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Single board computers or SBCs are smaller, lower cost and lower power consumption computers than desktop motherboards. While typically computationally less powerful, they offer a balance between performance and energy consumption, like a Raspberry Pi Zero. This allows them to be used in situations without access to mains electric, where solar panels or similar are used to provide electrical energy. They are also useful for projects such as running a personal server for cloud storage, for those that do not wish to trust large companies with their private data.
A searchable database of all SBCs available is hosted on BoardDB.
Secure instant messaging is a specialized form of instant messaging that along with other differences, encrypts and decrypts the contents of the messages such that only the actual users can understand them.
A mesh network is a decentralized peer-to-peer network, with user-controlled physical links that are usually wireless, where each node must not only capture and disseminate its own data, but also serve as a relay for other nodes, that is, it must collaborate to propagate the data in the network.
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs.
A web browser is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. Each individual web page, image, and video is identified by a distinct URL, enabling browsers to retrieve and display them on the user's device.
A web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results. The information may be a mix of web pages, images and other types of files.