An open source, free, cross-platform alternative to AirDrop, LocalSend allows you to send files to any device nearby without a central server in between. Also: end-to-end encryption and no ads or tracking.

Lunatask goes beyond a typical to-do list app and aims to track all parts of your life, from fitness habits to relationships to movies and books. It also serves as a daily journalling tool. Friends of DD enjoy a 30% discount. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

Home Assistant is an open source home automation platform designed to give users full control over their smart home devices without relying on cloud services. It can integrate and automate a wide range of smart home products, including lights, sensors, cameras and thermostats, through a single interface. Being open source, it prioritises privacy and can be self-hosted on devices like a Raspberry Pi.

For those learning English, this site publishes a daily news story in three different versions for different levels of English proficiency. It also highlights and explains the more complicated words that you can add to a word book.

In his dispatch from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, David Roth chronicles how Silicon Valley’s vision of the future – from janky Hyperloops to ‘affectionate intelligence’ companions – reveals the industry’s relentless drive to replace genuine human experiences with sterile, subscription-based alternatives. “The industry’s leading powers say ridiculous things, the people whose job it is to report on the industry repeat them, and everyone downstream is left to reconcile the distance and rationalize the difference between those soaring possibilities and the reliably shabby fact of the thing.”

Many of us have lost the habit of simply hanging out – social time without an agenda – due to busy schedules and tech distractions. Lauren Mazzo explains how spending unstructured time with loved ones is beneficial for our mental health and relationships. “Socializing nearly always revolves around a specific activity, often out of the house, and with an implied start and end time. Plans are Tetris-ed into a packed calendar and planned well in advance, leaving little room for spontaneity. Then, when we inevitably feel worn out or like our social battery’s drained, we retreat inward under the pretense of self-care; according to pop culture, true rest can only happen at home, alone, often in a bubble bath or bed.”

In part due to the rising cost of living, more and more people get together in creative communal living arrangements. I found these examples both insightful and inspiring. Shared meals and responsibilities not only help reduce food waste and costs, but address our loneliness crisis and teach us important lessons on compromise and collaboration. “It’s a way to redefine success in a society in which the conventional idea of ‘making it’ often means living alone or in a small family unit – society’s ‘big bias on individualism’, as Wolf puts it.”

This widely shared piece by Rebecca Shaw captures a shared feeling really well: there’s something darkly comedic about living through an era where some of the most influential figures aren’t just concerning for their actions, but are also, fundamentally, trying way too hard to be popular – making their negative impact on society somehow even more grating to witness. “Whether I am engaging with the news, or with Musk tweeting constantly like a man with no job or friends, or with Zuckerberg sending out weird videos and appearing on Rogan, I am in pain. Not just because I don’t like what they are doing but because they are so incredibly, painfully cringe. I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didn’t expect, and don’t think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be. I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.”