Instead of upgrading your motherboard you may be able to use your spare PCIe x1 slot

It's true that most often we just use one slot for the video card and there are another two or three empty slots waiting to be used.

Such a slot can easily accept a card that will provide upgraded Wi-Fi, Ethernet ports, extra USB ports, allow mounting on NVMe drives or extra SATA drives, and more.

It's not going to make your CPU faster, but it could mean not having to replace the whole motherboard and matching CPU in the shorter term. I did realise this when I wanted to install a NVMe drive a year back. Mounting a single NVMe drive on my motherboard meant giving up two of my SATA drives (their share the same data lanes), but buying an add-on card could have allowed the mounting of multiple extra NVMe drives without sacrificing my SATA drives.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/pcie-x1-slot-more-useful-than-many-pc-upgrades

#technology #upgrades

Immich Kiosk turns any screen into a photo display

“No processing happens on the tablet, it is just a display for the image output. In fact, you won't even have much of configuration options since all of that is done through a config file. My tablet, which feels sluggish for practically everything, can handle this within the browser just fine. It loads quickly, transitions are smooth, and it doesn't crash. What else can you ask for?”

Any old tablet that at least has a browser on it, can run this kiosk mode view of Immich photos, albums, people, memories, and a lot more. Good to see in the config that you can limit it to specific albums or people only, or hide specific albums or people. So the admin will just need to apply their mind to that side of things.

Another alternative to this is Immich Public Proxy which requires each album to be configured and shared manually, but has the ultimate security as a result.

Immich Kiosk's website also has a demo that you can try to see how it actually works.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/turned-old-tablet-into-immich-powered-photo-display or their project site at https://github.com/damongolding/immich-kiosk. I did a video about Immich Public Proxy at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkPtL4lxszA

#technology #Immich #opensource

This Bicycle Bell Can Even Be Heard by People Wearing Noise-Cancelling Headphones because its 2026

“The unique Škoda DuoBell bicycle bell is a classic example of a completely analogue solution to a problem caused by digital innovation. Its ringing sound bypasses the noise-cancelling capabilities of modern headphones, which often isolate the wearer from outside noises all too well.”

LOL we need new solutions to 2026 world problems. I'm wondering if cars won't also need something like this fitted. ANC headphones and ear pods are definitely becoming more prevalent. Seems the low frequency used here, is something that ANC does not easily mask.

Although it is a frequency tone, bells have long been tuned for specific frequencies, so an analogue device can actually do this perfectly well.

See https://www.wired.com/story/skoda-duobell-bike-bell-can-be-heard-by-people-wearing-noise-canceling-headphones

#technology #cycling #ANC

France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, calling US tech dependence a strategic risk

“The French government has decided that enough is enough. It has announced that it will shift away from proprietary technologies from outside the European Union and focus more on open-source solutions — and part of that means ditching Windows for Linux.”

The South African government made the same statement in the mid-2000's but mysteriously abandoned the implementation after the success of the pilot project. Brazil, Russia, China, and some others had also committed to similar objectives and have actually been making some stead progress.

So time will tell in this case too. That said, it is actually right and proper that any government should want to invest money in localised efforts and ensure the digital sovereignty of their data. From the beginning I've not been a proponent of external cloud services. Ideally a government should consolidate all its various departments onto its own platforms, or at least have them fully managed locally by local companies.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/frances-government-ditching-windows-for-linux

#technology #France #opensource #Linux

LinkedIn secretly scans for 6,000+ Chrome extensions, collects data

I initially ignored the first post about this after LinkedIn had stated it did not dispute that it detects specific browser extensions, telling BleepingComputer that the info was used to protect the platform and its users. The company also claimed the report was from someone whose account was banned for scraping LinkedIn content and violating the site's terms of use.

But others have been digging deeper into this issue, and it does appear that the data collection is a lot broader than the reasons that LinkedIn gave. For example LinkedIn is scanning for over 6,000 extensions (most of which have nothing to do with scraping of data from websites), and they do this by scanning the files on the drive for those extensions, as well as collecting other data about the user's machine.

It was not verified though that LinkedIn is actually sharing this data with any other parties. My own website's Matomo stats engine for example does also collect machine data (type of device, browser, pages visited, and city) but the data stays on my platform and I don't identify anyone from it.

It is just worth remembering that there are some companies who do aggressively collect data and some (like Facebook) who openly state they share that with upstream providers and 3rd parties (yes you can assume data brokers). If I ever visit a Facebook page it happens in a private browser via a VPN.

In LinkedIn's case I suppose we do need to remember it is owned by Microsoft, and they have an AI service. Their record around security and privacy has also not been great over time.

See https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/linkedin-secretly-scans-for-6-000-plus-chrome-extensions-collects-data

#technology #privacy #LinkedIn

You Should Be Using Reddit on Your RSS Reader

“You may know that Reddit can be a treasure trove of useful information and opinion, and that RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a clean and straightforward way to keep up with what's happening on the web—but you might not be aware that you can combine both Reddit and RSS in numerous ways.”

So yes no real news that RSS is already baked into Reddit, and that can be a cleaner way of ensuring you don't miss posts for s specific Subreddit, or a keyword search.

But what I did not realise is you can also put some qualifiers on at the end of the URL to sort, limit the number of posts, filter on top posts only, etc. You can even combine two or more feeds into one.

See https://lifehacker.com/tech/rss-reader-on-reddit

#technology #RSS #reddit

The EFF is quitting X

“Last year, our 1,500 posts earned roughly 13 million impressions for the entire year. To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.”

I don't think many legacy corporations have really been looking deeply into their numbers on X. We've seen in the past that X faked the advert views, so one also has to be careful of accepting X's numbers at face value as well. Many accounts on X today are also bot accounts and actually not real human views at all.

See https://www.theverge.com/tech/909550/eff-electronic-frontier-foundation-leaving-x-twitter

#technology #X #twitter #socialmedia

Yes Blossom shows an image / blob for my media post!