Streaming your Apple Watch’s display to your iPhone is convenient and helpful. You can check your watch from another room, show off a feature to a friend more easily, and access anything with the ease that comes with a much larger display. As long as its on and within Bluetooth range of your iPhone, this feature will work.

It is a pity that the Watch's screen stays lit for this, as it would have been one way to spend time fiddling with it and not chewing up the battery. Just note that the settings mentioned are done on the iPhone and not the Watch.

See https://lifehacker.com/you-can-finally-control-your-apple-watch-from-your-ipho-1849552944

#technology #AppleWatch #iOS #screenmirroring

Yes, a real pity it is no longer supported by its creator due Microsoft apparently taking his code and rebranding for their own use (yes it is a MIT license, but it's amazing how Big Tech can just take without giving back, but don't you dare take from them...).

I had to urgently find a SIMPLE screen recorder in a hurry as my meeting had started online, and I had to use Windows OS (some issue with Skype for Business not starting on Linux). So gone were my normal Linux simple recorders. Everything I found on a search for Windows limited to 10 mins recording, or had watermarks, or no computer output sound source, etc.

But wow Captura ticked all the boxes with full screen or region of screen, choice of one or more audio recordings, FPS rate, mouse clicks, key strokes, portable build, etc in a simple interface. All I did have to do was download FFMPEG, and point Captura it to the binary file.

See https://mathewsachin.github.io/Captura/

#technology #screenrecording #opensource #Windows #Captura

Plasma 5.26 introduces "Plasma Bigscreen" as a user-interface optimized for TV usage or other large format displays. Plasma Bigscreen has the Aura Browser optimized for large displays, the Plank Player for playing multimedia content nicely in such environments, and various other features.

See https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Plasma-5.26-Beta

#technology #opensource #Linux #KDE #BigScreenTV

You can self-host these open source apps that will regularly scan the devices connected to your WIFI / LAN and alert you the connection of unknown devices. Pi.Alert has a few extras like warning of the disconnection of "always connected" devices, additional notification options, presence history, and others I show in the video.

In this video I compare these two apps and show what they look like in action, as well as covering some tips and solutions for issues I had experienced.

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6an9QG2xF0

#technology #security #PiAlert #selfhosted #opensource

In response to controversy over image synthesis models learning from artists' images scraped from the Internet without consent—and potentially replicating their artistic styles—a group of artists has released a new website that allows anyone to see if their artwork has been used to train AI.

The website "Have I Been Trained?" taps into the LAION-5B training data used to train Stable Diffusion and Google's Imagen AI models, among others.

Not everything is open source on the Internet, and even open source licenses may require attribution, non-commercial use, or possibly prohibit modification. It is the artists freedom of choice to decide how their work is used or reused. Whether all of that is still considered open source, is a different matter that Richard Stallman will no doubt weigh in on.

One thing I hope though, is that we don't go through lots of "false copyright take down claims" as there is nothing worse than automated take downs, and you have to be blocked and resubmit your genuine work. I suppose though it can never be a perfect world (we have humans in the world after all).

See https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/have-ai-image-generators-assimilated-your-art-new-tool-lets-you-check/

#technology #artists #AI #licensing #art

The new Be Your Own Model experience requires customers to upload a full-body photo of themselves to create a realistic simulation of what an item of clothing would look like on their own bodies. The feature is capable of recognizing where the fabric should drape and shadows should fall, made possible by the company’s acquisition of the Zeekit virtual try-on platform last year.

“A single shirt can come in six different colors, seven different sizes and two sleeve lengths. Our technology captures all the variations and shows how they look uniquely on each individual,” says Walmart in a press release announcing the new feature.

See https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/15/23354447/walmart-app-ar-vr-virtual-model-clothing-own-body

#technology #AI #Walmart #clothing #virtualclothing

Type and ye shall receive. That’s the basic premise of AI text-to-image programs.

Users type out descriptions of whatever they like — a cyborg Joe Biden wielding a samurai sword; a medieval tapestry of frogs jousting — and these systems, trained on huge databases of existing art, generate never-before-seen pictures that match these prompts (more or less). And while the output of current state-of-the-art models certainly isn’t perfect, for those excited about the technology, such flaws are insignificant when measured against the potential of software that generates any image you can imagine.

If you do a search for Stable Diffusion, it will be found on the HuggingFace domain name.

See https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/15/23340673/ai-image-generation-stable-diffusion-explained-ethics-copyright-data

#technology #AI #AIart #StableDiffusion

Three industry bodies, including the Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa), have launched an online ICT Skills Registry aimed at helping younger job seekers find employment in the technology sector.

The initiative, which is also supported by the Wireless Access Providers Association and the Wireless Applications Service Providers’ Association, is a searchable database that “contains the profiles and skill sets of candidates seeking a career path in the ICT industry”.

Website link in the linked article below.

See https://techcentral.co.za/new-ict-skills-registry-launched-in-south-africa/215271/

#technology #southafrica #skills #jobs #youth

There is no need to build in special support as in the iPhone 14. Depending on the configuration of the satellite, it will provide messaging, voice or broadband services.

When the satellites are in place — and handsets can connect directly to them — it can change the mobile telecommunications landscape.

It will provide near-complete coverage worldwide, including in South Africa, enabling people to use satellites instead of mobile networks for basic mobile communications.

Developing nations in Africa with low mobile network penetration will benefit significantly from satellite networks.

Very interesting times ahead!!! But of course it is telecomms related, and potentially crossing international borders, so we can expect regulation, complications, and we lose the nice stuff...

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/460798-game-changer-can-threaten-vodacom-and-mtns-business-models.html

#technology #satellite #telecomms #southafrica