Category: Wireless

ChatGPT Desktop App – Unofficial open source OpenAI ChatGPT desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux menubar

Although I have considerable misgivings about trusting AI for anything at this point in time, given its propensity to occasionally just make up answers that are total bulls&!t and invent facts out of thin air, a lot of people are still playing with it, and this software could make it more convenient to do so. Note that I have not personally tested this, so install and use at your own risk.

OpenAI ChatGPT desktop app for Mac, Windows, & Linux menubar using Tauri & Rust (Sonny Lazuardi / GitHub)

Steorn’s Stunning Orbo Claims: Neverending Electricity Produced at Point-of-use | Free Energy Times

Is this legitimate? I don’t know, but one reason I think it just might be is that it’s not making a totally outrageous claim, such as “you can run your entire home off of one of our devices.” No, this sounds more like a “Wright Brothers demonstration at Kitty Hawk” type of thing – right now it can only generate small amounts of current and the price is far too high to be practical, but if it works, it proves that something that most people thought impossible (free energy) might actually be possible. Give it a few more years of research and development (assuming all the people who want to work on it aren’t bought off, scared off, or killed off by the fossil fuel interests), and who knows where this could go. I’d be happy if it could just make phone, tablet, and laptop batteries a thing of the past!

If Orbo turns out to do what Steorn claims it does, the technology is simply stunning. What CEO Shaun McCarthy talks about in this video — a webinar for Steorn investors that was somehow made public — is that they have managed to make a power unit that puts out a steady electrical current indefinitely (well almost, McCarthy said that theoretically it could run for 800 years), without any kind of energy input needed.

Source: Steorn’s Stunning Orbo Claims: Neverending Electricity Produced at Point-of-use | Free Energy Times

Link: How to Set Up WiFi Hotspot in Windows 8

Last year, my roommate moved out of my apartment and ended up taking our wireless router. I didn’t want to wait for twenty-four hours for Amazon to send me my new router, so I decided to turn my PC into a wireless router (or hotspot). My PC, which was wired directly to my modem, turned out to be a great replacement for my router and allowed me to hook up to the internet via WiFi with my laptop and mobile devices.

There are two ways of turning your Windows 8 PC into a wireless router, and I will walk you through both.

Full article here:
How to Set Up WiFi Hotspot in Windows 8 (Make Tech Easier)

Link: Send an SMS Text Message from the Command Line

When you think of sending out text messages you probably think of the iPhone or an Android, and the command line doesn’t cross your mind, but thanks to the ever-useful curl command, you can send out a SMS text message to any phone number right from the Terminal.

Note that while this article comes from an OS X-related site, the technique shown should work in just about any version of Unix or Linux, as long as the curl command is supported.

Full article here:
Send an SMS Text Message from the Command Line (OS X Daily)

Link: How to Set up a Raspberry Pi as a Wireless Access Point

The Raspberry Pi can connect to a Wi-Fi network using a USB dongle but using that same dongle you can also turn your Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point. Once set up correctly, this will allow other wireless devices to connect to your Pi and optionally you can route any traffic out through the Ethernet port and on to the internet (via the router from your ISP).

However, before looking at the steps needed to get this working, a word of warning. The configuration needed can be a little complex and if things don’t work as they should then troubleshooting the problem can be difficult. Also for this to work correctly, you need a WiFi USB dongle that can work as an access point. The best place to find information about your particular dongle and the Raspberry Pi is on the embedded Linux Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi adapters page.

Full article here:
How to Set up a Raspberry Pi as a Wireless Access Point (Make Tech Easier)

Link: Setting up a Raspberry Pi as a WiFi access point

Would you like to use your Pi as a WiFi router? Or maybe have it as a special filtering access point? Setting up a Pi as an access point (AP) is a bit more advanced than using it as a client, but its still only a half hour of typing to configure. If you want to, this tutorial will make it so the Pi broadcasts a WiFi service and then routes internet traffic to an Ethernet cable. Since its all Linux you can go in and update or configure it however you like.

I used the following pages as a guide to create this tutorial, please note many of them will not work completely, but check them out if you are interested!

Currently tested working on Raspbian only

Full article here:
Setting up a Raspberry Pi as a WiFi access point (Adafruit Learning System)

We would not purchase a Raspberry Pi solely for this purpose, since you can probably buy a dedicated router that will act as an wireless access point for less than the price of a Raspberry Pi, power supply, SD Card, and WiFi adapter. But if you already have a Raspberry Pi that is loafing along doing some task that doesn’t make full use of its capabilities, this might be an extra task you could give it, particularly if it happens to be in a spot where WiFi reception is a bit spotty.

How to use Wiconnect in Ubuntu Linux to set up a WiFi access point that Android devices can connect to (NOT an ad hoc network!)

If you run Ubuntu Linux, and you have a wired ethernet connection to your system, and it also has wireless connectivity, then at some time you might have tried to set it up as a WiFi access point.  And what you probably discovered is that you can create a WiFi access point using Ubuntu’s “Create New Wireless Network” panel, but unfortunately this creates what is termed an “ad hoc” network, and for reasons we don’t fully understand, Android devices and some other types of wireless devices apparently can’t connect to that kind of network.

Ubuntu's method for creating a WiFi access point will NOT allow Android devices to connect
Ubuntu’s method for creating a WiFi access point will NOT allow Android devices to connect

Why this should be so difficult in Ubuntu is hard to fathom because Windows users can easily set up an access point using Connectify.  This provides an actual access point.  It turns out that there’s a similar program for Ubuntu but it’s not well known, because it’s not in the official Ubuntu repository.  The program is called Wiconnect Infrastructure Wireless Connection Manager and it is described as follows:

Wiconnect is an infrastructure wireless connection manager built specifically for ubuntu. This is an Ubuntu’s open source alternative for connectify. It aims to provide network that is compatible with android devices.
current features:
– Compatible to connect with android devices
– Flexibility to change wifi username and password
– ability to check devices that connects to your wifi

future aim :
– ability to create repeater
– a much better gui
– ability to check devices that connects to wifi via device name and not mac address

The program is hosted on Launchpad and is available as a .deb file.  So, go to the download page and download the software to your system.  Then, double click on the file once it’s been downloaded, and Ubuntu Software Center will load and display this:

Wiconnect Install page as displayed in Ubuntu Software Center
Wiconnect Install page as displayed in Ubuntu Software Center

Again, just in case you didn’t quite understand what we wrote above above, you cannot at this time find Wiconnect by searching for it in the Ubuntu Software Center – you have to download the .deb file and then double click on it to cause Ubuntu Software Center to bring up the above page. Once you read the page, if you want to install the software, just click the Install button. Once the software is installed, you need to run it to configure it. We have Classic Menu Indicator installed, and it appears under Other | Wiconnect, but you can also start it by going to the Dash and typing in Wiconnect. The first screen you will see when you invoke the program is this:

Wiconnect Connection tab
Wiconnect Connection tab

Before you go any further, you should check your network connections and make sure that “Enable Wireless” is on (there should be a check mark next to it) but also make sure you are not actually connected to a WiFi network. Unless you have two network adapters, you can’t both be connected to a WiFi network and simultaneously acting as an access point.

Now on the Wiconnect Connection screen, click the About tab to bring up this screen:

Wiconnect About tab
Wiconnect About tab

Click the button that reads “How to use this software” – it should bring up a text file that will help you if you get stuck at any point. Now click the Connection tab to go back the original screen, and then click the Setup/Resetup Wizard button. It will then bring up several screens asking for information:

Wiconnect Root Password window
Wiconnect Root Password window
Wiconnect Root Password confirmation window
Wiconnect Root Password confirmation window

The above two windows are asking for the password you use on your system when installing new software or making system changes. Some of what it has to do requires root privileges, so that’s why it needs the password.

Wiconnect Wifi Settings
Wiconnect Wifi Settings

On the above screen it wants you to enter the name of wireless network as it will be seen on your WiFi devices, also called the SSID. Use something unique, but not too personally identifying, so that if you are in an area where there are multiple WiFi networks you will be able to easily find your access point. As for the password, this might be called either the “password” or “key” on some devices, but you should use a really strong one here if you don’t want to be hacked. If you don’t have a program that you can use to generate a truly random password, then search online for a random password generator. The longer and more random the password is, the better. Remember that if a hacker can see your access point, he can run a program that can try millions of password combinations over time, so don’t make yourself an easy target.

Wiconnect Connection Settings
Wiconnect Connection Settings

On the above screen you need to select your internet source, which in most cases will be your wired ethernet connection on eth0.

Wiconnect Save Root Password query
Wiconnect Save Root Password query

On the screen above, it is asking whether you want to be prompted to enter your password any time you make a change, such as starting or stopping your wireless access point. By saving the root password, it won’t ask for it each time, but as it notes, that is less secure. If you are not the only user of your system, you probably do not want to save the root password, so that no one else can start or stop your access point without your permission. After you have answered that question, you should see this screen:

Wiconnect Setup Completed screen
Wiconnect Setup Completed screen

This completes the setup but doesn’t start your access point. To do that, go back to the original window and select the Connection tab:

Wiconnect Connect Tab, updated with correct ssid name
Wiconnect Connect Tab, updated with correct ssid name

Note that the SSID name should now be showing the name you selected (if not, you might need to restart Wiconnect). Now click the Create Connection button. After several seconds, your access point should be operational. Whenever you want to turn it off, click the “Stop Connection” button. Note that if you answered “No” to the question about saving the root password, then you will be prompted to enter it each time you start or stop the wireless connection.

Note that if your device (that you want to connect to your access point) asks you to specify what type of connection this is, it will be something like “WPA/WPA2 PSK” – the exact terminology may vary but the most important thing is that it is WPA2.

In case you are wondering, the Advanced tab in Wiconnect looks like this:

Wiconnect Advanced Tab
Wiconnect Advanced Tab

The first four buttons give you the ability to change individual settings in the configuration without re-running the entire setup. The fifth lets you see a report of what is connecting to your access point at any given time – with one device connected, it looks like this (the MAC address in the image has been replaced by x characters for security):

Wiconnect "Who is connected to my WiFi?" Window
Wiconnect “Who is connected to my WiFi?” Window

Just as a final note, we used this with Ubuntu 12.04, the most recent LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu, and it allowed us to create an access point that an Android tablet could connect to. It’s not the most beautiful program out there, but at least for us, it worked, and that’s what’s important. We particularly appreciated the convenience of being able to start or stop the access point just by clicking a button. But just in case anyone can’t seem to make this work, here’s another article that shows a bit different method to achieve nearly the same result:

How to Set Up a Wireless Hotspot (Access Point Mode) That Supports Android in Ubuntu (WebUpd8)

Hopefully one of these two approaches will get your access point working!

Link: 7 Apps To Help You Run Windows Programs On Another OS

So you have switched to another operating system, but still miss some of your favourite programs on Windows? Here are 7 app to help your run Windows program on your current platform!

Full article here:
7 Apps To Help You Run Windows Programs On Another OS (EFYTimes)

Two additional ways that we know of that are not mentioned in the article: Parallels, which is basically a virtual machine that integrates into the OS X or iOS platforms, so that you can run just about any Windows program, although you will need to have an actual copy of Windows to install, and the Parallels software itself is not free. But there is a free alternative: VirtualBox, which runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD (and, we’ve even heard reports of people running Android in VirtualBox). Here again you would need to have an actual copy of Windows (or your other preferred operating system) to install, but the VirtualBox software itself is freely available as Open Source Software (see their web site for details).

Links: How To Set Up A Wireless Hotspot (Access Point Mode) That Supports Android In Ubuntu

A wireless hotspot enables a computer to serve as a router over Wi-Fi. Ubuntu lets you easily create a wireless hotspot by using the Network Manager, but it uses an ad hoc network and most Android and Windows Phone devices can’t connect to such networks.
For this reason, I’ve created (in collaboration with Satya) a script called AP-Hotspot that automatically creates an infrastructure (Access Point mode) wireless hotspot in Ubuntu that should work with Android and Windows Phone devices. The script uses hostapd and dnsmasq and it requires Access Point mode support for your wireless card – AP-Hotspot checks for this automatically and won’t run if your wireless card doesn’t support it.

Full article:
How To Set Up A Wireless Hotspot (Access Point Mode) That Supports Android In Ubuntu (Linux A.I)
Alternate location of above article (WebUpd8)

If you don’t feel comfortable running a script, the script is based on these instructions, so if you want you can do it manually:

[GUIDE] Making infrastructure wifi hotspot on ubuntu 12.04/12.10 (xda developers)

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