Somewhere in my head I thought that cellphone transmissions operated under part 15, I guess I presumed that because it doesn't require a license to operate -- so wrong I am, it actually does require a license to operate under FCC Parts 22, 24, or 27 (Licensed Wireless Services), the service provider carries the licence which allows you to transmit without a individual licence..

The reason it even came to my mind was when I came across this recent 'United States V2x Communication Module Market 2026 Analysis and Forecast to 2035 Executive Summary' https://www.indexbox.io/store/united-states-v2x-communication-module-market-analysis-forecast-size-trends-and-insights/

Basically what it talks about how the V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) module manufacturers are hindered by the FCCs restrictive Part 15 rules

"...certified hardware that passes the stringent US automotive electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) tests per SAE J2954 and FCC Part 15. Supplier qualification cycles are long—typically 18–24 months—creating high barriers to entry for smaller component makers..." "...In short, FCC Part 15 turns what looks like a simple tech product into a multi-million dollar, multi-year regulatory gamble..."

"For nearly two decades, the auto industry focused on DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communications), a Wi-Fi-like technology.
Because DSRC operated like Wi-Fi, the vehicle itself acted as an independent radio station.
Under the old rules, any custom Wi-Fi-like radio transmitter built into a car required extensive testing under FCC Part 15 rules to ensure its signals did not leak or disrupt nearby electronics.
This setup placed the entire burden of proof, design loops, and testing costs on the automotive supply chain, resulting in a 24-month bottleneck.
In short: Transitioning to cellular means automakers can stop treating V2X like an unpredictable, unlicensed walkie-talkie (Part 15) and start treating it like a standard, highly regulated cellular device, which slashes months off the qualification timeline. "

Since they found the FCC rules so restricted they opted instead to utilize the licenced cellular network for their "V2X modules" to communicate.

"...FCC Part 15 acts as a legal and financial roadblock for companies trying to enter the U.S. automotive market. It is not just a paperwork step; it is a major hurdle that eliminates many smaller competitors..."

Now this is where it gets interesting.. to me anyway because it seems to reveal something else. I got curious just exactly what these V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) module do, and here's a general  rundown:

V2X  modules are small electronic components that allow a vehicle to wirelessly communicate in real time with its surrounding environment.

V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle): Cars broadcast speed and braking data to nearby cars to prevent crashes.

V2I (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure): Cars talk to traffic lights and road signs to optimize traffic flow.

V2P (Vehicle-to-Pedestrian): Cars detect smartphones carried by pedestrians or cyclists to avoid accidents.

V2N (Vehicle-to-Network): Cars connect to cellular networks for real-time navigation and weather updates.

Such components also allow cars to "see" around corners and through buildings where cameras and radar cannot, this is to prevent accidents, and also act for self-driving cars to coordinate, they reduce gridlock by letting vehicles sync with traffic management systems.

It all very interesting but all I can really see is an increase of big brother. Everything from your travels, your stops, your speed, your home tv viewing habits, the websites you visit, where and when you spend your money.. etc etc etc.. it keeps going. Every aspect, every movement of your existence is can be retrieved by the powers that be  at any time.

Is it just me but does that all feel unnerving? But it is what it is and it's only going to increase.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/china/chinese-dissident-fled-south-korea-dinghy-arrives-canada-rcna352094

HONG KONG — A Chinese political dissident who fled to South Korea last month in a dinghy has arrived in Canada, his friend said on social media on Saturday. Dong Guangping was aboard a 10.8-foot inflatable boat in the waters off a western South Korean island in May when he was detained by South Korea’s coast guard for allegedly violating the country’s immigration law. It was his fourth known attempt to flee China. ...

... his friend Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian activist, said Dong had landed in Toronto following an Air Canada flight on Friday.

“He just had a big bowl of noodles with eggs, tomatoes and shrimps,” she wrote in the post, adding that she has spent more than 10 years trying to get him out of China. ..

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/china/chinese-dissident-fled-south-korea-dinghy-arrives-canada-rcna352094

_________________________________

Telephone's Rise Was Shaped by Courts and Lobbying, Not Just Wires, Historians Say
The patent Bell filed in 1876 never described a speaking telephone. His lawyers later argued it did. ....
https://broadbandbreakfast.com/telephones-rise-was-shaped-by-courts-and-lobbying-not-just-wires-historians-say/

Excerpts:

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2026 — Three communications historians examined the first 50 years of the American telephone industry, from Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 patent through 1926, .... A patent that predated the invention. A single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court did more to make Bell the telephone's sole recognized inventor than his own patent did, .... .. Bell's 1876 patent never mentioned transmitting speech, and he had not yet transmitted an intelligible word when he received it, Beauchamp said. A teacher of the deaf with expertise in sound rather than electrical engineering, Bell had set out to build a "harmonic telegraph," a high-capacity system designed to send multiple signals over a single wire, not a device for transmitting voice. ....

The broad legal theory that ultimately defined Bell's patent rights came from his lawyers, not from Bell himself, Beauchamp said. The night before his first major patent trial, Bell wrote to his wife complaining that his own lawyers "don't understand this at all." The lawyers’ argument won anyway, fighting off hundreds of competing claims through the 1880s from rivals ...

Internal AT&T correspondence from the 1890s and 1900s shows a minority of company executives, dismissed internally as "ridiculous dreamers,"  believed telephone service could be profitably sold to farmers, working-class households, and women for social conversation, Fischer said....

https://broadbandbreakfast.com/telephones-rise-was-shaped-by-courts-and-lobbying-not-just-wires-historians-say/

https://youtu.be/gN5XUR2Zf5Y?si=vG-DlqKVOXCc9OdZ

7 Beatles Lyrics Fans Have Been Mishearing for Decades
https://www.mentalfloss.com/entertainment/music/beatles-lyrics-fans-mishearing-decades

Lyric: "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes"
What listeners think they hear: “A girl with colitis goes by”

Lyric: "Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye"
What listeners think they hear: "Yellow mud of custard or yellow butter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye"

Lyric: "She's got a ticket to ride"
What listeners think they hear: "She's got a tick in her eye"

Lyric: "The banker never wears a mac"
What listeners think they hear: "The banker never wears a mask"

Lyric: "Paperback writer"
What listeners think they hear: "Take the back right turn"

Lyric: "Desmond has a barrow in the marketplace"

What listeners think they hear: "Desmond has a barrel in the marketplace"

Lyric: "And I'll send all my loving to you"
What listeners think they hear: "And I'll send all my laundry to you"

"It is a very common misconception that only movies made before 1931 are in the public domain! .. ... Because many studios went bankrupt, considered their old films worthless, or simply forgot to file the paperwork, the vast majority of films from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s never had their copyrights renewed. This is why famous later movies—like John Wayne's Angel and the Badman (1947) or Cary Grant's His Girl Friday (1940)—are legally in the public domain today."

High Hat (1937)

• The Plot: An elite opera singer (Dorothy Dare) finds her career stalling and reluctantly transitions to commercial radio. She clashes with the station's producers when they pressure her to sing popular "swing" music instead of classical pieces.
• Why it matters: The film culminates in a studio variety program, offering a detailed visual representation of what a live 1930s radio station broadcast looked like behind the scenes.

---

The Loudspeaker (1934)

• The Plot: A charismatic but overly confident young man from a small town (Ray Walker) heads to New York City determined to become a famous radio star. He achieves massive success on the airwaves, but his skyrocketing ego threatens to alienate his friends and family.
• Why it matters: It is an early look at the culture of instant celebrity created by the rise of national network broadcasting.

---

The Ghost Breakers (1940)

• The Plot: Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope) is a popular Manhattan radio broadcaster who accidentally gets caught up in a murder misunderstanding and flees to Cuba. Together with an heiress, he ends up investigating a haunted castle.
• Why it matters: While it transitions into a horror-comedy, the opening act relies heavily on Lawrence’s profession as a radio commentator to drive the plot forward

 

Why Wisconsin Has Speed Limit Signs With Decimal Points https://www.jalopnik.com/2181718/why-some-wisconsin-speed-limit-signs-have-decimal-points/

"... a recycling and solid waste facility in Appleton, Wisconsin, about 107 miles north of Milwaukee, believes it has a trick to get the attention of even habitual speeders: a posted 17.3 mph speed limit. .... in an attempt to catch the eyes of passing vehicles and force awareness of the low, oddly specific speed limit. .. "Why 17.3? Because it makes you pause. It makes you look twice. And most importantly, it breaks that 'autopilot' feeling we can all fall into when driving familiar routes." ... 

After posting the unusual speed limit sign, Kraig Van Groll, the superintendent of solid waste at the recycling facility, told Supercar Blondie that all vehicles coming through the facility's parking lot "have started moving through the facility differently." .... A few years ago, a parking lot in Colorado Springs, Colorado, posted an even-lower speed limit of just 8.2 mph. The sign in the parking lot didn't look nearly as official, but it got similar attention from passing motorists. ..."

The point of the strange speed limit sign is to catch drivers off-guard and shake them out of their autopilot mode, which may work the first time or two passing by the sign, but like everything in life, its novelty and thus effectiveness is likely to wear off with repeat visitors. What do you think, would seeing a 17.3 mph speed limit sign cause you to think twice about speeding?

Read More: https://www.jalopnik.com/2181718/why-some-wisconsin-speed-limit-signs-have-decimal-points/

How natural selection helps design antennas, cancer treatments and adhesives
by Owen D. Jones, The Conversation
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-natural-antennas-cancer-treatments-adhesives.html
NASA had a big—and little—problem. For a small satellite, the agency needed a tiny antenna, with very specific communication capabilities and very strict limits on size and weight. The agency gave the problem to a design team adept at simulating the way natural selection engineers solutions.
Design using natural selection is based on a simple but powerful idea with broad applications across the world: When variation in replicable traits exists, and some variants succeed more than do others .... ..
The NASA team adapted that idea to work inside a computer. ... Repeated over many cycles, this process quickly refined the programs that produced antenna designs until a design outperformed a human-designed version—with stronger signal, greater range, and lower energy use—and took less time to develop. It was built, was launched into space in 2006, and performed admirably for the planned 90-day duration of the mission. To me, as a professor of both law and biology, that success points to a broader truth: When people harness the logic of natural selection, they can often find efficient and effective ways to solve complex problems. ..."

https://phys.org/news/2026-05-natural-antennas-cancer-treatments-adhesives.html

I do have several cell phones - less for communication than a handy repository for music and other stuff.  My go-to cell phones are both from Asia - both have eye protection features and one has, in fact, an e-ink display.  That's because of a medical condition I have.

Both also support VOLTE (LTE calls) and one supports 5G.

Well, my carrier is phasing out 3G, and it turns out that they have a strict whitelist of allowed phones for VOLTE services.  My calls, when I do them, drop the network down to 3G (which I hadn't noticed - that's how much I use voice calling).   I've just been informed that effective next month, the carrier will charge a premium for 3G use, and it will go away within a year.

It turns out that most phones aren't compatible with my carrier's VOLTE; basically, only phones that the carrier sells will work on the network.  Talk about unethical business practices!  The CRTC way back in the 2000 and teens mandated that all cell phones sold in Canada had to be sold unlocked (to force competition), and this is one way of getting around that edict.

As far as I can tell, no other Canadian carrier does this.  I just verified that my phones should work with the other major carrier in the country, and can go into one of their stores and use a test SIM to check out that claim.

So in the grand spirit of competition, I will do just that, and if they work, will be switching carriers.  I will also let my current carrier (Telus) know why I am switching.

It took me a long time to find an eye friendly cell phone (the e-ink one) and I'll be darned if I have to give it up due to anti-competition actions on the part of a large corporation.

Today’s bans on DIY repairs of everything from cell phones to tractors grew out of Hollywood’s fear of videotaping
Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, Miami University Published: May 22, 2026 8:47am EDT
https://theconversation.com/todays-bans-on-diy-repairs-of-everything-from-cell-phones-to-tractors-grew-out-of-hollywoods-fear-of-videotaping-280990
Excerpts:
"Repairing electronics and household appliances has not been a real option in the United States for decades now,  ... .. Absurd situations have proliferated. It can cost about the same to buy a new printer as it does to replace the ink cartridge. The U.S. Department of Defense cannot repair the weapons systems it purchases because the intellectual property rights remain with the manufacturer. John Deere, the farming equipment company, doesn’t allow farmers to access the software needed to repair their own tractors because, while the purchase covers the physical machinery, it does not cover the software. ... in addition to cost and frustration for consumers, is environmental harm. ...

The right-to-repair movement emerged in response, calling for people to be able to repair what they purchase, .... Right to repair seems to be a rare area of bipartisanship in Congress. The Warrior Right to Repair Act – introduced in 2025 by a Democrat – and the Repair Act – introduced by a Republican – are two ongoing legislative initiatives to create a federal legal framework that would make it easy and cheap for American users to repair their devices. Both bills are fiercely opposed by industry groups. .. ... the origins of the legal and technical obstacles to product repairs lie in debates in the 1980s over new media and copyright guardrails. ... The rapid rise and popularity of video cassette recorders, or VCRs, in the late 1970s transformed films and TV shows from transient experiences into tangible consumer goods. ... Hollywood was alarmed ... and tried to stop the technology. Today’s repair bans are part of that story. ...

When the film studios took Sony to court to stop the production and sale of video recorders in 1976, they argued that Sony’s product encouraged copyright infringement. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that taping TV content for personal use did not violate copyright law, expanding the understanding of fair use. The industry then focused on finding a technological solution to the piracy problem ..... ..Then came digital rights management. .. to control user access to content. ... It increased existing penalties for copyright infringement online and criminalized any technology used to bypass technological locks. .. Since 1998, more and more consumer products, ... use microchips and proprietary software protected by copyright. Because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, third party repairers cannot alter or bypass the proprietary software. ... When getting a product repaired becomes almost as expensive as buying a new one, many consumers will choose to buy and throw repairable items away. ....."

https://theconversation.com/todays-bans-on-diy-repairs-of-everything-from-cell-phones-to-tractors-grew-out-of-hollywoods-fear-of-videotaping-280990