The Discord Hack is Every User’s Worst Nightmare — Why Uploaded IDs are a Problem “A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive information online.” This was EXACTLY my concern about having to upload one's ID document to any private (or government) website. Neither a private organisation nor most government websites are immune to hacking. A password is easy to change, but an ID document is often a nightmare to change, and the ID number anyway stays the same. A fine does absolutely zero to benefit any end users, either. In South Africa we do have the POPI Act that has restrictions on what sort of data may be collected and stored about individuals, but in practice that is still a big problem as companies always want to collect for the sake of collecting. We've yet to see any CEO or a government official do jail time for weak controls of hacked sites. We need more severe penalties for companies (and governments) who lose control of private data, as well as for the hackers, and also to limit want really needs to be collected. At least I am finding now most banks and private organisations, who require some personal data for tax purposes, do insist it is encrypted with a password before sending over e-mail. Things are improving, but are still way behind where they need to be by now in 2025. See

404 Media

The Discord Hack is Every User’s Worst Nightmare

A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hac...

#technology #privacy #hacks

ProtonUp-Qt v2.14 Brings New Proton-EM Compatibility Tool “ProtonUp-Qt, an open-source GUI that streamlines the installation and updating of Proton-GE and Wine-based compatibility layers, enabling Linux gamers to run Windows-exclusive titles on their preferred distributions, has rolled out the brand-new 2.14 version. The key change in this release is the addition of Proton-EM, a new compatibility tool that places emphasis on Wayland, expanding gaming support for users who rely on custom Proton builds.” The tool has gotten really useful actually as I see you can also see which layers are not in use by any games, and the game list view shows which games are using which layers as well as which ones are compatible, and you can change those. I'm just not seeing the Proton-EM option yet for Wayland. See

Linuxiac

ProtonUp-Qt v2.14 Brings New Proton-EM Compatibility Tool

ProtonUp-Qt 2.14 adds Proton-EM support, drops NorthStar tool, and improves compatibility for Steam, Lutris, and Heroic users.

#technology #gaming #Linux

South Africans can now spend cryptocurrency directly at more than 650 000 Scan to Pay-enabled stores “The integration allows users of major exchanges — including Binance, Luno, Blink and VALR — to pay merchants using bitcoin, stablecoins and other digital assets without first converting them into rand. Payments are made instantly via QR code at checkout, while merchants still receive settlement in local currency.” I have successfully used the CryptoQR app to pay for my groceries at Pick 'n Pay a year or two back. It seems MoneyBadger works much the same way, and good to see it quickly integrated with my existing Muun wallet on my phone. It also integrates with Bitcoin Lightning accounts, so this seems like it will also cut out having to convert from one crypto networks across others, before being able to use funds. See

TechCentral

Crypto hits checkout counters in South Africa

South Africans can now spend cryptocurrency directly at more than 650 000 Scan to Pay-enabled stores nationwide.

#technology #southafrica #crypto

Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration I get there is still ADB installation as an option, but that often requires a cable connection and disabling security in the Dev settings of the phone. The whole philosophy around Android was having the freedom of choice to do what you wanted with your phone (a bit like some countries used to have freedoms of choice and speech). Many countries for example have abortion as a perfectly legal procedure, and those countries want the choice to freely access abortion apps if they want to. I get too that Android is proposing a free alternative for Devs that would still allow sideloading, but this has serious restrictions in terms of how the app can be distributed there, including limited numbers of installs. The biggest loss here would be for privacy. Apps like Bitchat are intended to be 100% private with zero registration or exposure, and the app can be directly sent to other users. The new proposal completely kills this method of transfer. I do also realise that many average/mass users do maybe need more protection from rogue apps, but then just pop up a message to make it more difficult, and to inform the user of possible risks. But let users decide whether they want to take the risk or not. There are also web apps yes, but they require online access, and usually also don't do push alerts. Google has already not been very popular since they ditched their “Do No Evil” slogan, and this just screams of more control, wanting to know who everybody is, etc. Imagine if your desktop OS would only allow you to install apps from the official store? Linux would collapse, as it was founded on the freedom to choose! As it is, Microsoft is now apparently wanting to restrict users to not being able to register their Windows OS with offline account registration. I'm for protecting mass users, but I am also FOR other users being able to exercise their own choices at their own risk. That is called a win-win. See

Hackaday

Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

After the news cycle recently exploded with the announcement that Google would require every single Android app to be from a registered and verifie...

#technology #Android #privacy #freedoms

Cairo-Dock 3.6 Released With Wayland Support and HiDPI Display Handling “Cairo-Dock 3.6 is ported to Wayland to mark the project's return to relevance now in 2025 in working with the many Wayland-focused desktops. Cairo-Dock 3.6 is working with the likes of the Wayfire, KDE KWin, Labwc, COSMIC, Sway, Hyprland, and other Wayland compositors. But GNOME/Mutter is not currently supported.” Yes, it has been a very long (years) time since Cairo-Dock had any major update. I thought it was dying. The global keyboard shortcuts I think is more a limitation of Wayland, as I'm having to use ydotool for my shortcuts with my Elgato Stream Deck still under Wayland. The HiDPI support will handle higher resolution screens and proper scaling of the displays. See https://www.phoronix.com/news/Cairo-Dock-3.6-Released #technology #Linux #Wayland #CairoDock #opensource

Linux 6.18 Will Be A Big Improvement For Servers Encountering DDoS Attacks “A set of patches merged via the networking pull request for the Linux 6.18 will help servers better cope with distributed denial of service “DDoS” attacks. Thanks to a Google engineer there are some significant optimisations found in the Linux 6.18 kernel code for more efficiently handling of UDP receive performance under stress, such as in DDoS scenarios.” This will be welcome news to most hosting services. The only issue though down the line may be that with cybersecurity, the goalposts also keep shifting and evolving. The details though are in the linked post. See https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.18-DDoS-Improvement #technology #hosting #opensource

Austria's military has switched from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice "Austria's military has completed a major IT overhaul, replacing Microsoft Office with the open-source LibreOffice suite across all its desktop systems. The change, finalised this month, affects approximately 16,000 workstations in the Austrian Armed Forces. This move will substantially reduce Austria's software bill. At $33.75 per user per month, a Microsoft 365 E3 subscription for 16,000 workstations costs approximately $6,480,000 per year, compared to LibreOffice's zero cost." But despite all the cost savings, the main reason for the change was in fact for digital sovereignty and to gain control over critical data. The whole marketing towards moving everything into foreign controlled clouds not only creates a dependency and lock-in to those services, it also often means reducing an organisation's own capacity to support itself. Any organisation should be basing its decisions on a very holistic view of all the factors involved. Be very wary of the allure of glitzy PR and nice-to-haves. See

ZDNET

This European military just ditched Microsoft for open-source LibreOffice - here's why

It's not about the cost savings, either. Many government organizations are replacing Microsoft software for a more important reason.

#technology #Austria #opensource #digitalsovereignty

Which browsers with integrated AIs collect the most user data The big thing with using integrated AI within browsers is that you are potentially giving a lot more access to your user metadata versus just visiting the AIs webpage and doing a search there. The linked article measures across 23 different types of metadata and in case you think it is just harmless data, it includes data points such as your contacts, location (which can be precise), browser history (what you did in the past), purchases, identifying data (which can be used to build your profile of user behaviour across all the sites you visit), etc. Although we know that WhatsApp and Facebook already collect and even share this information with others (it is stated in their terms and conditions), many don't realise that allowing their browsers integrated AI to have this access, is potentially just as bad. From the Surfshark report, we can see that Google's data collection is at least as bad as Facebooks. One thing that is different is maybe that Google is not actually sharing that data to their partners (well, it is not stated as far as I know). But where this is of serious concern, is for political activists, whistle-blowers, or refugees, where there is a real danger of their governments being able to access this data, just because it is collected and stored. And of course, the contacts' info just helps to connect all the dots between everyone's contacts and friends... So, if you are in any sort of sensitive situation, you want to avoid browser integrated AI, and even consider rather using privacy respecting AI such as Venice or Proton's Lumo. See

Surfshark

New Gemini in Chrome integration collects excessive user data

Gemini AI, which has just been integrated into the Chrome browser, collects the most user data among all browser-integrated AIs, including users’...

#technology #privacy #AI

Steam Client Adds Advanced Options to the In-Game Overlay for AMD & NVIDIA GPUs on Linux “The big news for Linux gamers is the implementation of advanced options for the in-game performance overlay for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, improved Steam UI scaling in XWayland, improved system display scale in the in-game overlay, and improved Big Picture update progress UI. Also for Linux users, the new Steam Client update fixes several bugs, including an issue where the ‘Browse Local Files’ button in ‘Game Properties’ fails to open the system file browser, an issue where the Steam Client fails to reload or shows dialogs unexpectedly after a render process crash, and an issue with crash dump reporting.” Seeing that I have successfully migrated to Wayland, this was of a lot of interest to me. It is also good to see CPU temp added to the on-screen performance monitor. Once about 10 major game updates have finished downloading, I'll be able to try this out. Why are there always so many big updates ;-) See

9to5Linux

Steam Client Adds Advanced Options to the In-Game Overlay for AMD & NVIDIA GPUs - 9to5Linux

The latest stable Steam Client update introduces advanced options for the in-game performance overlay for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.

#technology #gaming #Linux #opensource

TCL’s 8-inch Nxtpaper Android tablet could lure you away from the colour Kindle “Nxtpaper isn’t a reflective display technology like E Ink which relies on little drops of ink moving around, but it does feature several upgrades over standard LCD panels. The Tab 8’s glass screen is etched with a fine pattern giving it a matte finish that reduces glare and reflections, and TCL’s latest version, Nxtpaper 4.0, is also designed to minimize the softening effect often seen on matte displays.” Which is all good, but it still does not beat the real E Ink screen in terms of massively long battery life, and reading in the bright sunlight. So I'd say this is good compared to a standard tablet, but not for what an eReader was specifically designed for. See

The Verge

TCL’s 8-inch Nxtpaper tablet could lure you away from the color Kindle

TCL’s new compact Android tablet may be the e-reader you’ve been looking for.

#technology #eink #ereader

Tecmint's 6 Best Linux Distros for Gaming and Playing Windows Games “The good news is that gaming on Linux has improved dramatically in recent years. Besides the many native Linux titles already available, you can also play a huge selection of Windows-only games using compatibility tools like Proton (built into Steam) and Wine. In fact, nearly 80% of the most popular Windows games now run on Linux with little to no extra effort.” For myself, I've been using Manjaro Linux the last few years, and I am playing all the games I've needed to so far on Linux. My list includes: * Snowrunner * War Thunder multiplayer * Ships at Sea * Assetto Corsa EVO * Assetto Corsa Competizione * BeamNG Drive * Train Fever * Euro Truck Sim in multiplayer * American Truck Sim * FORZA Horizon 4 * Hell Let Loose * Red Dead Redemption II * Dirt Rally 2.0 * rFactor 2 * Train Sim World 5 All in all, it is 77 games, so I have more than enough to keep me playing. I've not got Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 so cannot comment on that one, but the only one that I think did not play for me on Linux was World of Subways 3. See

7 Best Linux Distros for Gaming and Playing Windows Games

7 Best Linux Distros for Running Windows Games Smoothly

These Linux distros come with drivers, preinstalled tools, and optimizations, so you can install them and start gaming right away without extra setup.

#technology #linux #gaming

FOSS Force Asked LibreOffice and Collabora: Why Aren’t They in Schools Instead of Word and Google Docs? “Much free and open source software helps its users save money as possible — on both hardware and software — while protecting their privacy. It also often makes it easy for them to learn how it works — if they’re interested — and customize it in any way they want or need.” “With such features, FOSS should be the default choice in any educational environment, in these days when many schools face budget cuts, and switching to free as in free beer proprietary cloud applications like Microsoft Teams or Google Docs to save money has the consequence of actively preparing and educating pupils to be endless sources of data to be exploited for the likes of money and political control.” There are really no big surprises here in the answers from LibreOffice or Collabora. And there should be a lot going for open source such as being able to use much older hardware, studying and adapting the code, no lock-in license fees, complete and unbroken support for the same open standards such as ODF that governments have endorsed, but yet... big money does tend to make the world go around. Those massive kick-backs that Microsoft gives to education, and the digital villages that they build, etc, all have to be paid for. That money comes out of the far bigger license and cloud subscription costs that governments are already paying. For any change to happen, the whole economic model needs top be rethought. Today, with internal IT being more and more outsourced to cloud service subscriptions, I don't see this change happening easily. In fact, with cloud services the lock-in is way greater than just the internal IT capacity being lost, it is also data lock-in. Ideally, organisations want to be igniting local innovation around IT as well as hosting, and building up their own shared resources. And that all starts with education. See

FOSS Force

We Asked LibreOffice and Collabora: Why Aren’t They in Schools Instead of Word and Google Docs? - FOSS Force

We ask LibreOffice and Collabora why their software isn't used in more schools, and what can be done to turn that around.

#technology #education #opensource

Heart Rate Measurement Via Wi-Fi without any skin contact needed “The basic concept is simple enough. One ESP32 is set up to transmit a stream of Channel State Information packets to another ESP32, with a person standing in between. As the person’s heart beats, it changes the way the radio waves propagate from the transmitting unit to the receiver. These changes can be read from the packets, and processed to estimate the person’s heart rate.” We've seen some fascinating applications before with Wi-Fi (like seeing through walls), but this could have interesting applications too, like measuring heart rate while someone sleeps, not needing to wear a watch or a band at all. Just please don't mention the discounted 5G myth. This also opens up ideas about how else Wi-Fi may be used for other solutions. In the comments below the linked article, someone has also provided the link to the full paper explaining how this works. See

Hackaday

Heart Rate Measurement Via WiFi, The DIY Way

A few weeks back, we reported on a research group that figured out how to measure heartrate using perturbations in WiFi signals. [Nick Bild] was in...

#technology #health #innovation #wifi

Custom Home Assistant Floor Plan Dashboard with Real-Time Controls Do you want a graphical floor plan of your home to show what lights are on or off, whether someone is at your doorbell, etc? There are probably lots more ideas to show the status of many things graphically, and to be able to even control them from this view by clicking on the item in the image. This is a good step-by-step tutorial showing how to put this together. The example showing the layering of the images can be applied to anything else as well. It does involve many repetitive steps to put it together, but it is certainly not difficult to do. Like most things in Home Assistant, start small with one function, and add to it later on. See the video at #technology #homeassistant #opensource #homeautomation

Pix payments happen in 24/7 real-time, are free, and supported by the Central Bank of Brazil "Launched in late 2020, Pix quickly became Brazil's most used payment method, sharply eroding the share of cash, cards, checks, bank slips and other forms of payment in Latin America's largest economy. By cutting out intermediaries, Pix has squeezed revenue from card networks such as Visa and Mastercard, card processors including Cielo, StoneCo, PagBank and Getnet, and banks that once charged more for traditional transfers." This system is very much like the PayShap system in South Africa, but a big difference is in South Africa the banks are often charging nearly normal banking rates for using the system, which has stifled its adoption. In the Brazil the opposite is true, where the norm is cost-free, or very close to it with other banks. I understand there is a Big Power which is not happy about this as they see this as stifling their business, but surely the world is about innovation and cutting costs through increased competition. It is not about banning something competing with you, but rather to embrace change and evolve with the times for the benefit of citizens and consumers. In many 3rd world countries such a system also increases safety when cash need not be carried. Viewed another way, when we pay with cash, those are direct transactions without a middle-person (just VAT being added sometimes). This system really replaces cash. Some quotes from the EBANX site below show over 70% of all Brazilians use Pix as their preferred payment method, making it more popular than credit cards, and merchants that integrated Pix through EBANX saw a 16% increase in revenue and acquired 25% more new customers. It is probably time for the banking system to be overhauled a bit, not only to reduce costs, but also to improve flexibility. This is not going to replace banks yet, but it is up to banks to really start competing more now. See

Pix Payment | The Instant Payment Method from Brazil | EBANX

Meet the Brazilian instant payment system that is revolutionizing transfers and payments. Increase your sales in Latin America by accepting Pix pay...

and

Pix (payment system) - Wikipedia

#technology #banking #Brazil

Keratin extracted from sheep's wool repairs teeth in breakthrough “The finding could support sustainable, low-cost treatments for early tooth decay within the next two to three years, according to the researchers. They reported their findings August 12 in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.” See

Live Science

Keratin extracted from sheep

Keratin extracted from sheep wool has been found to help protect human teeth. It could be coming to your dentist’s office soon.

#health #teeth

Did a video about my recent trip in the Jimny through the Cederberg Mountains -

Mastodon social network is bringing quote posts to the Fediverse "Mastodon is officially rolling out quote posts. Starting next week, you’ll see an option to quote another user by selecting the repost — or “boost” — button, allowing you to add your thoughts to someone else’s post.” I know there were concerns about this, but it does seem to be the way to go. For influencers or bloggers, it does at least link back to their original post for attribution, which is important to them. It also seems users will have the option to disable it for their posts, so surely this choice to have or not have, is the best of both worlds. ActivityPub, which is what powers the Fediverse including Mastodon, is quite significant as it is an open standard and is probably the most used social network protocol outside of the centralised social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. See

The Verge

Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse

Quote posts on Mastodon are finally happening.

#technology #Mastodon #socialnetworks

Pessimists Archive educates people on and archives the history of technophobia and moral panics Pessimists Archive is a project to jog our collective memories about the hysteria, technophobia and moral panic that often greets new technologies, ideas and trends. Explore the timeline of technologies at the footer of their site. “We believe the best antidote to fear of the new is looking back at fear of the old. Only by looking back at fears of old things when they were new, can we have rational constructive debates about emerging technologies today that avoids the pitfalls of moral panic and incumbent protectionism.” It's quite true, I suppose that having a bigger picture context of things, does help put them in perspective. I typically think back to the early 1900s about the panic spread about motor vehicles and having to have a person walking in front of the car with a flag to warn pedestrians. Similarly, with the early steam locomotives that were rumoured to stop cows producing milk, and also travelling too fast so that humans on them would not be able to breathe properly. So much FUD that we have just forgotten about (for good reason). And of course we must not forget that many legacy industries spread all sorts of propaganda and ideas specifically to discount some new advances, because it is in their interests financially to prevent people moving away from using their product or service. The site really deals mainly with the long forgotten technophobia issues, and not with some of the more current ones. It is always best to look back historically, as there is less emotion and personal involvement with those times. They do interestingly enough tie some technophobia together that relates to similar fears, just which re-appear later with newer technology. See

Pessimists Archive

Archive of historical technological pessimism

#technology #conspiracytheories #FUD

Switzerland releases its own AI model trained on public data and its open source “Switzerland launched an open-source model called Apertus on Monday as an alternative to proprietary models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, reports SWI as spotted by Engadget. The model’s source code, training data, model weights, and detailed development process are available on the AI model platform HuggingFace.” Of course, being Switzerland, this is an attempt to adhere to the European Union’s copyright laws and voluntary AI code of practice, which may set it apart from some other AI models. Some may argue then it is won't be as good as some other AI models, but I suppose the analogy may be a thief could be richer than most workers who earn their honest dime through their own hard work. See

The Verge

Switzerland releases an open-weight AI model

The model’s training data, model weights, and source code are open to the public.

#technology #privacy #AI #opensource