Why I Ditched My Smartwatch for a Retro-Styled Casio Watch This video takes you through my decision-making process and reasons for ditching my Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 (and other smartwatches) for a modern, retro-styled Casio ABL-100WE watch. The video starts with the straw that broke the camel's back, and concludes with two other possibilities I'll weigh up early in 2026. Watch #technology #smartwatches #retro #Casio #gadget

By now, we should know you CANNOT believe all you see on social media “Elon Musk’s social media echo chamber X-formerly-Twitter introduced a new feature over the weekend that shows the location where its users have been tweeting from — a move that has exposed an embarrassing problem for the social network: that many of its most politically inflammatory users are actually foreign scammers cashing in on gullible and outrage-hungry Americans. As the New York Times reports, it didn’t take long for online sleuths to notice that accounts that post MAGA ragebait weren’t actually tweeting from the United States; instead, they’re based in Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and other parts of the world, often linked to online scams and schemes.” Especially if there is an algorithm to be gamed, and one based on outrage or inflaming emotions, then be very wary of actually believing what you see are genuine people. If they're not AI driven bots, they're going to be people click baiting to get viral responses. The behaviour today makes old-fashioned trolling look positively tame by comparison. I think that for many people, a sense of apathy has set in when using social media. Certainly on the centralised algorithm driven services, it has been many years since I saw any real-life friends or family actually posting anything. There is hope though in the many decentralised, and better moderated, social media network platforms. They don't have algorithms to game (apart from chronological ordering of posts) and they don't have ads paid for by views, so there is little to drive that sort of behaviour. Of course there is always the geopolitical angle, with efforts to try to undermine or railroad elections in countries, but again, it is difficult to get a viral foothold without an algorithm driving views. Users are generally just seeing posts from those who they follow. And on clicks and views, especially on Twitter, as those views are what generates revenue for them from advertisers, it also appears that those may have also been faked from back in the old Twitter days. This according to something mentioned on the Revolution.Social podcast this last week. Before Elon Musk even came along, Twitter saw that faking these numbers could increase their revenue! After Elon Musk took over? Well, we don't know for sure, and maybe he is running it all by the book. So, we should just remember that on profit-driven social networks which have paid advertising, and where ragebaiting and trolling can easily go viral, not everything you see is going to be true, and maybe there is an attempt to just push your emotional buttons. If you remember this, your visits to some social media platforms may be a lot less stress inducing. See

Futurism

Twitter's New Feature Accidently Reveals Something Fascinating About Huge MAGA Influencers

Many of Elon Musk's X's most inflammatory users are actually foreign scammers, according to a new feature introduced by the platform.

#technology #socialnetworks #ragebaiting

Finamp - an open source Jellyfin music client for mobile devices Finamp is really beautifully designed and dedicated music player that connects to your existing Jellyfin music library. There are a number of improvement sin the beta version already, so I'd recommend you aim to use the beta version. Yes, it still has a few improvements needed, such as Android Auto compatibility (coming in the beta release) as well as a self-populating favourites playlist (is planned). It is available for iOS, and Android from both Google Play and F-Droid. Just note there is no beat release via F-Droid. I actually use Obtanium to pull the APK updates straight from GitHub. See

GitHub

GitHub - jmshrv/finamp: A Jellyfin music client for mobile

A Jellyfin music client for mobile. Contribute to jmshrv/finamp development by creating an account on GitHub.

#technology #music #Jellyfin #opensource

Viseron is a self-hosted camera monitoring app and the perfect Frigate alternative “If you've ever wanted to keep an eye on your surroundings without sending data to third-party servers, you've probably heard of Frigate. The open-source is a popular choice as an NVR that runs locally and taps into the power of AI to detect people, cars, and more. But Frigate isn't the only game in town. There's another contender worth looking at. It's called Viseron, and it's a self-hosted camera monitoring platform that offers a polished interface, widespread hardware support, and, most importantly, it works on your local network. Viseron is designed from the ground up to be simple, flexible, and private. There are no subscriptions to worry about, no hidden restrictions, and, of course, no cloud dependencies to worry about.” Having any CCTV cameras running 24/7 in or around your home has to be a concern for privacy. We have seen way too may vulnerabilities, with even a website dedicated to showing you everyone's exposed cameras, which included children's nursery cams. My own cameras are restricted to a VLAN that has no Internet access (ingoing or outgoing). So it is good to see more and more self-hosted alternatives becoming available for everyone. This one even has AI-powered object detection, which my much older Reolink system does not have. See

XDA

This self-hosted camera monitoring app is the perfect Frigate alternative

This open-source alternative to Frigate offers a modern interface and AI-based object detection.

#technology #privacy #opensource #CCTV

FreeDV - Open Source HF Digital Voice for Amateur Radio “FreeDV is a suite of digital voice modes for HF radio. Our flagship mode is the Radio Autoencoder (RADE). You can run RADE using a free GUI application for Windows, Linux and OSX that allows any SSB radio to be used for high quality digital voice. FreeDV technology is being developed by an international team of radio amateurs working together on Machine Learning, DSP, coding, design, user interface and testing.” It's true that amateur radio has been constantly evolving over the years. A lot has been happening with digital text based messaging, and just a few watts of power is easily transversing 10,000+ kms between continents. Voice took a big leap forward with SSB when it came out, and with many clinging to that because they want to “talk” to others, it looks like FreeDV will offer that same experience, whilst utilising all the advantages that a digital mode can offer. Apart from being able to use less power, the other plus of digital modes, is punching through the ever-growing noise floors that are killing some voice/phone bands. Best of all, unlike the VaraHF and VaraFM protocols, this is an open source protocol. See

FreeDV | Open Source HF Digital Voice for Amateur Radio

#technology #amateurradio #hamradio #freedv #opensource

LibreOffice has a new fix for Microsoft changing its default font to Aptos “Microsoft has moved away from its legacy ClearType fonts. This includes familiar names like Calibri, Candida, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, and Segoe for Western languages. Microsoft is now using Aptos as the new default font for Western languages. This shift is apparently what prompted The Document Foundation to refresh its guidance and tools. For years, proprietary fonts standard on Windows and macOS have been used as a lock-in tool.” Despite Microsoft's lip service to supporting open standards, it seems to have gone out of its way to keep tweaking thing which end up breaking compatibility with open standards. Fonts had come right years ago when most Microsoft fonts also became available on Linux, but of course now Microsoft has again shifted its ground. Of course, if more users opted to use free and open standards, we'd have a lot less of this problem in the first place. It does appear though that the Aptos font can be downloaded from Microsoft, so hopefully LibreOffice's solution also gets implemented soon by ONLYoffice, FreeOffice, etc too. See

How-To Geek

LibreOffice has a new fix for your font problems

Say goodbye to your document getting messed up over a font change.

#technology #opensource #openstandards #officesuites

Hate Meta (Facebook)? Even Realities Is Making the Smart Glasses You Want “As Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses continue to turn your face into a computer, with a camera and speaker, Even Realities is doubling down on a design that eschews those components. Instead, it's focusing on extending your smartphone through the display of its smart glasses while figuring out new mechanisms for controlling the experience.” What I like is that there is no camera on these glasses, so there should be no embarrassing privacy issues or making others feel uncomfortable when you are wearing them. And, of course, not being made by Meta, it already scores a lot higher in terms of privacy and not selling your user data. The Even R1 smart ring is also interesting, as it can pair with the glasses to display its health info to the glasses, and also be used to scroll the display on the glasses. See

WIRED

Hate Meta? Even Realities Is Making the Smart Glasses You Want

The company announced the Even G2 smart glasses, sporting a bigger display in a lighter frame, alongside the R1 smart ring, which can control the d...

#technology #smartglasses

In-depth Comparison between Open Source AFFiNE and Joplin Notes for Note-Taking Both AFFiNE and Joplin Notes are intended for creating and editing notes, with a view to building up your searchable personal knowledge base. My video does an in-depth dive comparison between AFFiNE and Joplin Notes with a primary focus on the note-taking capabilities and their Markdown format compatibility. AFFiNE has the added advantage of providing some great graphical tools with its edgeless canvas mode, whilst Joplin Notes has tremendous extendability through its numerous community plugins. They do things slightly differently and neither, though, does everything perfectly, so my video will hopefully highlight some of their differences which may appeal to you. Watch #technology #opensource #notes #markdown

I replaced Microsoft Word with a self-hosted, open-source alternative No, not I, as I had replaced Microsoft Office many years ago. But nevertheless an interesting read and a good reminder that most folks don't really NEED Microsoft Word, with all the great alternatives around today. My go-to office suite is actually FreeOffice which has much the same going for it as ONLYoffice, which I also have installed. Apart from being open source, these alternative suites are also truly cross-platform and friendlier when it comes to adhering to open standard formats such as the Open Document Format. The network effect though is still super strong around the world, being fuelled by a powerful PR machine, which is now telling everyone they need to have AI built into their office suites. Actually, FreeOffice does have an option for that, as well as a dramatically lower once-off pro-plan cost, but do you need it inside your office suite? See

How-To Geek

I replaced Microsoft Word with a self-hosted, open-source alternative

It also includes a spreadsheet and presentation editor!

#technology #opensource #officesuites

Join The Newest Social Network And Party Like Its 1987 "Algorithms? Datamining? Brainrot? You don’t need those things to have a social network. As we knew back in the BBS days, long before anyone coined the phrase “social network”, all you need is a place for people to make text posts. [euklides] is providing just such a place, at cyberspace.online. It’s a great mix of old and new — the IRC inspired chatrooms, e-mail inspired DMs (“cybermail”) make it feel like the good old days, while a sprinkling of more modern concepts such as friends lists, a real-time feed, and even the late-lamented “poke” feature (from before Facebook took over the world) provide some welcome conveniences." Yep many are getting sick and tired of the big centralised social networks with their algorithms and data mining. There are actually countless alternatives around, and this is merely one of the latest to arrive on the scene. I have lost count of which social networks I'm actually on. I'm probably only active on around 8 or 9 on a daily basis, but we are spoilt for choice, and many are very welcoming and have a different sort of feel and niche they cater for. From

Hackaday

Join The The Newest Social Network And Party Like Its 1987

Algorithms? Datamining? Brainrot? You don’t need those things to have a social network. As we knew back in the BBS days, long before anyone c...

#technology #socialnetworks

Testing Whether Fast Charging Kills Smartphone Batteries, And Other Myths It will be a lot clearer if you watch the video in the linked article, as the article text does not really clearly summarise all the conclusions. See

Hackaday

Testing Whether Fast Charging Kills Smartphone Batteries, And Other Myths

With batteries being such an integral part of smartphones, it’s little wonder that extending the period between charging and battery replacem...

#technology #batteries

ODF 1.4 Release Marks 20 Years of OpenDocument Format “Microsoft's proprietary formats like .doc and .docx dominate the office productivity landscape. Most people and organisations rely on these formats for daily document work. This creates a predatory situation where vendor lock-in is the norm and compatibility issues are taken as an omen that moving away from Microsoft Office is a bad idea. OpenDocument Format (ODF) offers an open alternative. It is an ISO-standard XML-based format for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics. ODF works across multiple office suites, including LibreOffice, Collabora Online, and Microsoft Office itself.” Open standards are critical to the future use and access to data. Open data also helps prevent vendors locking you into their service. Open standards also help lower the costs of services as it increases competition in the market. In summary, open standards protect users. Unfortunately, many organisations work actively against open standards as they stand in the way of their profits, and of course big organisations can lobby governments... As users, we all need to support open standards. We cannot take on the big organisations, but we can decide to prefer to use services based on open standards. And yes, believe it or not, besides the marketing PR, you do NOT NEED to use MS Office. There are perfectly good alternatives, with many being free of cost. If you do still use MS Office, at least choose to save everything in ODF format. See

It's FOSS

ODF 1.4 Release Marks 20 Years of OpenDocument Format

Accessibility and compatibility upgrades mark 20th anniversary of document standard at OASIS Open.

#technology #openstandards #ODF

Banning Phones in Schools Is Drastically Changing the Behaviour of Kids, Teachers Say “Gothamist spoke to students about their experience with the ban, and the number one takeaway didn’t have to do with anything to do with hot-button topics like social media addiction or cyberbullying. Instead, it was that kiboshing phones is forcing kids to actually talk to each other in meatspace again — and it’s making schools way noisier, for better or worse.” I'm going to say something that will be highly unpopular with employees, but I think banning phones in the workplace during working hours (not lunchtime) would also boost productivity and focus a lot! I can't but help noticing when I go to do my weekly groceries shopping at a certain supermarket, that in more than one aisle, a packer is busy on their phones with the boxes lying next to them. I doubt these are emergencies, and are more likely ongoing replies to someone on an instant messaging app. Apart from shelf packers though, even for management, they should not be conducting work communication over private messaging apps. E-mail can be read whenever one is at their desk, and the company has a record of the official correspondence then too. There seems to be this need to be in constant contact 24/7, but I have started to realise that I do not need to read every single notification coming in as it happens. I choose times when I'm taking a break, or before supper, etc when it does not break my concentration of what I'm doing. As I'm writing this post, I've heard my phone going ding about 5 times (one at least was from my spouse). If it's urgent though, they can phone me, but if I don't have boundaries in place, a phone threatens to just keep interrupting you. It's the same reason why my phone goes onto Do Not Disturb mode from 22:30 every night. See

Futurism

Banning Phones in Schools Is Drastically Changing the Behavior of Kids

Schools around the world are banning phones, and the results can be unexpected. For instance, schools are getting loud again.

#technology #health #education #boundaries

This OpenWrt-Based Router Has Swappable Wi-Fi Modules for Future Upgrades “Their Turris router project started as an internal research effort focused on understanding network threats that has now evolved into offering commercial products with rock-solid security and convenient features. Now, they have launched the Turris Omnia NG, the next generation of their security-focused router line. Like its predecessors, the router is manufactured in the Czech Republic.” Yes, part of the news is the swappable Wi-Fi hardware modules, but also very interesting is that the router comes with an open source operating system based on OpenWrt. I really like that! That means that you can do a lot more with it than just being a basic, cripple proprietary router. It can work as a NAS, VPN gateway, run LXC containers or even full Linux distributions like Ubuntu or Debian on virtual machines, or a self-hosted cloud server running Nextcloud. Try doing that on a commercial Asus or T-Link router! See

It's FOSS

This OpenWrt-Based Router Has Swappable Wi-Fi Modules for Future Upgrades

The Turris Omnia NG promises lifetime updates and a modular design for a real long-term use.

#technology #opensource #routers #openwrt

Scientists Say They’ve Figured Out How to Transcribe Your Thoughts From an MRI Scan “They’re calling the technique “mind captioning,” and it may represent an effective way for transcribing what someone’s thinking, with impressively comprehensive and accurate results.” It is certainly not reading of specific thoughts, but nonetheless statistically the results are way above just random guesses, with some sounding impressive. And yes, it seems AI does the number crunching to arrive at suggestions. As with any technology, there can be good and bad applications for it. The usual culprits will try to exploit the bad side, but think of the good for those with seriously impaired communication capabilities (stroke, aphasia, and other medical difficulties). Right now, of course this is not possible yet to use without an MRI machine, but it is quite promising so far, and possibly better ways to scan will be found. See

Futurism

Scientists Say They've Figured Out How to Transcribe Your Thoughts From an MRI Scan

The team showed that the brain scan analyzing technique could generate accurate descriptions of a video someone was watching.

#technology #health

Why self-hosting matters now more than ever in the age of cloud "A little over a week ago, a DNS update conflict brought down AWS, crippling hundreds of apps and services worldwide. Along with many of Amazon’s own platforms, Netflix, Spotify, Google Drive, Zoom, and many others were affected by the failure. At ground level, online shops went silent. One Reddit user lamented that they had missed out on thousands of dollars in profit because their trading platform couldn’t execute a trade, while another unlucky person’s bed stopped functioning." And just this morning there we suffered a Teraco outage for an hour and a half that affected Internet services too. All my self-hosted services in the house continued to work so I could watch movies, read my RSS news feeds, update my notes management, etc. The linked article goes on to show many other advantages too of self-hosting. That said though, you do at least want to have two hard drives so that there is a rsync backing up daily to the second drive. Just because self-hosting may save you money, does not mean you should skimp on the essentials. You have to take accountability for your data if you self-host. See

XDA

Why self-hosting matters now more than ever in the age of cloud

Break free from reliance on the cloud and build digital independence.

#technology #selfhosting

AFFiNE is an excellent open-source knowledge management tool “AFFiNE is an open-source productivity app with a workspace that blends structured note-taking with visual thinking. It’s a bit like Notion, Obsidian, Miro, and NotebookLM combined, but in a minimalist package. There are paid tiers that give you access to more of its AI features and cloud storage (it is a local-first app, though). But you don’t need to subscribe for the everyday management features.” There is a good write-up about this product in the linked article below. I've always preferred flat markdown files as I can see them and access them with any Markdown editor, but I did install AFFiNE a while ago on my Linux desktop. I really liked what it can do in terms of creativity and ideas collaboration. I don't think, though, that it will replace my notes app as I like to have my notes on hand where ever I am. With AFFiNE you do need to use its app for the creation and viewing. That said it does install on macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and can work through a web browser too. Looking again at that list, and the fact that you can self-host it, I may have to give this another try as it seems with all that, I probably can sync everything across all my devices. For example, in my desktop AFFiNE app there is an option to sync it with the AFFiNE cloud, which includes a link to your own self-hosted instance. It does also support Markdown formatting, as well as export to/import from markdown files. I tested the import of a Markdown document I'd done a while ago in Obsidian Notes, and it imported perfectly, complete with to-do lists, code blocks, tables, etc. The mobile app though does not appear to export/import Markdown documents itself. Plain documents can be created and edited in AFFiNE's Page mode, but you can also switch to the Edgeless Canvas mode where all the whiteboarding, graphics, etc magic happens. Currently, I'm using Joplin for all my markdown notes, and syncing to a self-hosted Joplin server app. Although Joplin is doing everything I want with markdown notes, it does not store the notes in plain markdown files (like Obsidian Notes does). So, in truth, as fat as file formats go AFFiNE won't be much different from Joplin Notes, and if the browser access can actually view and edit notes directly on the self-hosted AFFiNE instance, that would actually be a big plus over Joplin Notes for me. I'm going to rethink my Joplin vs AFFiNE decision, I think. See

XDA

I built a second brain with AFFiNE, and it's the best thing I've ever done for my productivity

An upgrade to my digital life

#technology #brainstorming #knowledgemanagement #opensource

AI Is Amplifying the Dunning-Kruger Effect, New Research Finds “People who are the worst at doing something also tend to severely overestimate how good they are at doing it, while those who are actually skilled tend to not realize their true talent. This galling cognitive bias is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, as you’re probably familiar — and would you believe it if we told you that AI appears to make it even worse?” Taking things at face value, is really the crux of this problem. We've read more than one story about lawyers being caught out by incorrect conclusions drawn by AI. I'd expect, too, that if a trainee lawyer does some research, that they'd have to back it up with the actual references used to do their summary. But it seems too often, a confident answer is given by AI, and many just copy and paste that without questioning it. I like AI that actually provides the links to the source articles, because sometimes I've even found no mention of the answer actually given by AI. AI often just pieces excerpts together, where a human may not have even connected those dots (for very good reason). For some questions, AI can be pretty accurate, but for some others it can be way off the mark, and yet very confidently it will give a wild guess. There is zero actual intelligence in AI. It can be a very useful tool, but only as long as you treat it with caution and check against the sources. Like all technology, it can be very good and it can be very bad. There is no “always good and perfect”. As much as Mr Altman will have us believe AI is a sharp instrument, it is not, it is a blunt one if yielded incorrectly. Given all the hype around AI, and the tremendous investments riding on it, it is no wonder that all networks and products are leaning over backwards to stuff AI into all their products and services, even when no-one asked for it to be there. All these consumer AIs, of course, also all call home to the mother ship in real-time, so imagine what all that data harvesting is also worth. See

Futurism

AI Is Causing a Grim New Twist on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, Research Finds

New research shows how AI tools is making a Dunning-Kruger specimen out of everyone that uses them, no matter how smart.

#technology #AI

Lock Company Sues Man Who Picked Its Lock, Gets Horribly Humiliated This is often the typical; reaction of an organisation when someone shows their product or service has some serious defect or flaw. The problem is, then we all get to hear about it, and are less than impressed with their attitude. Rather than acknowledging something and fixing it, let's attack the messenger. How does this help the many other consumers who use the product or service? I'd never heard of the lock company Proven industries, but now I do know all about them after they sued Trevor McNally. It is worth remembering that no software or hardware is foolproof, just ask Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and every other big IT company. As the judge said in this preliminary hearing, someone can say something as long as it is not false (my note: or a politician). See

Futurism

Lock Company Sues Man Who Picked Its Lock, Gets Horribly Humiliated

The company charged him with eight separate offenses, including copyright infringement and "defamation by implication"

#technology #security #legal

Consumers should be very wary of buying cloud connected appliances or devices Flashing lights and AI-powered functionality often hides a very dark secret. Most of these devices are connected to a cloud service, you typically do not even know where that service is (and the US is as bad as China when it comes to eavesdropping, allegedly). In the linked article, a man discovered what happened when he tried to block that access, which also reveals another issue — that the devices can frequently be remotely disabled, and you would not know anything about that. Such a device connected to your main home network, as it has established a network link out through your firewall, could be used to attack or snoop on all your other network devices including computers. You certainly, as an absolute minimum, want such devices only connected to a guest network, and want that guest network isolated from the main network (the latter is not the default for consumer grade routers). In my case, my IoT devices have their own VLAN which is completely isolated from all other network devices, which are also segmented into their own VLAN groupings. In summary, just remember that a cloud dependent device can become a useless paper weight at a point in time (whether you stop paying for a subscription service, or whether the manufacturer goes out of business or ends support), it can open up external access to your network, or it can be sending out other sensitive information anywhere in the world. Because 99.9% of us have no idea what that device is actually doing, we may want to rethink supporting the purchase of such devices. The more people who buy them, the more manufacturers will produce them, and we'll see fewer alternatives available over time. I'm a cynic though, so I'm doubting the world will stand up together and only purchase non-cloud connected devices, but I thought I'd just put this out there. Credit to Security Now! podcast episode no 1049 where it was discussed. See

Futurism

Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House

One man's robot vacuum was constantly communicating with its manufacturer, sending a detailed 3D map of his house halfway across the world.

#technology #cloud #security #privacy