Why I'm thinking one of those was for a WiFi antenna. Seem to think I may mention it on my Meshtastic webpage.
EFF Launches Digital Rights Bytes to Answer Tech Questions that Bug Us All
Yes, politicians and Big Corporates do twist narratives to suite their own agendas. EFF is aiming to try to give more objective and honest answers to technology questions, especially those which affect users' privacy and security.
EFF is the leading nonprofit defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology Development. Its mission is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice and innovation for all people of the world.
An interesting twist is that you can submit your own questions and answers too (without providing your name, e-mail address, or a completed reCaptcha).
#technology #privacy #security #EEFF
PeerTube, the Open-Source YouTube in the Fediverse, Now Has Official Mobile Apps
PeerTube is an open-source and decentralized video network, with videos hosted across thousands of interconnected servers, from large YouTube-like public servers to smaller ones set up by individual creators.
You can browse and watch videos from over a thousand different servers—the app calls them "platforms" in some places—and you don't need an account with any of them to use the mobile app. You can also favourite videos, subscribe to channels, follow your favourite creators (regardless of the server they're hosted on), create custom playlists, and add videos to a watch list.
Created in 2017 by a single developer, PeerTube is now maintained by the French non-profit Framasoft.
PeerTube uses the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon, Meta's Threads, PixelFed, and other services, meaning you have a bunch of servers to play videos from.
I can imagine that funding for a video based platform is going to be a bigger challenge than for text based posts. I also post my own videos to a Peertube server.
See https://www.howtogeek.com/peertube-now-has-mobile-apps
#technology #opensource #video #PPeertube
Location data firm helps US police find out when suspects visited their doctor
A location-tracking company that sells its services to police departments is apparently using addresses and coordinates of doctors' and lawyers' offices and other types of locations to help cops compile lists of places visited by suspects, according to a 404 Media report published today.
Fog Data Science, which says it "harness[es] the power of data to safeguard national security and provide law enforcement with actionable intelligence," has a "Project Intake Form" that asks police for locations where potential suspects and their mobile devices might be found.
Who needs a surveillance state when the data can just be purchased by the government?
This all comes down to the power of aggregating lots of metadata. If one takes just a single app like WhatsApp where the T&C's allow for a full range of metadata to be collected by the app and passed upstream to Meta, who leaks data to 3rd parties, it is very easy to see how all this is possible. WhatsApp (just as an example as it is not known whether WhatsApp is the source of this data) knows who you talk to, when you talk to them, where you are exactly, where you live, how often you use your phone, what roads you travel on, where you visit, and lost more. It may not be able to read your E2EE messages, but it knows everything else, and its users have given consent for the data to be passed to 3rd parties.
I really have no idea how such information can be allowed to be traded and sold to interested parties. Many countries only allow such data to be collected and provided to law enforcement after a court order is obtained by law enforcement. As TikTok is still Chinese owned, I'm doubting if this data is being provided by TikTok to US data brokers. It is more likely US owned social networks providing this data themselves (purely my guess though).
I can see why more and more users are distrusting these companies which provide free services, and then sell their data. The thing is, if law enforcement and governments are buying the data to get around their own legal restrictions, I just don't see this situation really changing.
As users, we need to shun the use of such services (which is why I deleted my WhatsApp account when the T&C's changed). It is also worth trying to rather use social networks that fall under the legislation of more privacy-friendly countries. Which also makes me a bit suspicious of why the US wants to maybe force the sale of TikTok to a US company... If that happens, I'll be deleting my TikTok account too.
It seems more and more to me that social networks are the ideal way to find out who goes where and who they are communicating with... There is certainly lots of economic value in this, otherwise data brokers would not be doing such a roaring trade. They should just be aware though that they are very likely breaking the privacy laws of many non-US countries (not just the EU) if those citizens data is being sold in the USA. It's time these other countries woke up and took note of what is going on.
#technology #privacy #ttracking
The Raspberry Pi 500 with an integrated keyboard is the perfect starter mini-PC
The Raspberry Pi 500 is a mini-PC that's tucked away within a keyboard, which makes it super portable and easy to plug in wherever you want. It's the next step up from the Pi 400, utilizing the Pi 5's hardware to make an even better companion.
I'm thinking that this enclosure should probably also be able to have a SSD drive tucked into it.
The new Raspberry Pi Monitor is also interesting as it can be connected, and powered, directly from the keyboard.
Now that it also includes a GPU, and can run most OSes as well, this all makes it a very compact and useful computer. It looks like it will even handle two display outputs.
The total cost then would probably come to about $220 (with mouse, screen, and power supply), but that really includes everything you need.
See https://www.xda-developers.com/raspberry-pi-finally-releases-monitor
#technology #rraspberrypi
You can 'play' AAA games on a Pi (or anything else) using open source Sunshine and Moonlight
Moonlight allows you to play your PC games on almost any device, whether you're in another room or miles away from your gaming rig.
Moonlight (formerly Limelight) is an open source implementation of NVIDIA's GameStream protocol. They implemented the protocol used by the NVIDIA Shield and wrote a set of 3rd party clients.
You can stream your collection of PC games from your gaming PC to any supported device and play them remotely (even over the Internet). Moonlight is perfect for gaming on the go without sacrificing the graphics and game selection available on a PC.
Sunshine is a self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight (where you are running the game from). Offering low latency, cloud gaming server capabilities with support for AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPUs for hardware encoding. Software encoding is also available. You can connect to Sunshine from any Moonlight client on a variety of devices. A web UI is provided to allow configuration, and client pairing, from your favorite web browser. Pair from the local server or any mobile device.
Sunshine can host a game from a device running Android, ChromeOS, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, Xbox One/Series, PS Vita, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, or LG webOS TV. Run Sunshine on your own hardware. No need to pay monthly fees to a cloud gaming provider. It works with Intel, AMD or Nvidia GPUs.
So yes, you could have a game running on a Windows or Linux or other computer, and be accessing and playing it from a Raspberry Pi or a mobile device.
This is also useful if you have one main gaming computer with a good GPU, but others in the home have smaller computers and also wish to play games.
See https://itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-moonlight-setup
#technology #gaming #remoteaccess #opensource
The OTIO standard can allow importing of a video editor's timeline into a different video editor
This means a timeline that contains various media with multiple tracks and clips with cuts, can be exported, for example from Kdenlive and imported into DaVinci Resolve. This is useful where often one editor can do things that another editor cannot do.
You can read more about the OpenTimelineIO, or OTIO, standard at https://opentimelineio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html. Their site does state: OTIO supports clips, timing, tracks, transitions, markers, metadata, etc. but not embedded video or audio. Video and audio media are referenced externally.
I picked up on this from Kdenlive's post on Mastodon, about how they have achieved exporting a timeline from Kdenlive and importing it into DaVinci Resolve. The attached image shows this announcement, which can also be seen at https://mastodon.social/deck/@kdenlive@floss.social/113622947347734481.
Despite this though there may still be some challenges, for example with DaVinci Resolve on Linux not supporting AAC audio, so no audio editing will be possible then on the DaVinci side (without conversion). Although I'd expect the audio could be left intact as AAC if it is just re-imported back to Kdenlive.
On DaVinci Resolve's side, I see they announced support for OTIO was added already from their version 18.5.
#technology #interoperability #openstandards #vvideo
RaspController is an Android app for remotely managing a Raspberry Pi
RaspController is an application designed to monitor, access, and control your Raspberry Pi over a network. Once you pair the app with your lean, mean, green board, you can access the files, monitor the resource consumption, and check the outputs of the sensors and cameras connected to the SBC. Plus, if you’ve got the necessary packages installed on your Raspberry Pi, you can send wake-on-LAN packets over the network to activate it remotely.
For tinkerers who often pair extra devices to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins, you can consult the pinouts and wiring diagrams inside RaspController. As if that’s not enough, you can even use the app to execute shell commands on the SBC, making it perfect for a headless Raspberry Pi setup.
See https://www.xda-developers.com/raspcontroller-guide
#technology #raraspberrypi
If your webcam didn’t come with customization software, you can use OBS to reframe it
OBS is free and open source software that will provide various filters and effects you can apply to an input such as a webcam. It will generate an output stream which any app will think is a webcam.
In this way you can apply custom masks, overlays, zoom in, add a title, change colours, change scenes between multiple cameras, or share your screen, change the background, and lots more.
See https://www.xda-developers.com/how-i-use-obs-to-reframe-my-webcam
#technology #opensource #wwebcam
Android’s AirDrop-Like Quick Share Just Got an Upgrade
Google has just announced a new, neat change to Quick Share. Now, instead of having to change around your settings or add people as a contact every time you want to share something, you can now just generate a QR code. The other person will be able to scan that very QR code to instantly initiate the actual file transfer, without the other user having to change their existing settings, verify devices, or do anything else.
This is part of a larger effort by Google to actually make Quick Share a useful, widely-used feature on Android phones. The feature, formerly named Nearby Share, recently got merged with Samsung's Quick Share, adopting the latter's name. The feature is also available for Windows computers to share files back and forth with Android phones.
So, all good it works really well between by Android devices, but I have a Linux desktop and file transfer is something I do quite often. There is a rQuickShare I found in the AUR, but it only shows a black screen, so something is wrong there.
I'm still using LocalSend which does work well between all my Android, Linux, and even iOS devices. But thinking about file transfers, maybe I will also just add the Android download folder on my folder to the SyncThing for my desktop.
See https://www.howtogeek.com/android-quick-share-qr-codes
#technology #quickshare
5 signs it might finally be time to upgrade your PSU
As a PC user, you probably already appreciate the crucial role of a power supply unit (PSU). It's not only responsible for routing the correct voltage to every component inside the PC, but also keeping everything operating at peak performance (and importantly, stability). Without adequate and clean power, your CPU, and GPU can easily encounter issues that you might fail to diagnose at first glance.
Two places many PC sellers compromise on to save costs, are the power supply and the case. So often upgrading your PSU with a quality one, can make a real difference, and you may need to anyway if you want to install one of the newer graphics cards.
Quite frequently stability issues arise from cheap PSUs where they cannot sustain loads nearer their rated limits. Another big plus is many after market PSUs are dead silent.
Another overlooked issue with cheap PSUs, is they typically just have a thick bundle of cables coming out of the PSU, no matter whether you many only be using a few of them. After market PSUs will usually have connectors on their casing (like the featured image on this post), so that you only connect what you need to use, and cut down on the cabling clutter inside the PC case.
See https://www.xda-developers.com/signs-to-finally-upgrade-your-psu
#technology #PSU #powersupply
iVerify's $1 phone scanner finds seven Pegasus spyware infections
In recent years, commercial spyware has been deployed by more actors against a wider range of victims, but the prevailing narrative has still been that the malware is used in targeted attacks against an extremely small number of people. At the same time, though, it has been difficult to check devices for infection, leading individuals to navigate an ad hoc array of academic institutions and NGOs that have been on the front lines of developing forensic techniques to detect mobile spyware. On Tuesday, the mobile device security firm iVerify is publishing findings from a spyware detection feature it launched in May. Of 2,500 device scans that the company's customers elected to submit for inspection, seven revealed infections by the notorious NSO Group malware known as Pegasus.
“The really fascinating thing is that the people who were targeted were not just journalists and activists, but business leaders, people running commercial enterprises, people in government positions,” says Rocky Cole, chief operating officer of iVerify and a former US National Security Agency analyst.
“The age of assuming that iPhones and Android phones are safe out of the box is over,” Cole says.
iVerify's app was released earlier this year for Android, too.
See https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/12/1-phone-scanner-finds-seven-pegasus-spyware-infections
#technology #security
Jack Dorsey explains very concisely how Nostr works in 2 minutes
One of the best descriptions I've seen. No fluff, no technical jargon. Why Jack left X and Bluesky, was because he wanted a social platform that was also going to be censorship free. The Nostr design depends on numerous hosted relays, and there is/are no central server/s that store posts. Nostr is quite different from the decentralised type hosting of Bluesky or Fediverse servers.
I'm glad too he touched on Nostr not working on top of blockchain, because although there are many who punt crypto on Nostr, and you can tip any poster in crypto if you wish for their post, you firstly do not have to use any of that (it is optional) and the network does not rest on top of it. Many users on Nostr (like myself) don't mention crypto and post about perfectly normal things.
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YDj1QdL2Zs
#technology #socialnetworks #NNostr
KDE is Making its Own Distro, and So is GNOME
KDE's distro won't be the same as their KDE Neon (which is Ubuntu based) but it is uncertain whether the new one will replace KDE Neon (I think not because of the differences).
What is known about KDE's new distro is the following:
* Be the recommended KDE operating system with stability and user experience as priority
* Offering a secure experience
* A focus on modern technologies (kind of like Fedora)
* Immutable core
* Wayland by default
* Close to rolling release schedule
The immutable core is pretty interesting, as that is a newer approach that I've not gone for yet. So we'll only know for sure once there are versions out for testing.
It does look like they are trying to marry the benefits of a rolling release with stability, through the immutable core, good testing, and probably built-in rollbacks etc.
And it looks like GNOME is going for a very similar approach too.
See https://news.itsfoss.com/kde-gnome-official-distro
#technology #Linux #KDE #GNOME
How to expand your NAS with USB drives – and why it’s not always a good idea
Expanding the capacity of even the best NAS is simple. Fill the enclosure with as many drives as it supports and add an external enclosure once the primary system is fully populated. Larger drives can replace smaller capacities as they reach their end of life, but there's also the possibility of using USB drives to expand capacity. Whether or not you should do this is a different matter altogether.
In my own case, I do actually use the USB interfaces on my home server. But I have USB-SATA connectors going to each 4 TB hard drive. At 2am every morning, the server does an incremental rsync backup from drive 1 to drive 2. So I don't sit with the drives running all day long in a RAID configuration. For me, it's working fine right now.
#technology #NAS #sstorage
Red Dead Redemption 2 Relaxing Ambient Third Person Horse Carriage Ride
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an amazing game in more ways that one. But it is not just about gun fights. The scenery, sounds, and numerous small details are truly remarkable.
We are seeing more and more videos of walking or riding across the map because you can roam freely anywhere, and interact (or not) with anyone, or any animals.
The linked video is one example, shot in 4K 60 fps. I'd recommend watching it at least full screen 1080p. If you have headphones, even better, as you will be able to hear all the details of all the ambient sounds.
One day I hope to experience this in proper VR.
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pTT6867XJ4
#technology #relaxing #ambientsounds #RDD2 #ggaming
Don't miss the road rage incident at 19:55, nor when he gets out to look at the waterfall just after 04:01:00 - the detail of the water is quite impressive
How to Choose the Best (and Fastest) Alternative DNS Server
Your internet service provider offers its own DNS servers, which help you turn websites like www.howtogeek.com into their respective IP addresses. Your devices use those by default, but you can set your own preferred DNS servers for a bit of improved speed.
Many DNS servers will also block malware, pornography, and other types of websites, if you want them to.
If you're looking for something faster than your ISP's DNS servers, you should run a DNS benchmark to find what's best for your connection. The fastest DNS server will depend on your geographical location and internet service provider, so there really isn't one fastest DNS provider for everyone.
See https://www.howtogeek.com/342330/how-to-choose-the-best-and-fastest-alternative-dns-server
#technology #DNS #nnetworking
Red Dead Redemption 2 Relaxing Ambient Third Person Horse Carriage Ride
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an amazing game in more ways that one. But it is not just about gun fights. The scenery, sounds, and numerous small details are truly remarkable.
We are seeing more and more videos of walking or riding across the map because you can roam freely anywhere, and interact (or not) with anyone, or any animals.
The linked video is one example, shot in 4K 60 fps. I'd recommend watching it at least full screen 1080p. If you have headphones, even better, as you will be able to hear all the details of all the ambient sounds.
One day I hope to experience this in proper VR.
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pTT6867XJ4
#technology #relaxing #ambientsounds #RDD2 #ggaming
These temporary tattoos could eventually replace clunky EEG wires and "potentially revolutionize" brain-computer interface devices
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and others developed the tech, which aims to avoid the limitations of conventional electroencephalography, or EEG, testing. The researchers were able to successfully measure people’s brain activity using specially designed liquid ink that was non-invasively printed onto their patients’ scalps. The innovation might make EEGs and other diagnostic tests much more convenient to perform.
The researchers still have many small and large adjustments to make to their technology before it’s ready for public use. They eventually hope to lace their ink with wireless data transmitters, for instance, which could allow doctors to someday perform a truly wireless EEG test.
See https://gizmodo.com/these-temporary-tattoos-can-read-your-brainwaves-2000533460
#technology #health #EEEG
7 Ways Tech Can Improve Your Mental Health
Technology often receives bad press for its adverse effects on people's mental health. But, actually, there are many ways in which your devices can help you improve how you feel, as long as your methods are selected carefully and used in moderation.
I rarely get stressed out by tech (it's my form of relaxation) but I have been meaning to add more music to my day as generally when I'm driving or shopping I listen to tech podcasts.
Something I can add to this list though (that may work for some) is to try relaxing games like Euro Truck Sim 2 in single or multi-player mode, Snowrunner (similarly you can explore off-road trails with a few friends), or even Red Dead Redemption 2 (in free roaming type game play).
See https://www.howtogeek.com/ways-tech-can-improve-your-mental-health
#technology #relaxation #mmentalhealth
