We still await an acceptable blood glucose monitoring watch, but this has not stopped some marketers from claiming their watches can be use “for reference purposes”.

This may not be a scientific test but does at least demonstrate how far out these watches can be, and that they in no way should be used really for blood glucose monitoring.

You get what you pay for, and some form of medical clearance is really what you want to use.

See https://youtu.be/sWadFt4vBtY?si=mRk2DsyxIa8HqJMV

Not made by Meta = Tick. The price though is almost the cost of three monitors…

These may not be full time permanent replacements for monitors, but they are great for portable use, and could potentially save a ton of desk area space. You can also work in a confined area (even on a plane trip, without the neck strain of having to look down the whole time, or having the passenger next to you read all your e-mail), with the illusion of space and the monitors being further away from you. Or they can also be used so that they don’t disturb someone sleeping (or working) next to you, or you can use them instead of having a large screen TV.

At even 60Hz to 120Hz, that is a pretty decent refresh rate, and more than I expected it to be. They are also not as heavy or cumbersome as many VR goggles are, weighing it at around 75g. Resolution is 1080p per eye.

It seems too that the glasses can connect to Linux computers that support USB-C DP video output.

But this type of device really needs to be tested in person before buying. It’s not the sort of thing you can easily show someone remotely, or via a video, to help make a choice.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/replaced-monitors-smart-glasses/ and the video at https://youtu.be/m5pTpB9x-es?si=V1K–m2ZwWQxPSLM is also worth watching

Character AI says it is bringing to life the science-fiction dream of open-ended conversations and collaborations with computers. Their dialogue agents are powered by their own proprietary technology based on large language models (so not ChatGPT), built and trained from the ground up with conversation in mind.

Needless to say, a hallucinating supercomputer is not a source of reliable information. Still, they hope that you find Character AI a useful tool for imagination, brainstorming, language learning, and a host of other purposes they have themselves not yet imagined.

For creation of your own character, they support two different creator experiences. Their Quick mode allows creators to create interesting Characters in less than a minute. Their Advanced mode allows adventurous creators to perfect their Character by using more powerful tools. Note that character creators do not see any of your conversation with their characters.

The apps for iOS and Android (and website) is essentially free and fully featured. It does not look like the paid service is actually exempting you from the ad-driven service, though.

What drew me to reading more about this service was it was featured in Google’s Play Store Editors’ Choice for 2023, and has an average rating of 4.6 stars from 425,000 reviews. So, clearly there are many who enjoy using it. You can actually test it a bit on their website without registering.

See https://beta.character.ai/

Well, this is interesting! The move by France in this direction is not new at all as in 2018 they announced they were moving towards using Matrix and Riot to replace WhatsApp and Telegram, and then in 2020 they announced they would roll out their in-house developed messaging service called Tchap (based on Matrix protocol). In February 2020, the Tchap service had 80,000 users in the French public administration.

What is new, though, is a seemingly complete move away from self-hosting of Matrix servers with Tchap, to Olvid.

Olvid is also open source and E2EE, uses a decentralized infrastructure, and doesn’t require a phone number or any other personal data for registration. Hence, it is seen as a more trustworthy option that includes all the key features of its more renowned and widely used competitors.

Security comparisons between Olvid and other messaging apps may be rendered moot due to Olvid’s unique distinction of having ANSII (France’s national cybersecurity agency) “first-level security certification.”

This certification involves a thorough examination of the app’s source code by the state’s experts, and none of the other mainstream apps mentioned in this post have undergone the stringent evaluation process.

So, although Signal is secure, it still requires phone numbers, and France is not controlling the hosting.

Too many countries are still dependent on US technology or hosting, and as we’ve seen before in the UK and Germany, you can’t unfortunately trust even your allies not to spy on you. France is therefore to be admired for taking accountability over their own security and privacy.

But like with anything that is not WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal, there is always going to be a major struggle to get broad adoption. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram are popular because they require phone numbers to register, and that helps everyone find their friends and contacts easily. But any government can of course call the shots as to what software is installed on their official phones. It just depends on whether a phone is deemed official or private.

The Olvid website also has a link to a technical paper about how the protocol actually works.

See https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/french-government-recommends-against-using-foreign-chat-apps/

The Raspberry Pi line is full of capable compact computers, but they’ve never been the strongest in the bunch when it comes to graphical output. Nor have they been particularly expandable in that regard. However, that’s all beginning to change, with Jeff Geerling reporting success getting external GPUs to work on the Raspberry Pi 5.

This is really early days to demonstrate what is possible (seems Nvidia may still be a problem). So, it’s not ready yet for a copy-and-paste for everyone to use, but all the efforts have been open sourced for others to follow and contribute to.

See https://hackaday.com/2023/11/30/the-raspberry-pi-5-can-use-external-graphics-cards-now/

Vivlio has been building an open European alternative to the Kindle and Kobo e-readers. And it proves that you can compete with tech giants with a team of 35 as long as you have a distinct strategy with different goals.

“The fundamental principle of the Vivlio model, which really sets us apart from Kobo, for example, which has a partnership with Fnac, is that we guarantee two things to our partners. First, the customer remains their customer. This means that the customer account is a bookseller’s customer account, not a Vivlio customer account,” Dupré said.

“Second, a very large portion of the sales generated by the Vivlio ecosystem go to the bookseller. In other words, we leave most of the margin to the reseller . . . That’s the contractual, legal and operational promise,” he added.

Adobe’s DRM hasn’t evolved in years. It’s clunky, hostile to the end user and Adobe takes a cut on each transaction. “The company literally almost died because of [Adobe’s DRM] as we were having major problems. It accounted for 80% of our customer support requests,” Dupré said.

Vivlio contributed to Readium LCP, an open-source DRM solution that doesn’t require an Adobe account (or any third-party account).

So, this is in interesting approach. What makes Kindle popular is of course the Amazon “bookstore”, and Amazon has kept that non-compatible with other readers, as that is their trump card. Amazon also has a massive number of books at good prices, so that has been difficult for anyone else to compete with.

And as much as many hate DRM, it’s still a core part of the publishing industry so you need seamless support for it otherwise many popular books are not going to be available. Vivlio has addressed this, and I hope that LCP gets more widely adopted vs Adobe DRM.

One problem I found though was that although the Vivlio website is quad lingual, the shop seems to default to French without any visible means of switching to English. The same happened when I clicked on the option to buy an e-reader. This is not going to appeal to global audiences too much.

See https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/30/this-small-french-company-wants-to-build-the-open-alternative-to-kindle-and-kobo/

“Rather than focusing on big ticket items, we compiled a list of requests from Proton community members on how Proton Mail can make your life easier. This involved aggregating statistics from Reddit, Twitter, and UserVoice, and also analyzing data from over 100,000 support tickets dating back several years. Then we began diligently working through the list. We don’t make money through ads and we have no venture capital investors, so you, the community, are the only people we answer to.”

The issue with searching the contents of E2EE email was about not exposing the contents to Proton themselves. So, in the past we had to download and search, or use the local mail that was synced through Proton Mail Bridge. I’d be very interested to see how Proton got this right now, to work seamlessly in the web search.

They’ve also added protection from tracking links, scheduling of mail messages up to three months in advance, public holidays in Proton Calendar, and many more features.

I’d switched full time over to Proton from GMail a few months back, and have to say it is a really good experience right now. I’m on a paid tier so that gives me 510 GB of storage too – way more than the 102 GB I had with paid GMail.

I’ll certainly be looking forward to the snooze mail feature that is about to still be released.

See https://proton.me/blog/mail-calendar-improvements-2023

There are some more modern solutions to securing your bike’s parts together:

1. Hexlox: Hexlox insert into the heads of your bike’s existing Allen bolts. As long as the bolts are steel (most are), these magnetic inserts drop right in and prevent an Allen wrench from fitting into the bolt head.
2. Pitlocks: Pitlocks look like misshapen nuts, surrounded by a dish that prevents somebody from attempting to wrestle it off with an adjustable wrench.
3. Pinheads: Pinheads look like domes of metal, dimpled as if they’d survived a scale-model asteroid strike. An individualized key slips over the dome, gets traction on the dimples, and unscrews or tightens it.

These are actually great low tech solutions to hopefully preventing your bike from being stolen (rather than trying to track it after it is gone). The nuts and bits can be reused on future bikes and don’t wear out either, so although not cheap, they can be used for a long time.

You can’t make a bike thief-proof. If they want it badly enough, they can defeat any security bolt or method. But that’s only if you have a Mission Impossible-style team of all-star bike thieves targeting your ride.

See https://www.wired.com/story/bike-security-bolts-finally-gave-me-peace-of-mind/

If you’re setting up a new machine or adding a hard drive to an existing one, you may want to have your home directory on a different drive than the default location.

A popular configuration for modern personal computers is to have a medium-sized Solid State Drive (SSD) holding your operating system and a larger traditional hard drive (HD) as your the main storage for data. Or you may have a single traditional hard drive in your system, and you’ve added a new HD for increased storage. Whatever your reasons, here is a simple and blow by blow run-through of moving your home directory.

By the way, if you’re installing a Linux system from scratch, you’ll probably see an option to create a separate home directory in your Linux distribution’s installer. Generally, you’ll just need to go into the partitioning options, create a separate partition, and mount it at “/home”. But, if you’ve already installed a Linux distribution, you can use these instructions to move your current home directory to a new location without losing anything or reinstalling your operating system.

I did exactly this with my machine. I’d bought a new 120GB SSD drive to use as my boot and OS drive, and I kept my bigger spinning drive for the home data partition. I already had a second spinning drive which continued to serve as the daily backup drive, for both my data but also my Timeshift OS snapshots.

SSD drives are still a bit expensive to buy in 3TB+ size storage capacities so it makes sense for me to still use spinning drives for my data and its backups. A 120GB SSD has been fine for the Linux OS and it boots nice and quickly too.

If you’re migrating home to a new data drive, this is a really safe process as you copy the home data to the new drive partition, point to the new partition, and reboot to test. Your old home data is still where it was until you are happy.

See https://www.howtogeek.com/442101/how-to-move-your-linux-home-directory-to-another-hard-drive/

It sounds like a simple thing to do, but SimpleX is not a cloud based hosting, nor does it even have a common profile that anyone can just follow or connect to. Every friend being connected with, receives a unique invite address. There is no e-mail address or phone number used to register, so no-one can find or connect with you unless you send them their own unique invite.

Hence this linking has been keenly awaited for a while now.

How does it work? “The way we designed this solution avoided any security compromises, and the end-to-end encryption remained as secure as it was – it uses double-ratchet algorithm, with perfect forward secrecy, post-compromise security and deniability. This solution is similar to WhatsApp and WeChat. But unlike these apps, no server is involved in the connection between mobile and desktop. The connection itself uses a new SimpleX Remote Control Protocol (XRCP) based on secure TLS 1.3 and additional quantum-resistant encryption inside TLS.”

The downside of this approach is that mobile device has to be connected to the same local network as desktop. But the upside is that the connection is secure, and you do not need to have a copy of all your data on desktop, which usually has lower security than mobile.

See https://simplex.chat/blog/20231125-simplex-chat-v5-4-link-mobile-desktop-quantum-resistant-better-groups.html

It is not always a given that the GCam port (from the Pixel camera app) is actually always better than the stock S23 Ultra app, for example, some say the 10x optical zoom, and the low light photos, are better with the stock app. But in other cases the blue sky colours can be better with the GCam ports, and also the GCam ports don’t overprocess as much as the stock camera app does (resulting in softer, finer detailed photos).

The other complicating factor is there is no one GCam port to just install and use. There are a number of them with some slightly different features, and also some may not even work on your device. So, unfortunately each person would have to do some research, and even test possibly more than one port.

GCam ports have been renown for their excellent HDR+ feature since the early days, and they would likely improve photography on most phones that they can install on (not just the Samsung Galaxy phones). The other plus is, you do not have to root the phone, and the stock app is still there to use.

There are actually quite a few videos comparing the stock vs a specific GCam port.

See https://cyanogenmods.org/samsung-galaxy-s23-ultra-gcam-port/

A new PwC report said African gaming and esports are expected to grow significantly in the next few years, with South Africa leading the pack (think that is across Africa).

The PwC Africa Entertainment and Media outlook revealed that South Africa leads the Nigerian and Kenyan markets in video games and esports revenue.

South Africa saw strong growth in these sectors in 2022. This was especially prominent within the esports category, with total revenue up 30% year-on-year.

I’m glad to see this category growing because as long as you have electricity, a fibre connection, and a reasonable computer, you can compete fairly equally. The only downside can be where latency times to Europe and the USA lag a bit. But we are seeing more and more gaming servers being established within South Africa.

Some of the most popular mobile games include PUBG Mobile, Clash of Kings and Call of Duty Mobile.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/517201-south-african-gaming-and-esports-surge.html

This is probably worth noting, for anyone who still uses Facebook, and thinks posting “anonymously” in a group, is actually anonymous. This is especially true for small friend or family groups, and could cause major embarrassment.

Facebook introduced the anonymous posting feature in 2017, allowing users to share content within groups while keeping their identities under wraps. This feature is available on all platforms that Facebook is available on and syncs across all your devices. Whether you use an iPhone, Android, or one of the top Chromebooks, you can share your thoughts anonymously in Facebook groups.

You must be a member of a group that activated anonymous posting to use this feature. While your posts remain anonymous within the group, the admins, moderators, and Facebook have access to your name and profile picture. This measure is in place to maintain group safety and uphold Facebook community standards.

So, if you have a friend or family member managing your group, they ARE going to know what you posted. This is pretty typical Facebook though, who blur the lines between privacy, anonymity, and E2EE. Those are actually binary terms – they are either on or off. You don’t get partial privacy, anonymity, or E2EE (the E2EE I’m referring to is the attention being drawn to the WhatsApp E2EE whilst actively passing the metadata upwards to Facebook and 3rd parties).

See https://www.androidpolice.com/facebook-anonymous-post-tutorial/

Open-source software is essential to the functioning of our modern internet. It’s essential to all our modern technology. Open-source tools form the simple and functional building blocks that help power everything from TVs to ChatGPT, and it’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of the open-source movement in making software development accessible.

Yet, understanding of open source software values is scarce. Companies and businesses will often ignore their licensing requirements, and even many developers aren’t aware of the licenses they operate under. Whether you’re a developer, tech enthusiast, business leader, or just an interested party, it’s important to respect the efforts of open-source developers and credit them for their contributions. As a developer or user of software, you could also open yourself up to lawsuits if using a license improperly.

There are different definitions of open source, but they generally all hit on the same key points. To be open source, software must be freely available and members of the public are freely allowed to inspect, modify, and distribute the code at their discretion. This includes the sale or commercialization of any derived (i.e. enhanced) or aggregate (i.e. combining multiple bits of software) work that might be produced from open-source software.

The world would be a very different place if it were not for open source licensing (hardware as well as software). It has allowed innovation to keep leap frogging and has also allowed so may start-up businesses to get off the ground with minimal cost. Learners everywhere have also been able to inspect it and take it apart and learn from it.

But it is not license-free. Although some open source licenses have no restrictions at all, many others do have conditions, whether it means the source must accompany the product, or the whole final product needs to be open source. So, it does often have implications, especially for any business selling products.

Although some open source projects have some or other paid support tier, or paid hosting service. If you intend to use open source into the future, it is a good idea to consider donating to that project, to ensure it is sustainable in the long run.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/open-source-software-licensing/

KDE, especially, is known for its amazing themes and theme customisations. With that can come lots of tweaking, and then forgetting how to get back to what you really liked. Or maybe you want to share that fantastic theme combination that you got right with friends.

Konsave helps do all of this very simply and effectively. I do like that all its options are logically named like -r for remove, -l for list, etc. So, although it is command line driven, it is really easy to use.

It officially supports KDE Plasma, but can be used on all other Linux desktop environments too. It is an open-source application written in Python.

See https://github.com/Prayag2/konsave

Thanks to the phenomenon that is BookTok, the act of reading has been rendered an aesthetic for some; on the other hand, the app’s community has launched careers and book awards, and has pushed literary sales to revitalized heights.

Somewhat mimicking in-person book clubs, the intersection of social networking and reading already exists, with the reigning — but sometimes controversial — Goodreads functioning as an answer to both. The platform functions like a book log, shared with both friends and the public. Then there are the other long-existing integrated communities, like Book Twitter and the once-popular Bookstagram. But digital communities and book clubs are still less readily available, and conversations about reading online are often saturated when they appear on platforms that serve wider purposes.

I have found Goodreads and BookWyrm (part of the Fediverse, and privacy focussed) to be great for notching up reads against an annual goal, and for posting reviews etc. But what they lack is the real social aspect of reading clubs, and also good AI suggestions.

LibraryThing is also around after many years, but it’s look and feel has never really updated with the times. Many of its groups are quite active with a few thousand members, but many have also gone dormant.

It looks like Fable is helping fill this niche. I’ve not actually joined Fable, so can’t say first-hand. Although they also sell ebooks (that was what made me a bit cautious, although it is a good way of funding the platform) about 90% of the book clubs are free to join and participate in, and there are thousands of book clubs.

If you think about the early days of Amazon, as an online bookshop, this is similar, but it has been founded by a reader and is focussed on only reading (versus taking over the world). Some of their popular clubs are around 8,000 to 12,000 members. If you can’t find a suitable club to join, you can start your own one on the platform.

What sets it apart a bit, though, is the clubs are not just centred around authors or specific genres. It seems many clubs are focussed around the reader personalities themselves, and their interests. They also have a new AI-powered discovery feed.

Part of the founder’s mission states: “I started Fable so that all of us can fill the micro-moments in our hectic lives with stories. Our mission is to deliver the world’s best social experience with exceptional stories in service of mental wellness.”

It is true that books are a refuge from stress and boredom, and they also spark creativity and a yearning to travel and know more about the world.

It is also dedicated to diversity and inclusion, so can be expected to be a safe place for anyone to venture into.

See https://mashable.com/article/fable-app-readers-goodreads

Linux and open source are the future and there is no doubt about that, to see this come to a reality, a strong foundation has to be laid, by starting from the lowest level possible and that is exposing kids to Linux and teaching them how to use Linux operating systems.

Linux is a very powerful operating system, and that is one of the reasons why it powers a lot of servers on the Internet. Though there have been concerns about its user-friendliness, which has brought about the debate of how it will overtake Mac OSX and Windows on desktop computers, I think users need to accept Linux as it is to realize its real power.

Why Linux specifically? One thing common to children is curiosity, and early learning can help instil a character of exploration in them when the learning environment is designed to suit their needs. Linux is all about curiosity, experimentation, learning how it works, adaptability and customisation.

See https://www.tecmint.com/best-linux-distributions-for-kids/

Here’s what the student doesn’t know: Although she surfed the internet in the privacy of her home, Facebook saw much of what she did.

Every single site she visited used the Meta Pixel, a tracking tool that silently collects and transmits information to Facebook as users browse the web, according to testing by The Markup. Millions of invisible pixels are embedded on websites across the internet, allowing businesses and organizations to target their customers on Facebook with ads.

The Markup has also found hospitals, telehealth companies, tax filing websites, and mental health crisis websites using the pixel, and transmitting sensitive information to social media companies.

And WhatsApp is no different. Do not be fooled about the end-to-end-encryption. As far as we know that actual message content is still private, but it is WhatsApp’s terms and conditions that still allow for the active passing of metadata from your usage of WhatsApp upstream to Facebook. That behaviour is not just when you open and close WhatsApp and who you talk to when, it also includes the location of your phone 24/7 and whatever else it can harvest.

Facebook’s real power comes with how much data it collects from so many varied sources, and how it can collate all that information. It knows who one’s friends are, and what each friend does, and how that all relates together.

It is really difficult to get away from all this, as I recently discovered on my WordPress blog. Although I removed all the Google tracking stuff, the plugins that I make use of, have their own embedded data gathering. For example, I see Privacy Badger is blocking ‘pixel.wp.com’ and ‘api.pinterest.com’. Some I can explain, like the Flickr widget that fetches my photos from Flickr that I highlight.

But yes, it seems we really do have to arm ourselves with ad and tracker blockers nowadays. Corporates are not really changing their behaviour willingly at all.

See https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2023/11/22/facebook-watches-teens-online-as-they-prep-for-college

No matter what OS you use, virtual desktops, workspaces, and activities allow us to better separate and group our activities more logically together. If you dislike clutter, and want better productivity and organisation, then this video is worth watching if you have not yet explored this before.

Although this video focuses on general Linux and KDE users, I do cover why someone would want to use virtual desktops or workspaces. As these features exist too on Windows and macOS, this may be of interest to those users, and also to compare with how Linux does it.

This is not a step-by-step how-to-do-it video, as my videos focus more around an overview of why you may want to use something, and what it can do for you. If you like the concept of virtual workspaces, there are plenty of how-to videos to get started.

I specifically delve into the differences, too, between virtual desktops/workspaces and KDE activities.

Watch my video https://youtu.be/wq-7KEeH7_U

The latest point release, Inkscape 1.3.1, has grown into one of the biggest bug fix packages they’ve ever shared with the community. Update to benefit from more than 70 bug fixes, 16 improved user interface translations, and even two small, new features!

Inkscape has proved itself to be a good alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It is a free and open-source vector graphics editor that is similar to Illustrator in many ways. Inkscape can be used to create a wide variety of graphic designs, including illustrations, logos, icons, and website graphics. It also has a variety of features that are similar to Illustrator, such as layers, paths, and filters. I’ve also found my drawing tablet on Linux to work very well with it.

It is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

See https://inkscape.org/news/2023/11/18/big-small-release-inkscape-131-is-out/