Lesser used paths are often very difficult to follow, and a wrong turn can lead you quickly into difficulties, or even plunge off a 100+ metre drop, especially on Table Mountain. So do some extra research and planning before setting out for the first time on a new trail.

Always research a route also on something like Google Maps that will show the contours, distances, places close by, and often photos and reviews. You can also try the 3D view, or else revert to Google Earth for that.

I'd also highly recommend a well-used app like AllTrails that shows not only recent reviews, but also gives an idea of how often a trail is in use. It also has a good side-view of the elevation along the trail. If you are not familiar with the area, try stick to busier routes like the Newlands Forest Trails or Kirstenbosch Gardens if you are on your own. AllTrails as well as Strava (both maybe premium I think) as well as Google Maps will allow you to share your location as you are moving. Privacy is absolutely not a consideration when out hiking or being on a trail run.

Safety against nature is only one consideration, and the other is unfortunately against humans. We've had a few instances of muggings, and even murder, in Cape Town so it is not recommended at all that especially non-residents go out alone on lesser used trails, or over the top of Table Mountain where there is little cellphone reception. Always try and hike or run with someone else, try stay within cellphone reception areas, and let others know where you are going, and when you expect to return.

Apps such as Casi cost only about $2 pm and can summon armed response to assist you. You can also consider installing an app (or automation app like Tasker or MacroDroid) that alerts you if cellphone reception has been lost.

If you're a ham radio operator, carry your VHH/UHF radio with you as you can summon help on 145.700 or 145.750 FM from most areas where there is no cellphone reception, and rescue organisations such as WSAR often have a ham radio operator on board. If your radio has APRS beaconing, keep that on as your location will be pinpointed at all times.

If you feel lost or threatened, rather summon help quickly and at least have someone monitoring you, than leave it too late (even if this is the BnB owner you are staying with).

There are some really great nature and trails to be explored around Cape Town, but it is essential to be prepared before going out. It is absolutely not to be considered a "walk in the park".

Make sure your phone battery is fully charged, you have some clean drinking water, a good hat, a jacket, and ideally also have mobile data available. Also check the weather reports before leaving, and remember that in strongish winds the cable car station closes (as I discovered one day and had to descend Table Mountain in the dark).

See https://www.capetownetc.com/news/wsar-rescues-trail-runner-in-jonkershoek-nature-reserve/

#technology #capetown #hiking #safety

2FAS is an interesting app as it focusses more on privacy than Google and Microsoft's 2FA authenticators do (we all know Google and Microsoft love to know where you log in, from where, and when). To this end, the app operates on its own and, if you choose to, it syncs between devices using your own iCloud or Google Drive. It requires NO account registration to be used.

It has a dark mode, as well as the ability to group your 2FA tokens, and can also show the upcoming 2FA token (useful if there is say 15 seconds to go, and you don't want to wait). It is compatible with any service that supports the TOTP and HOTP standard, including Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox.

There are two potential downsides right now: Firstly, this works with one or more mobile devices, so the desktop browser extension does not run its own tokens (it calls the mobile device for an OK). Secondly, this could be a problem if you use an Android as well as an iOS device, as there is no syncing between the iCloud and Google Drive storages. However, migrating from one OS to the other should not be a problem as the app can export and import the tokens.

If you want to work offline without the cloud sync, just remember to make a copy of the backup codes or save (with a password) the tokens to a file, and move that file off your mobile device.

Their code is open-source, including the server side, which can install using a Docker image.

See https://2fas.com/

#technology #2FA #security #privacy #opensource

I'd long ago ditched using my own ISP's e-mail service for exactly the reasons given in the linked article. I know it was a freebie, but it ties you into that provider, and it is a major pain to change 500+ logins elsewhere (another good reason why we should be allowed to use login IDs instead of e-mail addresses). The days of having only 5 or 10 services to log in to, are long gone.

Yes one "could" move to Gmail (or similar) but the thing is Google does mine that data (I know it won't worry many people) and Google has also shown it is not always interested in keeping a service going forever. A free Gmail account forces you to use their domain name, as a custom domain name will require the paid Gmail service. So, for a free account you are now tied to Gmail, have your mails mined, and would have to go through lots of pain to move again in the future. If you don't like Google, GMX is another good option for free e-mail without a custom domain name.

E-mail redirectors also pose a similar problem because I used Bigfoot for many years for this, but then they also shut down.

You could also host your own e-mail server, but that takes technical knowledge and some cost of either hardware or hosting costs anyway, and you run the risk of being an untrusted mail domain. Most average users are not going to opt to go this route.

What does not shut down though is one's own domain name. My domain name costs me about US$7.70 per year. I can use that for a website if I wish, but also for e-mail. That e-mail address will never change as long as I keep paying the annual fee for the domain name. The domain name can point to any other e-mail service, no matter how often you change your actual e-mail provider service. The ONLY proviso for this is that you must choose an e-mail provider that allows the use of a "custom domain name". What does frequently come with this, unfortunately, is that it is typically only paid e-mail services that allow you to use your own custom domain names. Still, e-mail as a service is not very expensive, and if you are a business, this is really important for branding and consistency anyway. I was already paying for Proton VPN, and to upgrade to use their free e-mail with a custom domain name and 500 GB of space, cost me around US$3 per month extra (and that now also gives me fully encrypted and digitally signed e-mails).

But something worth otherwise considering is checking with your domain name provider too. Mine actually offers an e-mail service for about US$1.90 per month. You can always move to a different e-mail service later on, as you still have your own domain name, and there is no need to update your e-mail address anywhere else again.

Although paid e-mail does cost a little money per month, one perk you do often get is multiple e-mail addresses, so you could also consider sharing with trusted family members where you could have their first name as the address, and use your family name as the domain name.

In summary, if your mail service is completely free you are probably the product of that service (either through data mining, lock-in without a custom domain name choice, forced to use webmail login, restricted storage space, tied to another service you have to pay for, etc). Similarly, if you go with a custom domain name e-mail service, you will probably have to pay a bit and go through an initial setup, but usually your e-mail is being left alone by the provider, and you can switch at any time with nearly zero interruption or notification changes to anyone. It's worth thinking about.

See https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/19/australias-internet-providers-are-ditching-email-to-the-disgust-of-older-customers

#technology #email #Australia

The Indian government has decided to share with the world the many e-governance tools it has created to run the country, under the name Indiastack. Other nations can now get their hands on India's identity service Aadhaar, the DigiLocker cloud storage locker, the CoWin Vaccination Platform, the Government e-Marketplace, and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission.

The project's digital home describes the project as "a set of open APIs and digital public goods that aim to unlock the economic primitives of identity, data, and payments at population scale." An FAQ states "None of the systems which comprise India Stack require any proprietary technology or intellectual property which would preclude their implementation in any other country."

India's government has announced that the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to share India Stack, making it the latest territory to adopt the collection of digital public goods the world's most populous nation has created as a means to assist development of government digital services (and its own diplomacy) around the world.

India Stack is based on the payment, identity, and data services India developed to power its own citizen-facing services. India's population recently topped 1.4 billion, meaning India Stack is proven to operate at a scale that can meet the needs of any other nation. India Stack also powers impressive services: the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has brought electronic payments and banking services to even the country's smallest merchants.

India Stack therefore gives India a chance for deep engagements with other nations, and a different way of doing so compared to the economic and/or military ties promoted by China, the US, or Europe.

It's a great pity that South Africa (also part of BRICS) has not been able to offer their own e-Services stack to the world. It was started in about 2015 (8 years ago called an Open Jig framework), all based on open source software (and used to boast open APIs) as well as an open data policy, but there never seemed to be any unified payment services, and the mention of APIs, and even open source (there is now a copyright notice on the website), has all disappeared from the website. It is clear that South Africa was busy on the same lines as India, but it looks like India has beaten SA to the finish line in terms of implementing the full stack, and making it available to the world. A world-class vision also needs a world-class execution plan!

See https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/18/indiastack_trinidad_tobago/

#technology #India #egovernment

Tech giants such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei have long focused on the wrist. It’s not the most comfortable option for everyone, and it can be challenging to maintain precise tracking through the wrist. Ensuring that your smartwatch fits snugly to obtain accurate data is crucial. A smart ring can be the great solution, however, provided you have the right size.

A finger has access to arteries, which a smartwatch could not reach, Mohit Kumar, founder and CEO of Ultrahuman, which counts iSeed, Steadview, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume among its key investors, told TechCrunch.

“If you go to any medical grade pulse oximetry devices, you put it on your finger. You don’t put it on your wrist. That’s primarily because this is a much better source of data,” he said.

Khatri of Noise agreed with Kumar and said the data available through a finger is way higher than a device can get from a smartwatch. Launching smart rings from BoAt and Noise is expected to bring competition to this nascent space.

The products are not yet launched, but the R&D and work commenced over a year back. Another positive sign is that it is unlikely that the data will sit behind a subscription pay wall (as Oura's latest ring has). I've been pretty impressed with my Oura ring, but it was very costly, and they did send me a replacement ring just after the warranty expired as the battery was suddenly giving out. So I may be keen to test one of these new Indian rings out when they are available. So I'll be watching this space closely.

More competition in the market, especially from India, is going to be good for consumers.

See https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/13/smart-rings-india/

#technology #fitnesstrackers #smartring #India

Self-hosting your data and services with Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a great way to free yourself from the spiralling costs and tangled web of subscription fees. Whether you’re simply looking to back up your photos or stream 4K movies on your travels, there’s a wide range of products to pick from, but not quite so many to suit all budgets.

If you’ve been tempted by one of the best NAS systems but are put off by the expense or lack of gradual upgrade paths, building a cheap DIY NAS could be a better alternative for you.

I have a mini-PC running OpenMediaVault at home, with two external notebook drives (they power off USB power). OpenMediaVault runs a daily backup which copies data from the primary drive over to the second drive. It's not fancy, but it offers a couple of home-hosted services that I run inside the house, as well as a Nginx Proxy Manager service that securely manages any external connections from the Internet.

The only downside is that the combination of LAN network, mini-PC power, and externally connected drives via USB, means that it has been too sluggish for me to do proper desktop backups over the LAN to it. Maybe I must try tuning it again, but this is a potential bottleneck if you wanted to back up hundreds of gigabytes of data. Still, it is highly functional, and I find it very worthwhile running. All my self-hosted services are running in Docker containers under OpenMediaVault.

So, as the article says about some options, you can go extremely budget, or if you pay a bit more, you get more functionality and speed. Off-the-shelf NAS hardware is a great way to get started, especially if you’re limited on time. But hopefully, this guide will convince you that a self-built PC or Mini-PC/DAS setup is a great way to take control of the setup yourself. Plus, it’ll cost you significantly less and net you a lot more hardware than a Synology or QNAP.

See https://www.androidauthority.com/cheap-diy-nas-server-3348392/

#technology #selfhosted #NAS

I use read-it-later services extensively to save any news I want to do blog posts about later, or something I want to look at in more detail when I have time (and three monitors).

I had been self-hosting Wallbag for quite a while, and did a video about it too, but I had some issues re-installing it when I moved to Docker container hosting on my VPS.

Ominvore certainly looks very interesting, with a modern interface and quite a few useful features. I'm starting so long with their free cloud hosted service, and could register with ease, and even initiate an import from Pocket. They do have a docker-compose file for setting up containerised self-hosting, but I'm going to wait a bit just to see if that matures a bit, as it seems it is early days still and no proper guide has been completed yet for it.

Apart from the usual saving links for reading later, with tags, archiving, etc, it also supports a clutter-free reader view for easy reading without adverts. In the reading view you can also change formatting, highlight text, add/view notes (in a Notebook view), and track reading progress across all devices (each note also shows a yellow progress line on its tile view to indicate reading progress).

It also has a feature for subscriptions via e-mail. Omnivore can generate unique e-mail addresses you can use for subscribing to online newsletters, and it is intelligent enough to realise that if a mail contains a welcome message, note from the author, etc that will be forwarded by Omnivore to your main e-mail address (without exposing that to the newsletter service).

It also has integration with Logseq, Obsidian notes, webhooks, and more.

You can save links by adding them in the app, using a browser extension, or by using the share option on mobile devices and just selecting to share to the Omnivore app.

There is no price model yet set up for the service, but I'm pretty sure they'll have an ongoing useful free tier with their online service, and probably only charge for some more advanced functionality. There is always the self-hosted option too. But for now, this looks very functional and useful to me, and I've started using it.

See https://omnivore.app/

#technology #opensource #productivity #readitlater #bookmarks

DEF CON Infosec super-band the Cult of the Dead Cow has released Veilid (pronounced vay-lid), an open-source project applications can use to connect up clients and transfer information in a peer-to-peer decentralized manner.

The idea being here that apps – mobile, desktop, web, and headless – can find and talk to each other across the internet privately and securely without having to go through centralized and often corporate-owned systems. Veilid provides code for app developers to drop into their software so that their clients can join and communicate in a peer-to-peer community.

If an app on one device connects to an app on another via Veilid, it shouldn't be possible for either client to know the other's IP address or location from that connectivity, which is good for privacy, for instance. The app makers can't get that info, either.

The framework is conceptually similar to IPFS and Tor, but faster and designed from the ground-up to provide all services over a privately routed network. The framework enables development of fully-distributed applications without a 'blockchain' or a 'transactional layer' at their base.

To demonstrate the concept, they have published the code for a chat app called Veilid. Veilid is designed with a social dimension in mind, so that each user can have their personal content stored on the network, but also can share that content with other people of their choosing, or with the entire world if they want. The primary purpose of the Veilid network is to provide the infrastructure for a specific kind of shared data: social media in various forms. That includes light-weight content such as Twitter's tweets or Mastodon's toots, medium-weight content like images and songs, and heavy-weight content like videos. Meta-content such as personal feeds, replies, private messages, and so forth are also intended to run atop Veilid.

The easiest way to help grow the Veilid network is to run your own node. Every user of Veilid is a node, but some nodes help the netowrk more than others. These network support nodes are heavier than the node a user would establish on their phone in the form of a chat or social media application. A cloud based virtual private server (VPS), such as Digital Ocean Droplets or AWS EC2, with high bandwidth, processing resources, and uptime availability is crucial for building the fast, secure, and private routing that Veilid is built to provide.

The interesting thing for me here is, that usually with peer-to-peer client apps, they need to know, or be able to discover, the IP addresses of other P2P client apps in order to connect over the Internet. This is obviously a major privacy issue, but without it being able to happen, a P2P network cannot be established. So, I'll be interested to read more about how they have solved this in a workable manner.

Peer-to-peer networks have always been the most censorship resistant, full ownership of identity, etc, but the downsides were the IP address advertisement, the difficulty of finding anyone else on the network, and often having a separate identity for every device. The closest I've seen so far in addressing the shortcomings has been the Nostr protocol. So, I'll be following discussions on Nostr about this to get a better idea of how Veilid compares with Nostr.

The questions really for most will be, how easy and practical will Veilid be for average users to use, and how will it fit in with the W3C standard declared for social networking (will it be yet another extra social network).

See https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/12/veilid_privacy_data/

#technology #socialnetworks #privacy #Veilid #P2P

As your child heads back to school, you may be looking for appropriate ways to bolster the education they're getting in the classroom. But how do you determine what's suitable for their grade level while remaining inclusive and entertaining enough that they won't be bored to tears? Answer: Try podcasts.

There are many child-friendly podcasts out there that explore topics that aren't often included in traditional curricula. You can listen to them in the car on the way to school or sports practices, and they can spark questions around difficult topics like racism or identity — in an age-appropriate way.

Podcasts are not just about technology or fiction, as there is a lot of educational content too. We, as parents, should not be trying to mould our kids into miniature versions of ourselves. They are a generation younger than many of us, and times have changed. It is important that they get a variety of perspectives and get to make up their own minds. For example, I was a computer programmer (amongst other things), but my daughter is more creative by nature, and programming is just not her thing. She needs to explore options I don't necessarily understand myself.

Podcasts of course are also great in that they can be listened to whilst moving around or doing other things. They can often fill usually non-productive times.

See https://mashable.com/article/educational-podcasts-children-back-to-school

#technology #education #podcasts