Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 battery life hammered by Samsung Health Monitor app I noticed about a month or two back that my Galaxy Watch was suddenly no longer getting its two days of use out a battery charge. I do keep my watch usage quite light, and normally have the Wi-Fi off, display set to lower brightness, etc, so 2 days is usually fine. I do use watch with the Sleep For Android app that monitors sleeping heart rate etc, and that does chew about 11-12% during the night, but that has been my normal usage. I thought at first maybe it is the battery ageing, but it is not even a year old yet. But checking the battery usage stats showed that the Samsung Health Monitor app (not the standard Samsung Health app) was chewing the battery by a good 3%, higher than any other app. Rebooting had not helped either. Seeing that app is only used for ECG, sleep apnoea and blood pressure, not of which I had used for quite a while, that app should be idling with no battery usage. I tried to delete the app, but it deleted off the phone but not from the watch at all. It would also not disable properly, nor could I turn off the background usage toggle. In the end, I used the ADB command to manually delete the app. And wow, now I have a full 2 days battery use again, plus a little extra. It shows again what impact badly behaved apps have on hardware. Ideally, this app should not be using any battery power if I don’t have sleep apnoea detection active, or if its parent app on the phone is deleted. #batterylife #samsung #technology
How To Check Disk Health In Linux: A Beginners Guide “Your computer's disk drive stores all your important files. Photos, documents, videos, and everything lives on your disk. But what happens when your disk starts to fail? You could lose everything. Worry not! Linux has built-in tools to check your disk health. You can spot disk-related problems early and save your data.” Smartmontools is a package on Linux that provides tools for monitoring and managing the health of storage devices—such as hard drives and SSDs—using the built-in Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) system found in most modern drives. But other tools are also covered such as badblocks, fsck, and the graphical user interface app GNOME Disks. See #technology #Linux #diskdrives
How much VRAM do games really use in 2025? Why this caught my eye is because I just hit a VRAM limitation this week with my RTX 2060 card. It has been playing games just fine without any issue, but DaVinci Resolve Studio reports an issue with one of the new AI features requiring a minimum of 8 GB VRAM to work. So, this is something to keep in mind when looking for a new GPU. The advice seems to be to not necessarily buy the fastest or latest GPU, but rather go for something lower down the ladder, but with a lot more VRAM. See #technology #GPU
Denmark’s Government Ditches Microsoft for Open Source “Up to half of employees at Denmark’s Ministry of Digital Affairs will be switched to (an unspecified version of) Linux in place of Windows, and move from Office 365 to the leading open source productivity suite LibreOffice. Denmark’s minister of digitisation, Caroline Stage Olsen, confirmed the migration is in progress to Danish media outlet Politiken (paywalled), adding that if all goes well the whole ministry will switch to using open source software by the autumn. Denmark, like many countries, wants to have greater control over its own digital infrastructure, data, and cloud services.” This certainly seems to be a move that is growing in popularity across Europe. It does a bit of effort for any change, but this will likely also mean more investment is local skills and resources, and many governments are prepared to pay a premium for that. See #technology #Denmark #opensource #government
@Alby why did I get a mail saying my lightning channels was closed? I did not close it. It was all configured and working until this morning (I logged in with my browser extension and it showed my SATS balance). Now my SATS show 0. I have a self-hosted Alby Hub running 24/7 on a VPS, and that is fully operational and reachable. Now it shows I must "buy my first channel". I already did buy a channel. It has been operational daily. What is asks for now to buy a channel, is my entire SATS balance. Not understanding this?
These 8 Free Multiplayer Browser Games Are Too Fun to Miss Out On These are just click-and-play games, so nothing to install and take up space. Just bookmark the games you want to play again. I got a bit hooked on playing Smash Karts and completely forgot what the time was last night. See #technology #gaming
Packet is a Linux app that uses Android’s native Quick Share feature to exchange files “Anyone with an Android phone near your device can send/receive files to/from you via Packet. They don’t have to install an app on their device since the feature is built-in, and the Quick Share protocol uses end-to-end encryption for (relative) peace of mind.” I have been using LocalSend up to now, which has worked well, but it does require the app to also be installed on the Android device. So for anyone visiting your home, for example, that is a bit of an extra step. Packet looks really low-friction and may fill the gap to wirelessly fling files, photos, videos and whatever else between Android and Linux devices. There is a link to the open source GitHub project at the bottom of the linked article. See #technology #filesharing #opensource
South African app Sociable aims to shake up social media Cape Town-based social media platform Sociable combines online activity with in-person meetups. The Sociable feed makes it easier than ever to find everything happening around you in real time. No more outdated articles, just real experiences. So this app is not your general status posting app from what I can see. Users can choose from categories such as Party, Sport, Food, Adventure, or Lifestyle to create an event based on a location, which others can subscribe to or follow. An event has a description, FAQ, a capacity, etc to get more information, and users can also indicate if they will attend. The aim seems to be to create a safer environment without AI driven bot posts etc. I suppose it is also a great way to meet up in person with like-minded people to enjoy a common interest. Certainly for Cape Town I see organised walks, hikes, runs, pottery classes, and more, some of which are intended just for women. Interestingly, it also makes provision for paid events with tickets, and even private events that can only be accessed with a unique pin code. There are mobile apps for iOS and Android available. See and their website at #technology #social #southafrica #events