Hi, I'm John VK4JPM with the Darling Downs Radio Club update. wow - what a week we just had.

The bimonthly lunch was excellent and well attended. It was great to see so many DDRCi members make the trip down to Nerang for the HamFest - thanks to GCARS for a wonderful day of information, HAM-appropriate bargains, and yummy stuff from the hotplate. Well done for the event. And .......

GOLD COAST AMATEUR RADIO SOCIETY

And that's a wrap, For another year at the Gold Coast Amateur Radio Society's annual HamFest.

It was a cracker * over 50 tables of goodies * over half of these were commercial providers with all the major brands represented * 7 dozen bacon and egg muffins * 150 sausages and more people snapping up bargains than we have seen for years.

We look forward to seeing you all next year at the Gold Coast Amateur Radio Society annual HamFest.

If you are up this way, drop into 85 Harper st Nerang on Saturdays at 1:30pm and say hi!

So until next time, for GCARS, Aidan VK4APM.

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking. . I recently watched an interesting segment from the German broadcaster, DW. We manage to adjust and adopt to the changes of technology that come into our lives. Maybe forty years ago we were telling children to turn off the lights when they left the room. This was to save electricity and reduce the bill. Maybe, 20 odd years ago the compact fluorescent lamp was gaining traction as a more efficient method of lighting than the Edison/Swan incandescent devices that had lit the world for roughly a century. Time has marched on and technology has brought us the more efficient LED, light emitting diode which has become the ubiquitous illumination source of the 21st century. More recently the world has been given access to a “holy grail” of the digital age, that of artificial intelligence. We are seeing AI incorporated into operating systems and search engines and multitudinous other forms of software and firmware and yet the underlying ethics of its use has not been decided and tabloid journalists and talking heads are speculating on science fiction like outcomes for this morally ill-defined tool. To digress a little but we have been told for many years that the tools of industry, mainly the chemistry which is used to progress our civilisation, is effecting calamitous changes to the environment which we inhabit. The outcome of this is believed to be producing devastating climate shifts that will alter all our lives. I note that whilst we are encouraged to not do anything that will damage the planet I have not heard the cries of pain that the conflicts in various parts of the globe are inflicting on our climate. Surely in some research units, there must be people trying to work out whether the explosions from the wars are negating the benefits of changing our form of lighting let alone our substitution of non-polluting electricity generation for for petrochemical and fossil fuels. This brings me back to the program. Three of the major internet colossi have joined the move to use nuclear technology to power the expected stupendous increase in electricity consumption used by AI. If the facts are correct, each major effort of AI to train itself for proper human interaction uses significantly more power than the course of living does now. What the multiple is I don’t know but the boffins and number crunchers at these behemoths of cyber business have concluded that without adopting nuclear power generation, they will not have the power to meet the expected growth of AI. It seems to be the height of ironic progress to self-destruction to be adopting technology which conflicts with the current results of massive scientific research. We as a species have been able to find alternatives and solutions to problems but if the straws in the wind are correct, can mankind survive its creative urges?

I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think….how about you?