Manual do Usuário

I’ll say it right up front: I’ve written my share of pieces on this topic, which doesn’t invalidate the observation Nicholas Carr made in his newsletter: I hate to be a cynic, but I’m guessing the main reason for the proliferation of these sorts of articles [about using your phone less] is that they’re algorithmic catnip. They’re symptoms of the illness they seek to cure. We’re addicted to reading about our addiction to phones. If the pieces have a therapeutic value, it probably lies less in…

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here every Thursday. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. WikiCity. One more creative way to browse (or fly over) Wikipedia. Every entry is a building in a city made up of the encyclopedia’s 100,000 most-visited entries. For the war-minded among us, there’s an alternate mode where you pilot a plane and can destroy (?) the buildings/entries. This page was intentionally left blank. A print-world convention carried…

Pictures by Hyperallergic. According to the website Hyperallergic, the London-based activist group Everyone Hates Elon pulled off this intervention on a bus-stop ad for Meta’s new pervert smart glasses created in partnership with celebrity Kylie Jenner. Depending on the angle from which someone views the ad, Kylie’s photo transforms into an X-ray of her skull, and the message changes to read “We’re always watching.” Kind of like those “3D images” for kids. Everything about this story is…

AI-drunk companies love to trumpet their millions or billions of users. What they don’t tell you is that most are forced to use such features. Think of the AI overviews that Google Search forces on you, whether you asked for it or not. Samsung seems to have taken this tactic to the next level. According to How-To Geek, the Samsung Health app will delete users’ health data from the company’s cloud — making sync between devices impossible — unless they agree to hand it over for AI training and…

This comment from Bruno, on Bluesky (pt_BR): Instagram launches new tool that drains your entire bank account and kills your family. Here’s how to turn it off 👇 Instagram doesn’t (yet) do that. His joke references the recent news that photos from public Instagram profiles could be used to generate new images on WhatsApp with Meta AI, Meta’s generative AI, which also owns Instagram. The press picked it up and led with “Here’s how to turn it off” in the headlines. (My tip? Deactivate or delete…

LineageOS now has a web installer. The project warns, however, that it doesn’t handle the entire process, and that you’ll still need to follow the instructions on your device’s wiki. Even so, it should make things considerably easier during those major yearly updates. In the same announcement, they report that work on LineageOS 24 — based on Android 17 — is “progressing nicely”.

Scarcity makes us pay more attention to details. A clear reflection of living with limited resources, one of the things that has intrigued me is the tiny battery capacity of my phone. It wasn’t the biggest when it was new and, four years later, reduced to ~82% of its original capacity and more demanded by major annual software updates, it now requires some planning on the days I know I’ll be away from power outlets for long stretches. It’s not quite a problem because I work from home. Still,…

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here every Thursday. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. Favicon Website. This entire website is served from inside the “favicon” — that little icon you see on your browser tab. The author explains how he did it. Are you in the weights? Enter your name and find out what different LLMs (AIs) know (or don’t) about you. Standard Reader. The atproto (Bluesky’s protocol) now supports long-form text (Standard.site).…

Screen compulsion is a widespread problem — anyone who says they don’t have it just hasn’t realized it yet. Is ditching the screen while keeping the tech apparatus connected to the internet a possible way out? I’ve been thinking about this since I put an Apple Watch on my wrist. (I’ve since taken it off after four months.) Apple’s watch fulfilled the prophecy made by Brazilian pop duo Claudinho e Buchecha back in 1998 — and suddenly, I could control my calendar — and many other things — without…

Hot take: if you feel comfortable with Markdown, you don’t need an editor that displays the formatting. Any plain text editor will do. The rest is just fluff.

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here every Thursday. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. handwritten.blog. A handwritten blog. Literally. The guy writes on an e-ink tablet, then does a whole adaptation process before publishing. The downside is that on mobile everything is tiny and barely readable. Wiki Spy. Browse Wikipedia images. Click on one, and the site returns similar results. Another nice web thing from our friend Neal. WordPress Museum.…

Someone on Tildes pointed out a contradiction at the end of my “I almost got hit by a car” story, where I say that, since the incident, I started using the Loop Engage, which reduces 16 dB — far less than the noise cancellation on AirPods Pro 2, estimated at 27 dB. “An 11 dB difference is far greater than it sounds on paper,” I wrote. In that case, the 16 dB reduced by the Loop Engage would also count as a significant reduction. He’s right. If the point of changing my behavior is to stay as…

Meta — the same company that declared in 2021 that by now you’d be living in the “metaverse” — sold a few million camera glasses for pervs and, all of a sudden, the next future envisioned by Mark Zuckerberg’s unhinged mind is one where we all walk around wearing camera glasses powered by “artificial intelligence.” Yes, Silicon Valley CEOs believe the best way to curb screen addiction at 20 cm from your face is to strap screens 20 mm from your eyes. Silicon Valley operates like an insular small…

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here every Thursday. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. Town Square. A script that creates a little town square in your website’s footer. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to see it in action.) Anyone online gets a stick figure and can chat with other people. Made by Brazilian developer Cauê. Firewood Splitting Simulator. A firewood splitting simulator, just because. Tip from Rennan. LinkedIn Badge Generator. An…

In early June, while visiting my parents in a small town in the interior of Brazil, I decided to skip the gym and make a quick run to the pharmacy — the first signs of a migraine had set in, and that’s the best time to take something before it gets worse. The nearest pharmacy is about 1,5 km (a mile) away. I laced up my running shoes to make it worth the trip: a light walk to pick up the medicine. On the way back, I decided to change my route and loop through a small square where, when I used…

Until now, Apple has kept Apple Intelligence — the suite of artificial intelligence tools baked into its operating systems — entirely optional. If you don’t want it, you can simply skip it during a new device setup or when updating the system. That show of respect for its customers may change with iOS/macOS 27. Reports suggest that, at least in the first beta, Apple Intelligence is mandatory: On iOS 26 (left), Apple Intelligence can be turned off. On iOS 27 beta 1, it can’t. “So what’s the…

Google will remove the last traces of Manifest v2, the feature that enabled robust ad-blocking extensions like uBlock Origin, in Chrome versions 150 and 151. Chromium forks — Edge and Opera — have signaled they will follow Google’s lead, though no firm deadlines have been set. Manifest v3-compliant ad blockers work, albeit with limitations. Firefox (and its derivatives) and Safari will continue to support Manifest v2.

The excellent The social network (2010), which dramatized the founding of Facebook, is getting a “companion piece” this October: The social reckoning. This time, it will depict the events surrounding the release of the “Facebook Papers” — internal documents leaked to the press in 2021 by Frances Haugen, a former Meta (then still Facebook) engineer. The first trailer shows Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg, which I think is a strong casting choice: the voice is uncannily close, and Strong in…

At the risk of being among the first victims of artificial intelligence in a potential machine uprising, I keep my interactions with today’s generative AIs (or AI chatbots) strictly transactional. I open the site, ask or request what I need, get the answer, close the site. No names, no pleases, no thank-yous, no small talk. I avoid anthropomorphizing them as much as possible. I treat them for what they are: statistical machines churning out words that make sense, not a new form of sentient life…

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in daily posts. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. How diamonds are made? An interesting story on a beautifully designed website. Tip: hold your finger or cursor over the 3D diamond to move it around. It’s time to talk about my writerdeck. Veronica took an old laptop and transformed it into a disconnected digital typewriter. (If you prefer, there’s a video version too.) Is AI profitable yet? A tracker of…

At the opening of Build 2026, Microsoft lived up to the nature of the event — focused on developers — and announced, among other things, a slew of updates to make Windows 11 more appealing to this audience. The linuxification of Windows is moving forward at full steam, now with native coreutils and container support in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Beyond that, plenty of things involving AI “agents” — the big theme this year — including native support for OpenClaw.

Wipr 2, the Safari ad blocker created by Kaylee Serena (and the one I use), got a new feature that extends its functionality system-wide: Filtr. Developed over the past ten months, it makes use of a new technology introduced in version 26 of Apple’s operating systems, the URL Filter. According to Kaylee, it allows you to “to block network requests system-wide without having access to any network traffic at all, and with more granularity than previous solutions.” She says this is the first app…

During the Brazilian Internet Forum (FIB16), in Belém, Pará, I carried a backpack to the convention center with basic items to spend the day there, do the work I was hired to do, and when I had some free time (which was rare), take a look at this Manual do Usuário. The descriptions follow the order from left to right, top to bottom. Case Logic Huxton Backpack: I like it because it’s discreet and has plenty of compartments. I don’t think it’s waterproof, but I discovered the fabric has some…

I had the opportunity to participate in yet another edition of the Internet Forum in Brazil (FIB16), this time in the Amazon forest region, in Belém, Pará. The event, organized by NIC.br, brings together people from different sectors to debate hot and/or important topics related to the internet in the country. My FIB16, however, was a bit different. Like the previous edition in Salvador, Bahia, I came here hired by NIC.br to host the interview podcast Nós da Internet. I opted to stay for fewer…

I had the opportunity to test Indigo before its launch — on the 12th — a social media app that unifies the timelines of Bluesky and Mastodon. The duo of developers, Aaron Vegh and Ben McCarthy, have experience in the field. They’re also behind Croissant, an older app that lets you post simultaneously to Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. Seen together, it’s as if Indigo were an evolution of Croissant — you can also post to Bluesky and Mastodon at the same time from Indigo. The app itself is…

Released this Wednesday (20th), WordPress 7.0’s headline feature was supposed to be real-time collaboration. But in the final stretch, after beta versions, Matt Mullenweg, the project’s leader, postponed the feature and promoted LLM integration to be the version’s centerpiece instead. (Matt’s leadership was a shitshow, with delays, new demands with unrealistic deadlines, and as always, plenty of finger-pointing. “What’s wrong with WordPress?”, asks the only person with the power to change…

Still thinking about Google I/O… Google presented “AI agents” capable of doing people’s work in countless scenarios, none of them very believable for real people. (Who needs AI to organize a neighborhood block party?) At TechCrunch, Sarah Perez writes a solid critique of this questionable utopia that Google is trying to sell us. On my end, I think we’re living a “Groundhog Day” moment of that Google Now feature from ~2012, which would notify you via push notification that your flight’s gate had…

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in daily posts. Hope you enjoy! More of them in the archive. Singularity (6min31s). The new short film from Blender Studios, from the renowned open-source 3D editor. I thought it was pretty cool. The AI Resist List (in English). A database of initiatives resisting the AI empire. Among the site’s creators is journalist Karen Hao, who is launching her latest book in Brazil, The AI Empire, published by Rocco. Fits on a…

The opening of Google I/O this year (35-minute video recap) showed a Google less shy about transforming the web into raw material for its AIs. Search will become (even more) a souped-up ChatGPT, and also the checkout counter for every online store, and YouTube will use video clips to create answer pages. Notice that in all these announcements, Google/YouTube transforms itself into a curator and interface for web content, without attribution or with minimal credit given. You won’t visit websites…

Editor’s note: Missing the daily links? They became “weekly links.” After a year, keeping up the daily pace started to take its toll. The longer gap between posts brings another advantage: a focus on cool links, leaving aside the news items — which I used to include in the daily posts to add more substance. After all, when I created this section the goal was to share and celebrate the good things that pop up on the web. Let’s get back to basics. *** Taken. This page lists and explains all the…