skies, by Christine Leunens. The film will definitely make you laugh, but be forewarned: it may also break your heart.

Waititi's film defies easy categorization. Let's just call it an absurdist dramedy. It's being touted as a satire, and the marketing has emphasized the humorous elements, but the WWII setting also calls to mind darker fare like Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds (2009). Several critics have compared it to the Oscar-winning 1997 Italian film, Life Is Beautiful, directed by and starring Roberto Benigni as a Jewish father shielding his son from the horrors of a WWII concentration camp by pretending it's all an elaborate game.

Jojo Rabbit falls somewhere in between. It has more warmth and heart than the former and more of a savage edge than the latter. And while Waititi cites Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and the 1988 black comedy Heathers as influences, tonally, Jojo Rabbit also owes quite a lot to Waititi's charming 2016 film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

Enlarge / The "Make It Rain" mission launches in June 2019 from Rocket Lab's spaceport in New Zealand. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Rocket Lab has successfully begun to transform into an operational launch company this year, with five successful Electron missions in 2019 and the promise of a couple more before the year ends. In accomplishing this, it has become the world's first private company to develop a low-cost rocket for small satellites.

Moreover, it continues to set performance milestones. With its "As the Crow Flies" mission earlier this month, Rocket Lab set a new altitude record for the company by sending a 20kg payload to a 1,200km circular orbit. But now, the US-based company that launches primarily from New Zealand has set its sights much, much higher.

On Monday, Rocket Lab announced that with its "Photon" upper stage it will be able to send small payloads all the way to lunar orbit. “Small satellites will play a crucial role in science and exploration, as well as providing communications and navigation infrastructure to support returning humans to the Moon," Peter Beck, the company's chief executive, said in a news release. "They play a vital role as pathfinders to retire risk and lay down infrastructure for future missions."