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3 apps to turn your old smartphone into a dashcam

By: Rich Hein

I used to spend a lot of time commuting, but these days I’m lucky enough to work remotely. My wife isn’t. She drives about 20 miles each way on busy highways, and like a lot of people, I worry about her every time she pulls out of the driveway. Late last year, I bought her a dashcam. It’s nothing fancy, just something recording in the background, but she really likes it and says it gives her peace of mind. That alone made it feel worth it to me.

Demonstrating The Sheer Lack Of Security In First Gen Cellular Networks

By: Lewin Day

Modern cellular networks are built to serve millions upon millions of users, all while maintaining strict encryption across all communications. But earlier cellular networks were by no means so secure, as [Nostalgia for Simplicity] demonstrates in a recent video.

The video begins with an anecdote β€” our narrator remembers a family member who could listen in on other’s conversations on the analog AMPS phone network. This was easily achieved simply by entering a code that would put an Ericsson handset into a test mode, in which it could be switched to tune in any desired AMPS channel. Since the communications were transmitted in a purely analog manner, with no encryption of any sort, any conversation on such a network was basically entirely open for anyone to hear. The video shows a recreation of this method, using a software-defined radio to spin up a low-power, very local AMPS network. A phone call is carried out between two handsets, with a third handset able to listen in just by using the special test mode.

If you’re particularly keen to build your own first-generation AMPS phone network, just know that it’s not really allowed due to rules around spectrum allocations. Still, it’s entirely possible as we’ve covered before. It doesn’t even take much hardware in our modern SDR era.

3 free, open-source apps that saved me from photo library chaos

By: Rich Hein

Managing a photo library is easy when it’s just yours. It got a lot harder for me when I also became responsible for keeping photos organized for my wife and mother-in-law. Different habits, different expectations, and everyone still wants their pictures to be easy to find and safely backed up. Over time, that turns into a messy sprawl of folders, duplicates, and β€œwhere did that photo go?” conversations.

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