Did you know you can switch the orientation of your Apple Watch, so the digital crown faces a different direction? While most people with an Apple Watch wear it with the digital crown located on the upper right side next to the display, there’s a way to turn the button around.

Typically, if you wear your Watch on your right arm, or you just often bump the crown by mistake, this may be something you want to consider.

See https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-change-apple-watch-orientation

#technology #applewatch #tip #apple #ios

The upcoming version of the OS will display a notification whenever an app drains excessive battery within 24 hours (via 9to5Google), irrespective of whether it targets the Android 13 SDK. Google notes the warning will not be shown when an app's foreground service is consuming a lot of battery until it is finished running or the user dismisses the notification — it will only be displayed if the high power consumption continues in the background after that. After the initial message, the warning won't be shown again until at least 24 hours later.

This is good news as sometimes a rogue app can really deplete the battery and that is only spotted when the battery is near dead.

See https://www.androidpolice.com/android-13-will-alert-you-when-an-app-is-draining-your-phones-battery-in-the-background/

#technology #android #battery #batterylife

Could the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors in your future smartphone take the place of laboratory equipment in health and food safety applications? It's looking like a possibility.

Researchers at the University of Washington reckon handset LiDAR can determine fluid properties, sparing you from having to use expensive lab gear. The amount of liquid needed for a smartphone LiDAR test is significantly less than that for a medical lab, too, they said.

One application of LiDAR would be testing blood for coagulation. The researchers also found their method was able to determine the fat properties of milk and whether the liquid had been adulterated, and to identify a particular liquid from among ten samples.

The discovery, we're told, let the researchers distinguish between coagulated and uncoagulated blood with only a single finger-lancet-sized drop, differentiate between different types of milk and whether the milk had been adulterated, and distinguish between 10 classes of liquid with 91.5 percent average accuracy.

See https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/18/smartphone_lidar_medical/

#technology #health #lidar #foodsafety

Both AdGuard Home and Pi-hole are free and open source, and both do pretty well much the same as far as functionality goes. They can also both be installed natively or as a docker container image, and will run on Raspberry Pi's or larger hardware.

The differences really come with AdGuard Home's UI looking a touch more modern and less cluttered, and supposedly AdGuard Home has additional functionality already included, where that must be installed additionally for Pi-hole.

So I managed to get up and running quite quickly with AdGuard Home by following DB Tech's video. One thing that tripped me up was that the container would not start, and reported a clash on port 53 (the DNS port). But one of the commenters on the video, Wesley O'Brien, suggested a solution which worked perfectly for me. I set my router's DHCP server to provide the IP of my AdGuard Home server as the DNS, and now all devices throughout the home network are using it. Speed tests and website page loading appears unaffected (not slower, anyway).

See https://youtu.be/u9ylq5Gry_A

#technology #opensource #adguardhome #pihole #trackers

As a server administrator or Linux desktop user or anyone who is new to Linux, understanding about /etc/fstab file in Linux and how to debug fstab issues are very important.

Fstab is a file system table used by the kernel during boot time to mount the file system. To put it in simple terms, you will create one or more partitions on your hard drive, and you will make an entry for each partition in fstab which will be read by the kernel during boot time and the file system will be automatically mounted.

By default, any partitions you create during the OS installation will be automatically added to the fstab file. Interestingly, they also touch on the /etc/mtab file as well.

See https://ostechnix.com/what-is-fstab-in-linux-introduction-to-linux-etc-fstab-file/

#technology #linux #fstab

phpBB, also known as a “PHP Bulletin Board” is a free and open source flat-forum bulletin board software that provides a space for people to gather and communicate with each other. It is written in PHP and supports many database engines including, MySQL, Oracle Database, SQLite, PostgreSQL, etc. It comes with hundreds of style and image packages that help you to customize your board.

Yes phpBB is really basic compared to some fancier discussion forums, but for many organisations they want something really light weight, light on resources including storage and network traffic, and simple to manage, and phpBB is still quite popular because of that.

See https://www.rosehosting.com/blog/how-to-install-phpbb-on-ubuntu-20-04/

#technology #opensource #bulletinboard #forums

Portainer is an open-source management UI for Docker, including Docker Swarm environment. Portainer makes it easier for you to manage your Docker containers, it allows you to manage containers, images, networks, and volumes from the web-based Portainer dashboard.

I started out with docker containers using Portainer, and I still use Portainer today. In the beginning, I used the quick-click install of existing App Templates to quickly get many popular types of web service up and running. It was this ease of use that helped me migrate away from cPanel hosting. Today I tend to use App Templates, where I have taken existing scripts and tweaked them for my use to store data on specific external volumes, specify ports to be used, etc.

If you want to get into using Docker Containers to host services, I'd suggest looking at a few videos about using Portainer to get the feel of it. Of course, everything in Portainer can be done from the command line too (and often quicker) but using a graphical interface that basically does everything needed, is a lot more friendly for most average users.

See https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/ubuntu-docker-portainer/

#technology #docker #containers #portainer #selfhosting

Whilst Briar is an excellent P2P messaging client (requiring no Internet) it still does not yet run on iOS. So to be able to connect to everyone, you want to consider clients which do connect as widely as possible. As with all P2P clients, your friends all need to also have the same app installed. Usually these clients require zero personal information (not even a phone number) to be used.

Bridgefy is designed to work on local Bluetooth (max about 100m) during natural disasters, a protest, at large events, at schools, etc. It will create a mesh network, so one or more other peers can help transmit messages further. See https://bridgefy.me/.

Jami also is a P2P client, but it uses encrypted TCP to communicate. It can be installed on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android TV. It will connect over the Internet to any friend, with no servers required (there is no website that can be blocked or intercept messages). It does not work across Bluetooth, but it can work on a local area network (without Internet) if everyone is on the same network, e.g. a Wi-Fi network. So yes, typically something like Jami will work perfectly in Russia or Ukraine across an Internet where servers are being censored or blocked. See https://jami.net/.

These are pure messaging apps though, so if you want P2P blogging you'd want to consider RetroShare, Secure Scuttlebutt, Aether or other similar service that works without any websites or servers at all.

#technology #messaging #privacy #censorship #P2P

The history of computing could arguably be divided into three eras: that of mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers. Minicomputers provided an important bridge between the first mainframes and the ubiquitous micros of today. This is the story of the PDP-11, the most influential and successful minicomputer ever.

In their moment, minicomputers were used in a variety of applications. They served as communications controllers, instrument controllers, large system pre-processors, desk calculators, and real-time data acquisition handlers. But they also laid the foundation for significant hardware architecture advances and contributed greatly to modern operating systems, programming languages, and interactive computing as we know them today.

In today’s world of computing, in which every computer runs some variant of Windows, Mac, or Linux, it’s hard to distinguish between the CPUs underneath the operating system. But there was a time when differences in CPU architecture were a big deal. The PDP-11 helps explain why that was the case.

The PDP-11 was introduced in 1970, a time when most computing was done on expensive GE, CDC, and IBM mainframes that few people had access to. There were no laptops, desktops, or personal computers. Programming was done by only a few companies, mostly in assembly, COBOL, and FORTRAN. Input was done on punched cards, and programs ran in non-interactive batch runs.

See https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/a-brief-tour-of-the-pdp-11-the-most-influential-minicomputer-of-all-time/

#technology #retro #vintage #minicomputer #pdp11