gImageReader is a front-end for Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine. Tesseract was originally developed at HP and then was open-sourced in 2006.

Basically, the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine lets you scan texts from a picture or a file (PDF). It can detect several languages by default and also supports scanning through Unicode characters.

However, the Tesseract by itself is a command-line tool without any GUI. So, here, gImageReader comes to the rescue to let any user utilize it to extract text from images and files.

See https://itsfoss.com/gimagereader-ocr/

#technology #opensource #PDF #OCR #gImageReader

Measure would allow developers to use own payment systems as tide turns against industry that has been largely unregulated

A controversial Arizona bill that addresses the fees technology companies like Apple and Google charge app developers is raising new antitrust challenges for embattled US tech giants.

The bill – which passed the Arizona state house last week and now will move to the state’s senate – would require Apple and Google to allow app developers to use their own payment systems, rather than Google’s or Apple’s, to process user purchases within the app.

It used to be that building your own watch was either a big project or it meant that you didn’t really care about how something looked on your wrist. But now with modern parts and construction techniques, a good-looking smart watch isn’t out of reach of the home shop. But if you don’t want to totally do it yourself, you can turn to a kit and that’s what Stephen Cass did. Writing in IEEE Spectrum, he took a kit called a Watchy and put it through its paces for you.

With its gray-tinted screen, Squarofumi’s Watchy inevitably conjures echoes of the Pebble smartwatch, which made a huge splash in 2012 when it raised over US $10 million on Kickstarter. Pebble ultimately had its lunch eaten by Apple and others, but Watchy is different in a few key respects: It is not trying to be a mass-market device. It is unashamedly for those willing to tangle with code. It’s also inexpensive — just $50 versus the Pebble’s $150, let alone the Apple Watch’s $400 price tag.

See https://hackaday.com/2021/03/06/the-ieee-builds-a-smart-watch/

#technology #hardware #watchy #opensource #smartwatch

The RedMagic 6 Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset, offers a 6.8-inch Full HD OLED display, capacitive “shoulder triggers” on each side, up to 512GB of storage, and a 120W fast charging system that can apparently fully recharge the 4,500 mAh battery in as little as 17 minutes.

There’s a non-Pro model too, but its charging system isn’t nearly as impressive. It has a larger 5,050 mAh battery, but only a 66W charger that takes 38 minutes to reach 100%. It also only has up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

Camera-wise both phones feature a triple-lens system on the rear, featuring a 64MP main lens, 8MP ultrawide lens, and 2MP macro lens. This does take phones a good notch or two up from where they were but note this is primarily a gaming phone so don't expect the cameras to win any awards.

See https://www.tomsguide.com/news/the-most-powerful-android-phone-ever-just-launched-with-18gb-of-ram-and-165hz-display

#technology #android #hardware #gaming #redmagic

Widgets are rather weak on iOS in terms of lots of options e.g. you get basic activity rings for Health but no large step counter option. So this is where Widgetsmith comes in by offering a few extra options for widgets and all that I needed were included free without premium subscription required. I was looking for a step counter widgets and a day of the week and date widget. You can further customise the widgets, and don't forget that iOS 14 does allow stacking of widgets too.

It's not very intuitive for beginners as to how to add widgets using Widgetsmith, so the article below gives some guidance.

See https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/25/widgetsmith-ios-14-home-screen-widgets

#technology #ios #widgets #iphone

It uses relay-assisted peer-to-peer transactions and end-to-end encryption via password-authenticated key exchange. The program is written in Go and is available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux and *BSD.

The idea behind croc is being able to transfer files and folders between cross-platform computers securely, fast and easy. With support for resumable, peer-to-peer transfers. As a bonus feature, croc is also able to securely transfer a short text or URL directly.

The data transfer is done using a relay, either using raw TCP sockets or websockets. When the sender and the receiver are on the same LAN, croc uses a local relay, otherwise a public relay is used. Thanks to this, croc can send files between computers in the same LAN, or over the Internet, without having port-forwarding enabled.

See https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/03/croc-is-tool-for-resumable-encrypted.html

#technology #opensource #P2P #crossplatform #filetransfer

In Beat Saber, you slice away at big squares that come rushing at you – it’s like colouring in and partying at the same time

When somebody suggested Beat Saber to me, I wasn’t interested. First, it looks rather intimidating from the demo videos: you’re inside a virtual reality headset, with a controller in each hand, which resembles a swishing lightsaber on your screen. You have to slice through bright blue and red blocks as they come rushing towards you, having first noticed which way their arrows point. Plus there’s music. If you can imagine being in an arcade with a hangover, that’s the dread that went through me.

Second, you have to invest in a headset. There are about six that people recommend – including a thrifty Hamswan one (£19.99) – but only one that’s a stand-alone, in that you don’t need to already have a PC to connect it to. I borrowed one, the Oculus . It’s expensive (£299) and I didn’t want to buy one. Except then I did, because I didn’t want to give it back.

A good e-learning platform is important for education all over the world. Teachers need a way to hold classes, students need a friendly user interface to facilitate learning, and administrators need a way to monitor the educational system's effectiveness.

Moodle is an open source software package that allows you to create a private website with interactive online courses. It's helping people gather virtually, teach and learn from one another, and stay organized while doing it.

What makes Moodle unique is its high usability that can significantly increase with third-party solutions. If you visit the Moodle plugins directory, you'll find over 1,700 plugins developed by the open source community.

See https://opensource.com/article/21/3/moodle-plugins

#technology #opensource #education #elearning #moodle