iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Danie van der Merwe

@danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy

48 followers 0 following 1.2K posts

I blog about #technology #gadgets #opensource #selfhosting #greentech #traditionalwetshaving #alternativeto #hamradio (ZS1OSS) #southafrica - see my blog at […] 🌉 bridged from ⁂ mastodon.social/@danie10, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 1h

BeamNG.Earth is a 1:1 scale streamed Earth for the BeamNG.drive game BeamNG.Earth lets you drive anywhere on the planet at 1:1 scale, on real elevation and aerial or satellite imagery, with view distance out to a curved horizon. The world is filled in from real data: land-cover ground textures […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/10/2026

Self-hosting doesn’t actually save you money, and the people who promise it does are setting beginners up to quit Yep it's quite true. If you are just going to host one or two things, you could get away with a Raspberry Pi, but I have about 40+ containers running, and I realise I'm on my 3rd or […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026

Open-Source Self-Hosted Zer0 URL Shortener A modern-looking, tiny, fast, self-hosted URL shortener built for Docker Compose. zer0 keeps the redirect path lean, protects public link creation with CAPTCHA, stores links in Redis, and includes a browser admin dashboard for stats and cleanup […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2026

The Beginner’s Almanac for Wet Shaving "The first week in any wet shaving group feels like walking into a conversation halfway through. Somebody posts an SOTD with a three-piece OC and a croap, somebody else asks whether a G5 knot will splay too much for face lathering, and a third person […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

Data sovereignty in South Africa is not an address I rarely ever promote a partner sponsored article, but this one does touch on important aspects around data sovereignty which I wished government design-makers better understood. There are numerous risks to data being hosted (held?) in an […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Fairphone’s latest repairable earbuds are smaller, lighter, and longer-lasting “The Fairbuds 2 have been redesigned from the ground up, moving to a stemmed design, available in black or green, and a case that’s 37 percent smaller than the first generation. Despite that shrinking hardware […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026

Strata is an alternative file manager for Linux written in Rust “This file manager is written in Rust with GTK4 and released under the MIT license, with its lead developer, Pierre, announcing its first stable release a few hours ago. He claims that in 45 days, the project has picked up over 30 […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

2026 Kindles Have Removable Back Panels for Easy Battery Replacement All I can say is, this was quite a refreshing surprise to me, where everything is going tinier and more glued and sealed up today. True, I've not yet had to ever replace a battery on one of my Kindles, and they've been running […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

Free cybercrime and online scams helpline goes live in South Africa “South Africans who have been scammed, hacked, extorted or harassed online now have a free place to turn for help. The Cyber Helpline, a UK charity, has launched a 12-month pilot in South Africa with local social impact […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

@webmink I think this is just going to dramatically boost the adoption of digital sovereignty, open source software, and local investment, all of which are very positive for countries.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026

No phone signal? LastBar will find the nearest place that has it. “LastBar is a map of where mobile phones have signal and where they do not, made by the phones of the people who use it. When you are stuck with no bars, it gives you the distance and the direction to the nearest place where your […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

You can now tell telemarkers to get lost officially in South Africa “South Africans can register blocks against direct marketers on the government’s new National Opt-Out Registry now – not from May 2027, as the National Consumer Commission’s (NCC’s) own indicated – the commission has told […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

Someone Vibe Coded a Free and Open Source Knockoff of Adobe Creative Suite “Using Claude Opus 5.5 and the programming language Rust, the creator of these apps, Atlanta-based Brandon Thomas, says he recreated Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, After Effects, and InDesign […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

Dutch tax office ditches Microsoft 365 cloud for on-premises alternative “The Netherlands Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 cloud migration in favour of services hosted on infrastructure it controls, alongside European open source alternatives. Email and […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

Voicebox can clone your voice from a few seconds of audio on your own PC “Voicebox is an open-source and free-to-use voice studio created by Jamie Pine, who is the founder of Spacedrive Technology Inc. It is distributed under the MIT license, pitched as a local replacement for two paid services […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/10/2026

Map Animator makes animated route maps for travel and adventure videos, right in your browser “It's made for people who film their trips: motorcycle tours, cycling, hiking, road trips and sailing. Draw the route or use your GPX recording, give it a look, and get a video clip that shows where […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

@GrahamDowns thing is unless Meta ensures there are visible shutters ove rthe lenses, wearers are liable to get hurt or their glasses damaged. No-one wants camera lenses pointing right in their face, especially one's which have got Meta sucking up all the data and them sharing to data brokers […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

Honor’s Magic 9 Pro Max Has a Shotgun Mic and a 500mm Lens Mount “The Honor Magic 9 Pro Max launches in China on September 28 with a directional “shotgun” microphone, ARRI cinema color, and a lens mount that takes a 500mm teleconverter. If you shoot video on your phone, the mic may matter more […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026

Veilamp is an open source music player that also streams your music to friends You really have to see this cross-platform player to believe everything it does. Apart from all sorts of technical music listening tweaks, it can act as a headless music server on your own network, or you can let […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

@ChrisPirillo the art is now in a good prompt and having enough tokens. I'd venture to say a good creative director will still get way better results than I would with AI creation of entertainment. But yes the short video stories I've seen have been absolutely excellent.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

@dangillmor then they'd qualify well to be politicians...

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

First for South Africa as robotic exoskeleton aids Table Mountain rescue I can really sympathise with this situation as it happened to me as well a few years ago. We hiked up the mountain and planned to come down with the cable car. But many hours later by the time we reached the Table Mountain […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

@pee I certainly hope so - cannot one one profit-driven company dictacting to the rest of the world

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Microsoft going back to its roots and breaking spreadsheet compatibility “Microsoft has ended 40 years of single-occupancy for Excel cells and is now allowing multiple values to inhabit the same home. For the time being, this capability is only available in Microsoft Excel for Windows and Mac […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

F-Droid’s Android open-source app store has been rebuilt from the ground up “Virtually every Android device comes with the Play Store preloaded, but there are other ways to get apps. F-Droid bills itself as a community-driven source for free and open source Android apps, but its official app […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

OSS Document Scanner is an open source mobile app to scan documents to PDF This mobile app does largely what Adobe PDF Scan or similar apps do, but your scans stay private and offline. It runs on Android and iOS, with the Android app being available from a variety of sources. It is open source […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Grist is an open source self-hosted spreadsheet with a database hiding underneath “Grist is a relational spreadsheet-database app that I can host on my own server. When I first tried it, it felt familiar because the basic idea is still the same: I get rows, columns, cells, and tables that I can […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

OpenCode is an open source alternative to Claude Code OpenCode is an open source agent that helps you write and run code with any AI model, including free (for now although the free tier uses a limited subset of backend models including Big Pickle) use of its own OpenCode Zen model. It's […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

AI Efficiency Could Cost Us the Next Generation of Experts This is a very though-provoking that applies much wider than just AI. In fact, its origins go back to long before AI was even around. It is applicable to whenever automation is involved with humans. The problem with humans is they get […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

Immurok Fingerprint Key Unlocks Linux, Approves SSH and AI Agents “It is a tiny wireless box that can unlock your desktop session, approve a sudo command, authenticate via polkit, log you into a server over SSH, generate TOTP codes for 2FA, and put a physical touch in front of an AI coding […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Australians Could Soon Opt Out of Social Media Algorithms Altogether “The Australian government is proposing to give social media users the option to switch off the default algorithmic feed, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Tuesday. Under the draft legislation, “Digital […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

@GrahamDowns supposedly this projection came into being hundreds of years ago for hand held compass use when at sea. Those days have really long passed.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

I discovered KDE’s hidden superpowers after installing these 3 open-source utilities “If you've been in the Linux space for a while, you know just how customisable KDE Plasma can be. However, a lot of us only limit that customisation to picking the theme or moving the panel. What surprises me […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

Kept is an open-source self-hosted alternative to Google Keep notes It looks and feels like Google Keep notes, but is private and tracker-free. It has some extra features too, such as location notifications, CalDAV integrations, collaborative editing, file attachments, etc. Kept is designed […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026

@pee it should work, but I thought about it, and I don't pay all day long, so I'm reconciled with just pulling my phone out, swiping up from bottom of the screen, and tapping.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

“I’m Not Dead Yet!” Reverse Polish Notation Calculators You Can Still Buy “RPN isn’t exactly the way people calculate with pencil and paper, and it certainly wasn’t derived from the slide rule, but there is a similarity in the way you work. With a slide rule, you generally establish some value […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

Tether Brings the Apple Continuity Experience to Linux “Continuity. That is Apple's catch-all term for how iPhone, iPad, and Mac talk to each other. It covers a wide range of small conveniences. Copy something on the iPhone and paste it on the Mac. Start an email on one device and finish it on […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

Could flipping Raise wrist to wake and Always On Display (AOD) improve battery life? This is an interesting option to try (I have a Pebble watch, so battery life is not an issue). The theory is that raising the wrist normally kicks the full CPU on to check time, and that probably triggers quite […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/08/2026

@dangillmor so now any ruler anywhere can arbitrarily decide to rename landmarks that have had names for hundreds of years. I see chaos ahead. Wars could be interesting with some places just having different names too.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

Scientist learns in front of peers why we cannot trust AI Blindly “Sutter’s cringe-inducing tale perfectly illustrates how many users of AI tools are putting themselves at risk without knowing it, including in the most rarefied echelons of academia. The science world has been inundated with […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

@george ouch! Bodies are all different but I dropped my cholesterol by moderate exercise (I do 5km walks) and I dropped from two tubs of double-cream yogurts per week to one full cream per week, full fat to low fat milk, and jungle oats for breakfast instead. It actually dropped. So may be worth […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

@GrahamDowns we have that hidden yes, but also a specific fixed charge on the rates account for water and electricity. Ah, I see now they have rolled it into one Elec HU service & wires (PREPAID) for R368.96 plus VAT extra. Water has a basic charge too of R86 plus VAT.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

HAMgpt Launches as a Personal AI Copilot Built Specifically for Amateur Radio “Unlike a general-purpose chatbot, HAMgpt is built around the real operating situation of each ham. It can take into account the operator's license class, country, grid square, radios, antennas and operating history […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

Image Toolbox is an open source Android app for social media creators “For you, as a content creator, the tools that matter the most are batch processing, format conversion, the 61 built-in export presets sized for platforms like Instagram, X, and YouTube, background removal, and watermarking […]

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Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

@GrahamDowns in Cape Town we all pay a fixed charge portion on our account, same for solar and non-solar users. Same for water. It is the availability/maintenance portion vs the per-unit usage costs.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

@leoncowle yes my point was that many parents are not great judges of what to do, nor often have the knowledge that their kids even have today. Common sense and used to be enough, but now you need a law to stop youngsters driving down the wrong side of a freeway.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

@GrahamDowns the difference though is that up until social media, most news and publications had editors and journalistic standards. Today if it is not a self-appointed "Dr" then is a 100% AI generated channel. The business now is just generating click views.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

@GrahamDowns yes certainly I agree on who should decide for kids. But my wife wanted me to buy vinegar this week so she could wash herself with (as per TikTok video). We can't just assume all adults are savvy around social media. In many cases some kids are more savvy than their parents sadly.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

@GrahamDowns quite a few addictive adults probably need the same curfew — not sure why kids as a category just all get lumped together.

Danie van der Merwe @danie10.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026

Quest VR Headset Becomes Unlocked Hardware “The Quest virtual reality headset gets a fully unlocked bootloader thanks to the QuestStack tool, which automates a complex process of privilege escalation to provide stable, privileged access to the hardware. This solidly frees the headset from its […]

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