Android Auto requires a constant connection between your car's compatible infotainment system and your Android phone. The computing is done on your handset, which projects various apps and content on your car's screen, making it easier to interact with your favourite software while driving using a dedicated, driver-friendly interface.

For decades, we were accustomed to using a different interface for each car manufacturer we encountered. But in the mid-2010s, things changed as big brands brought their platforms to vehicles. Google was no exception. Android Auto lets you use any Android phone, including budget smartphones, to run a modern and user-friendly interface on almost any car's infotainment system.

Android Auto is different from Android Automotive, which is an open source, full-featured operating system that powers some cars' infotainment systems, like in the Polestar 2. In contrast, Android Auto requires a paired Android device connected to a compatible infotainment system to work, similar to other systems like Apple CarPlay.

All you usually need is a USB cable, if your car does not support Bluetooth for Android Auto. My Hyundai, for example, has both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay built-in.

See https://www.androidpolice.com/what-is-android-auto-explainer/

#technology #AndroiAuto #handsfree

I'd actually missed that there was a floating panel, and it works quite nicely if you allow apps to appear below it.

Wayland will be interesting as I heard it was all ready for KDE apps, but last thing I also heard was it had some issues around Nvidia support. So not sure if it is fully ready yet for gaming with Nvidia, but I had made a note to test it again when Plasma 6 went live. The point was though that all current development attention is going into Wayland, and X11 is no longer really getting attention to sort issues out.

This does sound promising, though: "rest assured that the KDE devs are working on addressing all the Wayland/NVIDIA issues before Plasma 6 hits the streets in stable version".

See https://9to5linux.com/kde-plasma-6-to-ship-with-floating-panel-by-default-double-click-for-opening-files

#technology #Linux #KDE #Plasma #Wayland

Developed by Dr Manuel Schabus, head of the Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research Laboratory at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at Salzburg in Austria, and his team. The science team of Nukkuaa deals with the topic of sleep and solutions to solving sleep problems on a daily basis.

Do you wish to precisely analyse your sleep as often as you want, improve it with sleep training, and wake up refreshed in the morning? Then: welcome to the virtual sleep lab for your home. Nukkuaa - developed by professionals in sleep research - offers exactly this. Data show an 18 percent improvement in sleep quality among people with poor or very poor sleep quality when using Nukkuaa over a six-week period. In addition to acutely reducing insomnia symptoms, these effects have been shown to last week's beyond use of the app. It shows a 26 percent improvement in what is known as sleep onset latency: that is the time it takes to detect the first stage of sleep.

Digital sleep training improves sleep and helps improve mental, emotional and social health, according to studies. Studies already conducted on the efficacy of Nukkuaa show: Problems falling and staying asleep improve, and the perceived quality of life increases.

Put on your chest sensor (a Polar H10 chest strap supported for now, with the arm-based one to follow soon), go to sleep: Nukkuaa's artificial intelligence-based algorithm calculates sleep stages based on heart rate variability - and is almost as accurate as a regular sleep lab, where much more body data is measured. Also new: the combination of sleep analysis and sleep training based on current research findings.

Some caveats though:

1. The app itself appears to be limited to some markets (e.g. I could not download it from the US Play Store). In the end, I downloaded the APK file from ApkGK.
2. The app appears to only be in German for now (as at the January 2023 version that I have, but most recent update is May 2023).
3. Right now, it only works with the Polar H10 chest strap. It seems support for the Polar arm band will follow, and possibly from other devices. But it requires an accurate ECG based reader. Remember, this is essentially sleep laboratory analysis being made possible at home.
4. There is a free tier, but the more advanced analysis will require a monthly subscription.

I see that The Quantified Scientist channel on YouTube is planning to review the app soon.

See https://www.nukkuaa.com/en/unsere-forschung

#technology #sleep #medical #health

Yes, it is not just hard drives that need to be wiped. Network routers also contain storage with even more valuable information, especially when it relates to accessing that network, or other 3rd party networks. Even remote access information around VPNs is stored on routers.

Although the report focusses more on corporate networks, the same really applies to home networks.

You want to at least apply factory settings to your router before discarding it.

See https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/used_routers_corporate_secrets.pdf

#technology #security #hacking #routers

Think of something you’ve been studying lately and have to memorize—maybe the periodic table or a sequential list of steps. Find a way to condense it, so the material is the size of your phone screen—then make it your background. (Alternatively, make it the screensaver and background on your computer.)

Every time you check the time, glance at your phone, or get a notification, you’ll see the material. Take a few seconds to read it over. Now, it’s ever-present. Any time you want to review or quiz yourself, just tap your phone, so it lights up. You won’t have to dig through screenshots or notes to find what you need.

This also works for instructions, say, for an essay. Instead of continually opening up the instructions page, just keep it handy as the first thing you see on your phone, so you can check your work and progress as you go.

It is often possible, too, to have screen backgrounds that change. But it is a great way to just have something subtly reinforced for learning throughout the day. Even in your downtime, though, you can be subconsciously absorbing your materials.

See https://lifehacker.com/how-your-phones-background-can-help-you-study-1850424491

#technology #learning #studying #education

The Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS) is working on a system for South Africans to report scams, secure their personal information, and scan websites for vulnerabilities.

This comes after SAFPS stats revealed there was a 600% increase in incidents reported by its members in 2022 compared to 2018.

Called “Yima”, the system will help South Africans learn to identify scams and protect themselves online.

The centrepiece of the Yima website will be a reporting system for South Africans to submit any scam incidents or suspicious activity to the SAFPS. “These reports will be collated and shared with law enforcement for investigation,” the SAFPS said.

This will be interesting to see in practice, because although the SA POPI Act is very far-reaching, not a single person has been prosecuted and fined/jailed under it. The same goes for legislation around SMS and spam callers. We are great at legislating and announcing measures, but in practice the execution often falls through the floor. So let's see how it works after it launches. It is certainly something that is needed.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/491257-south-africa-getting-system-for-reporting-scams-and-fraud-online.html

#technology #scams #fraud #SouthAfrica

Google showed off a new mode for Google Maps that will display the route on top of the existing 3D map models. You’ll be able to scroll through directions, with lines and arrows visible above the map. Google even showed off weather effects in the render, like rain — that might be annoying for anyone trying to use this for directions, but it is a neat tech demo.

The new mode relies on a detailed 3D map, which isn’t available in all areas.

Ever since Street View was released, though, I'd been looking for / expecting some more seamless view. So it looks as if we may get something more like that now. But that said, I noticed recently that 3D map view was no longer appearing in my Brave browser, so also seems that Google is "preferring" Chrome and Edge browsers (why?).

See https://www.howtogeek.com/891546/google-maps-immersive-view-looks-like-a-simulation-game/

#technology #maps #navigation #3D

The last many months I've been struggling with having a boot up time of a good 10 - 15 minutes with Manjaro KDE. As this is a rolling distro, my configs are many years old as I don't do refresh installs every major release, and there have also been many modbus writes made to the kernel for various hardware I've bought over the years. So, the login screen would appear fairly quickly, but the KDE desktop only started responding efficiently after 15 minutes or so (after I'd gone to make a cup of coffee).

I won't go through all the fixes I've tried as there are many, including delaying auto start apps, the usual cleaning of cache files, build files, trying ZRAM, etc.

Some really useful commands that helped me were:

• systemd-analyze blame - to see what affects the desktop startup times.
• systemd-analyze blame --user - this was a new one today I tried and it did indicate the app Keybase was causing long delays, so I did remove that app today.
• journalctl -b -p err - this is a good one to show systemd boot related issues, and it for example showed if my USB headphones adaptor was plugged in without the headphones connected, it spends time trying to find them.

I had really eliminated most issues, but one thing remaining were a few kernel messages moaning about a task that had been blocked for more than 122 seconds. The task was sometimes different, and although speeds were OK after the boot process finished, I'd see some fresh errors reported about tasks hanging for over 122 seconds, such as 'kernel: INFO: task APEX_CONTEXT_WO:2401 blocked for more than 122 seconds'.

But today was a GOOD day as my long-lost parcel turned up at the SA Post Office (no notification of course sent to me), so I thought I'd spin the wheel of fortune one more time, and I found the linked article below.

So, after trying this out, the reboot was much quicker. The desktop was responding within a minute after login, and I even noticed that opening apps, as well as browser tabs, was also a bit snappier. I've done two reboots now, and it really does seem to have sorted it out.

The explanation, especially for those who have a system with a lot of RAM (I have 32 GB of RAM): This is a known bug. By default, Linux uses up to 40% of the available memory for file system caching. After this mark has been reached, the file system flushes all outstanding data to disk, causing all following IOs going synchronous. For flushing out this data to disk this there is a time limit of 120 seconds by default. In the case here, the IO subsystem is not fast enough to flush the data within 120 seconds. This especially happens on systems with a lot of memory.

Essentially the system is waiting way too long when some tasks don't respond, so it seems to need a quicker break out, and systems with more RAM have not hit the 40% threshold. It essentially involved editing the sysctl.conf file and adding two lines to clean up these wait states: sudo nano/etc/sysctl.conf

Add these two lines at the end of that file, save, and reboot: vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5vm.dirty_ratio = 10

But yes, I'm not sure why Linux does not lower that flush threshold if it sees the RAM is more. Maybe it did and my older install did not get some updated config files.

See https://www.blackmoreops.com/2014/09/22/linux-kernel-panic-issue-fix-hung_task_timeout_secs-blocked-120-seconds-problem/

#technology #Linux #Manjaro #bootup

Unreal Engine 5 is both easy and very challenging. It is easy in that most of what you want to do is all menus, settings, layers, and selecting from some amazing 3rd party textures, materials, etc.

The challenging part comes in actually understanding what you are doing. There are literally tons of settings (I mean countless) and the power really comes once you get to understand about 15% of that. I'm still on around 2 or 3%, but I do have a basic island with a landscape, a lake, and a river (sort of). As you keep busy with it, you realise there are better ways to do most things. So beyond 15% knowledge, and you start to do things quicker and better.

Apart from just creating islands and any other landscape or structure you can think of, there is 1st or 3rd person gaming views, cinematic and animation, VR, and lost more. It makes Lego look like kids play.

I'm also doing it on Linux, so there are some minor challenges. The main UE5 Editor is now native Linux binaries, as well as the Quixel Bridge add-on. But I'm having massive issues with Epic Games sign-ins and their hCaptcha checks (clearly I'm not human, yet I solve the identical hCaptcha on other sites this same week!). So for two plus days I've been getting failed login. Funny thing is I was logged in a few days back, but I'm not the only one, it seems, with this issue. So this is impacting my progress a bit.

The plan is to finish my photorealistic island and then to spend time walking around it, and maybe build it into an Android app or desktop app for some others to enjoy too. And of course I can keep improving this island.

So if you're looking for a 2023 challenge still, Unreal Engine could well be it! It's free to use but does require a bit of GPU processor and RAM.

#technology #gaming #creativity #virtualworlds #UE5