privacy - GadgeteerZA

Home Assistant’s new hardware voice assistant answers to ‘Hey Jarvis’ and can work offline

2024-12-202024-12-20 Danie

The image shows a small, square device, possibly a smart home gadget, resting on a surface. The background is a gradient of soft blue and orange hues, creating a calm and modern atmosphere. In the foreground, the device is the primary focus, with its sleek, white design and subtle glowing circle on the top drawing the viewer's attention. A thin cable is connected to the device, suggesting it is powered or connected to a network.

There’s a new voice assistant in town, and this one can work locally in your home without phoning home to its corporate overloads. This week, the popular hobbyist smart home platform Home Assistant officially launched […]

EFF Launches Digital Rights Bytes to Answer Tech Questions that Bug Us All

2024-12-112024-12-11 Danie

The scene is set in what appears to be a retro-style diner, viewed from the outside through a large window. The foreground is dominated by the window frame itself, while the background features a teal wall with the words "DIGITAL RIGHTS BYTES" prominently displayed in a stylized font. Inside the diner, three anthropomorphic animals—a penguin, a cat, and a dog—are seated at a counter, each enjoying a different treat. The counter is a simple teal color, and the overall color palette is muted and nostalgic. The penguin, cat, and dog seem to be engaging in friendly conversation. The penguin, wearing a bow tie, appears relaxed and content as it sips a milkshake. The cat looks cheerful, holding what seems to be a small sundae. The dog, wearing a sailor hat, has a slightly inquisitive expression, indicated by a thought bubble with a question mark above its head. Also, there is a silhouette of a figure in a hat visible outside the diner in the upper right corner; its presence hints at an unseen element beyond the window, adding a slightly mysterious touch to the illustration.

Yes, politicians and Big Corporates do twist narratives to suite their own agendas. EFF is aiming to try to give more objective and honest answers to technology questions, especially those which affect users’ privacy and […]

Location data firm helps US police find out when suspects visited their doctor

2024-12-102024-12-10 Danie

The image shows a detailed aerial view of a city at night, possibly in a suburban or residential area. The foreground is dominated by a detailed map, showcasing the intricate network of streets, buildings, and even small parks or green spaces. The background is dark, emphasizing the nighttime setting and highlighting the illuminated buildings as small points of light, creating a sense of depth and scale. Five white markers are placed on the map, drawing the viewer’s attention to specific locations within the city. The markers seem evenly distributed, suggesting a planned or strategic placement.

A location-tracking company that sells its services to police departments is apparently using addresses and coordinates of doctors’ and lawyers’ offices and other types of locations to help cops compile lists of places visited by […]

This Website Shows How Much Google’s AI Can Glean From Your Photos

2024-12-032024-12-03 Danie

The foreground is dominated by a slide projector, its plastic casing a pale off-white. A slide is in place, showcasing a nighttime scene with what seems to be a cityscape in the background. The image on the slide is dark, a purplish hue, with tall structures barely visible against a starlit sky. The number "E12" is handwritten on the top-left corner of the projector. The scene within the slide suggests a view of a city at night. The image is somewhat grainy. We cannot infer much about the people who might have taken the photo—their racial characteristics, age, economic status, lifestyle, or activities. The emotional tone of the photo is quiet and contemplative. The lack of clear details means it is impossible to guess at any specifics regarding the photographer and image creation time. The light source appears to be artificial, suggesting an indoor environment. The slide itself appears slightly dusty or smudged, which is not easily noticeable at first glance. The color saturation in the image projected onto the slide appears to be altered due to age or processing of the image. The image quality isn't very sharp, making some of the details in the cityscape difficult to discern. There is a subtle reddish-pink glow along the top edge of the slide within the projector, possibly from the internal light source.

Software engineer Vishnu Mohandas decided he would quit Google in more ways than one when he learned that the tech giant had briefly helped the US military develop AI to study drone footage. In 2020, […]

Cape has been selling a privacy-focused cellphone service to the U.S. military, now offering to high-risk members of the public

2024-11-212024-11-21 Danie

Smartphone screen showing title Dashboard. Below that is text stating Good morning, you are rotating personas every 6 hours. Below that it lists the previous persona rotations with the date and time of each.

Cape runs its own mobile core, all of the software necessary to route messages, authenticate users, and basically be a telecom. Ultimately, this gives Cape the control to do more privacy-enhancing things, such as periodically […]

A hands-On Review with Session — A Fully Encrypted Chat App

2024-11-182024-11-18 Danie

As with Threema and SimpleX, Session is one of the most secure and private chat apps that you get today (more so than Signal, and way more so than WhatsApp). A lot of this is […]

Signal introduces convenient “call links” for private group chats up to 50 people without creating a group

2024-11-122024-11-13 Danie

Users can control who joins the secure group chats by requiring admin approval when a new join request is created, so the host can approve or decline them. Nice to see such chats also have […]

SearXNG is an open source privacy respecting metasearch engine that is really easy to use

2024-10-282024-10-28 Danie

Teal colour background with title SearXNG Search. Below that appears Private, Ad/Tracking Free, No Profiling, multiple sources. To the right side is a man's head and shoulders. He is holding up a magnifying glass and looking through it.

SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, SearXNG can be used over Tor for online anonymity. My video covers […]

How to Turn Any Website Into an Android App (and Why You Should)

2024-10-252024-10-25 Danie

Phone screen with a window open stating "Create a Lite App". It prompts for a name for the link, and the URL.

Imagine accessing your favourite web-only tools as native apps on your Android smartphone. Or, better yet, having separate instances of the same app logged in from two or three different accounts. That’s just scratching the […]

Tag: privacy