The new version of Nova Launcher, a popular launcher for Android, brought an unwanted new feature: advertising trackers from Meta and Google. On Exodus, a non-profit app auditing platform, you can see the changes from the previous version (8.1.6) to the new one (8.2.4).
Nova Launcher was purchased by Sweden's Instabridge a few months after the launcher's creator left Branch, the company that bought the app in 2022 and promised to open its code — which never happened. Instabridge has confirmed that it is testing ads in Nova Launcher and that it will not display ads to those who have Nova Prime (paid version).
The Malwarebytes blog warns of a new wave of compromised browser extensions. The technique used, called steganography, is ingenious:
The use of malicious code in images is a technique called steganography. Earlier GhostPoster extensions hid JavaScript loader code inside PNG icons such as logo.png for Firefox extensions like “Free VPN Forever,” using a marker (for example, three equals signs) in the raw bytes to separate image data from payload.
Newer variants moved to embedding payloads in arbitrary images inside the extension bundle, then decoding and decrypting them at runtime. This makes the malicious code much harder for researchers to detect.
A group of researchers found 17 new contaminated extensions in Firefox. They have attractive names, such as “Ads Block Ultimate” and “Youtube Download.”
The focus of malicious actors on browser extensions is understandable. They have privileged access to the most intimate app we use on a daily basis, update automatically, and, with few exceptions, aren’t household names — I believe that extensions are searched for more by purpose than by name. Another problem is the market for buying and selling popular extensions, which change owners with no transparency.
A good way to mitigate damage is to limit yourself to extensions endorsed by browser stores. In Firefox, they have a "Recommended" seal. In Chrome, extensions reviewed by Google get a green “Featured” seal, according to the store's help section. In search results, you can filter them to display only featured extensions.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in daily posts. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive.
Ads on ChatGPT. Testing will begin in the US, on the free and Go plans (USD 8/month) — which has been expanded worldwide. Who could have imagined this would happen…?
KDE for creators. KDE Project piggybacked Apple Creator Studio's announcement to promote its suite of professional apps. They are quite good. And free.
iKKO: Mind One. I think I would enjoy using a square phone. On the other hand, the “AI phone” part, with a supposed separate operating system, sounds very suspicious. Still in pre-sale, for USD 429.
Zoneless. This website offers an easy-to-read view of time zones. Great help for deciding on meeting times between people from different countries.
Boing. Pull the spring and release it. The physics are really good! (Warning: it makes noise.)
If emojis are a new language, divergent representations can render meaning lost in translation between platforms. In 2018, Emojipedia hypothesized that different emoji vendors would converge their designs. The prediction came true with Apple as the benchmark. Why?
Apple is widely regarded as the “default” emoji design set in the West. This status dates back to 2008, when Apple introduced emoji support on the iPhone years before emoji were formally incorporated into Unicode in 2010.
[…]
Market realities for over a decade have also reinforced this influence. Apple continues to command a dominant share of the mobile phone market in the United States.
A reminder that big tech companies also shape much of our lives in the details.
The article is filled with examples of convergence, controversies (remember the bright green water pistol?), and a new wave of disruptions to the semantic unity of emojis (the culprit starts with “x” and ends with “x”), all richly illustrated.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in daily posts. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive.
25 years of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is one of the most inspiring projects of our generation. Imagine if we could take the dynamics from there to other areas of life? The world would be a better place.
Wikimedia Enterprise's new commercial partners. A new wave of leech AI companies has decided to pay for access to Wikipedia's treasure trove of data and information. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity join Google, Ecosia, Nomic, Pleias, ProRata, and Reef Media, which were already contributing.
ChatGPT Translate. The best application of AI is translation. OpenAI now has a Google Translate-style interface in ChatGPT. (You could already request translations in the standard interface.)
TranslateGemma: A new suite of open translation models. On the other side of the AI battlefield, Google has announced new translation-specific models that promise to be more efficient. You need to know how to run these models in the cloud or on a super PC at home.
Digg. The latest reincarnation of Digg, this time with founder Kevin Rose, opened its doors to everyone on Wednesday (14th). Access was by invitation only.
TickTick 8.0. Smart task suggestions for today, a new calendar view (annual), and several visual changes mark this update.
stegodon. A CMS for blogs accessible via SSH that communicates with ActivityPub. The published blog can be read on the web and generates an RSS feed.
Drone Photo Awards 2025. The winning photos of the Drone Photo Awards 2025 are, unsurprisingly, breathtaking. (I recommend viewing the photos on a large screen.)
WebTiles. Hundreds (thousands?) of personal websites arranged in squares. It has zoom and a space to exchange messages with those on the site. Caution: it's a bit heavy.
Editor's note: Every week, I publish the phone's home screen from a blog reader. Want to participate? Fill out this form. Want more? Check out the archive. All app links go to the App Store, Play Store, or F-Droid.
Many people see my phone and lifestyle as an aversion to technology, so it's worth mentioning that I'm a programmer. I like to play games, watch movies, and read. And for all these hobbies, I love learning about their history. Playing old games, watching old movies, and reading in depth about the history of strangely specific things, even if that knowledge is of no use to me.
Editor's note: The interview was conducted in July 2025.
If you plan to listen to music files like I do, but your phone is an Android, Oto Music is the best option I've found for this OS.
Oto Music's proposal is to adhere to Android conventions. Hence its look is well integrated with the Google OS, its support for Chromecast standard, and beautiful widgets. And, of course, all the features you would expect from a music player.
The attention to detail by Piyush Mamidwar, the app's creator, is noticeable. This is evident in the app's small size, only 5 MB. How can so much fit inside!?
Oto Music has some of the highlights of Doppi, my choice for iOS, such as an equalizer and synchronized lyrics search. And it goes further: it has a sleep timer and a powerful metadata editor.
It's free, available on the Play Store, with a one-time purchase that unlocks some extra features, such as support for multiple artists and genres in one song, various visual customizations, and a 10-band equalizer. (I just couldn’t fine the price. Can anyone see it?)
Holos. Join the fediverse (ActivityPub) using your own phone as a server. FOSS and free.
Regression of Apple icons, @heliographe_studio@mastodon. “If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design.”
WikiFlix. A "streaming" (more like an index) of free movies or those that have fallen into the public domain. There's a lot of good stuff!
Let's get straight to the point: living without Instagram, Facebook, and Threads (lol) is easy. The only setbacks I can think of are missing out on Facebook Marketplace listings and the lack of information about restaurants, cafes, and clinics that insist on limiting their digital presence to Instagram. It's inconvenient, but workable.
In many parts of the world outside the US, the “big boss” of those who decide to get rid of Meta is WhatsApp. And how could it not be? Some research on phone habits shows that up to 99.1% of Brazilians over the age of 16 use the messaging app. Here, it is ubiquitous; the standard means of communication for many people and companies.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in daily posts. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive.
End-to-end encryption in iOS RCS? (in French), @TiinoX83/xcancel. Evidence has been found in iOS 26.3 beta 2. It's the missing piece that will make RCS a viable alternative to the best messaging apps on the market.
Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena”. The visible changes are a new Start menu and new apps for system information and administration tools. This is a long term support version (until 2029).
Apple Creator Studio. Apple's “Adobe subscription” offer lowers the barrier to entry for the company's professional apps. Even a subscription can be good sometimes.
Firefox 147. Firefox's first update of 2026 focuses on behind-the-scenes improvements, such as WebGPU support on Apple Silicon and standardization of cache and settings directories on Linux (only valid for new profiles or installations). The only visible new feature is automatic PiP when switching from a tab that is playing video.
BTN-1 Macro Deck. A four-key (mechanical!) keypad made especially to be integrated with Home Assistant. Available for USD 35.
CColorPaletter. A beautiful and completely free color palette generator. Press the space bar to generate a new one.
Discos do Brasil (in Portuguese). An excellent catalog of Brazilian music, created by Maria Luiza Kfouri (1954–2023). Tip from Renato.
Image: Apple.
There are many interesting things in the newly announced Apple Creator Studio, Apple's “Adobe suite.”
For those who thought that the departure of Apple's VP of interface design was a harbinger of better times in that department, the new app icons (image above) indicate that nothing has changed. They are awful.
In addition, only Pixelmator Pro — which was purchased by Apple in 2025 — adopts Liquid Glass. Weird. Oh, and as part of the launch of Apple Creator Studio, Pixelmator Pro will get a version for iPadOS.
As for the offer itself, although we can't stand any more subscriptions, this format greatly reduces the barrier to entry for Apple's professional apps. They used to be one-time purchases (and still are, as an alternative), but they were so expensive that they ended up being restricted to those who have their expenses paid by their employer or make a lot of money with the tools.
Apple Creator Studio will cost USD 12.99/month or USD 129/year. Final Cut Pro alone costs USD 299, equivalent to five years of Apple Creator Studio. It is not a huge advantage in the US, but in other places, like Brazil, the gap between Final Cut Pro license and Creator Studio annual subscription is huge (BRL 1.999 versus BRL 399).
The subscription can be shared with family members.
Subscribers have access to Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Compressor (video editing), Logic Pro and MainStage (audio), Pixelmator Pro (images), templates, high-quality photos and images, and AI features for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform.
Apple Creator Studio will be launched on January 28th.
Bose open-sources its SoundTouch home theater smart speakers ahead of end-of-life, Ars Technica. Instead of turning old products into e-waste, Bose has released the API documentation for its SoundTouch speakers. It should be normal and/or required by law, but here we are — once again — praising a company for doing the bare minimum.
OG Preview Lab. An online tool that offers previews for various online platforms of how links will appear on those cards (OG tags, for those in the know). Great to use before sharing something.
Pi Clock. A clock that displays the time in pi digits. Keys 1–5 change the clock (key 5 activates gamer mode, aka RGB).
enclose.horse. Use all the barriers to prevent the horse from escaping and, at the same time, give it as much space as possible. A new challenge every day, free of charge.
Once again, Google threatens the 3 billion (!) Gmail users with Gemini (AI) features. This time, the change is dramatic: the inbox will be “smart”, which would be tempting if AI models were capable of summarizing correctly (they are not) and were not prone to mistakes (“hallucination” is an euphemism for mistakes). For now, the new Gmail is being released to Americans who pay for Google's expensive AI plans. The prophylactic measure is to disable all AI features in Gmail: in the settings, General tab, uncheck the option Enable smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet. You're welcome!
The adoption curve for iOS 26 is atypical, and by a wide margin. Previous years (2023, 2022) delivered numbers more similar to those of 2024, for iOS 18.
I thank all my friends who remain steadfast with iOS 18. I couldn't resist and updated mine, and although I find iOS's Liquid Glass to be the least worst among all the devices I've used so far, it's still the weirdest version since I started using an iPhone over a decade ago.
I hope these numbers set off an alarm in Apple's design department.
Update (5h10 PM): It’s possible, though unconfirmed, that a change in Safari’s user-agent is messing with StatCounter’s numbers. Other sources, however, support the suspicion of slower iOS 26 adoption, albeit to a lesser degree.
[…] What we’ve learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they’re not buying based on AI. In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome.
Kevin Terwilliger Dell head of product
It is surprising that the first manufacturer to tell the truth about so-called “AI PCs” is Dell, Microsoft's early partner in the Copilot+ laptops initiative.
Note, however, that the full quote indicates that Dell will not stop investing in AI, only that the technology will no longer be the flagship feature of its marketing. It begins as follows: “We’re very focused on delivering upon the AI capabilities of a device—in fact everything that we’re announcing has an NPU in it—but what we’ve learned…”
malwarebytes.com
