The fuel cell itself, which resembles a teabag that’s slightly larger than a fingernail, is covered in a nonwoven fabric and coated with alginate, an algae-derived product used widely in biomedicine because of its high degree of biocompatibility. When implanted under the skin, the cell’s alginate soaks up body fluid, allowing glucose to permeate the surface and flow into the power centre.

Overall, the two components provide a self-regulating circuit. When the fuel cell powered by glucose senses excess blood sugar, it powers up. This then stimulates the beta cells to produce and secrete insulin. As blood sugar levels dip, it trips a threshold sensor in the fuel cell, so it powers down, in turn stopping the insulin production and release.

This self-sustained circuit could also produce enough power to communicate with a device such as a smartphone, which allows for monitoring and adjusting, and even has potential for remote access for medical intervention.

Well, this looks promising, so we'll have to see if it actually becomes a reality and available for use.

See https://newatlas.com/medical/sugar-powered-implant-diabetes/

#technology #health #diabetes #type1diabetes

I make daily use of a note-taking app to record what I learn when problem-solving, prepare for YouTube videos, and much more. I save everything in Markdown format so that it is future-proof and stays compatible with whatever I'll be using in 20 years time.

I had originally got started with Evernote but exported everything to QOwnNotes later on. After that I started using Obsidian (powerful, free but not open source), and I'm thinking of making a change again back to something open source. Although I've also tried Joplin and Standard Notes, I never fully migrated to them. The beauty of an open standard like Markdown is that you can switch apps and just continue using all your notes from 10+ years ago.

The only issues you may experience are that some "features" like say generated tables of contents, Kanban, to-do's, highlighting, etc are not standardised in Markdown, so you can lose these when changing apps. But generally, headings, bold, italics, indenting, links, images, tables, etc are all fine. So, if you stick to one editor then go wild with the extra plugins, but if you want to retain compatibility across editors then you may want to think about what plugins you make use of.

Although not listed in the linked article, I see that open source and cross-platform (including mobile) Logseq has vastly improved, and I may want to give that a spin. Its feature is "everything is a referenceable block" with a block being a paragraph of text, and it calls notes pages. Only thing is it seems to mark the start of every block with a dot (and this shows in other editors) so hopefully I can disable that being inserted into the saved text. Its philosophy also centres around a daily journal where you just write your notes and can flag to-dos or link/search for anything. It also has whiteboards and graph views of linked notes (just like Obsidian).

Very interestingly, I noted that both Logseq and also Obsidian, have various Chat-GPT plugins to help generate content or even to rewrite your rough drafts. So yes, AI has already invaded open-source text editors!

See https://www.tecmint.com/note-taking-apps-linux/

#technology #notes #opensource #Logsec #Linux

Google introduced its Magic Eraser feature with the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, and it made a huge splash because it made it easier to remove uninvited guests and objects from images. Google wasn't the first or only one to bring an object-erasing functionality at that time, though. Samsung launched a similar feature called Object Eraser with the Galaxy S21 the same year, and Adobe Photoshop has been able to do it for many years. Google's clever implementation on the software front made it look almost like magic, but is Google's tool to remove photo bombers actually the best one out there?

Largely, your choice may be determined by whether you have a Pixel phone (or Google One subscription on any phone) or Samsung flagship phone. I have both, so this was of interest to me to see which one have the edge. It does appear that one does a slightly cleaner job of erasing, though.

There are also other third-party apps out there that do object erasing, but these were not evaluated in this review. But bear in mind, like moon shots, this is "faking" the photo.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/google-magic-eraser-vs-samsung-object-eraser/

#technology #objecteraser #magiceraser #photography

You do need some sort of proper password manager today, mainly because you cannot re-use the same passwords across different websites. So having a unique password, as well as a unique user ID/Email for each one, means you cannot remember 500+ combinations across all websites. Yes, for example, Bitwarden will also generate, and remember, a unique e-mail address login for each website (through either a 3rd party service, or even just with your existing service by making use of plus addresses). A unique e-mail address means even more added security as any hacker has to guess both a unique e-mail address and a unique password, and cannot use your know e-mail address.

A browser-based password manager can do the very basics but usually does not do the more advanced functionality such as generating user IDs, 2FA filling as well as access security, can be locked independently of the browser, and more. Their use is also limited to just that browser. I regularly use more than one brand of browser, and I work across different OSs. I need something that will sync across all browsers on all devices.

Many password managers will provide a free tier with some limitations (some are even completely free) but it is important to tick off what features you will need to use.

Even if you do pay for a good password manager, it is probably worth it, as our website accesses are unlocking more and more valuable resources from banking to online investments, our e-mail, our remote work logins, our identities, etc.

As sites transition to passkeys, so should all current password managers be adding this functionality in the coming year.

See https://www.howtogeek.com/141500/why-you-should-use-a-password-manager-and-how-to-get-started/

#technology #secirity #passwordmanagers #passwords

What a week! My car is also misfiring on a cylinder, and this morning I discovered both data drives on my home server showed "unallocated partition and filesystem". This I discovered after plugging them into my desktop computer, and they did not even show up as drives. I managed to see the lack of partition and filesystem when using GParted (partition manager) to view them. This was not good!

The first two rules of data recovery though are "Don't Panic" and also don't write anything or try formatting the drive. Invariably, the actual data is still on the drive, as usually it is the partition or boot sectors that are damaged in some way.

My home server boots off an SSD drive, and has two 4 TB USB drives connected. One USB drive is the primary data and stores the container volume data (the config and working data for the Docker containers that run off the boot drive), and the second USB drive is a daily Rsync of all the data on the primary drive.

So, I made a cup of coffee while my heart rate was returning to normal, and thought about the problem. At first, I thought it could be a hack as why would both drives fail together, but the boot drive was all OK and the logs showed nothing. My server does sit behind Cloudflare, a home router firewall, as well as Nginx Proxy Manager, and has Fail2Ban running. So I began to think this was maybe not the case.

The logs showed fails at around 00:30, and I recalled the grid power came on around 00:10 (this is in South Africa) and may have had some sort of power spike. I thought originally this was unlikely though, as everything runs off a solar inverter, and it should have cleaned anything from the power side. The other computers were all off, but the system has survived hundreds of such power cycles over the last few years without issues at all.

But after neither drive showed any sign of life after being connected to my desktop PC, I found another USB-SATA adaptor which I connected up to one of the drives. I could now hear it spinning, but Gparted showed the unallocated partition and file system message. But this was good, as at least the drives still spun.

So, I tried TestDisk and its job is initially to search for partitions on the drive, which it did find, and then it allowed me to start browsing files. So that was great, as the files did show. What TestDisk then can do (amongst many more functions) was to then rebuild the partition table. After that, the drive appeared in my file manager and I could view/copy the files. TestDisk may seem intimidating, but it is wizard driven with suggestions and advice, so you just really need to read each screen carefully.

But putting the original USB-SATA adaptor on again, seemed to once again trash the partition table. So after another recovery, I used the backup USB-SATA adaptor that I still had and could place that drive back in the server, and it was working perfectly on the primary data disk now.

So, off to the shop and I had to buy two new drive enclosures (that have the USB-SATA adaptors inside). I fitted the backup drive to one of those enclosures, and it is also now visible. OpenMediaVault was just moaning about the change of drive ID (supposedly because of the different SATA controller) but it settled down, and I could run a fresh backup to the drive.

So, in conclusion, it seems the USB-SATA adaptors were both trashed by probably some form of power issue that struck through the USB ports (although the main SATA SSD drive was fine). So, I've dusted off a disused APC UPS out of the cupboard and will rather run that server off that UPS to add some more cushioning for it.

I could consider again running a backup, possibly over the Ethernet network at night, to better separate the storage devices.

TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL v2+). It is powerful free data recovery software that was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software: certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table).

See https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

#technology #loadshedding #dataloss #backups #opensource

The team of researchers consists of professor Guenevere Chen of the University of Texas in San Antonio (UTSA), her doctoral student Qi Xia, and professor Shouhuai Xu of the University of Colorado (UCCS).

The team demonstrated NUIT attacks against modern voice assistants found inside millions of devices, including Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Alexa, showing the ability to send malicious commands to those devices.

The main principle that makes NUIT effective and dangerous is that microphones in smart devices can respond to near-ultrasound waves that the human ear cannot, thus performing the attack with minimal risk of exposure while still using conventional speaker technology.

We've actually heard about these near ultrasound attacks before, but further work has been done on demonstrating how it can work. It does not require someone to be near-by to the listening device at all, as it can be transmitted inaudibly to the human ear during a Zoom call, or even via a YouTube video.

So yes, absolutely nothing special required for this to work. The bigger challenge to the attacker is finding someone who actually has smart speakers to respond with, and them having some or other automation that can be weaponised. But that said, almost everyone has a smartphone or two, and many have default Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant standing by to tell them what the weather forecast is for today. Many of those assistants can also perform phone actions like enable WiFi, open a specific website, disable screen lock, and much more...

If you can authenticate on your smart device using your own vocal fingerprint, it is recommended that you activate this additional security method. Chen also advised that users monitor their devices closely for microphone activations, which have dedicated on-screen indicators on iOS and Android smartphones. And just using earphones also cuts out that sound being able to travel to smart speakers.

See https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/inaudible-ultrasound-attack-can-stealthily-control-your-phone-smart-speaker/

#technology #security #smartassistants #smartspeaker #vulnerability

The strange thing about the bug is that it wasn’t directly powered. It was actually a resonant cavity that only worked when it was irradiated with an external RF energy. Most of the video is background about the bug, with quite a few details revealed.

It goes to show that technology does not have to be complex to be effective. In this case, the simpler, the better.

The video at the link below has a lot of background of how it came about, as well the recreation exercise for the BBC. But the article also contains some links out to further sources on the reasons why the bug actually works.

And if you are not used to a colloquial English accent, the word sounding like "book" is actually "bug" ;-)

See https://hackaday.com/2023/03/25/recreating-one-of-historys-best-known-spy-gadgets/

#technology #security #spying #bugs

AI image generators like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney have suddenly burst into mainstream consciousness. More of these tools seem to be popping up all the time, but they aren’t always available to the public. Here are the ones you can use right now — today.

Like it or not, AI has started to really go mainstream now not only around chat (text) but also images. As I've pointed out before, it has no real "intelligence" but call it "assistance", and we'll see it embedded into many things. It's still a bit of a buzzword, but I'm sure the AI will fade more into the background in the future. Right now many providers and services are trying to outdo each other with what forms of AI they use. I mean, when did you last see a word processor boasting of having a spell checker powering it?

See https://www.howtogeek.com/830870/best-ai-image-generators/

#technology #AI #images

I certainly could spend a whole day watching the details of this stunningly beautiful world being explored by driving this Rivian through it. The level of detail is truly mind-blowing now.

Two things that are shown off here are firstly the type of detail that can be rendered for a vehicle, and secondly how changes to the virtual world are just rendered in near real-time.

I'm just picturing in my mind having the game Snowrunner releasing something with this level of detail...

Watch https://youtu.be/-lkEOEEKYD0

#technology #UnrealEngine #virtualworlds