This New Android Smartphone Is For Everyone Who Misses the Blackberry — And Has A Hidden Advantage Everyone is covering how this device works in tandem with your existing phone, and are not really emphasising that this can also work as a standalone device with its own SIM card. But be that as it may, for me the bigger thing in modern times is, this useful companion device could be snatched by mobile phone thieves, and you'd still have your main device safely in your pocket or bag. It's often the data that is worth more than the cost of the device. Yes, that's the bigger reality of today, with so many walking around and using their phones on the go. I very rarely actually field any voice calls nowadays as most of the phone interaction is done on social media posts, Signal, etc as texting. A bonus for many may also be that it has a 3.5 mm headphone jack (although I've long been using a USB-C to 3.5 mm jack plug on my phone). See

Lifehacker

This New Android Smartphone Is For Everyone Who Misses the Blackberry

Clicks Communicator is a BlackBerry-like smartphone with a physical keyboard. There's also the Clicks Power Keyboard, which is a power bank wi...

#technology #smartphones #theft

Pebble’s round smartwatch returns in an unexpected reboot “The original Pebble Time Round's sizeable bezels are gone and replaced with a sleek-looking, edge-to-edge 1.3-inch colour e-paper display that's both bigger and higher resolution than the original's. Battery life has been increased to roughly two weeks, and the display is now a touchscreen. The Pebble Round 2's colours include silver, black, and rose goal, alongside a 20 mm matching band in silver or black, and a 14 mm rose gold option.” I have to say I do really like the look of this Pebble watch. Pebble's shakeup of the smartwatch market has really been needed. Apart from going open source, they have brought way longer battery life, and also better e-Ink screens. I moved away from smartwatch's at the end of 2025 as I had tired from super expensive watches that have to be charged daily. That does bring me though to the one and only downside I have with this round version. I understand why the screen had to be made the way it was to retain the thing design and the angled viewing, BUT I have a real aversion as well to an expensive device just becoming a paperweight in a few years time when the battery runs out of charge cycles. It does not look like changing the battery in this device is going to be an easy option at all. From what I understand of the square versions, the battery change should still be possible, but sadly not as easy as a Casio watch. I suppose we'll know for sure when some teardowns have been done after release. The software applications and watch faces are already starting to take off. An end user can even design faces for themselves using some browser based design software. Pebble makes it really easy to design and distribute software, so I'm looking forward to seeing lots of innovation on this front (unlike you see for WearOS and Apple Watches). Something not quite correct in the linked article though, is that anyone who has pre-ordered the square designs, can switch their order to the round design. So you are not locked into that first order. See

XDA

Pebble’s round smartwatch returns in an unexpected reboot

The Pebble Round 2 aims to fix all of its predecessor's mistakes

#technology #smartwatches #opensource

13 Open-Source Apps You Can Use from a Web Browser “When we think of open-source apps for design, productivity, or even just for fun, we usually picture desktop software running natively on our computers. The web still feels like it belongs to proprietary giants like Google Docs, Figma, Canva, and CapCut. But open source has been catching up fast. There’s now a growing wave of browser-based open-source apps, many with public hosted instances you can use for real work right away. Some can also be self-hosted later, but this list focuses on the ones you can simply open and start using.” Best of all though, there is zero installation required, so these are really easy to just test out, and bookmark if you like them. See

It's FOSS

13 Open-Source Apps I Use from a Web Browser (And You Can Too)

You don't always need to install an open source software on your desktop or self host in your homelab. I use some of my favorites from the comfort ...

#technology #opensource

You can’t trust your eyes to tell you what’s real anymore, says the head of Instagram “Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is closing out 2025 with a 20-images-deep dive into what a new era of “infinite synthetic content” means as it all becomes harder and harder to distinguish from reality, and the old, more personal Instagram feed that he says has been “dead” for years. Last year, The Verge’s Sarah Jeong wrote that “…the default assumption about a photo is about to become that it’s faked, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial to do,” and Mosseri eventually concurs.” The message is clear: Seeing is no longer believing! The same has basically become true for video as well. Too many videos and photos are being posted daily onto, especial viral algorithm, sites to be quickly believed by the masses and reshared. Even some presidents have been taken in, mainly because such faked videos or photos also served their political purpose. In 2026, we really have to be asking who is posting this, why are they posting it, is it verified from other sources, who gains from my outrage or fears from seeing this post. Like with cyber-security, humans prove to be the weakest link in the chain. Unfortunately not all social media networks treat fake news equally. We'd have hoped by now Facebook would have learnt its lesson from the Myanmar violence. But rage-baiting unfortunately makes a lot of money for some networks. See

The Verge

You can’t trust your eyes to tell you what’s real anymore, says the head of Instagram

We’re all looking for the guy who did this.

#technology #socialnetworks #ragebaiting #AI #deepfake

Alzheimer’s Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say “A team of American scientists claim they have done something miraculous: they “cured” lab mice suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which has robbed more than seven million Americans, typically 65 years old and up, of their identity and cognitive ability. The researchers achieved this feat by administering the rodents with the powerful compound P7C3-A20, which they announced in a new paper in the journal Cell Reports Medicine. Scientists from Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), University Hospitals, and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center undertook the study.” There is no approval yet for this drug and I imagine more peer review will still be done too as well as clinical trials, but it does seem pretty hopeful, and especially so as they are claiming a reversal, not just a slow-down. See

Futurism

Alzheimer's Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say

A new compound has been shown to reverse late stage Alzheimer's disease in lab mice, which gives millions of sufferers new cause for hope.

#health #alzheimers

LanguageTool ends free use of Browser Extension — Here are some Options LanguageTool is an AI-based grammar checker. They just announced that the browser extension will only be usable to their cloud service with a premium subscription from Jan 2026. My video explains the announcement, and then goes through an overview of what is involved with self-hosting the community version of LanguageTool which will still use the browser extension, with some pros and cons of this approach. The other alternative is to switch to using something else like Harper, which does not use any cloud or self-hosted service, and works locally from just a browser extension. I contrast how the self-hosted LanguageTool compares in practice with Harper. See #technology #opensource #selfhosting #languagetool

Stop Manually Checking GitHub Releases — These Tools Automatically Install & Update Apps on Linux “Package managers are essential tools on Linux systems. They help you install, update, and remove software packages with simple commands. Most distributions come with their own package managers, like apt, dnf, or pacman. However, many modern tools are distributed as pre-compiled binaries via GitHub releases. Developers using languages like Go, Rust, and Deno often release their software this way. New projects that are not included in the official distro repository yet have to opt for this method. This creates a gap between traditional package managers and these GitHub-hosted releases.” This is probably going to be of more interest to those using Debian and Fedora based package managers, as these are the most popular packages, which are typically generated directly on code hosting sites. But some interesting options to consider between deb-get, Autonomix, Eget, Install Release, bin, stew, and AFX. See

It's FOSS

Stop Manually Checking GitHub Releases — These Tools Automatically Install & Update Apps on Linux

These handy utilities tools simplify installing and managing binaries from GitHub releases on Linux.

#technology #Linux #opensource

Windows fatigue continues to push thousands of gamers to switch to Bazzite Linux distro “Bazzite, a Linux distro that has a lot in common with Valve's SteamOS, is designed specifically with gaming in mind, offering a console-like experience that ditches the majority of Windows 11's most annoying features. In recent usage statistics posted to X, Bazzite shared weekly growth of roughly 1.25x over the past 30 days. To put the number in perspective, this means that Bazzite pulls in roughly 50,000 weekly users.” There are tons of different Linux distros, but they can actually all do the same things (same Linux kernel underneath). The presentation, included packages, and the package manager type, are what really separates them a bit. So you can really pick any distro you want, and make it work. I use Manjaro KDE, and it is playing all the games I want (including Windows-only games), it does all my browsing, document creation and editing, video creation and editing, and lots more. What is different about Bazzite, is that it has specialised around making gaming work well from the get-go, and it has a focus on newcomers to Linus as well. Interestingly, it also has a rollback function for any system updates that may cause problems. Best of all, it's fast, has no adverts, no TPM v2 requirements, and no AI Copilot. See

XDA

Windows fatigue continues to push thousands of gamers to switch to this Linux distro

The SteamOS-like Linux distro's weekly downloads are increasing rapidly.

or their website at

Bazzite - The operating system for the next generation of gamers

Bazzite makes gaming and everyday use smoother and simpler across desktop PCs, handhelds, tablets, and home theater PCs.

#technology #Linux #Windows11 #gaming

GreyNoise launches a free scanner to check if you're part of a botnet “GreyNoise Labs has launched a free tool called GreyNoise IP Check that lets users check if their IP address has been observed in malicious scanning operations, like botnet and residential proxy networks. The threat monitoring firm that tracks internet-wide activity via a global sensor network says this problem has grown significantly over the past year, with many users unknowingly helping malicious online activity.” This service involves nothing being installed in your network or devices. It is just looking to see if your IP address has been picked up in their database for suspicious activity that could indicate there is malware or possible botnet activity originating from your IP address. By just visiting their website the check is done from your browser, but if you register a free account with them, you can set up alerts based on your IP addresses. I set up an alert for my home network as well as for my VPS server. See

BleepingComputer

GreyNoise launches free scanner to check if you're part of a botnet

GreyNoise Labs has launched a free tool called GreyNoise IP Check that lets users check if their IP address has been observed in malicious scanning...

#technology #security #botnets

Portmaster is an open source application firewall built to monitor and control network activity on Windows and Linux “Every packet is visible to the service, and any packet can be stopped before it leaves the system. The software matches traffic to the app that created it by using eBPF and the proc filesystem on Linux or a kernel driver and the IP Helper API on Windows. This approach lets users see each connection while still setting rules per application. It also helps the service sort out unusual cases. Portmaster can recognize Snap packages, AppImage apps and scripts on Linux as well as Windows Store apps and system services that run under svchost.exe.” I love that it shows per application how many, and what countries, connections are being made to the Internet. It also intercepts DNS queries that may have bypassed your user settings. The linked article does link directly to the GitHub project, where you can get the files to install it. See

Help Net Security

Portmaster: Open-source application firewall - Help Net Security

Portmaster is a free and open source application firewall built to monitor and control network activity on Windows and Linux. The project is develo...

#technology #opensource #security

Decentralized YouTube Alternative PeerTube Adds Creator Mode “PeerTube is a free and open source video hosting platform that serves as an alternative to YouTube. Unlike centralized platforms, it allows anyone to create their own video hosting instance while connecting with others through federation. It is developed by Framasoft, a French non-profit organization focused on digital freedom. Before you ask, the organization keeps itself afloat on donations rather than advertising or scraping people's data. The project recently hit two milestones: PeerTube v8 was released, bringing collaborative features and design improvements. Just a week later, the mobile app received its long-awaited Creator Mode.” PeerTube has steadily been improving this year and playback has also been getting much better. A year or so back, it was still plagued sometimes with buffering. It works much the same way as Mastodon and other Fediverse networks do so you can host your own PeerTube instance if you want to. There are some biggish YouTube creators there too, but it does not pay money like YouTube does as there are no adverts shoved into everything. I also post my videos there at gadgeteerza@video.hardlimit.com. But yes, my follower count there is way lower than on YouTube, because I suppose so many love the YT ads. ;-) See

It's FOSS

Decentralized YouTube Alternative PeerTube Adds Creator Mode

The open source YouTube alternative offers some welcome updates for content creators.

#technology #peertube #opensource

Affinity, as an alternative to Photoshop, runs as an AppImage on Linux “Canva, after acquiring the team behind Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher, launched the free Affinity app that brings together all three of the aforementioned apps. And while it doesn't officially support Linux, the community has stepped up to fix that. So, if you're someone working in image and photo editing, Linux is one step closer to perfection.” Although the linked article does give a Python code snippet to install this via an installation script on Linux, many may feel more comfortable just downloading and running the AppImage version as this packages the WINE files with it, so it all runs sweetly. The first run will be slow as it creates the WINE folder files etc inside ~/.AffinityLinux-Appimage/, and thereafter it will start quickly. At initial startup, it prompts for a DPI setting, and it is probably best to leave that at the default (mine was 96) otherwise I notice it displays for a much larger screen. From

XDA

I thought I needed Windows for Photoshop, but this Linux project is just as good

Affinity on Linux is a game changer

and you can get the AppImage at

GitHub

Releases · ryzendew/Linux-Affinity-Installer

A repository that helps users get affinity software working on GNU/Linux 🐧 - ryzendew/Linux-Affinity-Installer

#technology #Linux #photoediting

AA Browser is a WebView browser experience for Android Auto head units Transform your driving experience with a sleek, modern browser designed specifically for the road. Built with cutting-edge Material 3 design and optimised for automotive interfaces. This browser will work on Android Auto head units, but note the warnings about not looking at it whilst driving. It may though keep younger passenger amused, especially those who are too young now to use social media in Australia. There are no trackers in the app itself, but it does not have ad blocking capability of the websites you may visit. You'd need to download the APK file, though, and sideload it to your phone. See

GitHub

GitHub - kododake/AABrowser: Android Auto WEB Browser

Android Auto WEB Browser. Contribute to kododake/AABrowser development by creating an account on GitHub.

#technology #androidauto #browsers #opensource

Hacker Busts Startup Running Huge Web of AI-Generated “Influencers” on TikTok “404 Media reports in an explosive scoop that Doublespeed has been hacked. This wasn’t just one account associated with the startup, but the entire backend used to manage its phone farm — so it provides an extraordinary glimpse at how the service is actually being used to manipulate social media at scale. Not only is Doublespeed a possible breeding ground for disinformation campaigns or financial scams, but they seem to be getting away with their phone farm operation without any pushback from TikTok.” Which all just goes to show yet again, many “influencers” are not even real people, the follower, likes and comment numbers also just cannot be trusted. I posted only about a month ago about how Twitter used to fake the post views to charge advertisers more money, for adverts that were not seen by those numbers at all. Once money and advertising get involved on a platform you don't pay to use, it all gets very murky. It's all about driving engagement up, and faking numbers, to fleece advertisers. I really don't think the owners of Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, etc are really interested at all about the social side of social media, nor the end user experience. Many of us remember how these networks were in their early days, when you interacted with real humans. Today, most of these accounts have AI-generated responses to any comments. If you still want human social interaction and some moderation of chats, you'll need to look to decentralised social media today. See

Futurism

Hacker Busts Startup Running Huge Web of AI-Generated "Influencers" on Instagram

A hacker found a way into the backend of AI startup Doublespeed, which offers customers access to a massive phone farm network.

#technology #socialnetworks

Chrome and Edge browser extensions with 8 million users, collect extended AI conversations “Security firm Koi discovered the eight extensions, which as of late Tuesday night remained available in both Google’s and Microsoft’s extension stores. Seven of them carry “Featured” badges, which are endorsements meant to signal that the companies have determined the extensions meet their quality standards. The free extensions provide functions such as VPN routing to safeguard online privacy and ad blocking for ad-free browsing. All provide assurances that user data remains anonymous and isn’t shared for purposes other than their described use.” Yes, I know this will not be a surprise to many, but there have been many cautions specifically around using free VPNs. Visiting a website in a browser tab is usually a lot safer than installing a browser extension, and especially extensions that grant privileged access like ad blockers. So, if you are a user of: * Urban VPN Proxy * 1ClickVPN Proxy * Urban Browser Guard * Urban Ad Blocker you will probably want to read the linked article. And for others smiling smugly, just remember that even apps like WhatsApp quite openly state in their T&Cs that they share user metadata with upstream partners. The devil is often in plain sight, just buried deep in the lengthy T&Cs that most don't read. There are some companies though like Proton, Signal, etc who state that your privacy is not compromised, and then others who require no e-mail, phone number, etc as they do not identify you in any way at all. See

Ars Technica

Browser extensions with 8 million users collect extended AI conversations

The extensions, available for Chromium browsers, harvest full AI conversations over months.

#technology #privacy #browsers

Easier Than Nano! Fresh is a Fresh New Rust-based Terminal Editor for Linux “Fresh is a new Rust-based terminal text editor that takes a different approach. It uses standard keybindings like Ctrl+S for saving, Ctrl+F for searching, and Ctrl+Z for undoing. It works like a GUI editor but runs in your terminal.” Newer versions of Nano do, I think, default to similar easy to remember common keybindings. If not, it certainly can be set to use them, but every now, and again I still hit Nano with the old keybindings on some devices I work on. That said, I don't think Nano has any built-in file explorer, though. Fresh certainly looks well worth trying out. It installs on macOS, Linux and Windows (binaries on the GitHub site). See

It's FOSS

Easier Than Nano! Fresh is a 'Fresh' New Rust-based Terminal Editor for Linux

Rust-based editor combines fast performance with GUI-style shortcuts that just work.

#technology #opensource #texteditors

Valve Has the Secret to Playing Your Games Everywhere, and It’s Not Streaming “Last month, Valve showed off the Steam Machine, a console-like box with PC guts, along with a Steam Frame VR headset. The secret sauce of the headset is down to its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU, a mobile-focused chip based on ARM microarchitecture. Valve claims the Frame will be able to play your Steam games, both over local streaming and through an open-source x86 emulator called Fex. When you put on a Steam Frame, it will be running SteamOS, same as the Steam Machine. It’s basically a Steam Deck for your face, but it’s much more distinct than that because of the underlying hardware.” So, this could be a bit like what the Proton compatibility layer has done for Windows games on Linux (and that has been huge, with more than 24,300 games rated as at least playable with Proton). See

Gizmodo

Valve Has the Secret to Playing Your Games Everywhere, and It's Not Streaming

Sorry, Game Pass, but Steam may soon bring your games to every platform.

#technology #gaming #opensource

Glances vs Dozzle vs Beszel for Docker Container Monitoring This video explores some practical pros and cons between open source self-hosted Glances, Dozzle and Beszel for the monitoring of running Docker containers in terms of their performance stats, error logs, automated alerting, and troubleshooting of issues. It concludes with an overview of the Docker compose configuration files to run Beszel. I did not unpack the Hub vs Agent relationship for Beszel in the video (as I delved into that only the following day), but note that an agent is required for monitoring of services, but an agent will only connect to one Beszel Hub using a unique token and key combination (created in the Hub when adding a System, and then transferred into the Agent's config file). So if an Agent is running on a remote VPS you can link it to a local Beszel Hub, but if you also want to link it to a Beszel Hub running on that remote VPS, then you must create a second Agent container and link that to the VPS's Beszel Hub. Watch #technology #selfhosting #docker #opensource

ClipCascade is a self-hosted clipboard manager that syncs across devices without the cloud There are a couple of apps that do P2P sync of clipboard data or files between devices, but most, like LocalSend, require you to open the app on each device. Others alternatively require dropping the text or file onto a browser page. ClipCascade will work seamless with your device's clipboard, so this make sit fictionless to use. Only downside for some is that an iOS app is still in the woks (and I imagine that thee will be challenges with iOS). The service employs end-to-end-encryption so should be secure, even when using their free cloud service if you want to test it out. See

XDA

This self-hosted clipboard manager syncs across devices without the cloud

Say goodbye to cloud dependency and hello to seamless clipboard syncing across all your devices.

#technology #selfhosting #opensource #clipboard

Henson Razors are engineered to give a spectacular shave with dirt-cheap generic blades, and it's on sale “Razors are one of the most heavily and competitively marketed products in American capitalism. Made with steel and plastic that costs a few pennies but sold for a thousand-percent profit, the razor market is the subject of vigorous academic study and debate. The founder of Gillette famously came up with a model of basically giving away the razor handle so he could sell the blades. Canadian startup Henson has the opposite model, charging $79 for a razor that can give you an excellent shave with dirt-cheap disposable blades that cost about 15 cents each.” I've not used one of these Henson razors yet, but seeing I have been using safety razors and DE blades for the last 15 years or so, I can attest to it costing a lot less than cartridge razors, the shave is pretty good, and it takes about the same time. It should be a no-brainer, but the Gillette PR machine has so many people convinced that they need the latest vibrating 8-blade razor. Two tips I can give with wet shaving with double-edged blades, is not to skimp on the quality of the razor as you're going to use it for decades, and the other is to buy a blade sample pack. The reason for the sample pack is, everyone's skin is different, and razors have differing aggressiveness angles, as do the blades. With those three factors, you want to find the sweet spot. A sample pack helps you test a few popular blades out with your razor. Of course, this type of shaving opens up all sorts of opportunities for gifts from razor stands, to custom handles, to shaving soaps (yes you don't want to use aerosol shaving cream anymore), to shaving scuttles, and so on. It becomes a whole hobby in itself. I was also pleasantly surprised to see in the last month, quite a few youngsters asking on Reddit about how they could get started with traditional wet shaving, as well as one lady who wanted to convert her spouse to it as well. So it is ever-growing, as can be seen from the number of artisans making shaving soaps, handles, razors, etc. I can safely say (that's a pun, by the way) that I will never ever go back to multi-blade cartridge razor shaving. Sorry Gillette. See

WIRED

Get (or Gift) 2 Years of Spectacular Shaves for $80 Right Now

Henson Razors are engineered to give a spectacular shave with dirt-cheap generic blades.

#technology #retro #traditionalwetshaving