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Monday 2026-10-19

10:00 AM

Steady pace [F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository]

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Friday, 16 Oct 2026, Week 42

F-Droid core

Wow, almost a month since our last weekly. A lot has happened, and most stayed the same. We were busy with apps inclusions, apps updates, client fixes and summits. The PR team is also the maintainer team, the testing team and the support team. Priorities take hold.

Now, polishing the Client is a top priority, so we’ll talk about apps way below.

F-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 adding:

  • Show Calculator icon when app hiding is enabled (Full only)
  • Show panic app hiding explanation dialog (Full only)
  • Fix notifications quirks (Thanks proletarius!)
  • Add icon shortcuts for My Apps and Search
  • Sort new apps by added date
  • Fix Huawei/Honor crash when drawing adaptive app icons
  • Fix app installation on old Xiaomi/Redmi devices
  • Disable SessionInstaller on newer Chinese MIUI devices
  • Translation updates

While we had more than a dozen test versions, we still did not convince enough users to update and hit these fixed bugs early in the development process. An understandable problem given the Android ecosystem size and diversity.

F-Droid Basic has been suggested for a while, so everyone already got the update. F-Droid’s extra features took a bit more time, but we are getting close to a release for everybody. If you’ve opted into betas you already got the updates, if not, you can do it now or manually expand Versions and update.

Community News

XDA covers (their) preferred short list of of must-have FLOSS apps, that made them “ditch their mainstream rivals”. Were you even using “mainstream” apps anyway?

While we acknowledge that mobile computing is the widest available form of computing, by users numbers, we know some also use the bigger “older” kind too, and use them together with their mobile devices to enhance operations. One such tool is fdroidcl, a command-line F-Droid desktop client that allows you to get the same apps controls, but from the comfort of your physical keyboard. Matthias Kirschner, of FSFE and former F-Droid Board member, tells us how he uses it for phone setups and upgrades. Get up to speed in this 10 minutes read.

Conversations was updated to 2.20.4+free with minor UI fixes. The developer penned a post that made the rounds in the FLOSS and Android communities, as the app is now also free on the centralized app store. Why now? See the 5 minute read that might make you mad that developers are treated this way by faceless corporations and happy that you chose F-Droid.

Jami launched their Jami Web client, no phone needed.

OsmAnd~ was updated to 5.4.10 with a plethora of fixes polishing the 5.4 release. One important fix that the F-Droid contributors have pushed is OpenGL1 integration crashes as our first release was misbehaving on lower-end devices that can’t use the modern OpenGL2 rendered due to hardware constrains.

Poker Payout was updated to 1.4.22 but with a new signing key. You’ve installed it last month? Tough luck, you need to uninstall then reinstall.

SMSecure was updated to 1.4.0 adding search, better delivery reports, hiding phone numbers in the UI, updated translations and many more fixes. One important feature that might get Silence users up from the couch has been added, Import encrypted backups from a SilenceExport folder. While we kept Silence on a life line since its last 2019 version, by fixing arm64 compatibility, time will soon come for it to be archived as the app won’t be installable on future Android versions and the current notification issues are a pain for the users. Get testing!

@CodeDoctor’s Dreamy Duskywing is here

Butterfly was updated to 2.6.0:

One of the biggest Butterfly updates yet brings:

📓 OneNote & Xournal++ support
🔄 Canvas rotation
💾 Persistent document states
🧰 Paints and presets for tools
📁 WebDAV remote encryption and backups
🎚️ UX improvements
📊 Tables
🗃️ Smarter file names for templates
🤝 Better collaboration & embeds
⌨️ More inputs & keybinds
🚀 Performance improvements

Read more here

@shuvashish76 makes it modern:

NewsBlur - News reader was updated to 15.0.5 adding better tablet support, faster scrolling, images controls, enhanced Add site and more.

Rethink: DNS + Firewall + VPN, updated to v0.5.7, gets a new redesigned UI, stats, universal allow rules, smart DNS filters and more.

@theimpulson peels onion layers:

First thing, I have been working with people at Weblate to have a small plugin and library to allow updating translations without rebuilding and redistributing the Android apps. As the work is still alpha, feedback is appreciated. Join us at github.com/WeblateOrg/kotlin-sdk.

The Tor Project muses back on how Tor VPN came to be, with Rust, per app tunnels, circumvention and more. Take an 8 minute break, read here.

@TobiGr checks a resume:

NewPipe is looking for two paid contractors: One Android developer with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose experience to help with the development of our new player library NewPlayer and the modernization of our codebase. There is also an open job an UI / UX expert to improve NewPipe’s user experience by doing an UX audit of the app. More information can be found on the website of NewPipe e.V., the non-profit organisation supporting NewPipe financially.

Archived Apps

7 apps were archived
  • APatch: The patching of Android kernel and Android system
  • CaptureCap: Record and Stream Audio and/or Screen
  • DobbyVPN: VPN client-side toolset.
  • F-Droid Privileged Extension OTA: Services to allow F-Droid to securely install and update apps
  • Human Benchmark: Test and compare your cognitive abilities with fun challenges
  • T CrB Detector: T CrB Detector notifies the user when the star T CrB has exploded.
  • TLSFragment: TLS fragmentation to bypass China’s Great Firewall. (Do try Lumine!)

Newly Added Apps

299 apps were added
(expand for the full list)

Just three hundred? Included during these 4 weeks, and many more are waiting. Some already got updates too, but we’re listing new apps only once here. The review process is long, not only by the length of our backlog, but also to get a chance to work with the developers, to get things in perfect shape at inclusion time and for the long road ahead. NOTE: We are also tightening the rules for apps inclusion, review the docs here.

More contributors raised to this challenge, offering their hands, eyes or tokens, each with their own abilities. Developers were guided to fix the recipes, add metadata (pics, icons, description), fix reproducibility issues, fix crashes and possible issues raised by testing in emulators and on real devices.

  • 0x56erify: Local, offline SHA-256/SHA-512 checksum verification.
  • 5G Proxy Client: Routes device traffic through a remote SOCKS5 proxy via TUN. No root, TCP/UDP.
  • AA-AuralListen Podcatcher: Private, ad-free podcast app – audio only, no account, all data on your phone
  • AdaptKey: Privacy-first Android keyboard that learns your typing style. Fully offline.
  • ADB Captain: Run ADB commands on your phone. No root, no PC — via Shizuku.
  • AeroPayout: Become a pilot in 7 days — buy tickets, advance seats, earn real rewards
  • Aftergleam - academic papers: A private reader for new research papers, ranked on your phone.
  • Agenda Tech: Private offline calendar: encrypted, zero network, encrypted backups.
  • Agendula: Tasks: A Material 3 Expressive task app with CalDAV sync.
  • Airplane Scheduler: Turn airplane mode on and off on a schedule
  • AlarmClock Deluxe (Wecker, Uhr, Timer, Stoppuhr): Alarm, clock, timer and stopwatch with advanced alarm tools
  • AMARadio: Ad-Free - No Paywall - Just Radio
  • Anchor Chain: Safe anchoring with phisycs
  • Andropolis: Classic city building: an open-source Android port of Micropolis (SimCity).
  • Animation Maker: A tool to convert image sequences into video files
  • Anonomi Postbox: Self-hosted relay that holds Anonomi messages until you are back online
  • API Flow: A focused mobile workspace for testing HTTP APIs
  • APODroid: Sets NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day as your wallpaper, every day
  • AppShelf: List of installed apps with sources — save, sync and restore on a new phone
  • AppStow: Organize and launch apps, websites, web apps and deep links
  • Aradia: LibriVox listener: Find, stream, and download free public-domain audiobooks.
  • ARK-launcher: A modern, customizable home-screen launcher built with Jetpack Compose
  • Auvae — growing close: 257 questions that bring people genuinely close. No account, no ads.
  • AWAGAM TLD and Domain Blocker: Block TLDs and domains at the DNS level using your own blocklists
  • AwayDoomscrollin’: Beta shield that blocks Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts scrolling
  • Aya: Quran, Hadith & Prayer Times: Offline Quran with 10 Qira’at, Hadith, prayer times, adhan, azkar & qibla.
  • Baby Monito: Track your baby’s feedings, diapers and weight, privately and offline
  • Baby Touch Lock: Block accidental touches, gestures and buttons while your kid watches videos
  • Battleship: Offline naval combat against an AI opponent, with no ads and no account
  • Bematist: Matches your local music’s BPM to your running cadence in real time
  • Binary Puzzle: A minimalist binary placement logic puzzle game.
  • Bitcoin Ticker (+Widget): Ad-free Bitcoin home-screen widget: EUR/USD price, 24h change and charts
  • BLACKBOX: File Encryption & Vault
  • Block Night: Offline falling blocks: 600 certified floors, daily challenge, Marathon and Zen
  • Bona vortaro: Esperanto dictionary, with the whole Reta Vortaro, offline
  • Box Breathing: Lightweight 50 KB box breathing timer that ticks the seconds out loud
  • boxorg: Declutter meditatively — photograph, frame, pack, find it again.
  • BreakThrough: Offline side-scrolling glass-breaking game
  • Brevier: A reading browser: the web without JavaScript, set in your own type
  • Bubble Night: Offline bubble shooter: 600 certified levels, daily challenge, Endless and Zen
  • CairnGPS: Hike tracking, live GNSS satellite view, achievements. Works fully offline
  • Captain’s Log: Your Personal Log for Navigating the Inner Cosmos
  • Cat Hunt: A game for cats: mice, bugs, a fish, a butterfly and a laser dot to catch
  • Chess Puzzles: Offline chess tactics from real Lichess puzzles. No account, ads, or tracking
  • Chroma Launcher: Your home screen, sorted by color. Find any app at a glance.
  • CimBar Scanner: Send and receive files and text as animated color barcodes — offline
  • ClashFest: Rule-based proxy client on the mihomo core: import, connect, protected
  • Clio Audiobook Player: Clean, modern audiobook player for Android focused on privacy and simplicity.
  • ClipRecorder: A privacy-friendly video recorder with clip management, effects, and merging
  • ClipVault: ClipBoard Manager with history, selection and management. Needs LSPosed / Root
  • Cobalt: Universal offline-first note capture and personal knowledge archive
  • Coffee Log: Log your coffee recipes so you can dial in and repeat the perfect cup
  • Colorgram: A free, open-source color logic puzzle game with no ads or tracking
  • ConnectFour Studio: Connect Four with 15 levels, 20 boards, match mode and perfect analysis
  • Constanza - Good habits: Habit reminders you answer without opening the app. No cloud, no ads.
  • Cookie Extractor: Extract your own session cookies after a manual login
  • Count for me: An interval timer you write, not one you just set.
  • CountAway: Count days to or from dates with local home-screen widgets
  • CPR Beat: Offline CPR metronome: 100–120 bpm, 30:2 mode, rescuer-switch timer
  • Cryo: Personal finance by voice: forecast, cards, debts, budgets and goals
  • CubeTimer: Offline 3×3 speedcubing timer with TNoodle scrambles
  • Cyclic Alarms: Alarm app for shift schedules — repeats every N days, not just weekly
  • Cycluna: Your cycle and the moon, tracked privately on your phone.
  • Daybook: Daily Logic Puzzles: New logic puzzles every day. No ads, no subscription, works offline.
  • DayCalcy: Simple ofline date calculator with reminder.
  • DeepWave: Binaural Beats: Binaural beats & isochronic tones for sleep, focus and relaxation
  • Desktop Mascot: A customizable animated mascot for your Android screen
  • DevSwitch: Toggle developer options, USB and wireless debugging, with Quick Settings tiles
  • DNS Resolver: Local DNS resolver, ad/tracker sinkhole, and traffic monitor
  • DoNotNotify: Block unwanted notifications with customizable rules
  • DragTree: NHRA Pro Tree reaction timer — accelerometer launch detection, no internet
  • Drausible: Read your Plausible Analytics stats, from plausible.io or a self-hosted server
  • Drift: Local-first RSS and Atom reader with optional cross-device sync
  • Drink Water!: Track water intake and get timely reminders. No accounts or ads.
  • Droynis: Read-only security and privacy audit for your phone
  • DumberKit: Calculator: Calculator and unit converter for keypad phones, typed on the keypad
  • Ebb: A period tracker that keeps your cycle on your phone. No account, no internet.
  • Echo Tiles - Play Your Music: Play piano tiles to your own music. Open-source, offline, and completely ad-free
  • EhViewer NekoInverter: An E-Hentai Application for Android with censorship circumvention
  • Encarté: Offline loyalty card wallet made for French shops. Scan, store, show.
  • Encly: Encrypted Offline Notes: Private notes & tasks with a PIN lock. No account, no internet, no ads.
  • ErmChat: A feature-packed Twitch chat client for mobile
  • Ethic Compass: An accessible, offline magnetic compass.
  • Ethic Keyboard: An app for those who only need a keyboard and nothing more
  • Ethic Notes: Private, offline, zero-permission notes application.
  • Ethic One Call: Lend your phone for one call while keeping the rest private.
  • Ethic QR Scanner: An offline QR and barcode scanner that never opens links automatically.
  • Ezhuthola: Malayalam Keyboard: Type Malayalam in Manglish. No ads, no tracking, no internet.
  • Feedora: A modern and elegant RSS reader with Material You design
  • FeelS: Local-first feelings wheel for private emotion check-ins.
  • Fencing Scores: Pool and tournament management for fencing competitions
  • Finan+: Offline, encrypted personal finance manager (Brazilian Portuguese)
  • Find Words: Word Search Puzzle: Solve fun word search puzzles! Connect letters & challenge your brain
  • Flare Enough: Calm, private, offline tracking for medication, symptoms and stillness.
  • Focus Launcher: A text-only, black and white launcher with app timers and a weekly review
  • Fogwave: Minimal ad-free internet radio for Lithuanian stations
  • Folder Camera: Take photos straight into folders, with optional secure transfer to your PC
  • Folio: Doc Maker: Scan & turn photos into clean PDFs. Fits size limits. Offline, no ads.
  • Fossy Protokoll: Document rental defects and build protocols — offline, no tracking.
  • FPS Meter: Lightweight real-time FPS overlay and game performance monitor
  • FreeFTP: Free FTP, FTPS and SFTP client. No ads, no paid tier, no tracking.
  • FreshMate: Keep your food fresh — track expiry dates for everything in your fridge
  • FTPS Server: Run a secure FTP server and share files on your local network, with no ads.
  • Ganxet: Board game timer for the whole table, with a clock facing each player
  • Garage: A modern, privacy-focused, comprehensive vehicle management app.
  • Gecko: Time-travelling audio recorder — save what just happened
  • Ghest: Track loans and fixed payments: where you are and when they end, fully offline
  • gloomy: A dim, night-vision-friendly screen light with swipe controls
  • Gluco Glance: Read your CGM sensor over Bluetooth. Offline, no accounts, no tracking.
  • Gotweb: Game of Trees Web Authenticator App
  • GPG Key Manager: GPG Tool for Android
  • GPS Car Tracking: GPS tracks with live OBD-II metrics; offline queue to your own server
  • Grace Launcher: A simple launcher with an app list, calendar agenda and music controls
  • Graycie: Apply grayscale automatically based on the app in the foreground
  • GrayPause: Keep your phone in grayscale, take short color breaks that end by themselves
  • Gridlink Mail: A fast, private JMAP and IMAP email client. No ads, no tracking, no Google.
  • Grove: A native Org-mode notes app for Android. Your notes stay plain .org files.
  • Gymbro: Private workout tracking with clear progress stats.
  • GymLog: Simple offline workout tracker. No accounts, no cloud, no tracking
  • Horus: Run Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode in a real Linux terminal on your phone
  • how many? - Count from Photo: Count Objects in Photos
  • Hydro Homie: Simple, private drink tracker with a filling glass, streaks and reminders
  • Ironvellum: Strength training with a ledger that remembers everything.
  • Jalali Persian Calendar: Gregorian and Persian (Jalali) calendar with a two-way date converter
  • JelloDog Chat: Chat for servers friends DMs and voice
  • Jigsaw Solitaire: A beautifully tactile, relaxing jigsaw puzzle game
  • JPortal: Unofficial app for the JIIT webportal: attendance, marks, grades and exams
  • KabelWacht: A simple, free WireGuard VPN client: scan, import, and manage tunnels.
  • Kairos: Your tasks in the right order, fitted into your day. No account, no network.
  • Kakuro: Solve Kakuro puzzles! The addictive blend of Sudoku and crossword sums.
  • Kalimory: Calm, offline bodyweight training with guided workouts and progressions
  • KeepADB: Keep Wireless Debugging active and toggle it from a tile or widget
  • keepIT: Notes, checklists and voice notes. Offline-first, synced on your own server.
  • KeliBoard: Customizable open-source keyboard
  • Keryx: One reader. Every device. Local-first RSS reader with optional cloud sync.
  • Keyholm: Single-device passkeys on secure hardware
  • Kompanion: Remote control companion for KOReader e-readers
  • Kryfo: private messages over tor. no phone number, no account, no metadata trail.
  • L9: Home screen launcher for D-pad and T9 keypad phones
  • Lantern Sudoku: Calm, readable sudoku with hints that teach. No ads, no game over, offline.
  • LatentJam: Local music player with an on-device recommender. No account, no network.
  • LensCast: Turn your phone into a networked camera: web, MJPEG and RTSP streaming
  • LibreCrate: Private offline vault for your documents and notes
  • LifeMeter: Your birthdate turned into a live dashboard of numbers about your life
  • liftmath: Gym calculator: 1RM, plates, warm-ups, strength scores, records, rest timer
  • LinkLift: Private media extractor and downloader for video, audio, and images.
  • LiveTempo: Manage song playlists with BPM references for live performances
  • Logic Labs: A pocket digital-logic lab — breadboard, 74xx TTL chips, offline coursework.
  • Lomo Camera: A tiny camera that shoots vivid, cross-processed Lomo-style photos
  • London Transport: Shows transport (Tube, Bus, Cycle) in London
  • Luncher: A lightweight home screen for Android TV: hide and reorder your apps
  • Macrion: Screen-aware Android automation, independently developed from Klick’r
  • Mahjong Solitaire: A performance-oriented classic Mahjong Solitaire game.
  • MapFlip - Apple to Google: Redirect Apple Maps links to Google Maps. Fast Apple map redirect & converter.
  • Mars Live Wallpaper: Mars, Earth, the Moon and Pluto turning in front of the Milky Way
  • Matewave: Offline chess: AI, puzzles, opening training and play with friends nearby
  • Mathe-Trainer: Mental arithmetic practice for primary school. German interface.
  • MegaProxy: Private VPN client for HTTPS, MASQUE α and SSH servers you control
  • MeshCore Signal Tester: Real-time mesh signal monitor for MeshCore companion radios & repeaters
  • MeshNavarra Utility: Administer Meshtastic nodes and NavaTastic repeaters over USB and Bluetooth
  • MeteoCompare: Compare 21 weather models, 10-day forecasts, local alerts and detailed charts.
  • MinLauncher: A minimal, ad-free Android launcher with no internet access and no tracking.
  • Mobile Harness: AI coding, Linux terminal, files, diffs, and previews on Android
  • Mobile Maia: Offline chess against Maia-3 with local Stockfish analysis
  • Mock Location that actually works: A reliable mock location provider that actually works to replay GPX tracks.
  • Modern T9: Predictive T9 keyboard with no network access and no telemetry
  • MoveAPiece: Offline Chess: Offline chess vs Stockfish or Maia, opening trainer, Pegasus & Chessnut boards
  • MTS Dialer (cz.mts.phone): Phone app (calling, blocking, contacts) that you’ll love !
  • Mushroom Compass: A compass that show you the way to your stored mushroom spots
  • MyLexicon: Offline-first personal dictionary and vocabulary companion.
  • Nature’s Music: Mix nature sounds—ocean, rain, forest, storm, city—and set a sleep alarm
  • Nearby Glasses: Smart Glasses are often hard to spot. This app scans for their Bluetooth ID.
  • NeionLauncher: <25KB size Android Launcher
  • Nexpill: Medication reminders that arrive on time. No account, no internet.
  • Nightblast: Send urgent alerts to your contacts using encrypted SMS messages
  • Nocean: Offline rich-text notes with fonts, media and no cloud
  • Notenkladde: Photograph and import sheet music, read it while you play, write notes on it
  • Numbers & Letters: Mental arithmetic and vocabulary game, no ads, no trackers
  • Numio Calculator: A clean, open-source calculator with live results and unit conversion
  • OctoLab: GitLab client for Android: gitlab.com and self-hosted instances
  • Okanzo: Private, offline-first net worth tracker with on-device encryption
  • OmniBeat: Internet radio player built to support all modern online stations.
  • OnionDrop: Private file sharing directly over Tor
  • Open Eats Journal: Open Eats Journal is a free nutrition, calories and weight tracking app
  • Open Open Radio: Browse and play thousands of web radios, with Android Auto support
  • Open Patience: Free, open-source Klondike & FreeCell solitaire — no ads, no tracking
  • Open Recorder: Open-source screen recorder with internal audio and no internet access
  • OpenChordBook: Read, write and organize chord charts offline
  • OpenOdo: Private offline vehicle logs, reminders, fuel and expense history
  • OpenPlants: Open-source & privacy-friendly companion app for your plants
  • Operator: List and kill processes that consume a lot of resources
  • Oubliettes: Dungeon logic puzzle: find the walls from the row and column counts
  • Outdoor Food Calculator: Plan food weight and nutrition for outdoor trips
  • PaperCript: Encrypted passwords on printable QR cards. No network, stores nothing.
  • Paperless Native: Mobile client for your self-hosted Paperless-ngx document server
  • PaperPhoneLite: Encrypted messaging through self-hosted Tor onion services
  • Pass: Deterministic passwords from site, login, and one master password.
  • PassPony: Git Password Manager: Password manager for pass and passage stores, synced with git
  • Patch Pilot: Manage presets on your hardware synth over USB, straight from your phone
  • PebbleNTN: Turn-by-turn directions from your phone’s nav apps on your Pebble watch
  • PebbleRecorder: Turn a Pebble watch button into a remote start/stop trigger for audio recording.
  • Phosphor Cam: Turn your camera into live ASCII and dither art
  • Pixel Tag Drawer: Organize and launch Android apps with tags and usage-based sorting.
  • PlaneTxt: Todo, agenda, journal and notes in plain Markdown files
  • Plunge Tracker: Offline cold plunge timer and log. No accounts, no network, no tracking.
  • PlusPlay: A minimal, lightweight Android video player app written in Kotlin
  • PocketClaw: A private AI agent that runs on your Android phone, with real on-device tools
  • Poop Log: Private, offline Bristol stool diary with CSV export.
  • Presencia: Simple offline attendance tracker for students
  • Prism Gallery: A private, offline photo gallery with four beautiful, animated design styles
  • Puzzle Press: Seven daily word and logic puzzles. Offline, no ads, no account.
  • QR Code Displayer: Reconstruct damaged or blurry QR codes entirely on-device for easy scanning.
  • QRieux - QR Scanner: QR scanner & creator. No ads, no tracking, works offline.
  • QuorumPony: Split a secret into printable cards. Any K of N recover it. Fully offline.
  • Ramblr: Tap, ramble, tap. Clean dictated text lands wherever your cursor is.
  • Ratafuel: Find the cheapest fuel in France near you.
  • Read Later: Bookmark. Read. Listen. The simple way to manage your reading list.
  • Rechenzwerge: Counting and math practice for preschool and elementary school.
  • Regex Crossword: Offline regex-crossword puzzles in hexagon and rectangle grids.
  • Relagent: Trustworthy AI assistant that runs 100% on your hardware
  • Renamite: Motion / vector animation editor
  • RepForge: Workout logger with AI coaching, analytics & Health Connect integration
  • ResticDroid: Scheduled, encrypted backups with restic
  • Rouse Context: Turn your phone into a secure, on-demand MCP server for AI clients
  • Rune: Private, on-device encrypted notes. No network, no telemetry, no trackers.
  • Sameura Dam Monitor: Storage rates and related data for 125 dams in Japan including Sameura Dam
  • ScaleLauncher: Use Xiaomi S400 locally via Bluetooth with openScale and Health Connect
  • Scratchpad Launcher: A minimal launcher with an always-visible scratchpad. Zero ads.
  • ScrubPony: Strip GPS and metadata from JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC photos, on your device.
  • Sepia: Share images without oversharing. X-ray, redact, and prove the file is clean.
  • Shelf: Offline book catalogue: search, track streaks, read your own files.
  • Shellwave: An SSH client that doesn’t make you choose between convenient and trustworthy
  • ShizuStore: App store for Shizuku apps that installs APKs from their upstream sources.
  • SilentSuite - Secure Data Sync: End-to-end encrypted sync for calendar, contacts, and tasks
  • Simple Nextcloud: A small Nextcloud file browser without a duplicate upload cache
  • Since Us: Count your days together. Private, ad-free and made for every kind of love.
  • SkyPulse: Decode and monitor 1090 MHz ADS-B aircraft with an RTL-SDR
  • Sleep Noise: Noise to sleep, or to cover the room around you. Plays when you open it.
  • Slitherlink: Logic Loop Puzzle: Connect the dots to form a single continuous loop. Pure, relaxing logic puzzle.
  • SnowRaven: Birding tools and data explorer for your eBird and Macaulay Library exports
  • Social Deduction Game: Offline game-master assistant for Werewolf, Mafia and social deduction games
  • solyto: Free, private, all-in-one personal organizer. Self-hostable.
  • Sopa de Letras: Offline word search with a 300-level campaign, daily challenge and time attack
  • SparkleDNS: Encrypted DNS over HTTPS and HTTP/3 with blocklists and per-app rules
  • SplitSmart: Offline expense splitting with fair shares and fewest-transfer settlements
  • Splitz: Launch paired apps in split screen with Accessibility Service automation.
  • Spool Maker: Read and create NFC spool tags for UltiMaker 3D printers
  • SportWetter: When does the weather suit outdoor sport? Heat, cold, wind, rain, air.
  • SPRAWL//RUN: A running tracker wrapped in a cyberpunk story that chases you. Fully offline.
  • Square Chess: Chess built for square screens, compact devices, e-ink and physical keyboards.
  • Sshd4a: An ‘sshd’ server with shell access, rsync and scp/sftp services.
  • Stanza: Pomodoro Timer: Frosted glass Pomodoro timer with zero-battery chronometer countdown.
  • Starling: End to end encrypted location sharing. No accounts, no tracking.
  • Sun Piano: Piano and synthesizer with 8 instruments, recording, metronome and MIDI input
  • Sweep: Plain-language stalkerware checkup. On-device, nothing stored or sent
  • TabGreater: Crypto watchlist with live prices, charts and home-screen widgets
  • TABI: Learn Japanese from zero in about five minutes a day.
  • Tally: One tap per expense. Every account, every currency. Private, offline, no ads.
  • Tapbar: Launch apps or quick actions from the status bar or anywhere on your screen
  • TaskDav: Tasks, notes and calendar over CalDAV — or local-only on your phone.
  • Temperance Companion: Offline habit tracker and Health Connect bridge for Obsidian Temperans
  • Tennis Score Manager: ITF tennis scoring with umpire voice calls, BLE wristbands and a TV scoreboard
  • Tern: Follow app releases where they are published and check them before they install
  • TeXslate: On-device LaTeX/XeTeX editor: compile & PDF preview offline, no cloud
  • TG WS Proxy: Telegram MTProto WebSocket Bridge Proxy
  • TreasureHunt: Be active, go treasure hunting!
  • TrovePass: Offline password generator — one master password for every site
  • TU Expense Tracker: Private, offline-first expense tracking directly from bank SMS alerts.
  • Turn the Page: Read FB2, EPUB and PDF with paper page turns and a spread on foldables
  • Tutor Language: Offline Spanish learning with reading, listening, and dialogue practice.
  • TV Viewer - IPTV Streaming: Free open-source IPTV player with community channels and opt-in analytics.
  • TyphoonEye: Typhoon tracks, forecasts and alerts for the Northwest Pacific
  • VaultPony: Encrypted vaults you control, compatible with VeraCrypt.
  • VaultX - Secure Password Manager: Secure offline password and identity wallet manager
  • Vectorint: See how much you can safely spend right now
  • Veil: Private, local-first encrypted notes
  • Vento VNC/RDP Client: Fast, fluid VNC/RDP remote desktop client
  • Verdetto: QR & Barcode Scanner: QR & barcode scanner. See the link before it opens.
  • Visual Routines: Create and follow calm visual routines one step at a time
  • VocaPhone: Voice dictation keyboard that transcribes on hardware you control
  • Voice Keyboard: Speech-to-text keyboard that uses your own Whisper API key
  • Voice Memos: A voice recorder with an inline player and a trim editor, no ads, no network
  • Waqfah - Quran before apps: Read a Quranic ayah before the apps you choose to open
  • Waste Works: A casual recycling clicker: take trash apart, find valuables, equip your worker
  • Webby Images Downloader: Pick images from a web page and download them all at once
  • WebStack: Visual bookmark stack and website manager for Android with offline snapshots.
  • Where: End-to-end encrypted realtime location sharing
  • Whisper: RSS Reader: Calm, private news from the sites you choose. No account, works offline.
  • Why? – mindful unlocks: Asks why you unlock your phone. See your habits. No internet. No tracking.
  • Wocheneinkauf: Shared shopping list for family and flatmates, synced live - no account
  • Wol Panel: Wake your machines over the LAN with a magic packet
  • WolLight: Wake-on-LAN app with device list, LAN scan and stale-IP recovery. LAN-only.
  • Zabb: Mobile client for Zabbix monitoring
  • Zanshin Calendar: Tibetan and Japanese calendars with almanac readings, and a meditation timer
  • Zazen: A minimal, offline meditation timer with interval bells.
  • zinna-IME: Offline Japanese keyboard with mozc conversion, flick and qwerty
  • ¡Aquí hay tomate! - Pomodoro: Pomodoro timer with a one-cell home screen widget. Dark, fast and quiet.
  • Ğ1nkgo: Ğ1 Wallet: simple, quick, modern and versatile
  • 是语输入法: A fast offline Chinese Pinyin input method

Updated Apps

917 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

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Kanji of the Day: 採 [Kanji of the Day]

採

✍11

小5

pick, take, fetch, take up

サイ

と.る

採用   (さいよう)   —   use
採択   (さいたく)   —   adoption
採点   (さいてん)   —   marking
採取   (さいしゅ)   —   picking
採決   (さいけつ)   —   vote
伐採   (ばっさい)   —   felling timber
採用試験   (さいようしけん)   —   employment examination
採算   (さいさん)   —   profit
不採用   (ふさいよう)   —   rejection (of an application)
採掘   (さいくつ)   —   mining

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 嘱 [Kanji of the Day]

嘱

✍15

中学

entrust, request, send a message

ショク

しょく.する　たの.む

嘱託   (しょくたく)   —   commission
委嘱   (いしょく)   —   commissioning
嘱望   (しょくぼう)   —   having great hopes for (someone's future)
委嘱状   (いしょくじょう)   —   letter of appointment (to a position)
嘱する   (しょくする)   —   to entrust (someone) with
嘱託殺人   (しょくたくさつじん)   —   murder at the victim's request
嘱目   (しょくもく)   —   paying attention to
受嘱   (じゅしょく)   —   being entrusted with
依嘱   (いしょく)   —   commissioning
付嘱   (ふしょく)   —   conferment

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

06:00 AM

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt [Techdirt]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is n00bdragon with a comment about Florida’s age-gating law and its esoteric definition of addiction:

Is anyone else bothered by this incredibly strange definition of “addiction”? Is YMCA soccer addicting if 10% of a youth soccer team (one player) plays soccer for more than two hours a day?

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a reply to a comment celebrating MAGA’s electoral victories:

Congratulations, you got record-high inflation, higher prices on gas and diesel, a militarized police force working on the president’s order to commit human trafficking with a side of murder, the kind of war your diaper-wearing piss-stain of a president said he wouldn’t start, and a massive reduction in the reputation of the United States amongst longtime allies. Are ya winnin’ hard enough to get sick of it, Trumpist?

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a response from MrWilson expanding on the first place winning comment about addiction:

It’s all arbitrary bullshit and has to be because it’s impossible to create definitions that would actually work for every scenario. A kid using Facebook messenger to get math tutoring help from his friend for two hours could count as “addiction” here.

It’s all substituting broadbrush generalizations in lieu of parents paying attention to what their kids are doing online, or even better, having honest relationships that mean their kids actually talk to them about what they’re encountering online.

Addiction should only be determined by a trained psychiatrist in individual cases after direct observation, not by politicians grand-standing and virtue-signaling their “think of the children” schtick that supports the “re-elect me so I can continue to get campaign donations from wealthy donors and insider trading stock tips” schtick.

Next, it’s Thad with a comment about the observation that ICE is inflicting injustices on the US citizens that Trump believes are inherently superior to everyone else:

Let’s not pretend we don’t know who he really means when he says “citizens”.

Over on the funny side, things are awfully slow: not a single comment even got enough votes to earn a funny badge, and in fact nothing even really came close. So in lieu of the normal section, we’ll just wrap things up with one single editor’s choice. It’s another comment about the “two hours a day” addiction definition, this time from an anonymous commenter:

no no I think they’re cooking here. We just need to extend this to its only logical conclusion: the 14 hour work week.

That’s all for this week, folks!

05:00 AM

Sunday 2026-10-18

11:00 PM

Anticipating confusion [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

I know that you know that taking this exit will get us to Sheridan Drive, but the person who’s likely to be driving down this road in a few minutes has no idea.

Let’s agree that most street signs are for folks who know where they’re going. We would label things differently if we were instructing those that don’t.

I know that you know that ERASE isn’t the same thing as DELETE, but the next person interacting with your command-line interface might not know.

Of course this is obvious when we say it so clearly. And yet, there are many kinds of USB cables, poorly named and labeled. The instructions that come with just about anything we buy were written by lawyers for juries, not by a product manager who actually wanted to inform and delight.

Design to be understood. And design so that the inevitable confusion of the newbie doesn’t get worse. Because without your active intervention, it will.

      

Chinese Court Jails Aiyifan Operator, U.S. Judge Won’t Transfer Pirate Site’s Domains [TorrentFreak]

aiyifanLast month, Chinese streaming giant Tencent won the first round of its legal battle against the pirate site Olevod, when a Florida judge ruled that the case can proceed in the United States.

Tencent is not the only Chinese platform to try its luck there. Last year, rival streaming service iQIYI used the same court and the same legal team to sue Aiyifan, a pirate streaming service for Chinese speakers outside China.

Aiyifan also operates under the names YFSP and IYF, with domains including aiyifan.tv, yfsp.tv and iyf.tv. According to Similarweb, yfsp.tv alone drew roughly 14 million visits last month.

Unlike Olevod, Aiyifan never appeared in court, and none of its operators were named as defendants. However, the U.S. case isn’t the only legal trouble the pirate site is up against. In China, one of the site’s operators has been sentenced to prison recently.

Operator Jailed in China

In August, iQIYI informed the Florida court that the Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court had upheld the criminal conviction of Wang Jianyang, describing him as one of Aiyifan’s principals.

According to the ruling, Wang ran a company in Chongqing that provided the technical support for Aiyifan’s website and app. He also handled advertising and promotion, working on the pirate platform since 2022.

The Chinese police detained Wang in March 2024, which was more than a year before iQIYI filed its lawsuit in Florida.

Wang had been convicted before. In 2021, a court in Jiangsu gave him a suspended prison sentence of three years and a 6 million yuan fine for setting up another pirate site.

Aiyifan launched while he was still on probation. In March of this year, a Shanghai district court revoked the suspension and added a new sentence of three and a half years, plus a 1 million yuan fine. Combined, Wang faces four and a half years in prison and a 7 million yuan fine.

From the translated Shanghai ruling

aiyifan sentence

Wang appealed the verdict, arguing that the evidence was insufficient and that, at most, he merely provided technical support. The appeals court disagreed, however, concluding that he played a major role in the operation. That ruling is final.

Florida: $1.96 Million Instead of $196 Million

In Florida, iQIYI’s civil case was launched in hopes to shut down the site. Aiyifan didn’t respond to the complaint in the U.S. federal court, after which a default was entered in July 2025.

iQIYI asked for a massive $196.55 million in damages. Most of that came from applying the $150,000 statutory maximum to 776 registered works, while thousands of unregistered works added another $78.55 million in proposed damages.

In January, Judge Melissa Damian ruled that Aiyifan is indeed liable. However, she rejected the damages award because it lacked support. iQIYI responded with a revised request for $54.4 million, but that was still too much for the court.

In an order issued last week, Judge Damian awarded $1,000 per registered work, doubled for willfulness, for a total of $1.8 million. The award covers a total of 901 works as more copyright registrations had been processed as the case moved on.

The trademark claims added $160,000, but there were no damages awarded for the roughly 5,000 unregistered works. This brings the total to $1.96 million, about 1% of the original request.

From the final default judgment

iqiyi damages

The reduces damages is not the only setback for the Chinese streaming company either, as its requested injunction is also limited.

Judge Won’t Transfer Domains

iQIYI specifically targeted the pirate site’s domain names, asking the court to hand them over and redirect them to iQIYI’s own site. It also wanted ISPs, hosting companies, CDNs, payment processors and WeChat to stop serving Aiyifan.

The amended motion for a default judgment dropped most of these third parties, but it still requested the domain takeovers, to effectively take these offline.

Judge Damian was not convinced that this would be appropriate. iQIYI admitted that it couldn’t say how much of the content on the sites was infringing, or whether any of the other content is licensed.

Aiyifan streams plenty of content that is not owned by iQIYI. Taking over the domains entirely would therefore go too far, the judge concluded.

The order acknowledges that “some other judges in this District have a more liberal approach to the dispensation of injunctive relief.” However, Judge Damian sided with the Eleventh Circuit’s requirement that injunctions must be narrowly tailored.

yfsp.tv’s homepage this week, with Toy Story 5 in the top slot

yfsp homepage

Partial Domain Registrar Suspensions?

Instead of transferring the domains, the judgment orders domain registrars to cancel the pages and subdomains that feature iQIYI’s shows or trademarks, once iQIYI provides a list.

If a registrar fails to comply, the registry must move the domain to a registrar of iQIYI’s choosing. That changes the registrar but would not transfer the ownership.

The registrar provisions in the judgment

registrar

Whether registrars can comply is questionable. A registrar controls the domain registration, not the pages on a website, so the only tools at its disposal are suspending or redirecting a domain as a whole.

That is exactly the broad outcome the court is trying to avoid.

Even the subdomains are a stretch. Two of the listed sites, m.yfsp.tv and www.yfsp.tv, share a single domain, and a registrar can only switch one of them off if it also runs the domain’s DNS.

For now, the Aiyifan sites remain online. Without a response from the operators, it’s also unclear whether iQIYI will be able to collect any of the damages.

—

A copy of the final default judgment, issued at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, is available here (pdf). The accompanying order can be found here (pdf), and the translated Shanghai ruling, as filed by iQIYI, here (pdf).

The seven (sub)domains listed in the judgment: m.yfsp.tv, www.yfsp.tv, www.yfsp.lv, www.iyf.tv, www.iyf.lv, www.aiyifan.tv and www.ayysp.com.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

10:00 AM

Kanji of the Day: 無 [Kanji of the Day]

無

✍12

小4

nothingness, none, ain't, nothing, nil, not

ム　ブ

な.い

無理   (むり)   —   unreasonable
無料   (むりょう)   —   free (of charge)
無い   (ない)   —   nonexistent
無いと   (ないと)   —   have to (verb)
無駄   (むだ)   —   futility
無視   (むし)   —   disregarding
無職   (むしょく)   —   without an occupation
無所属   (むしょぞく)   —   independent (esp. in politics)
無党派層   (むとうはそう)   —   unaffiliated voters
無償   (むしょう)   —   without compensation

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 撤 [Kanji of the Day]

撤

✍15

中学

remove, withdraw, disarm, dismantle, reject, exclude

テツ

撤退   (てったい)   —   evacuation
撤去   (てっきょ)   —   removal
撤回   (てっかい)   —   withdrawal
撤収   (てっしゅう)   —   removal (of a building, equipment, etc.)
撤廃   (てっぱい)   —   annulment
白紙撤回   (はくしてっかい)   —   complete revocation
全面撤退   (ぜんめんてったい)   —   total (full-scale) withdrawal
撤兵   (てっぺい)   —   withdrawal of troops
部隊撤退   (ぶたいてったい)   —   troop withdrawal
市場撤退   (しじょうてったい)   —   pulling out of a market

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

07:00 AM

Saturday 2026-10-17

11:00 PM

The race to the bottom feels inevitable… [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

but it isn’t.

A company wants web traffic, so it dumbs down content, builds listicles and grows. But then others become even dumber or more convenient, so it has to race to keep up with them. Eventually, with nothing but junk, it fades away.

A company builds a reputation for delivering useful permission-based email newsletters. But it needs to grow, so it eases its rules on spam, facilitates list swaps and grabs for attention. This attracts new users, but eventually the spam filters catch on and the site (and its users) sink into the muck.

A celebrity finds their notability fading, so they appear on C and then D list reality shows until everyone is in on the joke except them…

We can justify most moves to the bottom while they’re happening, but the problem with this race is that you might win.

With effort, you might not get to the top, but without resolve, you’ll certainly find yourself at the bottom.

The alternative is to resist the temptation for fast growth and settle for trust and authority instead. The race to the top is possible, but it’s more like a patient, persistent climb.

It’s difficult, lonely and only for long-term players. That’s precisely why it’s so valuable.

If you’re not proud of it, don’t serve it.

      

Just for Skeets and Giggles (10.17.26) [The Status Kuo]

The midterms are just over two weeks away.

44d6d78c-3430-4540-bc48-f79a849af85d.jpeg

Rather than addressing soaring fuel prices, the wars in Iran and Ukraine and rampant corruption, the president and his cronies seem intent on a smash-and-grab.

Image.heic

Trump is whining again about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Image.heic

If you’re on Russia’s side, it’s hard to pass as a peacemaker.

Image.heic

The oligarchs are particularly worried about the latest turn in the Russia-Ukraine war.

IMG_3059.jpeg

Widespread reports say that the online right’s yammering has died down lately. Coincidence?

6860f7ec-91e2-4757-aee3-2c4b508ea097.jpeg

I misread this at first, too. Truly gallows humor!

Image.heic

Dems now appear to hold the upper hand in deep-red Texas.

Image.heic

But his faithful are sticking by him, even if they can’t explain why.

Image.heic

This is a far cry from the Republicans of a generation ago.

SNL had thoughts on a widely shared image of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Image.heic

But there are still Hegseth defenders, right?

Image.heic

Whiskey Pete is all about the T.

Image.heic

Some top-shelf political commentary from this stand-up.

Image.heic

The big news this week: Trump’s handpicked new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, lasted just five days (or four depending on how you count it). Why? Well, let’s just say her first press briefing was less than stellar.

Image.heic

Here’s Jimmy Kimmel, trying to get canceled again by the Trump White House.

Image.heic

Takes on her performance soared like the price of diesel.

Image.heic

Here’s the Devil himself in her earpiece.

Image.heic

One of my favorites here:

Image.heic

The bit works even without the full look.

Image.heic

She was giving strong Miss Teen South Carolina vibes.

Image.heic

For you SNL fans:

Image.heic

Every actor will appreciate this.

Image.heic

There were also her claims of being an “attorney,” despite never having passed the bar exam. Her explanation involved (checks notes) China.

Image.heic

Halloween costume idea just dropped.

913198d9-5659-4b72-897c-abdcf2c5fffd.jpeg

With the false claims piling up for Katie Sack-a-lies, could she last much longer?

Image.heic

Did anyone else catch this?

Image.heic

Trump was photographed on Marine One with his travel companion Natalie and his new press secretary, and well…

Image.heic

The verdict: The lettuce outlasted Katie. Here’s a… tribute for you Hunger Games fans.

The Daily Show also offered a moving in memoriam.

Image.heic

It reminded my friend Corey Craig of something…

Image.heic

Sorry, not sorry.

Image.png

Mrs. Frazzled had some gentle parenting to do.

Image.heic

She went back to the Devil to re-bargain for her pasty soul (which he apparently consumed?), but no dice.

Image.heic

The Onion previews a future headline.

Image.heic

For those who need it in handy chart form, four days works out to just over a third of a Scaramucci.

Image.png

Bye, gurl.

Weekend Update had a special guest on.

Image.heic

It’s often said we’re blessed that today’s fascists are also embarrassingly incompetent. Exhibit 4,879:

IMG_3060.jpeg

Since Elon Musk is back in the news in the worst way, let’s review what we already know about him.

Image.heic

Shout out to the DSA folks in Los Angeles for this seasonally appropriate commercial.

Image.heic

I had no idea Kacey Musgraves was an internet sniper.

IMG_3047.jpeg

If you’re like most readers, you’ve seen this ask each week and scrolled past. I get it. This is free, and money is tight. But I’m hoping a few of you will take a moment today to support this newsletter, which depends wholly on voluntary contributions. The tip jar has been very low on new subscriptions lately, and it would make my day if a few folks would pledge $6 a month or $60 a year to support my daily efforts! Thanks for listening and considering!

Subscribe now

My heart melted watching this determined doggo.

Image.heic

Speaking of skills, this balancing act is impressive.

Image.heic

I loved this comment. Very of the moment.

IMG_3099.jpeg

This three-Doberman family is so fun to follow.

Image.heic

You don’t need three Dobermans to have great security.

Image.heic

On to the kitties. Talk about flower power!

Image.heic

I didn’t know cats sometimes jump like bunnies in a field.

Image.heic

I also had no idea mountain goats acted this way. Dude, you’re gonna get canceled.

Image.heic

It’s spooky season, so I present to you a terrifying yet cute rabbit.

Image.heic

The response to this post is amazing.

Image.heic
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I watched just one of these clips and now I’m hooked.

IMG_3052.jpeg

Here’s another. Aaaaaaah!

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More British humor! This guy is so good on the fly.

Image.heic

One more classic from Michael McIntyre. Don’t skip this one!

Image.heic

Another tribute to our lost legends, Whitney and Dolly.

Image.heic

And one for just Dolly:

Image.heic

DJs hear the world differently.

Image.heic

To close things out, a dad-joke gag of sorts. I love the cross-accent humor!

Image.heic

Have a great weekend!

Jay

10:00 PM

Pluralistic: Israeli ad-tech company was a delivery system for "mercenary spyware" (17 Oct 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


A lonely country road with a large roadside billboard. Thrusting out of the billboard is a punching fist with bloody, spiked brass knuckles; it is surrounded by scabrous craters. The sky is a psychedelic roil of red-brown clouds, from behind which loom indistinct, vast tropical flowers.

Israeli ad-tech company was a delivery system for "mercenary spyware" (permalink)

More than half of all internet users have installed an ad-blocker; Doc Searls calls it the largest consumer boycott in history. As large as that boycott is, everyone – yes, everyone – should block every "programmatic" ad, because the entire system is so insecure that failing to do so could result in the total compromise of any or all of your digital devices.

That's the inescapable conclusion of Citizen Lab's latest blockbuster investigative report, "Exposing AdFection," which reveals how the largest ad-tech companies in the world, including Google and Facebook, allowed themselves to be hijacked by a "mercenary spyware" company that used the ad system to locate targeted individuals and serve "zero-click malware" that took over their computers and phones without them having to take any action:

https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/

These tech giants amassed detailed surveillance dossiers on virtually every internet user, and they've assigned each of us unique, persistent identifiers, like a Social Security Number for spying. These companies also allow advertisers – or anyone pretending to be an advertiser – to serve blobs of code (which is all an ad is) to anyone based on those identifiers.

This allowed an Israeli spyware company called Discover-Tech (which masquerades as an ad-tech company) to sell totalitarian governments and sleazy corporate mercenaries the ability to pluck individual internet users out of the billions who log in every day and then serve "malicious ads" (that is, blobs of arbitrary code) to those targeted users. These malicious ads contained "no-click, zero-day" attacks, which meant that they exploited previously unknown vulnerabilities to take over devices without any user interaction. The mere act of loading a web-page or opening an app that relied on one of these gigantic ad-tech companies to serve ads was enough to compromise your device. No clicks needed, and no warning.

Among the targets of this attack campaign were the computers of workers at Al Jazeera. They were attacked with malware from the mercenary spyware company Candiru (which now calls itself "Integrity Labs" because irony is not dead). Beyond Candiru, Discover-Tech also facilitates attacks by numerous criminal mercenary spyware companies, serving ads on hundreds of thousands of sites and apps.

Discover-Tech was "certified" as a safe supplier by Google, Yandex, Microsoft, Beeswax (a division of Comcast) and IAB, the ad-tech industry's leading professional association. Ironically, Discover-Tech even attacked users by serving them malicious GDPR notices that appeared to let users opt out of commercial surveillance.

Because Discover-Tech was certified by all these industry bodies and firms, it had access to more than four billion ad-auctions, meaning that on billions of occasions, it was able to collect the identities of users loading apps and visiting websites, check them against the list of targets, and attack any victims it discovered through this dragnet.

Discover-Tech is an Israeli company with ties to other Israeli spyware and hacking companies, including through its board, whose members included Eric Banoun ("One of the pioneers of offensive cyber in Israel" –Haaretz). They have overlaps, relationships and affiliations with a rogue's gallery of Israeli companies, including the notorious NSO Group, who routinely sell cyber-weapons to the world's worst governments and whose products have been used to attack journalists, embassy workers, and activists.

The whole incident highlights the monumental insecurity of the ad-tech industry, whose indiscriminate and voracious surveillance and manifestly insufficient vetting and security auditing now expose every internet user in the world to terrifying targeted attacks. These companies – including Google, a thrice-convicted monopolist whose surveillance tendrils are wrapped around the whole world – claim that they operate their networks with prudence and oversight. But the proof is in the pudding: for years, they've played host to a murderer's row of cyber-mercenaries who used their infrastructure to attack journalists and others.

The only way to avoid this is to block ads. This is easy enough to do in a browser (which is why the majority of internet users have installed an ad-blocker in their browsers), but it's illegal to reverse-engineer and modify an app so you can block the ads in it:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/21/dickovers/#block-element

Many websites run anti-ad-block scripts that push out nagging, guilt-tripping notices that call you a thief and a cheapskate for blocking ads. Ignore those notices: if a website is running "programmatic" ads that allow arbitrary third parties to spy on billions of people and target individuals for malicious device takeovers, they are charging too high a price to see their content.

Some sites go further: their notices demand that you either turn off your ad-blocker or pay for a subscription. This "pay or okay" scheme is illegal in Europe, California and other territories with strong privacy laws, and they are morally bankrupt besides. Privacy shouldn't be a luxury item and everyone deserves to be secure from cyber-attacks:

https://noyb.eu/en/noybs-pay-or-okay-report-how-companies-make-you-pay-privacy

This report also provides the most comprehensive rebuttal to a dangerous idea that refuses to die: that we should improve competition in the ad-tech sector by assigning every internet user a mandatory, government-issued advertising ID to "democratize" ad-targeting and followup (which the sector calls "attribution"):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Despite all this, none of it is an indictment of ads per se. The problem here isn't advertising, it's surveillance. The ad-tech sector has convinced advertisers that targeting ads to users rather than content will massively improve ad performance. The evidence for this is very poor: targeted ads improve clickthrough rates by less than 5% (relative to content-based ads that relate to the substance of the page you're looking at), and they're incredibly expensive (and very dangerous!) to serve.

On top of all that, surveillance-based ads shift power away from publishers (who know more about the materials they publish than any ad-tech company ever will) to spying ad-tech companies (who can spy on users in ways that no publisher could ever match). Whatever minor additional revenues surveillance advertising can wring out of the market are totally swamped by the cost of the ad-tech sector's own operations, which the ad-tech sector makes up for by grossly underinvesting in security and by colluding to cheat publishers and advertisers, charging more for ads and paying less to the websites that run them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

If we want to improve competition in advertising services, the answer isn't to facilitate spying (which also allows the world's scummiest cyber-mercenaries to stage and serve targeted attacks). We should ban surveillance advertising altogether, restoring context-based ads to their role as the way that publishers make an honest living without selling out their audiences:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/31/context-ads/#class-formation

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Linux on a Big Mouth Billy Bass https://web.archive.org/web/20010927153043/http://bigmouth.here-n-there.com/

#20yrsago No-Fly lists even stupider than suspected https://web.archive.org/web/20061019002553/http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fstories%2F2006%2F10%2F05%2F60minutes%2Fmain2066624.shtml

#20yrsago Canadian MP booted for his blog https://web.archive.org/web/20061026153747/http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/18/turner-caucus.html

#20yrsago Recording industry shuts out Brazilian legal scholars https://web.archive.org/web/20061103225020/http://www.a2kbrasil.org.br/ENG/SIGN-A-PETITION-FOR-AMENDING-THE

#20yrsago How pickpockets work https://web.archive.org/web/20070110023812/http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2006/11/mystory.html

#15yrsago Why are more people opting for legal name-changes than ever before? https://web.archive.org/web/20111020163908/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15333140

#15yrsago Advice to the 1% from Lemony Snicket https://occupywriters.com/works/by-lemony-snicket/

#15yrsago Proposed Australian law makes it an offense to insult Gaming Minister Michael O’Brien https://web.archive.org/web/20120507161803/http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/surely-this-is-a-joke/story-fn7x8me2-1226167552466

#15yrsago Aloha From Hell: Sandman Slim goes back to Hell and kicks more ass https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/18/aloha-from-hell-sandman-slim-goes-back-to-hell-and-kicks-more-ass/

#10yrsago California DMV thinks “INFOS3C” is a dirty word https://www.techdirt.com/2016/10/17/california-dmv-rejects-1nfos3c-vanity-plate-because-sexual-connotation/

#10yrsago Howard Stern won’t release Trump tapes https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/howard-stern-on-replaying-his-donald-trump-interviews-it-would-be-a-betrayal-7542079/

#10yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson says Elon Musk’s Mars plan is a “1920s science-fiction cliché” https://web.archive.org/web/20161018043554/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-17/why-elon-musk-s-mars-vision-needs-some-real-imagination

#10yrsago UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal says GHCQ illegally spied for 17 years https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13305270/uk-illegal-surveillance-gchq-investigatory-powers-tribunal

#10yrsago Project Include cuts off Y Combinator because Peter Thiel is a part-time investor there https://web.archive.org/web/20161019043240/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/horrified-by-trump-silicon-valley-leaders-debate-cutting-ties-to-peter-thiel

#10yrsago Islamophobic terrorist cell planned a “bloodbath” in Kansas, wanted to kill Muslim babies https://web.archive.org/web/20161018144035/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/15/it-will-be-a-bloodbath-inside-the-kansas-militia-plot-to-ignite-a-religious-war/?utm_term=.a9d769256cf6

#10yrsago Everything Belongs to the Future: a tale of pharmadystopian, immortal gerontocrats https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/18/everything-belongs-to-the-future-a-tale-of-pharmadystopian-immortal-gerontocrats/

#10yrsago UK government proposes issuing Britons with unique porn-viewing ID numbers https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/a-database-of-the-uks-porn-habits-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/

#10yrsago Donald Trump’s mail-servers are running Windows 2003 https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#core

#5yrsago Copyfraudster censors investigation of implausible covid gadget https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#copyfraud

#5yrsago Corporatism made John Deere ripe for a strike https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/18/labor-shortage-discourse-time/#deere-dash

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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Recent appearances (permalink)


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Latest books (permalink)


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Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 563 (26602 total).

  • "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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03:00 PM

01:00 PM

MLB Plans To Play Stupid Games With Its Website Again In Upcoming Lockout [Techdirt]

Back in the much simpler times of 2021, we wrote about some of the games Major League Baseball decided to play as part of a brief owner’s lockout of players while both sides negotiated a collective bargaining agreement. This included essentially scrubbing the MLB website of all pictures of current players, stories about current players, and other references to current players other than their names, current and career stats, and the teams they played for. The league claimed that this was all to comply with federal labor laws, but nobody seemed to think that made much sense. Instead, this looked like an attempt to punish members of the MLBPA by taking them out of the spotlight as much as possible. That ultimately backfired, with MLB players changing their social media profiles to the blank silhouette that appeared on MLB.com while they made fun of the entire effort. It all made the league look very petty and very stupid.

And now, with yet another lockout looming as MLB owners attempt to incorporate a salary cap on teams despite record team valuations, the league has sent a memo to teams to say they plan to do it all over again, and more.

In addition to instructing teams on what they are allowed to speak with players about, as well as what conduct they are allowed to engage in if they attend the weddings of players (yes, seriously), the website will once again be transformed into a useless landing page filled with all the things the public doesn’t care about when it comes to baseball.

Additionally, the league’s website will once again remove videos and player images during a lockout, per The Athletic. That includes altering articles and headlines.

“Player images (including from their profile pages) and videos would be removed, and player names and pictures would be removed from article headlines.”

There will almost certainly be a lockout, which means this is likely to go into practice once again, unless the league reverses course. Which it absolutely should. This petty nonsense is not a needle-mover for public sentiment, which is half the game in a labor dispute in professional sports. The league is also on very shaky footing arguing they need a salary cap for competitive balance, given the last four teams in the playoffs that are currently going includes three teams that are small-salary teams compared with the rest of the league.

This is purely about MLB owners attempting to claw back money from the players who are actually performing on the field through artificial limits on spending. Spending that, by the by, is currently being done by those same owners who say they need to limit spending.

None of it makes much sense in the macro. And, for our purposes, it’s worth pointing out that trying to strong-arm the players’ union by playing petty games with the league website is pointless and self-defeating.

10:00 AM

Something Else To Look Forward To: AI Worms [Techdirt]

Back in the early days of the Internet – 1988 to be precise – the self-replicating computer program known as the Morris worm spread across the network and shut down thousands of online VAX and Sun computers. It was a good example of software not going rogue, but doing exactly what its creator had intended it to do without understanding the consequences. As Wikipedia explains:

By instructing the worm to replicate itself regardless of a computer’s reported infection status, Morris transformed the worm from a potentially harmless intellectual and computing exercise into a viral denial-of-service attack.

Since that early botched experiment, intentionally malicious worms have been written to create botnets that can launch DDoS attacks, for example to overwhelm systems punitively, or for the purpose of blackmail. Examples include Mirai and the later Aisuru-Kimwolf. These worms targeted specific kinds of Internet-connected hardware. But the arrival of AI agents that can carry out actions autonomously brings with it a new threat: AI worms potentially able to seek out, hack into, and infect any device that is online. Researchers at Anthropic have been studying this possibility:

small AI models may be months away from being capable enough to self-replicate on commercial internet-of-things (IoT) devices, like smart ovens and off-brand Android TV boxes….Unlike non-AI malware, [such a replicator] could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own. 

Previous work has shown that AI models can carry out this kind of attack on more powerful systems:

artificial intelligence (AI) agents enable a fundamentally new threat: a worm that generates tailored attack strategies to each target it encounters. The worm parasitically uses compromised machines to run open-weight large language models (LLMs) to sustain its reasoning, or extend its reach for further attacks. Deployed on a network of machines spanning Linux, Windows, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices, the worm propagated by exploiting common, real-world corporate network vulnerabilities.

The Anthropic researchers explored whether an AI worm could run a capable model in a distributed fashion across low-power IoT devices, as “shards”:

A model that’s too large to fit on one device can be split into pieces, or shards, that run on separate machines that communicate with each other to collectively run the model. Machines that could run a significant model shard for a <30B model [that is, an LLM that contains fewer than 30 billion parameters] include smart fridges, smart ovens, automatic vacuum cleaners, and lawnmowers. A growing number of home and business devices, such as security cameras and video-conferencing units now ship with small built-in AI chips, designed to run AI models on the device itself.

A 26B model running across 15 off-brand Android TV boxes, costing around $55 each, created manually by the researchers as a demo system, showed that IoT devices could indeed run quite capable models as shards, albeit slowly – at 0.39 tokens per second. Building on that result, the research project sought to answer two questions:

First, can small models get a model running on unfamiliar hardware? And second, can they do the whole cycle (find an uninfected device, copy themselves over, start running there, and repeat) all together in a single run?

The answer to both is “yes” – details in the Anthropic paper. The good news is that the process is very slow, typically taking one or two days to replicate. As the researchers put it: “As an analogy, imagine the replicator as a slime mold or a swarm of fruit flies, which replicate over days.” However, they also caution that things will speed up as IoT hardware becomes more powerful, and LLMs more compact. They write in conclusion:

As a prediction that goes beyond our experiments, we expect a future awash with agents running on all types of hardware, including some that aren’t under human control. While it’s true that IoT devices have been vulnerable for a long time, lightweight agents may be much more willing than human attackers to put in the effort to compromise large fractions of the world’s IoT compute. The rise of slow replicators would also be a bellwether for more aggressive, faster ones that can breach more hardened machines or be effective API key thieves. We should aim to harden our systems to make it difficult for such replicators to spread, but also prepare to deal with a world where they are here to stay.

These replicators will not be an example of AI agents “going rogue”, but of humans intentionally exploiting new capabilities for malicious purposes – or perhaps simply releasing badly written software, just like the Morris worm all those years ago.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky.

The Best Is Yet To Come! [The Status Kuo]

Images courtesy of MS NOW

On Thursday, Trump donor Eric Deters sued Kimberly Guilfoyle. Until December 2024, Guilfoyle was Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée. And until Tuesday, she was the Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to Greece—something of a consolation prize for getting dumped. Per Newsweek, the complaint, filed in Kenton Circuit Court in Kentucky, names Guilfoyle and two of her attorneys as defendants. It accuses them of defamation and false-light invasion of privacy and adds a breach-of-contract claim against Guilfoyle.

Deters bases his defamation claim on Guilfoyle’s response when The Wall Street Journal put her on blast. According to the complaint, a Journal reporter told Deters that Guilfoyle and her lawyers had dismissed their text messages as “fake” and branded him a blackmailer. Deters writes, “The texts are not fake. I have never been accused of or charged with blackmail.” The breach-of-contract claim alleges Guilfoyle violated an agreement to help former patients of Abubakar Atiq Durrani, a fugitive spine surgeon Deters has spent years trying to get extradited from Pakistan.

Weird, but OK.

Deters, quite a character himself, announced the filing in a Facebook video, holding up the complaint. Riffing on her Greece posting, he likened Guilfoyle to Apate, the Greek goddess of deceit, and declared his lawsuit “might bring down the entire Trump administration.” He promised to play a 16-minute phone recording by the end of Friday, which he said would be devastating to Guilfoyle. She is rumored to have kept a “Burn Book” that has Trump allies worried.

Before we jump in, a note of caution: Take everything Deters says with a big red hatful of salt. The die-hard Trump supporter has not substantiated his claims about the recording, and his disciplinary history in Kentucky and Ohio invites skepticism. That said, his feud with the now-ousted Guilfoyle makes for great Schadenfriday viewing.

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The texts at the heart of the case date to July 3, 2025, six days before her Senate confirmation hearing, when Guilfoyle allegedly asked Deters for $100,000. She wanted him to wire it directly to her American Express account, assuring him “it won’t show up anywhere.” She followed up with a PDF of payment instructions and a prayer-hands emoji.

🙏

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she also wrote.

Deters already had a long-running arrangement with Guilfoyle. By his account, he had paid her about $300,000 over several years to speak at Freedom Fest, an anti–COVID-mandate event he launched in Kentucky. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Democrats mocked the festival online when this year’s edition was canceled after Deters, by his count, sold just six of 100 VIP tickets. In September, Deters said that he was “never ever, ever, ever ever doing this event again.”

🙏

Deters described his relationship with Guilfoyle as a “quid pro quo.” Judging by the quo he wanted for his quid, these two were meant for headlines. His wish list included:

  • getting a summary he had prepared in front of then-Attorney General Pam Bondi;

  • getting a meeting with then-IRS Commissioner Billy Long about a tax issue; and

  • getting booked on Tucker Carlson’s show.

He also offered her $1 million if she helped secure Durrani’s extradition, payable after the spine-surgery litigation settled.

My favorite quo: He wanted her to send Kid Rock some song lyrics he’d written. As someone who has written a Broadway show and often receives unsolicited lyrics, I feel a little sympathy for Kid Rock here.

Guilfoyle, he told PBS, had promised to be his “ride or die” inside the regime. For readers unfamiliar with hip-hop, “ride or die” gained currency in the 1990s when B.G. and Jay-Z each released songs called “Ride or Die,” the Broadway equivalent of The Wild Party. This part I had to look up: A “ride or die” can describe a woman who stands by a man living a dangerous life, even at the risk of death—think Bonnie and Clyde. By the 2010s, white people who viewed themselves as gangsta had ruined it through overuse.

By late June 2025, Deters was losing patience with Guilfoyle. He sent her a memo complaining that she had not delivered. “I am not naive or a sucker. I need results. No results. No need for me to pay,” he wrote.

Quid pro quo, indeed.

Guilfoyle answered with a copy of a letter congratulating IRS Commissioner Long on his confirmation and asking him to look into Deters’ tax matter.

Guilfoyle, the Bonnie to his Clyde, wanted Deters to stop putting things in writing. In a late-June text, she warned him that doing so was dangerous and urged him to call her on Signal. That’s right: She put her request to stop putting things in writing in writing. In another message, read on air by PBS’s Amna Nawaz, she wrote, “What a nightmare. You’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship. Stop writing.”

Props to her for getting that one spot on.

Deters had a practical problem with that advice. “She wants me to use Signal. I didn’t know what Signal was,” he told CBS News. A question for Deters: How are you going to work with a grifter if you don’t know how to hide the evidence?

Deters never sent the money. A cash-flow problem apparently spared him. He told CBS News he didn’t have $100,000 to spare, “or I actually would have been a dumbass enough to do it.” In other words, Guilfoyle had picked a convenient mark with an inconvenient bank balance.

He told her instead that paying would cost him his marriage.

Fifteen months later, Deters handed reporters a 292-page file. It held their texts, his grievances against Trump world figures, photos of himself with assorted Trumps and an excerpt from his book.

What, no Kid Rock lyrics?

🙏

A modern Greek tragedy

The Journal published the texts about Guilfoyle’s Amex bill while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was visiting Athens. (Well played, WSJ.) Guilfoyle was at Rubio’s side during official meetings, but he was in no mood to entertain the story. At the foot of his plane, with Guilfoyle looking on, he lectured reporters about trusting their sources. “It’s not the gospel. It’s not the gospel for me. That’s not the way we do things,” he said.

Vice President JD Vance was asked whether a U.S. ambassador seeking payment of her debts in exchange for access was a problem. He managed a hedge worthy of Speaker Mike Johnson. “Obviously I don’t love that, but I, you know, I don’t know exactly who you’re talking about,” he said, likely knowing exactly whom they meant. Vance also urged patience, saying “we don’t try people in the court of public opinion”—unless they’re Haitians or Somalis, apparently. Meanwhile, according to CBS sources, White House officials were being told the texts were authentic.

Trump started out sympathetic. Asked about the reports on Friday, he said, “I just heard a little bit about it. I don’t know too much, but she was always very nice.” By Monday, his tone had darkened. Asked whether he was considering firing Guilfoyle, Trump replied, “Well, we’re looking at it. We’re not happy.”

On Tuesday morning, new press secretary Katie Zacharia (I’m copyrighting my moniker, Katie Sack-a-lies) took the podium for her first official briefing. “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” she announced. “She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.” About two hours later, Guilfoyle posted her resignation. Fun fact: Hours before the announcement, she had posted birthday wishes to Lara Trump set to Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” from the Barbie soundtrack.

Perhaps “What Was I Made For” would have been more appropriate.

Trump offered his own assessment later that morning. “She went to Greece. She was doing a good job, but we didn’t like what we were reading,” he said. He also distanced himself from Guilfoyle. “She wasn’t a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago,” he told reporters. Oof.

Guilfoyle went out swinging. “These allegations are false, and I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity,” she wrote, as if she had any by this point. Her lawyers, now her co-defendants, say that Deters owed her “approximately $150,000 for speeches and consulting work she performed for him long before she was nominated to serve as Ambassador.” Deters says he had already paid her $300,000 and never owed her anything.

This “bulldog” don’t hunt

Deters bills himself as “The Bulldog”—a personally painful moniker because it was also my nickname as an aggressive litigator back in the day. Deters is a former Kentucky lawyer and businessman who once co-owned the regional chain with the snappy name Snappy Tomato Pizza. He has run unsuccessfully for Kentucky governor and for Rep. Thomas Massie’s House seat. In 2021, per CBS News, the Ohio Supreme Court fined him $6,500 for the unauthorized practice of law.

Maybe he and the soon-to-be-out press secretary can commiserate.

His disciplinary history is worthy of Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn. Per The Hill, the Kentucky Supreme Court repeatedly suspended him for false statements in court and frivolous claims. In 2021, the court refused to restore his license and described his practice as anarchy. The opinion added, “Deters’ lack of self-awareness is utterly amazing.” Deters disputes that account. “I’m a retired lawyer because I got tired of the lawyer game,” he told PBS.

For years, Deters has campaigned for the extradition of Durrani, an orthopedic spine surgeon accused of billing Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers millions of dollars for unnecessary and potentially harmful spinal surgeries. He fled to Pakistan while awaiting trial on health care fraud charges.

Deters says he represents hundreds of the surgeon’s former patients, though how he will do this without a law license is unclear.

Maybe in China?

How many could fall alongside Apate?

Deters has been candid about why he went public. He told CBS he emailed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Don Jr. and Guilfoyle with a deadline: “You got until 5 o’clock on Monday to help me out with the Durrani victims.” When nobody responded (and really, why would they?) he took his file to the press. His motive, he told PBS, “is revenge, for lack of a better word.”

Deters had dangled money before. In one message reviewed by CBS, he pitched Don Jr.’s circle on how “lots of money could be made for a little money in this Durrani matter.” Perhaps that carrot was a bit too orange, even for the Trumps and their circle of grifters.

Deters telegraphed his lawsuit against Guilfoyle and her attorneys on Monday. “I’m going to be suing those lawyers, that law firm, and Kimberly Guilfoyle. It’s going to be fun,” he said on CNN. The next day, on the ironically named NewsNation, he laid out his terms. “I made this demand: extradition and investigation, or I am going to not only sue Kimberly Guilfoyle, I am never going to shut up,” he said.

Deters said the litigation will let him question Guilfoyle under oath. “I’m a tough hombre,” he told CBS. “I’m going to get to take Kimberly Guilfoyle’s deposition.” He also says he intends to subpoena records from the Trump regime.

Getting those records may prove trickier than demanding them. On Wednesday, Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, renewed his request for records, including Guilfoyle’s finances and her communications with top Trump officials such as FBI Director Kash Patel and former IRS Commissioner Billy Long. The American public is entitled to know just how far Guilfoyle’s “quo” reached on Deters’s behalf.

Garcia set an Oct. 22 deadline for Guilfoyle to respond. She may simply ignore it. At least until Garcia can wield the gavel and subpoena power—if Democrats take back the House in these ride-or-die midterms.

🙏

09:00 AM

Kanji of the Day: 団 [Kanji of the Day]

団

✍6

小5

group, association

ダン　トン

かたまり　まる.い

団体   (だんたい)   —   group
球団   (きゅうだん)   —   baseball team
記者団   (きしゃだん)   —   press group
集団   (しゅうだん)   —   group
入団   (にゅうだん)   —   joining (a group, team, etc.)
布団   (ふとん)   —   futon
応援団   (おうえんだん)   —   cheering group
政治団体   (せいじだんたい)   —   political organization
選手団   (せんしゅだん)   —   team (of players, athletes)
市民団体   (しみんだんたい)   —   citizen's group

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 鼓 [Kanji of the Day]

鼓

✍13

中学

drum, beat, rouse, muster

コ

つづみ

太鼓   (たいこ)   —   drum
舌鼓   (したつづみ)   —   smacking one's lips (over food)
鼓舞   (こぶ)   —   encouragement
和太鼓   (わたいこ)   —   Japanese drum
太鼓判   (たいこばん)   —   large seal
太鼓判を押す   (たいこばんをおす)   —   to give the stamp of approval
鼓動   (こどう)   —   beat
鼓膜   (こまく)   —   eardrum
鼓笛隊   (こてきたい)   —   drum and fife band
大太鼓   (おおだいこ)   —   large drum

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

08:00 AM

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: No Good Feed Goes Unpunished [Techdirt]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on Patreon.

In this week’s episode, Mike is joined by Mike McCue, founder and CEO of Flipboard, and a long term Silicon Valley exec and entrepreneur. Together, they discuss:

And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters, they cover:

Our fun links this week include Steve Job’s prescient 1983 speech and TinyLittleOffice which is an office suite where documents are stored in the URL themselves.

Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and Bluesky for video clips from the episode!

If you’re already a Patreon supporter, you can get the extended episode on Patreon.

05:00 AM

11 Or 13 Justices Start An Arms Race. 100 Justices Might Actually End It. [Techdirt]

For years, the idea of expanding the Supreme Court has been dismissed as a fantasy among “serious” thinkers. However, with it becoming ever more clear that the Supreme Court has gone completely off the rails and is now a purely partisan entity, rather than one doing neutral adjudications, more people are open to the idea of “fixing” or “reforming” the court in some form or another. Plenty of reforms are regularly suggested, from term limits to strict ethics and abstention rules. But one that gets the most attention is expanding the court.

This one is also the most controversial. A new Marquette poll found the public evenly split, 50-50, on expanding the court. That’s way behind the 79% who support term limits, but it’s hardly a fringe position.

Law professor Steve Vladeck, whose work we regularly discuss and cite, recently posted what he called “hard questions about court expansion,” which I think cover the key criticisms most people make about expanding the court. As regular Techdirt readers know, I advocate for expanding the Court to 100 Justices, with cases being heard by random panels of nine, with the possibility for some sort of larger “en banc” review as well.

Part of this also has to involve a more balanced system for bringing the number of Justices up to 100 without it being initially overweighted with ideologically biased Justices to one side. The most obvious initial system is to elevate a bunch of existing appeals court judges (currently there are 179 such seats), but doing so in a manner that requires some form of bipartisan consensus (at least one Senator from each party?) to agree to the elevation. Yes, such a system risks deadlock, but if there’s broad agreement that the process won’t tilt the Court toward either side, there’s at least a path to making it work. We have seen something kind of like this work with the FTC and the FCC and their bipartisan commissioners — at least until Donald Trump blew that up and basically fired all Democratic Commissioners (minus the one still hanging on at the FCC, because she’s needed under the law to allow the FCC to operate). And, yes, this ideologically captured Supreme Court blessed Trump doing so, but that’s all the more reason to set up a stronger system to ensure a Supreme Court that can’t become ideologically captured.

This can easily be combined with a term limit structure, but I’m not convinced term limits make that big a difference under my plan, other than changing the political calculus of when to retire. And with 100 Justices, that calculus matters a lot less, because no single retirement can swing the Court.

I think this type of expansion deals with nearly all of the “negatives” people warn about when it comes to expanding the Supreme Court. Let me explain why, and then see how it holds up against Vladeck’s “hard questions.”

  1. By expanding to 100 Justices you massively dilute the power and importance of any single Justice. So much of the issue now is that each Justice has so much influence and power that every single one of them matters a massive amount. Each Justice individually has a strong likelihood of changing the way fundamental parts of America work, with effectively no true recourse. Expanding the pool to 100 Justices means that none are nearly as important.
  2. Expanding to 100 Justices, rather than the much more conservative suggestions of 11, 13, or even 21, likely defuses one of the first concerns people raise: that each party, whenever it takes control of Congress, will simply expand the Court again in its favor. I agree that that is a very real risk if the expansion is just a few Justices. Then “packing” the Court becomes practical in some form. Leaping from nine to 100, with randomized nine-judge panels makes future packing much more difficult. It’s not impossible, but the much larger pool with the panel selection process makes it way more difficult to consistently bias decisions to the extreme level we see today. A smaller number makes it easier.
  3. Adding an en banc review process creates an additional check on consistent biases. En banc already exists in the appeals courts, and this could follow the Ninth Circuit’s model, where review goes not to the “full” court but to a larger, more randomized panel (the Ninth Circuit isn’t fully randomized, but the Supreme Court could be). Law professor Paul Collins has discussed the potential benefits of having cases handled by three-Justice panels at the Supreme Court with the possibility of alternative panel reversal, and many of his arguments for why that could limit extreme ideological capture would apply to my scenario as well.
  4. If this system were combined with term limits, and a better way to select the Justices that diminishes partisan bias, then it would limit a setup where one party could overwhelm the Court with too many Justices with a strong ideological bent, but rather would push for more Justices who can get support from both parties. I may have my own ideological biases, but any system designed to stock the Court with only Justices who believe in specific ideological beliefs will be seen as illegitimate. But a 100-Justice Supreme Court with an actual mix of Justices and beliefs is much harder to insist is ideologically biased towards either side, making it less a target of ideological capture.
  5. Side benefit: having way more Justices means they can handle way more cases more fairly, increasing access to justice for many parties who are effectively squeezed out of the Supreme Court by the heavy focus on so-called impact litigation, brought by parties seeking to use the Supreme Court as a tool to route around Congress. It might also help deal with Vladeck’s other big issue: the weird recent infatuation of the Court to make consequential decisions on the shadow docket with no reasoning.

I’m sure there are risks. But a massive shift in how the Court itself functions, rather than a small increase designed to swing the ideological balance, has a much better chance of surviving long-term without triggering partisan swings every few years. The goal of the 100-Justice system isn’t to swing the ideological balance. It’s to rethink how the Supreme Court functions to make it way more difficult for it to become ideologically captured in any way. And with such a big change, it also acts as a bit of a shock to the system, getting people to rethink the function of the court, to bring it back to being a true judicial body, rather than a political body.

Now, on to Vladeck’s “hard questions”:

  • How do we avoid touching off a race to the bottom, where each time one party controls the House, Senate, and presidency, it expands the Court to ensure an ideologically and politically sympathetic majority?

I think my explanation above gets at this point directly. Merely expanding the Court by two or four Justices likely does set off just such a “race to the bottom” for each time Congress switches hands. But by massively shifting the setup of the Court, greatly diminishing the importance of any single Justice, we can avoid the value of constant one-upping the previous party in control, and reset the judicial balance.

  • If a race to the bottom is unavoidable, how do we avoid further (and potentially fatal) erosion of public confidence in the Court—which will quite transparently be little more than a lever of power for whichever party last had such a trifecta?

First off, I think with my system, a race to the bottom is absolutely avoidable! And, again, there are other elements in my system that I think should increase public confidence in the Court. It diminishes the risk of ideological capture of the Court, it enables greater effectiveness and throughput of the Court, and includes a safety valve in the en banc system as well.

  • If eroding public confidence in the Court is a feature, and not a bug, how do we insulate against the same erosion of public confidence in lower federal courts?

Again, I think my plan doesn’t erode public confidence at all. If anything, it should rebuild it, by making the institution more resistant to ideological capture. It could also help restore trust in the lower federal courts because the Supreme Court itself should be more effective and able to take on more issues, which gives the lower courts more clarity, as opposed to the vague hand-waving we’ve gotten used to under Chief Justice Roberts.

  • What is the case for why expansion is a better way to achieve the desired reforms than alternatives that would (or, at least, should) avoid many of these forward-looking concerns?

Vladeck has outlined a number of alternative proposals for Supreme Court reform in his own work, and we can address those and some of the other most popular suggestions.

Term limits by themselves seem to do very little to increase public confidence in the Courts. It still allows for ideological capture based on the party in power. Yes, it gets rid of a few very old cranks, but that’s a short term fix if they are just replaced by the next MAGA crank in line. A massive expansion with a push for some level of bipartisan consensus again seems like a much bigger lever towards resetting the Court.

The ethics enforcement system seems like it barely helps at the margins of the most corrupt scenarios, but does little more to help in other ways.

“Jurisdiction-stripping” would block the Court from hearing certain kinds of cases, but I’m not sure how that helps, other than potentially increasing the power of Congress in a way that could further unbalance our three branch system of government.

Vladeck also has suggested systems of increased accountability:

There are many examples, but these would include: (1) expanding the Court’s mandatory docket; (2) establishing an Article III Inspector General; (3) codifying existing standards (as opposed to raising the standards) for emergency relief; (4) increasing public congressional oversight of the Court (including of its budget); and (5) on a more basic level, heightening congressional engagement in the Court’s day-to-day work.

The paper linked above also includes specific docket reform proposals that… are… fine? But I’m not sure any really move the needle on institutional trust.

Finally, to Vladeck’s long-term focus on the shadow docket, I’d be open to a specific reform on that as well, requiring that the shadow docket be explicitly tied to actual emergency situations, designed to focus on keeping the status quo in such an emergency, and only up to the point when a full briefing/hearing process can lead to a full decision on the merits. That alone wouldn’t fix the Court’s reputation problem, but it would be a useful addition.

But, on the whole, part of the argument for switching to the 100-Justice system is the very fact that it’s not an incremental reform, but a rethinking of how the Supreme Court itself works in a way that shocks the system out of the mess it has currently become.

Just like no voting system is perfect, no system for selecting a Supreme Court will be perfect either. But I remain fairly convinced that a 100 Justice Supreme Court would be a big improvement over what we have today, and clearly better than almost all other suggested reforms, including (importantly) the much more narrow plans to increase the number of Justices by two or four, which would set off the very concerns Vladeck outlines in his questions.

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03:00 AM

DOJ Lawyers Starting To Get Hit With Sanctions, But So Far, It’s Barely Even A Wrist Slap [Techdirt]

There’s been plenty of talk by judges about imposing sanctions on ICE and DOJ lawyers who have routinely violated court orders and constitutional rights, and straight up lied in court (or allowed agents and officers to lie in court). But not much has actually been done about this. So far, it’s mostly been threats of future punishment. But if there’s a sign of hope for the future, it’s this, even if “this” is a bit underwhelming. (h/t Kyle Cheney)

Sanctions are coming. Slowly. And almost comically. But it’s better than nothing, if only barely. A federal court in Arizona is finally going to “punish” an ICE lawyer for misconduct. The targeted wrist may barely feel the slap, but here it is, as delivered by federal judge Diane Humetewa in this recent court order [PDF].

The DOJ lawyer being hit with sanctions is Brooks Chupp, the Assistant US Attorney for the District of Arizona. Chupp is a Notre Dame graduate whose LinkedIn profile seems to have suddenly gone missing now that he’s been sanctioned by a federal court. According to his Notre Dame bio, Chupp served as a “research assistant” to Professor David Waddilove. It will surprise no one to know that Prof. Waddilove is a current contributor to The Federalist Society. (It will surprise everyone even less to learn that Waddilove claims to be a “legal historian,” despite apparently being far more focused on securing multiple degrees in “Theology.”)

That’s the background. This is how Chupp fucked up, leading to his being sanctioned by a federal court.

From the record here,the Court has little difficulty concluding that AUSA Chupp’s accusation against Petitioner’s counsel was factually baseless from an objective perspective. No evidence has been provided to support that Petitioner’s counsel “represented to ICE that Petitioner was not presently removable due to his pending motion before the Board of Immigration Appeals.” What evidence has been provided supports, at most, that Petitioner’s counsel informed the “El Paso field office” that Petitioner had an appeal pending with the BIA, but made no representation as to Petitioner’s removability. (Doc. 14-1 at 8). Objectively, there was no factual basis to assert that Petitioner’s counsel had “represented to ICE that Petitioner was not presently removable.”

[…]

This is not, as AUSA Chupp argues, an instance of “weak” evidence; it is an instance of no evidence. (Doc. 26 at 6). While AUSA Chupp may have desired to “preserve an argument based on an inference,” that inference was wholly unreasonable, unsupported by the evidence, and antithetical to the ethical rules that guide attorney conduct.

More simply put, AUSA Chupp lied to the court. Then he attempted to cover up his lies with factually unsupportable statements and inferences — things that are, of course, just more legally acceptable lies.

The court’s not going to put up with this, at least not from Brooks Chupp.

The Court has no difficulty concluding that AUSA Chupp’s accusation was, at the very least, negligent and possibly reckless. On its own this would be insufficient to justify finding a violation of Rule 11 here. Id. However, the Court further finds that the accusation was also frivolous.

[…]

Nor was the accusation here some minor or tangential fact, but was instead presented as a dispositive fact justifying Respondents’ continued detention of Petitioner and carrying with it the implication that Petitioner’s counsel had engaged in potentially criminal behavior. See 18 U.S.C. § 1001. As such, it required Petitioner to expend the effort and resources—in less than 24 hours—to secure a signed Declaration from his former counsel, complete with evidentiary support, and briefing in response. Only then, after that effort had been made, did AUSA Chupp “withdraw” the argument, and even then, only because he “d[id] not have specific records of what Petitioner’s attorney did or did not state.” Given these stakes and, as he himself recognizes, the “special role of AUSAs” (Doc. 26 at 2), the Court concludes—especially in light of how the accusation hardened from “unclear” on March 24 to “likely” on April 1 without any supportive evidence or reasonable investigation in the interim—that the accusation was both negligent and frivolous, and thus “tantamount to bad faith,” and, as such, in violation of Rule 11(b)(3).

So, what does this mean for this DOJ lawyer? Not a lot, unfortunately. I mean, he’ll be viewed as untrustworthy from now on (so expect a resignation or firing in the near future), but Chupp is only being ordered to spend a few hours being told things he already knows, but chose to ignore in hopes of pleasing the bloodthirsty bigots running/ruining the country at the moment.

The Court will therefore order that AUSA Chupp participate in at least one (1) hour each of continuing legal education on a) the special role of United States Attorneys and b) the need for evidentiary support for all factual contentions.

That’s it: two hours of CLE (Continuing Legal Education) that Chupp can likely apply to any outstanding CLE balance he might have racked up as a practicing attorney. As I said earlier, it is better than nothing. But not because it’s something other than nothing. On its own, it’s no deterrent at all. It practically suggests DOJ lawyers engage in lying and cheating because they’ll still have their jobs, their incomes, and their freedom, no matter how much they fuck with the legal system and fuck over people who just want their rights to be respected.

But it does do something, although it will be some time before we see whether or not it will have any effect. It breaks the seal, so to speak. It signals to other judges dealing with similarly slimy DOJ lawyers that sanctions can be brought and enforced. Any judge hesitating to be the first to do these things in their own jurisdictions should draw some courage from this turn of events, especially if the Trump administration decides it’s not worth its time to step in every time one of its lawyers is caught fucking up. Hopefully, there will be more of this in the near future, but only better, faster, and harder.

02:00 AM

12:00 AM

Trump Acquired $5 Million In SpaceX Debt Two Days Before Space Transportation Executive Order [Techdirt]

Our consolidated corporate press doesn’t really make this clear, surprisingly, but the United States is too corrupt to function. There’s simply no shortage of evidence across every arena that matters. Trump’s corruption is utterly historic, yet it’s just endlessly normalized. To the point where most press outlets don’t really even mention Trump’s corruption clearly when discussing policy moves.

But it exists all the same.

Recently, the administration issued yet another executive order; this one purportedly aimed at “expanding U.S. commercial space transportation.” How? Mostly by urging the U.S. government agencies to market U.S. commercial space options. There are also some vague calls for new export controls; as well as a push to make it easier for SpaceX to obtain land.

The goal purports to be to orient the U.S. to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030. But a lot of the order, as is typical for Trump EO’s, just a bunch of words jumbled together to make it sound useful and official:

“The Memorandum directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Commerce to ensure U.S. space transportation market access to promote and enable U.S. space transportation capabilities and standards.”

Primarily the order is about easing regulatory oversight and putting the government at the direct beck and call of top donors like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

The fun part: financial disclosure statements indicate that the president purchased $5 million in SpaceX debt two days before he signed his policy attempting to expand U.S. commercial space transportation (that same day, Trump acquired $25 million in Meta shares).

But worry not! White House spokesperson Davis Ingle insisted to the press that everything was completely on the up and up, and the president has no insight into or control over the financial decisions of “independent managers”:

“Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold,” Ingle continued. “All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest.”

In a functional country, the president divests individual stocks or relies on blind trusts or diversified funds to avoid potential conflicts of interests. The Trump administration, by contrast, is just one largely-unchecked financial conflict of interest.

Last week Trump awarded Musk — who has spent $366 million to try and ensure Republicans maintain control during the midterms — the National Medal of Science at the White House’s “Science: A New Golden Age” summit.

The corruption is unsubtle, but the vast majority of U.S. corporate “tech and business journalism” fails to clearly mention that Musk effectively purchased an authoritarian government, had that government butcher all meaningful regulatory inquiries into his multiple legal, environmental, and labor violations, and generally made billions off of regulatory capture under the cover of space innovation.

It’s just somehow not really deemed useful context for the reader.

Friday 2026-10-16

09:00 PM

A good worker [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

The truth is, I’m not a good worker. I’ve had very few traditional jobs, and my performance on typical tasks was poor.

Work the exact hours, do precisely what’s asked, don’t ask questions and focus on what the boss wants.

We modeled ‘good worker’ behavior in school. “Will this be on the test?” was the key question for 100 years. Do what the teacher asks for, and don’t overthink it.

The indoctrination of compliance came from factory owners. It’s easier to run an industrial operation when you can treat your workers as interchangeable cogs, not individuals.

We took that idea to schools, to communities, and even to how some engaged in spirituality.

The good worker trope falls apart when the world changes fast. It becomes a hindrance when job security wavers. And it doesn’t really pay off when AI and the atomization of work mean that most of us are the boss now, even if we are on a payroll.

It’s better to be a good leader, a resilient contributor and someone who has the insight and guts to ask why.

      
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