HeliBoard is a privacy-conscious and customisable open-source keyboard for Android

This is a very feature packed and functional keyboard. I've found its word suggestions as good as GBoard and other Big Tech keyboards. I managed to import an Afrikaans dictionary and HeliBoard handled multilingual typing well.

There are also quite a few layout tweaks that can be applied, it can pop up more word suggestions, clipboard history, do split keyboard, etc. Interestingly too, in the About menu there is a page that shows a description of hidden features that may go unnoticed. That is a nice touch, and shows how much attention has gone into this keyboard.

It is open-source and fully private, but even has a toggle to enable incognito mode to cut off features such as learning words.

It is not available on the Android store so you either install the APK from their GitHub site, or install it from F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid stores. Their GitHub project has 5.6k stars. The project is about 3 years old and has 67 releases so far, the last one being yesterday. So good to see it is actively maintained by 57 contributors.

It's now my daily driver as a keyboard (you that keyboards can potentially monitor every single thing you type, and cloud connected keyboards that sync your learnt words are all reporting to someone else's home).

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/heliboard-is-a-privacy-conscious-and-customisable-open-source-keyboard-for-android/
#android #opensource #privacy #technology

Tech Bros Puzzled by Why AI Hasn’t “Massively Disrupted” Books Yet

“The reality, of course, is that attempts to integrate AI into education have been consistently disastrous. As it turns out, a technology that spits out a confident mixture of fact and fiction without challenging the user to track down or digest information on their own isn’t conducive to particularly effective schooling.”

Yep, lack of context has been its Achilles heel. And because of this novel length books, taking over many jobs, proper education, etc are completely beyond it. It has improved a lot, but at a tremendous cost for resources.

The limitations are also becoming better understood. AI certainly has some good uses when applied to what it does well. I recall another post about two months back where the crux of improved workplace productivity, was where humans were paired with AI, with humans providing the context and the guardrails.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/tech-bros-puzzled-by-why-ai-hasnt-massively-disrupted-books-yet/
#ai #technology

Android is open source, but your phone isn’t—here’s why Google locked it down

"Android has come to dominate the global smartphone marketplace, and a large part of why this has happened is thanks to its open-source nature. Any phone maker can put Android on its phones with no licensing fees, and its adoption has also spawned a massive app ecosystem, so unless you're a trillion-dollar company like Apple, going a different way isn't sensible. But is the Android operating system on your phone really open source? The short answer is, technically, "yes." However, the phone in your hand is less open-source than proprietary."

The way bigger issue for me though is that some essential apps, especially like banking app, dig into that proprietary API, for "security" reasons. This is why you find with some rooted phones, or those running pure open source, that the banking apps won't work. The problem with that is, it is getting difficult to bank with a phone app when they use it for authentication changes made in the browser to banking services, creation/editing of virtual cards, etc.

So more and more now I'm finding it is not about the choice of just installing a googled Android, but it is about some apps I really need to use which just do not run without the Google API. For that I also hold the service providers responsible, but I get that they need to ensure the app is not hacked etc.

It's basically forcing the world into two Big Tech dominated devices. Whilst we have options for Android, that may break apps, the iOS world is even worse as there is basically no choice for a de-Appled iPhone.

Just interesting, and very sad, to see how the world has changed in the last 10 years. The same pattern repeated with the Internet itself, that as more of Big Tech and corporations became involved, the freedoms we had got eroded. I don't mean the freedom to install something open source, because yes I can still do that, I mean to install it and it is still all fully functional. In the early years of LineageOS I could still install and use my banking app just fine. Later I had to use RootCloak, but eventually that also no longer worked.

I may have to one day just say to the bank, like I deleted WhatsApp, and just say sorry I don't have a mobile phone so no SMS, no WhatsApp, no biometric authentication.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/android-is-open-source-but-your-phone-isnt-heres-why-google-locked-it-down/
#android #opensource #technology

Meta Patents AI Device That Tracks Your Emotions, Watches You Take Your Meds

“Meta has filed a patent for a system that records your voice and surroundings all day, then uses an AI to analyse your mood. The patent’s stated, theoretical goal is for Meta, a company that makes billions of dollars targeting ads at its users based on their data, is to sell users a wearable that tailors workouts for them based on whether they’re happy or sad. Patentlyze first noticed the patent which was published on July 2 after Meta filed it back in December of 2025. The filing described an apparatus that surveilled a user and their surroundings constantly to craft a better workout.”

It is easy to just discount this as yet another attempt by Meta to surveil and monetise their users. But it does certainly cement their approach to privacy and show you how far away they have moved from just being a social media company. It is just one thing after another, and we really only hear about these antics after they've been discovered by someone.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/meta-patents-ai-device-that-tracks-your-emotions-watches-you-take-your-meds/
#meta #privacy #technology

German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern heads down the open source sovereignty road

“So far, around 5,000 staff are using their new FOSS tools for chat, video conferencing, and groupware, but the plan is to roll it out to more than 50,000 public employees. It is also using OpenProject. For now, the plan is to keep Microsoft client OSes, changing the groupware tools first. This is not a Linux migration… yet.”

Which is the best-practice way of implementing such a migration. Start with the applications, and test out cross-platform alternatives on your existing OS. Once those are bedded down and are working, it is much easier to switch the OS out on user machines.

The admin side of the organisation has to test out updates, backups, networking, etc for the OS migration later on.

I was part of such an exercise back in 2007 or so, I as an early adopter in a government agency, I was running full Linux, with LibreOffice back then, and Zimbra email. It was fully possible as I know I did it for many months and that included remote VPN access into the network, and daily document interchange with other staff.

It just comes down to the will power of the CTO or CIO. Digital sovereignty adds a bit of impetus and will power to that equation.

Having myself just transitioned off some cloud subscription services to alternatives, ye sit took a bit of effort and paradigm change, but all my processes are still working, and I've saved a mint of money. Our problem is, like being with a bank or insurance company, we are afraid of change. Believe me, it is often very worth it!

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/german-state-of-mecklenburg-vorpommern-heads-down-the-open-source-sovereignty-road/
#digitalsovereignty #germany #opensource #technology

Wallos — An Open-Source Personal Subscriptions Tracker Which Saved Quite A Bit Of Money For Me

Wallos is a free and open-source application that you can self-host and which will help you track what subscriptions you currently have, what they cost (with auto-conversion to your currency), when they renew, notify you before they are due for renewal, and it will also optionally use AI to give you recommendations on what you could possibly save money on.

In the video I also spend some time showing what subscriptions I saved R5,800 (about US$438) per annum on. Wallos will show you where your money is going. Measurement is the first step towards better managing your subscriptions.

Watch

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/wallos-an-open-source-personal-subscriptions-tracker-which-saved-quite-a-bit-of-money-for-me/
#opensource #selfhosting #subscriptions #technology

This Linux storage feature feels like cheating once you understand it

“Copy-on-write (CoW) changes that bargain in a way that almost feels like cheating. Instead of rushing to overwrite old blocks, a CoW file system writes the changed data somewhere else and then updates its map. That simple shift is what makes snapshots, cheap clones, rollbacks, and smarter backups possible.”

I like the advice in the article about creating a test partition or drive to test this out first. I made the mistake in the early days of putting my entire 1 TB plus /home partition only BTRFS and I had quite a few teething problems and I did not fully understand how it all worked. I can't recall what issue I had at the time, but I did always do daily backups to my EXT4 based second hard drive. But in the end I went back to EXT4. It may have been a performance issue back then, and that the snapshots were saved in what I thought was an odd location.

It has matured a lot more and good to see the support is now baked into the kernel. But no matter how good you think your file system is, it is mandatory to have an automated full backup of it at all times.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/this-linux-storage-feature-feels-like-cheating-once-you-understand-it/
#linux #storage #technology

Here’s what end-to-end encryption protects—and what it doesn’t

“Earlier in May, the Texas Attorney General’s office sued Meta for deceiving users on the level of security offered by end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp. E2EE is used as a catch-all term to describe secure messaging features across a lot of different apps, but these apps each apply different implementation standards and the level of security is never the same. You should not assume that all your communications are safe from interception just because your messaging app supports E2EE.”

Worth reading because too many just assume if the packaging says E2EE, it's all good. In some cases you must actually enable E2EE for specific chats, and in the case of Meta the WhatsApp metadata gets shared elsewhere.

Seems Signal is still the best out of the mainstream centralised account-based messengers. There are though many decentralised and completely private messengers, but good luck to finding any of your friends there, or convincing them to switch to anything different.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/heres-what-end-to-end-encryption-protects-and-what-it-doesnt/
#privacy #technology

David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82

“South African-born pioneer of the British tech industry David Potter, the man behind the iconic Psion pocket computers, passed away on 28th June, six days before his 83rd birthday. Potter was the founder of the company of the same name, a pivotal firm in the British technology industry from the 1980s to the 2000s. Psion supplied software for the early computers from Sinclair Research, the ZX80 and the ZX81, including a Flight Simulator that you can play online. In 1982, Psion supplied the bundled software with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the later, the XChange suite for the Sinclair QL, later available for DOS under the name PC-Four.”

I fondly remember my Psion 5, and actually even the offices I bought it from in Cape Town, right next to the Kenilworth racecourse.

But the linked article is very interesting to read, as I did not realise the connection with Sinclair Research (the ZX81 was my first commercial computer I ever bought). And of course Symbian became famous also with Nokia.

Another thing I never knew, was how the name Psion came about. A spoiler is that P stands for Potter, but as a tech nerd the name was clearly not very glossy PR stuff we think of around Apple products etc today.

But Potter certainly deserves to be called a pioneer of early IT. He innovated in the years when small start-ups all competed with each other, and there were no multi-million Dollar buy-outs or takeovers, and unlimited cash let you dominate the industry.

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/david-potter-the-man-who-put-psion-in-the-palm-of-your-hand-logs-off-at-82/
#obituary #psion #technology