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

New Movie “Python: The Documentary” Traces the Language’s Story “Some things in the open-source ecosystem are absolutely foundational—they’ve shaped it into what we know today. One of the biggest is the Python programming language. And now, it’s giving its global community something a little different—and pretty exciting. A movie!” This is one of the most popular programming languages in the world, and known for its quirky sense of humour. The documentary should be entertaining to watch. There is a link to the movie in the linked article below. See

Linuxiac

New Movie “Python: The Documentary” Traces the Language’s Story

“Python: The Documentary” is a new 90-minute film that tells the story of how a side project evolved into one of the world’s most influential...

#technology #Python #programming

The Intergalactic Indestructible Shatterproof Travel Scuttle by Phoenix Shaving Recently, my ceramic Crown King shaving scuttle fell in the basin, and has a few hairline cracks on its outer shell which are leaking water now. After doing some searching, I came upon this shatterproof scuttle from Phoenix Shaving, as well as the Crown King Shatterproof Travel Scuttle. Both are made out of a type of Polypropylene plastic that does not break, shatter, or crack, even when thrown out of a moving vehicle onto a tar road. The point being, there are unbreakable travel scuttles. Given the price of these scuttles, and the fact I can't easily obtain them in South Africa, I'm seriously thinking of going the unbreakable route. They don't look as nice as the ceramic versions, but they work much the same, and are going to last. See https://phoenixartisanaccoutrements.com/products/the-crown-king-shatterproof-travel-scuttle #traditionalwetshaving #shaving

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

A Love Letter To Internet Relay Chat — The Original Social Media That Is Still With Us Today “Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-time communication technology that allows people to socialize online in both chat rooms and private chat sessions. As a decentralized communication protocol, anyone can set up an IRC server and connect multiple servers into networks, with the source code for these servers readily available ever since its inception by a student, and IRC clients are correspondingly very easy to write.” Yep, even though it was the first, and was around before today's youngsters were even born, the fact is IRC is still around. With so many becoming disenchanted with all the trackers, adverts, high bandwidth requirements, and bloat of modern social networks, there is still IRC, and it works much the same as it did way back when. It's true, it is more a network that people escaped to, and not from. I actually use IRC daily, even if it is just posting to my own two channels I manage there. I also suspect that IRC will be around still long after other networks have disappeared. Not only that, but I'm just wondering if it won't get “rediscovered” by today's youth at some point, in the quest to find something simpler and more pure as a social network. There are quite a few IRC clients around, but something that may help with onboarding of brand-new users is also having a really user-friendly client that obscures some of the slash commands. I know IRC purists will turn their noses up at this, but remember attracting new blood also often means offering new interfaces. My channel is called #gadgeteerza and is on the Libera IRC server. If you want to try IRC out without installing a client or a server, you can just head to

Kiwi IRC

in your browser and try listing and joining channels. There is an interesting video to watch about IRC at the linked article below. See

Hackaday

A Love Letter To Internet Relay Chat

Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-t...

#technology #IRC #socialnetworks

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

[URGENT] DEF CON Researcher Exposes How Password Managers Betray Your Trust "Czech security researcher Marek Tóth demonstrated at DEF CON 33 how a single click on any malicious website can steal passwords, credit cards, and 2FA codes from 40 million users of major password managers, with vendors like 1Password and LastPass refusing to fix the vulnerabilities." What this brings home yet once again is, in regard to security, the easier something is to use is usually not better for security. In this case, much of the issue is around the autofilling of passwords on page loading (because that is easier). So, to some extent, this is all helped along by settings we choose to set. Again for subdomains vs exact domain, it is easier to match to just the base domain… Many password managers will be addressing these issues in the coming week or two, but it is worth rethinking your "ease of use" settings on your password manager so long. See

Sam Bent

[URGENT] DEF CON Researcher Exposes How Password Managers Betray Your Trust

Czech security researcher Marek Tóth demonstrated at DEF CON 33 how a single click on any malicious website can steal passwords, credit cards, and...

#technology #security #vulnerabilities

You want your UPS to be NUT compatible The primary goal of the Network UPS Tools (NUT - see https://networkupstools.org/) project is to provide support for Power Devices, such as Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Power Distribution Units, Automatic Transfer Switches, Power Supply Units and Solar Controllers. NUT provides a common protocol and set of tools to monitor and manage such devices, and to consistently name equivalent features and data points, across a vast range of vendor-specific protocols and connection media types. NUT provides many control and monitoring features, with a uniform control and management interface. The actual post is a bit longer with some screenshots so is better viewed on my blog at

GadgeteerZA

EndeavourOS and Manjaro: An in-depth Comparison Between Two of the Best Arch Linux Based Distros

If you have ever tried using Arch Linux, you know it is almost impossible to install it without proper documentation and Linux knowledge. That’s ...

#technology #UPS #opensource #openstandards

You can once again buy an official Commodore C64 "Basically, there is a whole gamut of ways to get some part of the C64 experience, ranging from emulator-only to a full hardware DIY or pre-assembled format. Each of which come with their own price tag, starting at $0 for running VICE on your existing system. With so much choice we can only hope that the renewed Commodore company will become something more than Yet Another C64 Experience." The video in the linked article gives a good run down of the various Commodore C64 options up to now, before ending with the details and cost of the revived "official" C64. Apart from holding the world record for the most microcomputer sales of all time. I had one as well, after my ZX81, and it was a major breakthrough with colour graphics, sound, etc. I have very happy memories from that C64, although I must say I did enjoy my Amiga 500 a lot more as the game quality was just that much better, and it had a lot of games. I still play some of those Amiga games today such as Ports of Call every now and again on my Linux PC using an emulator. So the question is, would there still be interest in 2025 for the C64? Well it certainly has been modernised a bit with regard to HDMI and peripheral support, and apparently many thousands of the unofficial C64s are still being sold. See

Hackaday

Commodore Is Back Selling New C64s, But Should You Buy Them?

It’s hard to argue with nostalgia, but you can toss a bucket of cold facts over it. In the case of the recent rescuing of the Commodore brand...

#technology #Commodore #retrocomputing

Homepage - An Open Source Self-Hosted Dashboard Homepage is a modern, fully static, fast, secure fully proxied, highly customizable application dashboard with integrations for over 100 services and translations into multiple languages. Easily configured via YAML files or through docker label discovery. With features like quick search, bookmarks, weather support, a wide range of integrations and widgets, an elegant and modern design, and a focus on performance, Homepage is your ideal start to the day and a handy companion throughout it. My video explains why I moved from Heimdall to Homepage. It also shows what various service and information widgets are available, what my dashboard looks like, what the various parts do, and how the configuration files work. My docker compose file is also unpacked. Watch #technology #selfhosted #opensource #dashboard

Various desktop Linux tips for newbies I'm also seeing more and more new Linux users popping up. They're noticeable for often saying "why did they not do this earlier". The point is, today's Linux is very different from 20+ years ago. It generally just installs and works, often looking very similar to what users experienced before (meaning basically everything can be done in the graphical menus and windows). Linux gets a bit more interesting if you venture into using the AUR or Git versions of apps (you have to enable this, as these are more bleeding edge). This is where dependencies may break, and you need a bit of terminal skill often to fix things, but the good news is, you're not losing any data. Over the years I've also opted to having all my user data (the stuff under /home) in its own partition so that is it fully separate from the main OS. The reason was in the early years I used to format the drive and do clean installs, or was distro hopping. Nowadays, I just use Manjaro KDE, and it just keeps updating all then time - have not reinstalled for many years now (and no nagging to activate it or end of life coming). You may wonder what happens if a distro is no longer supported? Well firstly it keeps working, and it may well still pull some patches and updates. But usually you will be able to migrate to using some other distro, and your user data all stays intact. But this is also a good reason for picking one of the many mainstream distros, that should be around still for a very long time (measuring that long time in terms of Windows release cycles). No-one has to move to Linux, but for those curious enough to want to find out more, the usual approach is to start with a liveboot version and just run it from a USB stick or external drive to test it out a bit. The next step is typically to install it side-by-side with Windows, but I'd really recommend a separate hard drive, as Windows does some odd things to the boot partition sometimes. Linux can access the user data on a Windows drive, but I'd be careful with that, as Windows can lock the drive if it uses hibernation mode. The point is, lots of things are possible for Linux. One will find of course that many companies only bring out their software for Windows and macOS. And example is Stream Deck. But I discovered two excellent 3rd party apps that work even better under Linux with Stream Deck. Da Vinci Resolve for example produces world-class video editing software that runs on Linux natively, but there is also Kdenlive that will work just as well for most users. So always do a bit of research before buying software or hardware to choose wisely. Personally, for me, it's more about the freedom to what I want with it. See https://akselmo.dev/posts/how-to-linux-2025 #technology #Linux #opensource

Using Signal groups for activism "Things are heating up. Millions of people are taking to the streets against Trump's rising authoritarianism. Communities around the US are organizing to defend against ICE raids, to protest Israeli genocide, for mutual aid, and for other forms of fighting fascism. Signal can help people safely organize in all of these contexts. Signal groups, in particular, are more powerful than you might be aware of, even if you already use them all the time. In the linked post you'll see how." Of course, activism is also about a much wider range of topics than the above, and many have been running for decades. Apart from activism in 1st Word Countries, there is also activism in many 3rd World Countries, which in many cases are really life and death situations if users are caught. Signal is not THE most private network around. There are many others like Threema (not public link group invites though) and SimpleX (really open group invites with custom names per group) that enable far more anonymity. In other words, they don't require any form of registration or a mobile number to work, meaning there is even less to link back to any individual user. But this is why I wanted to make this post. It often comes back to many people wanting to find their friends on their chat app. Yes, finding friends makes communicating easier, but that in itself does leak metadata. The reason I only have two or three contacts on Threema and SimpleX are that it is way more difficult to build out your network. This is where Signal does strike an excellent middle path - it is simpler to use and find friends, whilst also going as far as it can to guard your privacy. It has some good group options (including an announcements only group) and most importantly where it differs from WhatsApp and Telegram, are that it's metadata cannot be accessed by Signal (WhatsApp goes as far as actively sharing users metadata with advertisers and partners, which is why WhatsApp has so many businesses on board). Telegram may handle far bigger numbers for its groups, but the problem is users do need to set up their privacy settings very carefully, and their metadata is at the risk of being subpoenaed now, and of course Telegram's encryption is proprietary. Signal's groups are limited to 1,000 users, and another issue may be that there is one profile across all groups (unlike SimpleX where you choose a name for each group you belong to, but it does not scale well to large groups at all). Signal does hit a sweet spot though and should really be adopted by a lot more mainstream users. Signal's user privacy is way ahead of both WhatsApp and Telegram, yet it is just as easy and intuitive to use. But, as I mentioned above Signal is not perfect. To summarise those shortcomings, they are: 1. Even announcement-only groups are limited to 1,000 users (Telegram has 200,000 for normal groups and unlimited users for broadcast groups). 2. A phone number is required to register the account initially (SimpleX and Threema do not require anything). 3. The profile your friends see is the same profile seen in a group (SimpleX allows different names) so select your profile name with this in mind, although the phone number is hidden by default. See

micahflee

Using Signal groups for activism

Things are heating up. Millions of people are taking to the streets against Trump's rising authoritarianism. Communities around the US are organizi...

#technology #privacy #chatapps #activism

How to Clear RAM Cache, Buffers, and Swap in Linux Without Reboot "Like any other operating system, GNU/Linux has implemented memory management efficiently and even more than that. However, if any process is eating away your memory and you want to clear it, Linux provides a way to flush or clear the RAM cache. In general, it is not a good idea to manually free up Buffer and Cache in Linux which might be used by the Linux kernel, which is designed to manage these resources efficiently, and manually clearing them can disrupt system performance." So, you can choose to apply any of these commands, and they won't do any harm, but the closing thought is that you should not normally really need to do so. Linux will use available RAM anyway so do not think that if it only uses 20% of RAM that is better than 80%. See

How to Clear RAM Cache, Buffers, and Swap in Linux Without Reboot

How to Clear RAM Cache, Buffer, and Swap Space in Linux

Is your Linux system slow? Learn how to safely clear RAM cache, buffer, and swap space to instantly free up memory. Simple steps, no reboot required.

#technology #Linux #opensource

You can watch YouTube on Jellyfin with TubeArchivist This is quite interesting, especially for those with bandwidth issues or wanting to watch offline (dare I say without ads or tracking...). TubeArchivist actually will run completely self-contained on its own, but there is also a Jellyfin plugin that will integrate it into Jellyfin, and the power of Jellyfin is the organising and curating of what you watch. You can tweak many settings, including resolution, but of course it may still fill up your disk storage over time. There are quite a few handy stats though and that includes how much disk storage is being used. Also, interestingly, it will pull through the views and likes from YouTube. The linked article is especially useful with regard to the integration with Jellyfin. See

XDA

I finally found a way to watch YouTube on Jellyfin — and it's incredibly easy

No more YouTube headaches on your Jellyfin server

#technology #videos #Jellyfin #opensource #selfhosting

Proton's New AI Assistant Lumo Offers a Private and Encrypted Chat Alternative On the plus side (not the Plus plan) this is an AI assistant that promises to keep your conversations completely private, even for the free version. "Proton says Lumo doesn't keep chat logs on its servers, and everything stays encrypted on your device using the same technology that protects the company's other services, so no one else can read your conversations – including Proton itself." On the not so Plus side, there is a Plus version, but it appears that Proton "Unlimited" plan subscribers, like myself, are limited to the free version only. Which is OK, but it may be time to reconsider that naming of that plan as it is getting further and further away from "unlimited". Some quick comparisons by running through some queries I already did in Perplexity is leaving me with a feeling that it is not as intuitive as Perplexy in terms of interpreting my actual question, and the answers are a bit more vague versus Perplexity's. It does however also provide sources for its answers (not all though). And of course a Proton subscriber, I don't get anything extra on the AI. So, I'm a little mixed on this one, but I suppose its privacy first focus may be plus for many. See

MacRumors

Proton

Proton today launched Lumo, an AI assistant that promises to keep your conversations completely private. Best known for its encrypted Mail and VPN ...

#technology #AI #privacy