Considering that music, shows, movies, images, paintings and other cultural representations exist, then I fail to see how 'the arts have been a complete abortion'.
"Contributes nothing to civilization" - yet we fetishize Roman, Greek, and 'typical "good" artwork'.
The right wing discourse is about advocating the replacement of existing democratic law in place of the vedic laws just like the olden days of pre british era. Vedas are the Hindu religious book that provides structure by which a society should be run by dividing people in to varna system(caste system).
India can never go back to vedic days, simply because there is no incentive for all Hindus. All Hindus are not the same in Hinduism. Vedic book advocates only a particular caste should have monopoly over education and only another to the right of having weapons, etc. This worked well prior to british colonilzation because people were not educated and could not see the big picture. That changed after the british rule and every one was given education which woke enough people to see the bigger picture of caste system.
The right wing advocates know that just with Hinduism they can not unite. They need another religion to hate and unite over that hate. This is where ISLAM comes in. Indian Muslims like the rest of the world can not take a joke on koran or Allah. This is very convenient for the right wing to spread hate and unite people over it. In contrast there is lot of atheist movement especially in South India where they can trash talk Hindu gods and their scriptures on public media at least for now. South India is more progressive and educated compared to North states.
I would suggest not starting in the 2.4GHz band, the protocols used there (wifi, bluetooth) are very complicated to understand. Get a rtl-sdr and start with something simpler: FM broadcast (my blogpost: https://www.abclinuxu.cz/blog/jenda/2019/11/gnu-radio-first-..., there is even an example capture you can download and replay, so you can start without the physical radio), police radio (both analog and digital), radiosondes, weather satellites, ISM stuff - temperature sensors, garage and car remote controls, airplane multilateration (https://github.com/mutability/mlat-server )… You can do lot of stuff even with the $10 rtl-sdr, for example I have used it for multilaterating TV and radio transmitters (thesis: https://jenda.hrach.eu/dipl.pdf, unfortunately "layman's explanation" is available only as a lecture in Czech). I know people are even building radioastronomy stuff and passive radars (https://www.rtl-sdr.com/passive-radar-dual-coherent-channel-...) with rtl-sdr.
Once you have basic understanding of the topic, you can get better hardware: AirSpy (the same features as rtl-sdr, but MUCH better signal-to-noise ratio and bandwidth) or bladeRF (costly, but probably the best radio you can get now). For example I'm now building a weather radar based on bladeRF. The bladeRF has a FPGA with open-source HDL, so you can mess even with absolutely lowlevel and bleeding edge stuff.
Going back to your original question:
Most cards load firmware from a file when they are initializing (check "dmesg|grep firmware", on my machine, for example, it says it has loaded /lib/firmware/rtl_nic/rtl8153b-2.fw), you are free to modify it. However, all (or maybe almost all) wifi cards have the format of the blob completely undocumented so it would be very hard to make a modification that would allow you to transmit/receive arbitrary signals. Something similar has been achieved with GSM phones (see OsmocomBB), but it requires very complicated reverse-engineering.
Firmware is typically loaded directly onto the hardware, so you would have to have a way to flash your custom firmware to the wifi antenna/card.
In the US and other countries, it is to the best of my knowledge legal to modify firmware for hardware you own. The illegal part is broadcasting, most bandwidths are highly regulated. Listening on the other hand is mostly legal, or at the very least extremely likely to fly under the radar.
You will not be able to modify the firmware blob just by running linux.
Few years back there was danger of FCC de facto banning alternative router firmwares like openwrt to prevent tampering with the wifi cards firmware.
This was the "only manufacturer signed firmware allowed" thing that thankfully was avoided.
FCC's motivation in this is to prevent people from using too much power or certain frequencies.
And as most manufacturers want to be able to sell in USA, it would have likely affected all versions.
Kainda like how many wifi devices sold in Europe only go up to channel 11 on 2.4GHz, when the EU band goes up to channel 13.
But ch12 and ch13 are not legal in usa, so they are blocked.
Here's an example. Maybe it only applies in the US, but Japan has something even more stringent.
If you live/work in a building with several floors, and a stairwell, go down the stairwell, until you get to the ground floor.
If the building has a basement, there will be a door to the basement, and it will be facing the stairwell, and will open inward (towards the stairwell). The ground floor (at least), will have a "panic bar," to unlatch it (this is a horizontal bar, at waist level, on average-sized people, that can be pushed, to unlatch the door, and push it open). The door will also open outward (away from the stairwell).
This is because of government regulations. Developers would not choose to do this, if given a choice. It's not cheap. I believe that some older buildings may be "grandfathered in," where they might not have to do it.
The same goes for lighted exit signs.
If they didn't have this, a lot of people would die in fires and emergencies. Before these types of regulations, there were constant stories about dozens of people dying in workplace fires. It still happens, in some places.
In the US, we have many government agencies, like OSHA, and the NLRB, and others, like the SEC, etc., not to mention the AGs and other law-enforcement people.
Business owners love to hate on them, but they are a big reason that we don't have poorhouses any more.
I have found that there is absolutely no bottom to the depths that people will sink, if they can make money. This seems to be true of folks that graduated from Yale, or from Jail.
The idea that any industry will "self-regulate," is a laughable and naive myth.
Enforcing staying at job via law enforcement is the definition of slavery. If people want to quit for higher wages let them. Market will move to equilibrium.
They don't pay upfront. That's not how management thinks. Until attrition is below 50% hiring new people with a good hike is profitable than paying to people who don't leave.
Remote Work. That's the answer. I wear wig and place the camera and lighting in such an angle that my wrinkles don't show up much. This covid situation has forced to conduct interviews online and its been amazing. I have never been asked my age in online interviews for some reason.
"youtube-dl" plugin has one neat idea with respect to tests. Both the test and the plugin code for a particular website are in the same file.If the website changes and breaks the plugin updating the tests is much easier way to fix the code. This makes sure tests are always updated, rather the other way of not updating the tests due to no incentive since the problem is already solved which leads to tests being useless.
