Please tell your friends about federated social media site that speaks several fediverse protocols thus serving as a hub uniting them, hubzilla.eskimo.com, also check out friendica.eskimo.com, federated
macroblogging social media site, mastodon.eskimo.com a federated microblogging site, and yacy.eskimo.com an uncensored federated search engine. All Free!
Bangladesh's decision to hold national elections in February signals the country's intent to usher in a "New Bangladesh" amid political and economic challenges, analysts say.
Butler Workers Lead a Historic Fight for Mental Health and Dignity By Amanda A and Carlos B PROVIDENCE, RI – On May 15, 2025, nearly 800 healthcare workers at Butler Hospital, a major psychiatric hospital serving the region, launched an open-ended un…
Lenin: 1917/7thconf2: PROPOSAL FOR LINES OF DEBATE ON V.P. NOGIN'S REPORT ON 'ATTITUDE TO THE SOVIETS OF WORKERS' AND SOLDIERS' DEPUTIES' APRIL 25 (MAY 8) marxists.org/archive/lenin/wor…
Am Morgen gibt es zunächst Nebel, der sich aber schnell lichtet. Tagsüber ist es heiter mit Quellwolken und trocken. Die Temperaturen steigen an der Küste auf 22 Grad und in Südniedersachsen auf 29 Grad. Der Wind weht meist schwach. /LL
NASA invites media to view the agency’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) spacecraft and two other missions — the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On–Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) observatory, which will launch along with IMAP as rideshares. Media will have the opportunity to photograph the three […]
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
Every week we cover the highlights of what’s happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
BRICS is an informal group of states comprising the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa.
That's the one where Gazans for decades carefully tended the graves and tombstones, including graves of Jewish soldiers with headstones engraved with the Star of David. Unlike Jewish graveyards in the West, incl. Germany, these were never vandalized. bird.makeup/users/seamus_malek…
The IDF appears to have blown up part of the Gaza War Cemetery in Gaza City on the accusation rockets were being launched from it and that a tunnel ran nearby. The cemetery holds war dead from WW1 and WW2, including thousands of British soldiers.bird.makeup/users/kann_news/st…
...consenso mayoritario entre analistas: EPSTEIN fue un trabajo del MOSSAD 🇮🇱 para extorsionar a políticos, empresarios etc. youtu.be/A1mKtx2orLo?t=670 ...lo cual explicaría la conducta errática de #TRUMP con el caso EPSTEIN. VALDECASAS ( ex-embajador 🇪🇸 ) [ Negocios.TV ] _ FOTO [ The Telegraph ] telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202… Epstein con camiseta del ejército israelí.
Alemania dejar de vender,AHORA, armamento usado para asesinar Palestinos. Con lo cual Alemania confiesa que hasta ahora estaba vendiendo armamento PARA asesinar Palestinos. #icc4netanyahu #icc4germany
Wir sehen in der von Deutschlands höchstem Kulturpolitiker ins Spiel gebrachten Verknüpfung öffentlicher Fördergelder mit einem #Genderverbot eine gravierende Kompetenzüberschreitung. Mika Beuster: „Wolfram Weimers Vorstoß ist ein Eingriff in die Rundfunkfreiheit.“ www.djv.de/news/pressem...
All’alba del 10 agosto 1944 su ordine del Comando della Sicurezza (SD) tedesca a Milano furono prelevati da San Vittore 15 partigiani. La fucilazione, decisa dai nazisti ed eseguita dai fascisti della Legione Ettore Muti, avvenne poco dopo in piazzale Loreto. Domani giornata di commemorazioni in piazza con due momenti: uno alle 9,30 e uno alle 21.
Domani commemorazione alle 9,30 e alle 21 nel luogo del massacro. All’alba del 10 agosto 1944 su ordine del Comando della Sicurezza (SD) tedesca a Milano furono prelevati da San Vittore 15 partigiani.
People on Thursday took to the streets in several cities across Lebanon, protesting the controversial decision by the government to implement a US proposal to disarm anti-Israel resistance movements.
Let's face it. You can whittle with just about any knife. In the past, some knife experts claimed that the Whittler wasn't an actually a pattern but was ju...
Zazen, by the highlight it places on the body, ballasts the disciple : whatever his practice, he will be all the more inclined to avoid going off the road along the path that he will have done his …
Salam alaykoum can you help my family during this war in gaza Due to the bad situation we are currently going through, we are truly sorry for the inconvenience💙We are sorry to ask you this chuffed.org/project/141764-hel…
I got a SmartWatch the other day. One of our interns had bored of it, so I swapped my long-disused BlackBerry PlayBook for it. I configured it, paired it with my Android phone, then set about trying to use it.
Here's the thing. When I'm at work, my phone is on the desk in front of me. In the car, the ICE displays who is calling - as does the phone itself. When the phone is in my pocket, I feel it vibrate and - if I'm not busy - I look at it.
No one calls me. I mean, seriously, mobile phones are text and email devices. Voice Calls? That's very 20th Century.
Looking through my incoming call history for the last three months - it's really only my family who call. Work tends to be text, email, or - [em]gasp[/em] face-to-face meetings.
Calendar reminders were nice, I suppose. But, again, my life isn't back-to-back meetings and urgently rushing to catch a plane to Hong Kong. Because of the limitations of the Sony SmartWatch2, I have to give the untrustworthy Sony corporation complete access to my email. So that was a big fat "no" from me.
And, again, having to give Sony access to all my social networks in exchange for some wrist-based jollies just wasn't worth the trade-off to me. Partly because I control my social media usage - it doesn't control me.
Ultimately, what is a Smart Watch for? If you have a problem of too many notifications on your phone - turn them off. If you're always missing calls - keep your phone close to hand. Want fewer calls? Don't give out your number or make sure important numbers are set to alert you.
Yet another thing to charge. One of the reasons I stopped using BlueTooth headphones (other than washing them) was because it was another bloody thing whinging to me that it needed feeding.
You have to physically strap something to your body. If you already wear glasses or wear a watch, I guess that's not too much of a problem. But with both Glass and a SmartWatch it was easy to forget to put them on.
The effort required to set things up "just so" would be as well served setting up the phone to only serve the most appropriate notifications.
The screen simply isn't of high enough quality. When you're used to a full-sized smartphone, anything smaller is like peering through the wrong end of a telescope.
The interface is just too fiddly. Whether poking around in a fury of half-remembered gestures, or trying to find the correct intonation to make the voice interface works - it's just not very pleasant.
Ultimately, though, the problem is that the context and importance of a message cannot be determined by a machine. Is the message from my wife a silly picture of a cat, or is it letting me know she's need picking up early? My Smart Watch can't possibly know. Even Google's "Priority Inbox" feature has as many false negatives as false positives.
The crop of wearables that I've tried fail at their primary purpose - to save me time and make my life easier. They offer a limited and inconvenient window into your world, when what you crave is expansive and immersive.
Strapping on a SmartWatch in 2014 feels like a 1970's vision of the future.
It turns out that my washing machine is incompatible with my BlueTooth headset. What was once my favourite little gizmo - resplendent with blinking lights - is now little more than scrap metal. Arse.
The last smartwatch that I tried was some awful early Sony device with a locked-down ROM. The battery died after a day and I couldn't find the proprietary charger. It slurped up all my data. It was garish to look at. And it was expensive.
The Watchy is the opposite in every single conceivable way.
It is an Arduino powered, open source, eInk display, with no data guzzling tendancies. And is only £60 including delivery. It's gorgeous to look at without being distracting, has a massive battery life, and allows for a bunch of tinkering.
The watch ships in kit form and is not overly satisfying to build. The buttons are especially fiddly to fit, the instructions assume you know how to open a ribbon connector, and there's warnings about how fragile everything is. Took me about 20 minutes all in - and that was mostly aligning the buttons.
But, once built, it does look great. Here are my first impressions:
It is an fun device to play with. But the whole thing is built on a set of (very reasonable) compromises.
The eInk screen is a delight to look at and helps keep the battery lasting for ages. There's no backlight - but that also makes it less of a flashy distraction.
The eInk screen is fragile. Yet, bizarrely, the watch comes with zero protection. There is no plastic shield to keep it from getting bumped or scratched. I appreciate that might cause glare or get dust trapped in it - but I don't think the deep bezel is going to protect that screen.
Similarly, there's no water ingress protection. I wasn't expecting a diver's watch with rubber gaskets - but I'd be nervous about wearing this in the rain. You can 3D print your own case, or buy a different one - but that adds to the cost.
There's no speaker - again, less distracting than other watches. The vibration motor is sufficiently powerful to discreetly alert you to anything important.
There's no touchscreen - again, saves on power and protects the screen. But the buttons are hard, loud, and just don't feel nice. Luckily WiFi can be set up by connecting to the device's own SSID. I was dreading the thought of having to enter details using those buttons!
It won't monitor your heart rate, sweatiness, or blood pressure - nor will it try to sell those data to perverts on the Internet. It does have a step-counter which uses an accelerometer to keep track of your movement.
It can't pair to your headphones for listening to music - but you can use BLE for firmware updates and WiFi for NTP.
You can reprogram it! But there's only 3,673,264 bytes to play with, so you can't squeeze to much in there. Oh, and the instructions are the usual half-finished & untested set of scattered files beloved by hackers.
There's no weird proprietary connectors needed to charge it. But it uses USB-Micro. So you'll have to dig out one of those old cables that you kept when the world moved over to USB-C.
Do you see what I mean? It isn't quite as spartan as the Casio F-91W, but it is missing some things you may find essential in a modern watch.
I'm conflicted. I love everything eInk. I like devices which are fully under my control. I don't want to wear something expensive and distracting on my wrist. I want to change the watchface to match my mood.
But... I don't want to wear something fragile. If I go abroad, I don't want to lug a laptop with me just to change timezone. I'm not sure I want to learn yet another programming paradigm. And, if I'm recharging something, I want it to use the same connector as every other gadget I've bought in the last few years.
I enjoy tinkering. But the instruction on the website are incomplete and hard to follow. I've sent a pull request to fix some of the errors I found. Eventually, after some confusion, I was able to download a face, edit the settings, and flash it.
I'm going to spend a few weeks playing with it. The Watchy is crammed full of possibilities. But it remains to be seen if I can fulfil them.
I'm currently in BST (UTC +1). After its first NTP update, my Watchy thinks it is in UTC -5. If I check weather.com from a computer on the same LAN, it correctly geolocates me. Is there a way to fi...
Look, I'm an idiot. I know that, you know that, and the man on the moon knows that. Let's not get into why I'm an idiot; let's just accept that I have my peculiarities and you have yours. My idiocy is a quest to make sure all my portable electronics can recharge using USB-C.
Modern smartwatches are tiny and they do a lot. As a consequence, their battery life is generally poor. The industry's attempts to fix this are either to replace the charging standard every year hoping to find something magical, or to lock you in to a walled-garden on proprietary nonsense.
I want to recharge my watch while I'm riding the bus. That means plugging one end of a USB-C cable into the seat and the other into my wrist. That's how I recharge my phone, eReader, laptop, headphones, toothbrush, and a hundred other gadgets. Why should a watch be any different?
So I bought the only smartwatch I could find with a USB-C port. The Colmi P80 - on offer at £16. It bills itself as "The world's first type-c smart watch".
To be clear, I wasn't expecting this to be a good smartwatch. Anything you buy from AliExpress for the cost of a couple of pints is bound to be a bit crap. What I wanted to know is whether USB-C charging of watches is viable.
What I discovered is that, yes, USB-C charging works even on a relatively small watch. Oh, and that this is a surprisingly decent bit of kit - especially given its price. Let's dive in!
You can set it up without using the app (more on that later). It Bluetooth paired to my phone without a problem - and without PIN entry. I could make and receive calls from the watch - and the voice quality was adequate.
Tilting the watch up made the display come on! I wasn't expecting that, to be honest.
The jog-dial button works. Good for scrolling and clicking.
Swiping on the screen to navigate works with pretty good accuracy.
Vibration notifications were strong enough to be noticeable.
There were a bunch of simple games and apps on there - including 2048 - which all ran fine.
It claims a 0-100 in 90 minutes which seemed broadly accurate.
It came with a short USB-C to C lead which was charge-only, no data. I plugged it until fully charged, then wore it continuously. After 24 hours of use, even with all my fiddling, that battery was at 80%.
After four days, it still had 40% left - I'd been using it for exercise, sleep tracking, a couple of phone calls, and using the torch at night. After 5 days, I finally got the "low battery" warning when I hit 20%. I reckon, with moderate usage, you'd squeeze a week out of it. Sticking the brightness up, keeping the screen on longer, and playing music through its tiny speaker are also going to drag the battery life down.
My USB-C Power Meter said it charged at 5V .16A, that's around 0.8W. Slow, but it only has a small 280mAh battery. Bluetooth Low Energy is, unsurprisingly, pretty energy efficient! Heart monitoring and motion detection is also a low-power activity. There's no power-guzzling GPS or cellular connection - so the power requirements are pretty modest.
The rubber flap keeps the port safe, although does feel a little flimsy. If you have a chunky cable, it might interfere with the cover a little.
This does not work with PD chargers. If you plug this in to the same power-brick as your laptop, it will not charge. Based on the three that I tried, PD chargers will not negotiate down to 1W levels.
If you have a charging adapter with multiple outputs, the regular USB-C ones will charge this just fine. All the USB-A to C chargers worked fine.
Given that this is a £16 watch, it hasn't exactly been "Designed by Apple in California". There are limitations and weird little niggles but, surprisingly, not too many.
First up, the brains of the watch is the JL7012 - which is a deliberately underpowered chip. It can do Bluetooth comms and drives the screen reasonably well. You're not going to be flinging billions of pixels around in 3D. The animation of all the interactions is a little jerky - obviously not 60FPS but just slow enough to be slightly annoying.
You can't tap the screen to turn it on; you have to click the side button or rotate your wrist. The raise to wake works, but takes a second or two to register. Weirdly, the scroll wheel works in most UI elements, but it doesn't for changing dates and times - so it is a bit of a slog to manually scroll through them on screen.
There no online manual available. All the other Colmi products have a manual available. Similarly, there's no firmware updates listed - although the app does claim to be able to update the firmware.
The USB-C port is for charging only - you can't get data off it via cable. You cannot use the watch while charging - once plugged in it will show a few messages about keeping the device clean. If you set it to use "nightstand" mode, plugging in will show the time and battery level - but you can't interact with any of the functions.
Directions - no maps, GPS, or even a basic compass. You cannot add any apps to this - what you get is what you get.
Connectivity - Bluetooth only. No WiFi and no cellular. This can't make emergency calls unless you're connected to Bluetooth.
Multiple alarms can be set - but you can't choose their ringtone.
You can add some "favourites" to the main screen, swipe across to get them. Sadly the options are pretty limited. For example, you can't put alarms or the calculator there. For those, you've got to dive into the main menu.
The screen brightness is manually controlled - no clever adaptive technology here. It can go bright enough to see in the blazing sunshine, although the dimmest setting is still a bit bright for night use.
There's no NFC - so you can't use this to pay for things. You can't even use it as an NFC business card - although you can send it QR codes to display, which is a handy alternative.
All that might sound bad but please remember that this is a sub £20 watch; it isn't competing with something costing ten times as much. The fact that it does all these things at all is pretty impressive!
Some of the functionality isn't available unless you pair it with the supplied app.
It is a given that all hardware apps are fundamentally a bit rubbish. The Colmi Fit app is basically fine. It isn't very polished but does everything it needs to do. You can get away without using the app completely for most things.
If you want updated weather, stocks, or prayer times - you'll need it to be paired to the app. Annoyingly, things like world clock also need a connection to be set up. Similarly, things like menstrual tracking need a connection (although, please note the privacy implications).
Annoyingly, despite it being basic Bluetooth functionality, music controls don't work without the app nor does the ability to show contact information.
Notifications other than calls also require the app. You'll need to give it permission to read all your notifications, but you can set it only to forward ones from specific apps. I didn't bother to set that up.
There are several built-in watch faces which can be changed by rolling the knob. Only one of the built-in faces is customisable:
What surprised me was just how many watch faces were available to download:
Sadly, I don't think it is possible to add your own designs, and none of them let you fiddle with what's displayed.
Many of the settings - like how long the screen should stay on for - are only available in the app. Even thought the app can get your location, you have to manually tell it what city you're in for an accurate weather forecast.
There were a few things I couldn't get working. The "AI Voice Assistant" is, I assume, just streaming audio back to your phone. As I don't have an assistant app, it didn't do anything. I'm not a Muslim, so I can't tell if the prayer times are accurate. The stress monitoring is a bit opaque - I don't know what precisely it measures. I don't have a menstrual cycle for it to track. I didn't investigate the SOS settings either:
Oh, and you can also tell it to remind you to drink water.
Finally, the app will show a notification showing your goals.
The app works well even if you deny it all the permissions it asks for but, obviously, some bits won't work unless they have access to your phone book, location, gallery, etc. You can always uninstall the app once done setting it up.
There are a bunch of different exercise modes on the watch - I'm not sporty enough to tell you what the difference is between all of them.
The app has some basic fitness stuff and will track your jogging locations.
Buried in the watch menu are your historic stats, but you'll need the app to export them.
Step detection is, like most watches, based on arm-swinging. So it wasn't terribly accurate when I was on my standing desk treadmill, but was acceptably accurate when going outside. It showed roughly the same amount of steps as the Pixel Watch 3.
You have to manually activate exercise mode if you want to quickly look up your heart-rate, steps, times, etc.
The leaflet in the box is the standard multi-lingual affair. Here's a quick scan of the English version. That'll show you some of what this watch is capable of.
I got the cheapest strap possible - but it looks like it uses standard fittings if you want something more luxurious.
The 240x296 screen is bright and colourful - a basic screen protector is included in the box.
There's a built in LED which acts as a torch - which is only useful if you wear it on the left wrist.
The "Flappy Bird" clone is a bit crap, but 2048 and space invaders are reasonable time-wasters.
There's a camera shutter app if you want to use it as a remote control.
It claims to be IP67 waterproof, but warns not to immerse it in water or use it in steamy environments. It seemed to be splash resistant, but I didn't take it swimming or showering.
There is none. There's no password lock on the screen and there's no Bluetooth PIN.
To be fair, there's nothing much you can do with the watch if you stole it. OK, you could make some phone calls if you were within range and get people's contact details. But there's no payment information stored. A thief might get your exercise and menstrual data, but it isn't a treasure trove of information.
Once it is paired to your device, it doesn't advertise itself via Bluetooth. If it is disconnected, it only broadcasts its availability when the screen is on. There's no pairing PIN.
The device uses the MOYOUNG-V2 protocol. I was able to pair it with GadgetBridge by pretending it was a Colmi V79. Most of the functionality worked - I was able to see heart rate, steps, change some settings etc. I've requested GadgetBridge support which should make it possible to get notifications etc.
Update! GadgetBridge can now send notifications!The notifications can be read and deleted, they can't be replied to.
My last smartwatch was the fairly crappy eInk Watchy which recharged with micro-USB, I only used it for a few weeks before getting bored of it. The last time I seriously tried to use a smart watch was a decade ago and I hated it.
Perhaps I'm just not a watch person? This is a cheap and useful way to get started. After a few days of use, I'm beginning to get used to it. It'll be more useful once I configure the notifications I get, I suspect.
That's up to you, champ. I'm not your real dad and I'm not trying to take his place. But I'm here for you if you need me.
Anyway, as discussed in a previous post, this little device shows that it is possible to make a smartwatch that uses USB-C. It isn't the most powerful or customisable watch. It can't compete with a £200+ Apple or Android watch - but it is surprisingly capable.
All USB-C cables are equal. But some, as the saying goes, are more equal than others.
This little gadget from Plugable is a fantastic bit of kit. Plug your USB-C power supply into one end of the gadget, plug the gadget in to your laptop, phone, or any other USB-C device. Watch the screen to see how much power is flowing.
There's no Bluetooth or WiFi to get the results out. There's no flash storage to record anything. There's no graphs. It shows you volts, amps, watts, and direction of power. That's all I need it for, and that's all it does.
As you can see, the screen reacts quickly. So you can get a good idea of what power load your various apps have.
This is great. My work Windows laptop was complaining that it wasn't receiving enough power from my USB-C docking station and, with this, I was able to see that it was getting about 40W.
I was able to test some USB-C cables to see how much power they could support.
Even better, this doesn't interfere with normal USB-C functions. It happily passed through video, audio, peripherals, etc.
It's about £20 - £35 online depending on whether The Algorithm favours you or not. You can find cheaper ones - but they tend not to go up to 240W.
This is an indispensable gadget - especially if you have dozens of cables of uncertain provenance. It'll tell you just how much they're capable of delivering.
Now I just need to find a USB-C plug which can actually deliver 240W via PD!
The Palestinian presidency will present "Israel’s" Gaza occupation plan to the UN, the Arab League, and the OIC, denouncing it as a war crime and urging immediate international action.
I have done something I have not done in thirty years. I installed Windows on a laptop. I have been using Linux exclusively since 1997.
Windows 10. No network and air gapped of course. This is hilariously slow. This is hilariously creepy. It keeps asking in many ways to transmit information to Microsoft. Hell no. I'm treating this software like it was written by Israeli Mossad or the Kremlin.
Εάν η φορολογική κλίμακα δεν τιμαριθμοποιείται, τυχόν αυξήσεις στα ονομαστικά εισοδήματα των νοικοκυριών ενδέχεται να οδηγήσουν τους φορολογούμενους σε
ow. (still, got a text-editor coded in a couple days instead of months... but do I fully understand it as I would if I had coded it entirely by hand? No.) newsflash addendum: vibe-coding causes ignorance and brain atrophy.
Hundreds of Moroccans participated in a protest in the northern city of Meknes on Thursday evening, denouncing the starvation policy pursued by the Zionist enemy forces in the Gaza Strip.
Can anyone recommend a payment solution for my small company website? I'd like to accept international payments from all countries.
I was looking at Stripe, which looks like it supports 44 countries and over 100 currencies and has a nice simple Python API. Also, they take a smaller percentage and flat rate than PayPal.
I just read that Stripe's CEO supports Israel, during the genocide, so I'm looking for an alternative.
Digging deeper, payment systems for Palestine are practically nonexistent.
kaia
in reply to cheesus crust • • •