My Short Overview Video of the Ships at Sea Simulation Game Experience the thrill of navigating a wide range of ships. In single- and multiplayer modes, immerse yourself in tasks such as service, cargo transport, and commercial fishing as you explore the breathtaking open world of Norway's Islands and its stunning scenery. The ocean is within your reach! The game is still in early access (so you can expect some minor glitches and for features to still be rolling out) but it is playing perfectly well for me on Manjaro Linux with Steam's Proton compatibility layer. In this video, I show what I'm loving about the game so far, and why I find it so relaxing to play. This is not a detailed how-to or walkthrough of the game, but if you are curious about it and wondering whether to buy it, my video may give a better feel for what you can expect to see. Watch #technology #gaming #simulation #ships

Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK - No Way I Trust any Social Network with my ID I don't live in the UK, but my point just is that I would never upload my government ID to any social network. I don't even like having to upload it to government sites, as they have a tendency to get hacked. Seeing I do have unlimited virtual banking cards, I suppose I could upload a payment card, and just freeze that card. But again, there is no way I'm uploading any image of my physical bank card to any social media site. And I can imagine that this is where the trend will, go for all the larger networks. I doubt this will ever make it to networks like Mastodon, Nostr, and the countless other decentralised sites anyway (and who have zero revenue to fine anyway). For the many who end up being harassed online, I'd expect they will be only too happy to not do age verification, as it will mean maybe having more guardrails in place against online harassment. My point being, that younger users are absolutely NOT the only users who need protection and privacy online. This is a rather short-sighted view of social networks as it really only tackles the Big Tech social networks, and ignores everything else. It is also ignoring the fact that actually most adults also don't want online harassment. Users should choose their platforms wisely according to their needs, and if parents think platforms are not suitable for their kids, then they should be enforcing that or making their kids aware of the dangers. As this stands right now, there is zero friction at all to kids just choosing any of the other alternative platforms out there that are way worse when it comes to any protections. Even younger users should just not be on adult social networks at all. It is only parents who can judge how ready their kids are, and what sort of devices to give them to use. But yes, these laws will just go ahead regardless, and hopefully all the ostriches remember to pull their heads out of the sand, to just breathe once in a while. For the rest of us, we have lost and lost of options, so luckily no-one is ever locked into one single social network. See

The Verge

Bluesky is rolling out age verification in the UK

Bluesky users in the UK can verify their age using their face, ID, or payment card.

#technology #ageverification #socialnetworks

Jack Dorsey made an open source peer-to-peer encrypted Bluetooth messaging app called Bitchat “Twitter co-founder and Block Head Jack Dorsey launched a new peer-to-peer messaging app over the weekend called Bitchat that runs entirely over Bluetooth. Bitchat relies on Bluetooth Low Energy mesh networks to send encrypted communications directly to nearby devices without requiring internet or cellular service.” Don't be too concerned about the Bluetooth range as this app sets up mesh connections across multiple peers, much like how Meshtastic and Reticulum radio works. So, hopping across two or more peers will quickly extend this reach. Bitchat is working over Bluetooth LE and the claims are that distance between peers could be as much as 300m. Certainly, for line of sight such distances should be easy to achieve. The plan in future seems to be to include Wi-Fi Direct as another connectivity option. I'm wondering if this could evolve in future to work something like the Reticulum network, across all sorts of protocols. As with Nostr and other similar projects, Bitchat requires no account creation, no servers, no e-mail or mobile phone registrations, and also it has password protected channels, and even a panic mode that will clear all data in the logo is triple-tapped. Right now, it is working on iOS devices through Apple Testflight, and an Android client is still expected to be released in the near future. As this type of app is normally easier to released for Android, I'm wondering if it was not primarily intended right now to protect the privacy of protesters inside the USA. See

The Verge

Jack Dorsey made an encrypted Bluetooth messaging app

Just don’t abbreviate it.

and the GitHub site at

GitHub

GitHub - permissionlesstech/bitchat: bluetooth mesh chat, IRC vibes

bluetooth mesh chat, IRC vibes. Contribute to permissionlesstech/bitchat development by creating an account on GitHub.

#technology #privacy #opensource #P2P

I'm enjoying playing Ships at Sea on Steam Games I did a short summary with quite a few photos at my blog at

GadgeteerZA

I'm enjoying playing Ships at Sea on Steam Games

This is a pretty relaxing simulation game to play. No shooting, or being shot as soon as you respawn! It is pretty well much like Snowrunner, but i...

#technology #gaming #ships #simulation

CoMaps is a fully open source navigation app that works offline and doesn’t track users “Born out of governance concerns in Organic Maps, CoMaps has been created with a goal of restoring transparency, community control, and privacy-focused navigation. It’s a fully open source navigation app that works offline and doesn’t track users. A few weeks after the project began, CoMaps has officially launched with apps for both Android and iOS.” It will look similar to Organic Maps but some key differences (apart from the governance) are that remappable left button, and some choices to reduce display clutter. I noticed too, there is an optional (off by default) choice to use Google detected Wi-Fi hotspots for assisting in location. See https://news.itsfoss.com/comaps-launch #technology #navigation #opensource

EasiShop is a South African comparative groceries shopping service developed by an ex-student from Cape Town "A former Fish Hoek High School learner is using his tech skills to help South African families stretch their grocery budgets. Tinashe Madanire, a 26-year-old student at Stellenbosch University, along with his co-founder Tendai Katiyo, launched a price-comparison website called EasiShop earlier this year. The idea? A simple website where users can track deals, build shopping lists, and find the best prices across major retailers.” This was something I've long thought we've needed. One place to put a shopping list of grocery items together, and then have the prices compared across Pick 'n Pay, Checkers, Woolworths, etc to find where it will be cheapest to buy. It is not yet going to be perfect, as many retailers also offer reward programs, personalised discounts, and many consumers also have additional kick backs through eBucks, GreenBacks, etc as well. Ideally, you'd want to be able to tick these relevant additional discounts too, and to also have Clicks and Dis-Chem added in future. But it is a great initiative and something that is certainly needed. I hope that it is going to continue to grow, and to benefit many local consumers. See the story at

IOL

How a former Fish Hoek student is helping families save on groceries with EasiShop

Discover how Tinashe Madanire, a former Fish Hoek High School student, is leveraging technology to help South African families manage their grocery...

or website at

EasiShop - Compare Prices from Different Retailers

Find the best deals from different stores. Save money by comparing grocery prices with EasiShop!

#technology #southafrica #groceries

I replaced my ISP router with OPNsense months ago, and I don't regret it at all OPNsense can also be fairly simple to set up if you go with the basics (like most home routers offer). But the great thing is you can also deep dive into it and setup separated VLANs and masses of tweaks and rules. What you need to know, though, is that you will need to run it on a separate piece of hardware (just like you'd have bought a router device) and ideally you'd want at least 4 Ethernet ports on it. The minimum is really two ports (a WAN port and a LAN port). My OPNsense device is a Protectli with 4 ports. One is a WAN port, and I have reserved another for a LAN port, and I have the remaining two ports connected as a LAGG interface to my main switch (so it has dual links for load balancing and redundancy). But again, you don't to do this either if you want to keep it simple. What I still want to explore with mine, is using the Haproxy plugin to do my reverse proxying directly on the OPNsense device, instead of in a container on my server. This will mean that some traffic destined for my OpenWebRx device can flow directly from the router through the main switch and to the OpenWebRx device (instead of via the server and then back through the main switch). OPNsense (and PFsense) does mean total control in your hands, and also ongoing updates and patches for many many years... See

XDA

I replaced my ISP router with OPNsense months ago, and I don't regret it at all

I took the plunge a while ago, and OPNsense is fantastic.

#technology #opensource #security #routers

Microsoft surprises MS-DOS fans with remake of ancient text editor that works on Linux “Last month, Microsoft released a modern remake of its classic MS-DOS Editor, bringing back a piece of computing history that first appeared in MS-DOS 5.0 back in 1991. The new open source tool, built with Rust and simply called “Edit,” works on Windows, macOS, and—in a twist that would have seemed unlikely three decades ago—Linux.” Yes, not only is it open source, but it also has a Linux binary file in its release. It feels a bit like the whole world just turned upside down. The interesting part though is that text editing has not really changed that much. The features may have, but it is still plain old ASCII text, so this editor can still work fine over 30 years later. The linked article has, near the end of the article, a link to the GitHub project site, as well as for a Linux Snap package. See

Ars Technica

Microsoft surprises MS-DOS fans with remake of ancient text editor that works on Linux

It’s funny how useful a 34-year-old software design can still be.

#technology #retro #opensource