Big Microsoft 365 price increases coming next year This should also be a call to those of us (personal or organisations) who have been using free and open source alternatives such as LibreOffice, FreeOffice, ONLYOFFICE, and many others for the last decade or two, to make a small donation to […]

Results from tracking 33,381 images across 1,564 instances from the mastodon.social federated timeline. Then filtering down to the top 1000 instances by active user from instances.social who had posted at least 32 images (1.5x the average).

The Rest Is History has received the 2025 Apple Podcasts Award for Show of the Year “The Rest Is History does a phenomenal job in taking a subject as vast as human history and captivating a global audience,” said Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, Apple Sports, and […]

Been waiting for this! Proton now has a Google Sheets clone with end-to-end encryption Spreadsheets are finally rolling out over the next few days for Proton users. I actually use spreadsheets more often than documents, for product comparisons or purchase decisions. So this is something that […]

[RAMBLE] offers privacy-respecting user forums similar to Reddit You may have seen many Reddit alternatives popping up on the Fediverse over the last few years, and some of them are pretty busy. I’ve done posts over the years on BeeHaw and similar sites there. And although they are […]

How Tor Can Help You Be More Anonymous on the Internet Whilst a Tor browser can access normal HTTPS websites, it can also access onion websites and the dark web (where there is no age verification required). The linked article is quite comprehensive in that it also mentions some downsides like […]

5 Docker Compose tricks that made my home server more reliable This was an interesting article. I did not know about the limiting of restarts up to a defined number of failures. That is pretty useful to prevent a container continuously restating, and then sometimes showing as green for running […]

5 open-source projects that secretly power your favourite apps “You’ve heard that the world’s infrastructure runs on Linux, and how important Free and Open Source (FOSS) software is to just about all the technology we enjoy every day, but there are some (to bring out the old cliché) unsung […]

Filedropshare uses WebRTC for local peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfers without the cloud This is not the first service to do this, as Pairdrop does something similar. It should not be confused though with Localsend, as Localsend requires the apps to be installed on each device it works with […]

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are better to use for major social network services than their mobile apps Yes, you do lose a few things like instant notifications and some performance, but the benefits are no app in the background that tracks your location the whole time, sometimes storing masses […]

The Astrion smart remote is a game-changer for Home Assistant users “Every once in a while, some piece of smart home tech launches that’s genuinely different to those that came before it, and one that I came across at this year’s Maker Faire in Shenzhen is the Astrion remote by Sanytron […]

Why I Ditched My Smartwatch for a Retro-Styled Casio Watch This video takes you through my decision-making process and reasons for ditching my Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 (and other smartwatches) for a modern, retro-styled Casio ABL-100WE watch. The video starts with the straw that broke the […]

By now, we should know you CANNOT believe all you see on social media “Elon Musk’s social media echo chamber X-formerly-Twitter introduced a new feature over the weekend that shows the location where its users have been tweeting from — a move that has exposed an embarrassing problem for the […]

Finamp – an open source Jellyfin music client for mobile devices Finamp is really beautifully designed and dedicated music player that connects to your existing Jellyfin music library. There are a number of improvement sin the beta version already, so I’d recommend you aim to use the beta […]

Viseron is a self-hosted camera monitoring app and the perfect Frigate alternative “If you’ve ever wanted to keep an eye on your surroundings without sending data to third-party servers, you’ve probably heard of Frigate. The open-source is a popular choice as an NVR that runs locally and taps […]

FreeDV – Open Source HF Digital Voice for Amateur Radio “FreeDV is a suite of digital voice modes for HF radio. Our flagship mode is the Radio Autoencoder (RADE). You can run RADE using a free GUI application for Windows, Linux and OSX that allows any SSB radio to be used for high quality […]

LibreOffice has a new fix for Microsoft changing its default font to Aptos “Microsoft has moved away from its legacy ClearType fonts. This includes familiar names like Calibri, Candida, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, and Segoe for Western languages. Microsoft is now using Aptos as the […]

Hate Meta (Facebook)? Even Realities Is Making the Smart Glasses You Want “As Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses continue to turn your face into a computer, with a camera and speaker, Even Realities is doubling down on a design that eschews those components. Instead, it’s focusing on extending your […]

In-depth Comparison between Open Source AFFiNE and Joplin Notes for Note-Taking Both AFFiNE and Joplin Notes are intended for creating and editing notes, with a view to building up your searchable personal knowledge base. My video does an in-depth dive comparison between AFFiNE and Joplin […]

I replaced Microsoft Word with a self-hosted, open-source alternative No, not I, as I had replaced Microsoft Office many years ago. But nevertheless an interesting read and a good reminder that most folks don’t really NEED Microsoft Word, with all the great alternatives around today. My go-to […]

Portainer or Watchtower just broke on OMV 7? This may have happened to you if you use the normal standalone Portainer under OpenMediaVault 7 (instead of OMV 7’s built-in container management). Typically, you’d see Portainer complaining it failed to connect to the local environment (docker o […]

Join The Newest Social Network And Party Like Its 1987 “Algorithms? Datamining? Brainrot? You don’t need those things to have a social network. As we knew back in the BBS days, long before anyone coined the phrase “social network”, all you need is a place for people to make text posts […]

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

ODF 1.4 Release Marks 20 Years of OpenDocument Format “Microsoft’s proprietary formats like .doc and .docx dominate the office productivity landscape. Most people and organisations rely on these formats for daily document work. This creates a predatory situation where vendor lock-in is the norm […]

Banning Phones in Schools Is Drastically Changing the Behaviour of Kids, Teachers Say “Gothamist spoke to students about their experience with the ban, and the number one takeaway didn’t have to do with anything to do with hot-button topics like social media addiction or cyberbullying. Instead […]

This OpenWrt-Based Router Has Swappable Wi-Fi Modules for Future Upgrades “Their Turris router project started as an internal research effort focused on understanding network threats that has now evolved into offering commercial products with rock-solid security and convenient features. Now […]

Scientists Say They’ve Figured Out How to Transcribe Your Thoughts From an MRI Scan “They’re calling the technique “mind captioning,” and it may represent an effective way for transcribing what someone’s thinking, with impressively comprehensive and accurate results.” It is certainly not […]

Why self-hosting matters now more than ever in the age of cloud “A little over a week ago, a DNS update conflict brought down AWS, crippling hundreds of apps and services worldwide. Along with many of Amazon’s own platforms, Netflix, Spotify, Google Drive, Zoom, and many others were affected by […]

AFFiNE is an excellent open-source knowledge management tool “AFFiNE is an open-source productivity app with a workspace that blends structured note-taking with visual thinking. It’s a bit like Notion, Obsidian, Miro, and NotebookLM combined, but in a minimalist package. There are paid tiers […]

More cloud device switch-offs - luckily my Sonoff devices were reflashed with Tasmota firmware so this is not something I have to worry about. On principle I would not buy again from Belkin if they did this to me. See https://meshed.cloud/@webmink/115465680169892630

AI Is Amplifying the Dunning-Kruger Effect, New Research Finds “People who are the worst at doing something also tend to severely overestimate how good they are at doing it, while those who are actually skilled tend to not realize their true talent. This galling cognitive bias is called the […]

Lock Company Sues Man Who Picked Its Lock, Gets Horribly Humiliated This is often the typical; reaction of an organisation when someone shows their product or service has some serious defect or flaw. The problem is, then we all get to hear about it, and are less than impressed with their […]

Consumers should be very wary of buying cloud connected appliances or devices Flashing lights and AI-powered functionality often hides a very dark secret. Most of these devices are connected to a cloud service, you typically do not even know where that service is (and the US is as bad as China […]

Suzuki Jimny 5-Door Additional Storage Space Solutions Needed Any Jimny owner knows their car is great! I’m already side-tracked before I started this post… What they also know is storage space is quite limited by default, hence the massive after-market accessories business that makes creative […]

Electric vs petrol car running costs in South Africa – The winner is clear An interesting comparison that really gives this a local perspective, even given the high increases in the cost of electricity that South Africa has experienced. One also has to factor in the servicing and maintenance […]

TT-RSS Shuts Down, but the Project Lives On Under a New Fork “In a surprising move, Andrew Dolgov (known online as “fox”), the original developer of the popular self-hosted open-source RSS reader and news aggregator Tiny Tiny RSS (TT-RSS), announced that on November 1, 2025, he will dismantle […]

Sanity Prevails Finally! Your passwords don’t need so many fiddly characters, NIST says “The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has released its latest guidelines for password creation, and it comes with some serious changes. Gone are the days of resetting your and your […]

No surprise: Research shows you cannot believe everything on social media “An analysis of how tools to make non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes spread online, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, shows X and search engines surface these sites easily.” Everyone seems to be noticing […]

Just saw the weirdest thing after a painter cut through an electrical wire in the wall, with his grinder while repairing cracks. Where cut the wire has the usual red, black and copper earth wires, but 40 cm later when it terminates two red wires and a black come out without the earth. BUT there […]

20 Essential SSH Configurations and Security Tips for Linux SSH is an essential tool for anyone managing Linux servers, and using it correctly can make your work both easier and more secure. By following the tips in this guide, you can protect your servers from unauthorised access, simplify […]

A Fascinating History in Photos of Tram and ‘Bus Transport in Cape Town since the 1800s I was looking for the location of the old Tollgate depot in Cape Town when I came upon this really excellent Museum page on the GAB site showing a really well laid out chronological history of the various […]

CoolerControl is a Powerful cooling control and monitoring tool for Linux This open-source application not only has a very modern looking and configurable interface, it also has some powerful ways to control the cooling too. It can combine different device sensors (mixed profiles) to set […]

The EFF’s How to: Get to Know iPhone Privacy and Security Settings “Open up your iPhone’s Settings app and you’ll find dozens of different options with little guidance on what those options do. Some of these settings have a serious impact on your privacy and security, altering what data gets […]

You Must Be Joking: Facebook’s new button lets its AI look at photos you haven’t uploaded yet “Meta has rolled out an opt-in AI feature to its US and Canadian Facebook users that claims to make their photos and videos more shareworthy. The only catch is that the feature is designed for your […]

Free Software Foundation announced its Librephone project to bring mobile phone freedom to users “Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF with the goal of bringing full freedom to the mobile computing environment. The vast majority of software users around the world use a mobile phone as […]

How to Control Kernel Boot-Time Parameters in Linux “Boot-time parameters are like secret keys to the Linux kernel; they allow you to control exactly how the system starts, how hardware is initialized, and how problems are handled. Whether you are debugging a stubborn boot issue, tuning […]

German state replaces Microsoft Exchange and Outlook with open-source email “The German state of Schleswig-Holstein has dumped its government email and calendar systems for open-source software. The six-month migration has replaced Microsoft Exchange and Outlook with Open-Xchange and Mozilla […]

LACT – Linux GPU Configuration And Monitoring Tool for AMD, Nvidia or Intel GPUs Detailed GPU information reporting, monitoring (with historical graphs), power configuration, thermals configuration, overclocking, and settings profiles. GPU configuration is handled by a system service that does […]

Fantastic News! South Africa’s Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe to steam ahead again after 19 years “The return of the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe steam train, which was officially announced on Monday, will not just be the revival of a beloved heritage attraction, but a major economic boost for the entire region.” […]

The Discord Hack is Every User’s Worst Nightmare — Why Uploaded IDs are a Problem “A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive information online […]