Cool links

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 over into the digital.

Website Spec. What does a site actually need to have? This repository, built for both humans and AI “agents,” does that work of compiling and justifying. The list is long!

Jim’s TrueType QR Code Font. An actual font (TrueType/OpenType) that renders any word in square brackets as a QR code. I didn’t fully understand it, but it works (point your camera at the example on the page itself) and you can even download the font from the links in the footer.

Pac-Hunt. The classic Pac-Man, but you’re the ghost instead of the “muncher.”

Olle Watch. This company built a circuit board and software platform to turn the classic Casio A158W into a smartwatch. Working around the screen’s limitations is a huge challenge, one they’ve managed to pull off. A third-party video showing the watch with Olle Watch’s “heart” inside.

TinyRetroPad. Miss the good old days of a bare-bones text editor for Windows — one that opens instantly and shows nothing but plain text? This app brings that experience back in an executable of just 2.73 KB.

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.

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 avatar generator with that “Open to Work” LinkedIn badge, but customizable. Made by Gabriel Nunes.

Society for the Advancement of Naked Skydiving. I don’t know what to say.

A Million Times. A clock made of many clocks. Inspired by the artwork “Humans since 1982” by Bjarke Ingels.

moments. It’s like Bear Blog — a simple service for publishing blogs —, but focused on photos. The result is beautiful and a pleasure to browse. Explanation from the creator. Indie and, for now, free.

KomoDo. A todo.txt-based task list app for Linux (KDE/Qt).

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.

Benny Powers. Benny’s site/portfolio is a desktop straight out of the beloved Gnome 2.

Paint.NET at paint.net. After 22 years, the developer of Windows image editor Paint.NET finally secured the matching domain — thanks to the greed of its previous owners.

Rejected Emoji Proposals. Emoji is serious business. For a new one to appear on your phone, it has to clear a committee. This page collects the ones that didn’t make the cut. There are plenty — and some of them are actually great.

Stream Spigot. Generate secret RSS/JSON feeds to read the people you follow on Mastodon and Bluesky, plus specific profiles on X, in your favorite RSS reader app.

eyeball. A line from 0 to 6,500. A number somewhere in that range appears on screen. Your challenge: guess where on the line it falls.

Protecting the Blue Corridors. A gorgeous site mapping the migration routes of different whale species and the main threats they face. The “Flat (Dynamic)” mode displays the data as an interactive timeline.

heerich.js. heerich.js is a minimalist JavaScript engine that constructs 3D voxel compositions and distills them into pristine SVG.

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.

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 spending and revenue for cutting-edge AI companies. It’s a gold rush: the only profitable one is the one selling the shovels and pickaxes (Nvidia).

Placedog. A free stock image library of everyone’s favorite best friend: dogs^{[citation needed]}.

Historic WordPress. Copies of the admin dashboard and default theme from the earliest WordPress versions, including the most beautiful wp-admin of all time (2.5).

Kill Yr Substack. A browser extension that replaces Substack links (including custom domains) with archived copies from Archive.org. For Chrome and Firefox; manual installation.

Markerhighlight.js. A JavaScript library for generating text highlights. Analog-style highlights — yellow marker pen, red circles, that sort of thing.

WhatCable. A free and FOSS application for macOS that identifies USB-C cable specs and displays them in plain English. (Did you know USB-C cables vary widely? It’s more of a non-standardized standard.)

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.

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 floppy. A manifesto for small software (in the sense of: taking up little memory space). The page itself includes a semi-hidden game where you have to click on flying floppy disks. For those under 30, “floppy disks” are the save buttons. Tip from Rafael.

Parallel Cities. Literally which cities are at the same latitude. A shout-out to folks in Pretoria (South Africa) and Windorah, latitude “neighbors” of Curitiba.

Hexagon world map. The map is dynamic and renders in just 10 KB of code.

Weather Replay. A weather forecast history for the whole world since the 1940s, based on data from the Copernicus Observatory of the European Union. (Works in Brazilian cities and any other country too.)

Where Now? A kind of “personal Foursquare,” this app marks the places of interest you’ve visited — and everything stays local. Markings can be manual or automatic. Free, for iOS.

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.

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Taken. This page lists and explains all the data that any website collects from your device the moment you access it.

Night and Day. A world map showing in real time where it is day and where it is night. There are controls to adjust the map in the upper right corner of the page.

Killed by Apple. It’s not just Google that has a killing streak with products and services. (Although Apple’s “lifespan” seems a bit longer on average.)

The Thirty Under Thirty Fraud Watch. A site that tracks and explains every Forbes “30 Under 30” honoree caught committing fraud. The list is long and includes superstars of the grift, such as Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes.

Email.md. A Markdown editor for generating responsive emails. Looks good! One of these days I’ll test it in the Manual newsletter.

Momotaro. A new pomodoro app, but with an adorable visual style. Free, for iOS.

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.

Meta: New AI measures to identify teens. Meta will use AI to scan photos and videos and detect people’s height and bone structure in order to place teenagers in age-appropriate experiences. Meta says this isn’t facial recognition, as if analyzing bone structure were somehow better. The technology is coming to Brazil and EU, starting with Instagram.

iOS 26.5 RC hints at sideloading coming soon to Brazil (pt_BR), iHelp BR. Can’t wait!

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model without consent. Worth noting if storage space is tight on your computer.

Artemis II photo timeline. They took all the official Artemis II photos and cross-referenced them with the mission’s event schedules to generate a timeline.

Artblock. An extension (Chromium and Firefox) that replaces ads with works of art and NASA photos. Brilliant! It’s not available in the extension stores yet, though.

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.

Xbox Mode begins rolling out to players on Windows 11 PCs today. This feature opens the Windows 11 gaming hub (renamed Xbox Mode): a full-screen interface to browse using joysticks.

Robot dogs with tech boss faces roam Berlin art exhibit. That’s awesome.

Bird Radio. A radio station featuring bird songs. Each “station” represents a part of the world. (Too bad the South American ones aren’t working.)

Cursor Camp. Neal Agarwal’s latest project is a camp for mouse cursors, full of Easter eggs and cool details. (Much) better from a computer or device with a mouse.

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.

Linux on PlayStation 5. The ps5-linux project enables the installation of a Linux distribution on the original PlayStation 5 (the physically larger model). The installation isn’t easy. On the other hand, since it isn’t persistent (you need to run the exploit on every reboot), there’s no risk of “bricking” the console.

OpenClaw suffers from waves of AI pull requests. They decided to limit to 10 open PRs per person (or “agent”). The irony of this is delicious.

Fedora Linux 44. The new version of Fedora is out, with many updated packages and, in the main editions, Gnome 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6.

PowerToys 0.99. This update includes two new utilities: “Grab And Move,” for moving and resizing windows without having to grab their edges, and “Power Display,” which displays controls for multiple monitors in the system tray and allows you to create profiles to switch between different settings. For Windows 11, free and FOSS.

Dorso. A macOS app that dims the screen when you hunch over. Monitoring can be done via webcam or compatible AirPods. For USD 4.99 on the App Store or for free by downloading the installer from the repository.

Boss Fight Books. A publishing house, founded in 2013, specializing in documentary-style nonfiction books about classic video games. There’s a market for everything, isn’t there?