July 2026

Four awful new privacy-eroding features from Meta in a month

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.

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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”.

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Why does WhatsApp drain so much phone battery?

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, sometimes I find myself playing battery babysitter.

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Cool links of the week

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). Platforms like Leaflet, Pckt, and Offprint are compatible, and Standard Reader lets you follow publications from these places. (I still need to dive deeper into Standard.site myself.)

Channel Surfer. YouTube channels presented “live”, as if they were old-school TV channels.

make-look-scanned. A web app that degrades a *.pdf file to make it look like it was scanned. There must be some scenario where this actually comes in handy.

Visionauta. An app developed by Brazilian Jonathan Santos that uses AI to assist blind or visually impaired people with everyday tasks. Available for Android and iOS.

240-MP. An interface for watching videos with the aesthetic of old CRT TVs. Built to run on a Raspberry Pi and compatible with Plex and Jellyfin.