nfSensei is an open source fork of pfSense, by the original creator, for Linux “nfSensei is a modern network operating system built from scratch in Rust with a React frontend, designed around a single principle: one API to rule them all. The CLI, the web UI, and the on-device AI assistant all flow through the same API surface. No drift, no divergence, no surprises. The entire system ships as five self-contained binaries. The nushell-based CLI has 400+ commands. The Kensho design system provides 40+ themes. And Clyde, the on-device AI, brings intelligence directly to the firewall without shipping your data to the cloud.” I see a lot of similarities in Scott's journey through computers to my own. As he says he has learnt a lot of lessons along the way. I spent quite a bit of time tossing up between pfSense and OPNsense before I decided to go the OPNsense route. Either ways, these systems give a lot of freedom from the commercial router and firewall vendors who tend to cripple their offerings. From FreeBSD to pfSense to nfSensei — Scott Ulrich has spent two decades of building open-source network operating systems. So I'm going to be very interested to see where this project goes, and I have no doubt it will be a major success. Interestingly, and I suppose logical enough, it has a configuration import from OPNsense and pfSense, but right now this is not ready yet for production use. See

GadgeteerZA

NfSensei Is An Open Source Spiritual Successor Of PfSense, By The Original Creator, For Linux

“nfSensei is a modern network operating system built from scratch in Rust with a React frontend, designed around a single principle: one API to r...

#firewalls #nfsensei #opensource #pfsense #technology

FairEmail is an open source privacy orientated email app “Setup was IMAP credentials for each of my personal accounts. There's no account to create with the developer or a sign-in step before you can reach your inbox. Two things in the listing made it appealing to 1 million+ users, including me. The app requires no special permissions, and it doesn't use Firebase Cloud Messaging, which is how most Android apps receive push. Instead, it holds an IMAP IDLE connection open to the mail server, so new messages arrive without Google in the middle. It's also the lightest mail client I've installed in years.” Yes, this is not for connecting to business accounts (unless they have a plain IMAP login) but it is really ideal for keeping your mail private more private. Too many services today want to suck everything up, either to protect the children, or to “enhance their offerings to you”. It's true this makes little difference if you actually have your mail service at Microsoft or Google, but I recently moved to Zoho Mail. It costs me around R115 per year (that is like US$8 or so) which is perfectly affordable, and they are not in the business of pushing ads into your mail, or hoovering it up for AI, etc. On my desktop I use BetterBird (a fork of Thunderbird) that pulls my mail and consolidates it into a combined inbox. I also use my personal domain name with my mail so I can switch providers later if I want to, without having to change my e-mail address everywhere. I've realised we have to push back against getting locked into everything all the time. We lose our privacy, we kill competition, and we lose our freedom to move away easily. See

GadgeteerZA

FairEmail Is An Open Source Privacy Orientated Email App

“Setup was IMAP credentials for each of my personal accounts. There's no account to create with the developer or a sign-in step before you c...

#email #opensource #privacy #technology #vendorlockin

I Remember These Modular Electronics Kits It's a real pity these kits are no longer around as they really “spark” an interest in building practical things, and in electronics. Mine was a 50-in-1 kit I think, and came in a wooden frame. You got all the various components fixed to the board with wire springs on the top as the connector points. There were resistors, capacitors, a variable resistor (like a volume knob), a diode, a speaker, and various other components. By connecting wires between the spring terminals, you “made circuits” for whatever project you were building. Some projects were a burglar alarm, or a radio, or an FM transmitter, and plenty more. But what it taught you, was that many complex devices are just built up from basic components wired together differently. Also, you learnt that with a few components you could build many devices that actually have a practical use. I progressed from there to etching circuit boards and building my own infrared TV remote control and more devices. Which in turn led to CB radios and other hobbies. This was all before the Internet was even known about, and also long before home computers. It was books and magazines which published such designs, and you waited until they were published, and you bought them in a store. I get that we have the Internet and computers now, but I'd really have thought that such a kit would still have interested 10-year-olds today. Learning to physically build things is a creative skill we really want to encourage today. See

GadgeteerZA

I Remember These Modular Electronics Kits

It's a real pity these kits are no longer around as they really “spark” an interest in building practical things, and in electronics.

#electronics #technology

Homelabbers and Desktop Tweakers may want to move beyond just plain AI chat The days of asking AI a question, or pasting a config file in, and then pasting (or typing) the updated file back, are no longer needed. I have over 47 running docker containers, with almost as many stopped, and when I want to create a new docker stack I'm never sure if there will be a port clash. Now I can just ask an agentic AI to check all my stopped and running containers and fix any port clashes, restart containers, diagnose why something is not working, check reverse proxy arrangements, etc. Agentic AI is a term often heard, but in simple English, it is AI that actually does stuff, not just answer questions. Sometimes there is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server to install, or a connector, or a plugin. Those mechanisms give selected access to the AI to actually do tasks like reading and updating a config file itself, check log files and advise on corrective actions (or even do those actions), etc. A chatbot AI answers questions, but an Agentic AI is a combination of AI with carefully selected tools installed, and permissions that must be granted by the user. In my earlier example with Docker Portainer, I put some code into Claude's config to connect to my Portainer instance on the LAN directly. In this way it can read all my existing container configs and learn what style I'm already using, and create something that really fits my environment with its unique volume mappings, etc. I also gave it directory access to my Conky config files (and the scripts folder for that) so that it can tweak any changes I require. I have also installed the n8n connector which has taken my breath away. The n8n service is workflow automation tool (for example I use a n8n workflow for checking my blog RSS feed, and then automatically pushing my posts out to the various social media accounts I post at). That is usually a lot of back and forth as I have to fix small issues. Now Claude uses the n8n connector and literally creates a n8n workflow from scratch for me. Yesterday it created a workflow to search my Nextcloud Notes content, retrieve it, update it, add new notes. It tested and figured out what did not work, and applied the fixes all by itself (with me just reviewing and clicking apply for the various write actions). So many possibilities open up, but there are some safeguards worth keeping in mind: Most such connectors have permissions that default to ask first. You can go a step further by granting always read permission, and keeping ask before writing, or if you are really living on the edge then permission granted for read/write/delete/overwrite automatically (and only for trusted tools). I have told Claude to remember to always back up any config file that it is going to write to or edit, but more importantly I have my own automated and independent backups that I can restore myself if I have to. Filesystem connectors require you to add specific paths first. Do not add the root folder, but stick to just specified folders you want help on. The Portainer access for example cannot access the .env files where typically passwords and API keys are stored (in Claude's case for this connector so you may want to check on what you use for this). The cloud side cannot reach inside your network or desktop without a locally-running connector. So when you want the AI to reach your LAN, filesystem, Docker socket, localhost services, etc you need to install an appropriate local connector/bridge service. Ask to review differences before applying changes. Don't give an AI access to secrets merely because a tool happens to be capable of reading them. You can often put secrets into a file elsewhere, where your scripts can put them in themselves, but AI has no access to read that folder. But start small and just give it access to one useful thing. This lets you see what it can do, and then you can decide whether you want to give it more. Even a few small automated tasks end up saving a lot of time down the road. And yes, some AI tools are better than others at some tasks. So when I asked Gemini which would be best for my types of tweaking and configs that I do in my home lab, it recommended Claude without hesitation. Chat is still also very useful for asking questions about setting up your Agentic AI capabilities, and what safeguards you should apply. I decided to also start paying for AI now as it is performing a truly useful function, and saving me money not only in time now, but also to better utilise the free self-hosting services that I have. I have already saved more than $20 per month on other subscription services (see my video about what Wallos did for me — It is not to say AI is perfect (it still needs human supervision) but it is undoubtedly a super tool to help make humans more productive themselves. For the same reason humans needed to master the use of the wheel, levers, early cars, telephones, and Internet search engines, if we don't do the same with AI, we could lose our jobs to other humans who do use AI effectively as a tool. Cars and telephones never directly threatened jobs at all, in fact they created many new types of jobs, but those who harnessed those technologies gained leverage over those who just ignored them. Whether we like it or not, the world has moved on to another level. The great advantage we have with this new tool is, we can even ask it how we can use it better and more safely (just check its answer elsewhere too!). The more worrying side we will need to solve, is how AI is being weaponised for hacking attacks, and even more dangerous, for creation of convincing AI-generated misinformation that can destabilise whole countries. This is something we need to solve, because cars, phones, the Internet, etc are also all used for bad purposes too, but they don't just get cancelled. See

GadgeteerZA

Homelabbers And Desktop Tweakers May Want To Move Beyond Just Plain AI Chat

The days of asking AI a question, or pasting a config file in, and then pasting (or typing) the updated file back, are no longer needed. I have ove...

#ai #homelab #selfhosting #technology

SoloMD is a simpler markdown open-source app that opens your whole Obsidian vault “Obsidian is probably one of the best note-taking apps out there, but it's not open-source, which is fine, there are perfectly good reasons for that. But a part of the Obsidian user base has always wanted a properly open-source alternative, one that isn't half-finished or abandoned. So when SoloMD popped up as MIT-licensed and Markdown-native with a built-in AI panel, it seemed worth a look. What it turned out to be was a Markdown editor that opens an Obsidian vault as-is without an import setup, and then it also handles a bunch of functions you'd only assume Obsidian can.” Of course, markdown being markdown, this works with any markdown files. It does not have any formatting menu bar though, so if you want to say bold some text, you do have to type the asterisks in. With its Live edit WYSIWYG mode, you do see the rendering as it should appear. That is at least something great about Obsidian too. 13 code-block languages, KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, footnotes, YAML front-matter, ==highlight== (including use of colour codes), and underlined text. But SoloMD plays nicely with everything, and apart from the markdown files and editing working just fine, it has built-in AI functionality. Beware though, if you point the AI to an external cloud AI provider, your note content will go out to that cloud provider, complete with any sensitive data. Although SoloMD does not have a nice WYSIWYG table editor, I did fine I could paste the table in the AI window, and asked my AI to insert an extra column in column 2. I pointed the AI to my Llama server AI and that worked just fine, as did querying it about my note, etc. But it did not just stop at pointing outwards to Llama server, as SoloMD can also expose its own built in MCP service (Exposes the open workspace as a Model Context Protocol server so Claude Desktop / Codex / Cursor can list, read, search, write your notes). Note again that you want to think about what you are exposing, but it can be handy for say Claude Code to consult your own notes about coding work, when thinking. It even has a built-in BYOK cost meter, that calculates the cost of tokens used for OpenAI or Groq (the latter of course allowing a generous free tier per day). What caught my eye actually about SoloMD, was this really rich enablement of AI into the application. You decide though what you want on or off (and everything can be off). It does its between-device sync using GitHub. They recommend using a private repo on GitHub, and it uses public private key exchange for authentication. From inside SoloMD you can opt to get a public link for any note, and share that to others for viewing. When setting up this vault sync to GitHub you can optionally enable Argon2id + XChaCha20-Poly1305 for end-to-end encryption too. SoloMD just runs git push and git pull so it can be pointed elsewhere too. It is open-source MIT-licensed, zero telemetry by default, no accounts, no cloud lock-in. Its installer is only 15 MB in size, and it uses around 80–150 MB RAM. It saves plain .md files (not using any proprietary formats) so is fully compatible with other Markdown editors. There are apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. It exports to HTML, Word, PDF, Image (PNG), EPUB, ODT, LaTeX, RTF, Pandoc Template. It does not have the massive community plug-ins collection that Obsidian has, but it is a really solid and very functional Markdown editor. One thing I'd like to have seen, was custom shortcut keys. See

GadgeteerZA

SoloMD Is A Simpler Markdown Open-source App That Opens Your Whole Obsidian Vault

“Obsidian is probably one of the best note-taking apps out there, but it's not open-source, which is fine, there are perfectly good reasons ...

#ai #markdown #opensource #technology

Track Bird Visitors With A Raspberry Pi And A USB Mic “Avian Visitors is a lovely project by Teddy Warner that uses a Raspberry Pi and microphone to keep track of which birds have been visiting your home, and creates a colourful illustration of recent visitors on top of it all. It reports on a web interface of its own making, but what really takes things to a new level is an optional, stylish E-Ink panel that shows the last 24 hours’ worth of visitors at a glance in a collage.” The colour E-Ink display showing the birds is a really nice touch. There is quite a bit of potential for this project, and one could just start off with the identification before going for a display. See

GadgeteerZA

Track Bird Visitors With A Raspberry Pi And A USB Mic

“Avian Visitors is a lovely project by Teddy Warner that uses a Raspberry Pi and microphone to keep track of which birds have been visiting your ...

#birds #opensource #technology

I turned my security cameras into AI assistants with open-source LLM Vision “LLM Vision is a free, open-source Home Assistant integration that lets an AI model examine the images from your cameras and describe what is happening in those images. LLM Vision doesn't replace systems like Frigate; it builds on top of them. Instead of just getting a notification that a person is detected, the AI model can describe what the person is doing, whether they're carrying a package, which direction they're going, whether they're doing anything unusual, and even describe the person and what they're wearing.” In 2026, we should not still be rewinding for hours through video from cameras to spot the issue we are looking for. Imagine being able to just ask it, is the garage door open, are the trash cans outside still, when was the cat last seen, etc. Key though is to really have a LLM running locally that does the work, saving on bandwidth, ensuring privacy, as well as for when the Internet is not reachable. I only wish I realised all this when I bought a new mini-server and my last graphics card. If I knew how useful it was going to be, having local AI running as a service at home, I would have bought differently. Only my desktop PC has this ability, and it is not running 24/7, and it does other things. See

GadgeteerZA

I Turned My Security Cameras Into AI Assistants With Open-source LLM Vision

“LLM Vision is a free, open-source Home Assistant integration that lets an AI model examine the images from your cameras and describe what is hap...

#cctv #opensource #privacy #technology

Capabilities more as the routing or paths is more network side

Netflix accounts taken over in South Africa through session cookie hijacking “These cookies allow users to stay logged in to websites or to save items in a shopping cart even after they exit a site. Through these cookies, cybercriminals have found an exploit that has allowed them to access protected private accounts. They are specifically taking advantage of “remember-me cookies”, which help users log in to different websites and platforms on the Internet without having to re-enter their details.” This was a big thing about two years ago and safeguards were built into Chrome (and Chromium) browsers but that really worked when the hosting service implemented those Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) protections. Seemingly Netflix has not done this. It seems that many entertainment and media platforms still rely on standard long-lived bearer cookies. Some good practices though for end users are: Log Out explicitly: Closing a tab leaves the session token alive in local storage. Click Log Out on accounts when finished, which sends a revoke request to the server and invalidates the token. Use "Sign out of all devices": If you suspect malware or a compromised browser, use the account dashboard (e.g., Netflix's "Manage Access and Devices" or Google's "Security -> Your Devices") to invalidate all current session keys instantly. Passkeys: Where supported, switch from traditional passwords + long-lived sessions to Passkeys (FIDO2/WebAuthn). Passkey sign-ins rely on public-key cryptography bound to your device's hardware enclave (TPM or security key), making token replication significantly harder for off-device attackers. Unknown links: Don't click on them is this is often how the session cookies are stolen. See

GadgeteerZA

Netflix Accounts Taken Over In South Africa Through Session Cookie Hijacking

“These cookies allow users to stay logged in to websites or to save items in a shopping cart even after they exit a site. Through these cookies,

#security #southafrica #technology

Google Search is likely Yahooed now This is a lesson that you are never too big to disappear. I remember the arrival of Google Search (when that was all they did) and how it collapsed Yahoo search from the scene. Googling even became a verb. As big and massive as Google Search was, who can say they still go to the Google search site to search, after ever having asked what they are looking for in most AI services today? Even just a year or two ago, most people would have laughed at you if you told them no-one would be actually visiting the Google Search page today. Just a month ago I used AI to compare available TVs on Amazon Prime Day, and help me arrive at a decision to buy a new TV. It was a more intuitive and interactive process than doing a plain search. The difference I suppose is, people know Google Search is dumb search (well apart from paid rankings) whilst AI is perceived to be “clever”. AI is not actually clever, but it is at least a step or two above basic search. So the future battlefield for SEO and adverts will now have to be within AI. I expect the paid accounts will have non/fewer of that versus the masses using free access (the way it has always been). See

GadgeteerZA

Google Search Is Likely Yahooed Now

This is a lesson that you are never too big to disappear. I remember the arrival of Google Search (when that was all they did) and how it collapsed...

#ai #search #technology

RSS-Bridge generates web feeds for websites that don’t have one You can either self-host the service, in many different ways, or there is also an official online instance you can use. The link to that instance is on the GitHub project page at the link below. See

GadgeteerZA

RSS-Bridge Generates Web Feeds For Websites That Don't Have One

You can either self-host the service, in many different ways, or there is also an official online instance you can use. The link to that instance i...

#opensource #rss #technology

Team South Africa wins at NASA space engineering competition “The international finals for the world’s longest-running space engineering competition were held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre and the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida from 30 July to 2 August. Team ZA was the only African team in the competition. It was South Africa’s first time entering, and no African team had competed before.” So yes, not a solo win by Team ZA on their own, but it shows the tremendous potential that South Africa has. If only SA could rid itself of the corruption plaguing it still, this potential could be fully realised and innovation could help spur economic growth. We owe this to our youth. See

GadgeteerZA

Team South Africa Wins At NASA Space Engineering Competition

“The international finals for the world’s longest-running space engineering competition were held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre and the Walt...

#southafrica #technology

OpenAI is giving ChatGPT free users unlimited text chats “OpenAI is making a big change for ChatGPT users on its free and Go tiers: Starting next week, users on those tiers will be able to have unlimited text chats with the chatbot, according to OpenAI. Right now, you may run into rate limits if you do too many text chats on those tiers, but those limits, just for text, will be going away soon. Next week, OpenAI is also adding a Think button for free and Go users that they can use to access higher reasoning for harder questions.” Which may be great for ChatGPT users, but the important thing is competition also helps push the bar up for other AI services such as Claude (who still has a hard cut-off with a rolling window). My spouse recently needed to start using a pretty complex financial package for a startup business. Normally this would involve me being dragged in, and I'd have to set it up and try to explain how it works (after I've spent time mastering it myself). Well she used free ChatGPT and did everything herself. I'm not saying AI will magically solve everything, but it can do some amazing grunt work. Yes, it can be better to learn how to do everything from scratch yourself, but often you need an outcome to get something productive done. On her own, this would have taken way longer and with a lot more frustration. Like it or not, AI is a useful tool to help us get stuff done. It takes dictionaries and search engines from yesteryear, to new levels of productivity. As I've stated before, I don't think AI is capable of actually replacing humans, and even the AI I use, I either paste into it what I want it to look at, or I authorise every step of changes to be made. I do not trust it to just run wild on its own. It requires oversight. See

GadgeteerZA

OpenAI Is Giving ChatGPT Free Users Unlimited Text Chats

“OpenAI is making a big change for ChatGPT users on its free and Go tiers: Starting next week, users on those tiers will be able to have unlimite...

#ai #technology

Spam callers face penalties of up to R1,000,000 in South Africa So a few amendments made, but what I really am happy to finally see, is the loophole closed around marketers opting in or not: “Any direct marketer who is not registered on the opt-out registry is prohibited from contacting consumers for marketing purposes”. They have to pay to register, and abide with monthly conditions, and of course there is now potentially a hefty fine too. I suppose the only issue is going to be around “foreign marketing” but so far all my spam callers had seemed to be for South African companies. See

GadgeteerZA

Spam Callers Face Penalties Of Up To R1,000,000 In South Africa

So a few amendments made, but what I really am happy to finally see, is the loophole closed around marketers opting in or not: “Any direct market...

#southafrica #spam #technology

LG Monitors Fill Windows PCs With Adware, and It’s Not Just Recent Displays “If you’re using an LG monitor and you suddenly see blaring ads for McAfee scam protection, it’s not because your PC’s been hacked (or, rather, not hacked by some unknown third party). LG, the maker of popular high-end screens, has been quietly stuffing its current and even past monitors full of adware.” I missed this somehow but heard about it this morning on the Security Now podcast. The big issue is not really the adverts at all, and if it were not for the adverts, no-one would probably have picked up on the tracking issues (thank you adverts!). The privacy policy mentions LG can track device usage data and online activity, including what sites you visit and what activities you do on those sites. That is metadata harvesting, much like WhatsApp does, and users should have been aware of it. Although to be honest, most privacy policy issues only become known once someone has highlighted them. It is also partly an issue with Windows updates and how they just install automatically without any highlighting of changes to a privacy policy. Microsoft has warned LG off of this behaviour, but will that just be the adverts disappearing, or the metadata tracking as well. I'd imagine (my guess here) is that LG was also sharing that metadata with advertisers, like WhatsApp states in their T&Cs as “partners”, so it is not 100% clear how far this all went. See

GadgeteerZA

LG Monitors Fill Windows PCs With Adware, And It’s Not Just Recent Displays

“If you’re using an LG monitor and you suddenly see blaring ads for McAfee scam protection, it’s not because your PC’s been hacked (or, rat...

#privacy #technology #tracking

It Seems a Lot Like Dead Internet Has Actually Come True “The infamous dead internet theory was originally a conspiracy that posited that the vast majority of the internet was run by bots and thinking machines. Most accounts you saw online were really bots masquerading as people — all part of some nefarious scheme to control humankind by keeping us isolated and divided. That last part is far-fetched, but the core of the idea — that bots outnumber humans online — is inexorably starting to feel weirdly grounded.” Pretty sad. I remember the first public Internet when bulletin boards migrated onto the new web. It was mostly all human driven with lots of blogs, no adverts, no tracking pixels, and no mobile phones. Everything moves on and evolves, that is true, but today you certainly can't trust opinions or videos that are seen on the Internet. I can't see the Internet going away, but it is going to be very interesting to see what the future of content holds. What I'm seeing, is a hollowing out of many of the big platforms such as Facebook, Twitter (who faked numbers to advertisers), etc. Certainly there are still accounts there, but I see next to none of my real human friends or family posting there. Many have migrated off to instant messaging platforms, and the broader other social media users I see, have moved to decentralised platforms like the Fediverse and Bluesky, and the more extreme are active on platforms like Nostr, Secure Scuttlebutt, and some centralised platforms like MeWe and Reddit. LinkedIn is littered with AI generated motivational business memes. It has all come down to gaming the system that rewards “content”. Like so many things in life, money corrupts. Exciting times, but I'm pretty sure that quality content will still find its niche audiences, and especially for those who want to share and educate others. See

GadgeteerZA

It Seems A Lot Like Dead Internet Has Actually Come True

“The infamous dead internet theory was originally a conspiracy that posited that the vast majority of the internet was run by bots and thinking m...

#ai #bots #technology

EskomSePush app transitioned to neighbourhood service disruptions otherwise it would have died This is the story of how the app evolved from being a high demand app to manage the electricity load shedding across South Africa, to something completely different after load shedding went away. The app now helps communities crowdsource issue around their water, electricity and Internet outages, and also has channels for safety, weather, and other news in communities. As I don't use Facebook or WhatsApp I like using EskomSePush as it is highly focussed on my own community and I can mute what is not relevant for periods of time. The closest that it comes to is Telegram, where a community channel could be split into different topics, and each muted if needed. I just have to laugh though at WhatsApp, because although it may be the biggest and most used platform, it really always lags a good year to two years behind its competitors. Sadly so many of its users only seem to use that one app, so have no idea of the benefits of other apps. See

GadgeteerZA

EskomSePush App Transitioned To Neighbourhood Service Disruptions Otherwise It Would Have Died

This is the story of how the app evolved from being a high demand app to manage the electricity load shedding across South Africa, to something com...

#southafrica #technology

Africa’s most popular phones have a tracking problem and explains where data disappears to "Roughly one in two smartphones sold in Africa is made by a company most buyers have never heard of. Transsion, a Shenzhen-based manufacturer, owns the Tecno, Infinix and Itel brands, which together accounted for about 48% of African smartphone shipments in 2025 – more than 40 million of the 84.4 million handsets shipped on the continent last year, according to Omdia data. New research has decrypted what those phones send back to their maker." Yes, one could say that most phones and software anyway report a lot of usage (metadata) back to other countries and developers e.g. WhatsApp even states this in their conditions that their users must accept. But these phone models go a lot deeper than that, first by baking it into the hardware, and secondly by collecting more granular data. Then there is also the issue of the users data packages being used to constantly transmit this data, even though it is not voice or video data. It is still eating away at users data where many can only afford small data packages at a time. It seems the only way to block this data collection, is to block the domains it is reporting to. This is what I have active on my home network, and it is pretty shocking to see the pages of ad-tracking and malware sites that are being constantly blocked (it is about one page per minute). The ones I see are all app level tracking, and because my wife used WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, and similar sites, her phone just fills pages of these blocks being shown all the time. One single minute of sites blocked on my wife's phone See

GadgeteerZA

Africa’s Most Popular Phones Have A Tracking Problem And Explains Where Data Disappears To

"Roughly one in two smartphones sold in Africa is made by a company most buyers have never heard of. Transsion, a Shenzhen-based manufacturer, owns...

#africa #privacy #technology #tracking

MeshCore Radio for Social Networking and Disasters with zero Internet required The Boland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) invited me to do this talk on 23 July 2026. HAMNET Emergency Communications provided the Zoom platform. The audience consisted of radio amateurs, citizens, and disaster management. MeshCore is a newer type of license-free decentralised radio network that allows citizens, government agencies including nature reserves, disaster management agencies, and amateur radio operators to all talk together, whether in public channels, directly to each other, or even in private encrypted channels. This is WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal without the Internet. The network is not only useful to make new friends across the city and stay in communication with neighbours, but more importantly it is a resilient network that will stay operation long after the Internet has ceased to work due to a disaster or lengthy power outages. This is achievable through solar-powered repeater nodes at high sites, and the fact that this network is not dependent on any central server or presence, and of course there is no approval or registration to use it. My talk highlights the similarities and differences between MeshCore and Meshtastic networks, and the reasons why such a network is so important to have in place across cities and towns. I highlight two recent outages we've had in the Western Cape where towns lost their electricity supply due to adverse weather conditions, and had their normal communications cut off for up to a week. In this time HAMNET does assist with communications but only from key points. Having a broader MeshCore network available, allows citizens and disaster management agencies to stay in contact with each other for essential services and assistance. The City of Cape Town and Western Cape Provincial Government, recognise the value of having fallback communications, and HAMNET already has emergency radio rooms at both sites, which are kept in operational readiness. We are aiming to have something like MeshCore also officially endorsed by the City and Province, so that citizens can equip themselves with these radios ahead of any potential disasters in the future. We also have some wilderness areas in and around Cape Town which have no cellular phone coverage, such as the top of Table Mountain. These areas are also ideal to have such radio networks operational, as they are easy to deploy, and radio nodes cost around R500 each (whether bought by citizens/tourist, or even available to rent for the day). The talk concludes with a comprehensive Q&A around various topics relating to MeshCore radio. Watch at See

GadgeteerZA

MeshCore Radio For Social Networking And Disasters With Zero Internet Required

The Boland Amateur Radio Club (BARC) invited me to do this talk on 23 July 2026. HAMNET Emergency Communications provided the Zoom platform. The au...

#disasters #meshcore #opensource #southafrica #technology

FokOffMense is South Africa’s spam block and POPIA toolkit Block community-flagged spam on Android, send formal POPIA opt-outs, and monitor breaches — one SA account, no ads. iOS users can use the website, but there is no iOS app yet (probably also because iOS does not allow apps to take control of the dialler, which is why TrueCaller was so broken for me when I had an iPhone). This app actually takes control of the Android dialler (otherwise calls cannot be blocked) and accesses / adds to the blocked numbers list on the phone. It is not a caller ID app so you won't see the names identified of callers, but if the number has been reported by 10 or more other users as spam, it will be blocked (as well as for SMS). You have the option of reporting a number in the app to the community, and you can go even further to file a formal POPIA report, which is mailed out through the app's server, so not from your own e-mail. The 10 number requirement is to stop individuals trying to block their spouse for example from everyone. But looking at the list I see some genuine call centres I need to get calls from (who probably spam non-customers) so it seems you can select those numbers from the Community Shield, or not. There is a free tier to try which gets you 5 POPIA request per month, 5 Community Shields blocks per month, and one e-mail monitor. The next tier is at R29 per month for 45 Community Shield blocks and 5 POPIA requests per month. The Premium tier is R99 per month, and Family tier for R279 per month for up to 5 people. Every plan includes privacy scans, a full exposure report, unlimited spam reports and blocking, and Gmail spam upload and email filters. Whilst TrueCaller will give caller ID and call blocking, and allow reporting into its crowdsourced block list, it has no POPIA reporting, nor privacy scans, exposure reporting, or Gmail spam filtering. See

GadgeteerZA

FokOffMense Is South Africa's Spam Block And POPIA Toolkit

Block community-flagged spam on Android, send formal POPIA opt-outs, and monitor breaches — one SA account, no ads. iOS users can use the website...

#southafrica #spam #technology