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.

Meta is under investigation in Brazil for blocking ChatGPT and Copilot on WhatsApp (pt_BR), G1.

Holos. Join the fediverse (ActivityPub) using your own phone as a server. FOSS and free.

Regression of Apple icons, @heliographe_studio@mastodon. “If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design.”

WikiFlix. A "streaming" (more like an index) of free movies or those that have fallen into the public domain. There's a lot of good stuff!

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.

End-to-end encryption in iOS RCS? (in French), @TiinoX83/xcancel. Evidence has been found in iOS 26.3 beta 2. It's the missing piece that will make RCS a viable alternative to the best messaging apps on the market.

Are You Dead?: The viral Chinese app for young people living alone, BBC. That’s depressing…

Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena”. The visible changes are a new Start menu and new apps for system information and administration tools. This is a long term support version (until 2029).

Apple Creator Studio. Apple's “Adobe subscription” offer lowers the barrier to entry for the company's professional apps. Even a subscription can be good sometimes.

Firefox 147. Firefox's first update of 2026 focuses on behind-the-scenes improvements, such as WebGPU support on Apple Silicon and standardization of cache and settings directories on Linux (only valid for new profiles or installations). The only visible new feature is automatic PiP when switching from a tab that is playing video.

BTN-1 Macro Deck. A four-key (mechanical!) keypad made especially to be integrated with Home Assistant. Available for USD 35.

CColorPaletter. A beautiful and completely free color palette generator. Press the space bar to generate a new one.

Discos do Brasil (in Portuguese). An excellent catalog of Brazilian music, created by Maria Luiza Kfouri (1954–2023). Tip from Renato.

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.

Apple and Google formalize partnership to use Gemini in the new Siri, @NewsFromGoogle/xcancel. The only good thing to take away from this news is the jab that both companies took at OpenAI.

Bose open-sources its SoundTouch home theater smart speakers ahead of end-of-life, Ars Technica. Instead of turning old products into e-waste, Bose has released the API documentation for its SoundTouch speakers. It should be normal and/or required by law, but here we are — once again — praising a company for doing the bare minimum.

I’ve never used a trackball, but Keychron’s Nape Pro looks like the perfect one, The Verge. An intriguing accessory presented at CES 2026. It can be used under the keyboard, on the sides, or held in your hand. No release date or price yet.

OG Preview Lab. An online tool that offers previews for various online platforms of how links will appear on those cards (OG tags, for those in the know). Great to use before sharing something.

Pi Clock. A clock that displays the time in pi digits. Keys 1–5 change the clock (key 5 activates gamer mode, aka RGB).

enclose.horse. Use all the barriers to prevent the horse from escaping and, at the same time, give it as much space as possible. A new challenge every day, free of charge.

Editor’s note: This week issue arrives a little later and after a mistake that triggered last week’s sent over the newsletter. My apologies for that!

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.

“We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available.” In a moment of euphoria in which even Mozilla — which would have the most to gain from caution around reckless adoption of generative AI — at least one web browser embraces that stance.

The size of Adobe Reader installers over the years. I would never have guessed the Adobe Reader installer is nearly 700 MB. (SumatraPDF’s is ~8.2 MB.)

Mavericks Forever. This person loves macOS 10.9 “Mavericks” so much they decided to modernize Apple’s 2013 OS that was discontinued in 2016. (Don’t try this at home.)

doxx. A Word document (*.docx) viewer for the terminal.

Drawmote. I haven’t tried it, but this site promises you can draw by waving your phone. (I think it only works in Chromium-based browsers.)

MakeACopy. An Android app that scans and transcribes documents (OCR). Private, offline, and open source.

Karousel. A script that turns KDE Plasma into a “scrollable” interface.

dnsperftest. A simple script that tests the speed of popular public DNS servers from your connection.

Gamer Church. I’m not entirely sure whether this is a blog or a video-game directory. The layout is pretty cool. Tip from Juan.

Instapaper integration with Kobo goes live.

Typepad is shutting down. Everything will be deleted on September 30^rd.

SuperTuxKart Evolution promises a “new experience”, Omg! Ubuntu. Backstage disagreements over the most iconic Linux game resulted in a split. (They could’ve settled it with a best-of-three match in STK, right?)

Microsoft Copilot launches on Samsung TVs and monitors. Is this what Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification”?

Koko Analytics 2.0. A WordPress analytics plugin. The new version expands monitoring site-wide, not just for posts and pages.

Essayist. An academic writing editor. For iOS, iPadOS and macOS, about USD 5,99/month.

digitalsolitude. A site that only works when a single person is accessing it.

bookmarks.txt. A concept for keeping URLs (bookmarks) in plain text files.

TiledScreen. If for any reason you want KDE Plasma 6 to look like Windows 8, this theme is all you need.

A presentation app that works on your phone. As long as your phone is an iPhone.

SVG Crop. A web tool that “trims” whitespace around any *.svg file.

EPSON MX-80 Fonts. A font that simulates dot-matrix printers.

In ❤️ with PDA. A site that emulates an old PDA.

The Useless Web. A classic: press the button and go to a random “useless” site.

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.

Revisiting Facebook. If Zuckerberg himself admits that Facebook is much more than a site (or app) for connecting people, since “seeing friends’ status updates” became something from the “OG Facebook,” the question remains: what is Facebook today?

What’s on your phone, João? Every week, I publish the phone’s home screen from a blog reader.

How to remove “stuck” iCloud Tabs in Safari. Things at Apple work great until the day they don’t. A silly example that really bugs me is “stuck” iCloud tabs on Safari — a glitch in Apple’s tab syncing feature that lets me access tabs from one device on others.

Big list of free, non-AI generated stock images.

Flashword. An app to save and review unknown words. Free, for iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS.

Logoipsum. Fake logos you can drop into mockups.

Web materials map. A sort of “mind map” of the elements that make up web pages. Click the yellow items for interactive demos.

Email is easy. Think you know everything about email? Take this quiz. (I got 14 out of 21.)

DigiPaws. Android app with a bunch of tools to cut down on screen time. If the one that blocks only YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels actually works, it might be worth it. (Haven’t tested it.)

Which Year. The challenge: guess the year the photo shown was taken. The closer you are, the more points you get.

HappyCow. A search engine for vegan and vegetarian restaurants. Listings seem to be up to date (at least the ones in my city).

The State of CSS 2025. The annual survey results are out, highlighting trends in web development. (Still haven’t used :has().)

The mathematically optimal way to cut an onion, The Pudding. A neat example of how something ordinary can be looked at in an absurdly complex (and brilliant) way.

The lyrics to the Jaws theme song. Deep.

Helium. A new browser based on ungoogled-chromium. Still experimental and macOS-only, but it promises to be “usable” as a daily driver.

copyparty. A portable, feature-packed file server. “Inverted Linux philosophy: do all the things, and do an okay job.” 😁 (Looks pretty fun!)

Straw.Page. Yet another site builder, this one with a “web 1.0” vibe but adapted for mobile. Free with a premium plan at USD 49/year.

Quoted posts coming to Mastodon. It’s happening.

Mozilla testing web apps in Firefox. If you’re on Firefox 142 for Windows (not from the Microsoft Store), you can try it out. The feature has to be enabled in “Labs” inside browser settings.

corner-shape superellipse() generator. You can do some wild stuff with CSS these days.

domain-check. A command-line app that checks whether domains are available.

Croissant. A new feed reader by David Bushell.

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.

My favorite mouse costs less than USD 10. Who needs a MX Master?

Ductts. A diary for crying and tears. For iOS.

Baseline. A nice theme for Obsidian.

Just Buy Nothing. A fake online store to scratch that shopping itch. According to the creator of the site, “this is either the dumbest idea of all time or something that will actually help people stop giving their money to these corporations that are actively trying to make their sites as addicting as possible while the quality goes down and prices go up…” Tip from Rafael.

Compare Small Form Factor PC Cases. Shows the size and volume of various computers.

“Break glass in case of emergency,” Liquid glass edition. If you enable some accessibility options, macOS 26 “Tahoe” looks like a 1990s OS.

Windows XP-themed Crocs, The Verge. The missing merch from Microsoft’s 50^th anniversary celebrations. As expensive (USD 80) as it is ugly.

Term-Shdw. A small application that creates a “comet effect” for the mouse cursor inside the terminal.

Subtitle Edit. Video subtitle editor. Free, for Windows.

I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display. Through the kiloxp.com site you can interact with the display and there’s a live stream of it changing on YouTube.

Threadbare. “Story-driven, collaborative game where players don’t just explore a world—they co-create it.” Still in development, Linux only.

NextDNS gains feature to bypass age verification, r/nextdns.

“Meta AI, what app do you recommend for private messaging?”

A friendly introduction to SVG. Drawing on web pages with code. Who would have thought?

A partial comparison of window management interactions in iPadOS 18 and 26. Maybe it was harder to discover these gestures in iPadOS 18, but it seems like a better thought-out thing (and better overall) than the version 26 implementation.

F-Droid Search Metrics. Statistics from F-Droid, the Android app store from an ideal world.

Cheat Sheets. Repository of quick references for various technologies. Tip from Alexandre.

Known bug in NetBSD’s sleep command, via @ayke@hachyderm.io. The command can’t handle durations longer than 250 billion years. If necessary, put the command in a loop, with each command limited to about 200 billion years.

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.

Web browsers with AI assistants built-in are coming. Are they the future of browsing the web?

Vibechart. Did OpenAI use ChatGPT to create the charts used on GPT-5 announcement?

Rumicat. A newsletter service “for small audiences.” The free plan supports up to 300 subscribers.

Letter Club. A kind of “email club,” where participants commit to writing about a theme and, on the scheduled day, everyone receives everyone’s writings. As far as I can tell, it’s free.

DSEG Font. A font that simulates those from monochromatic LCD screens, like calculators. Free and open source.

Inter Mental. Possible tech-induced cognitive-behavioral disorders. Don’t take it (too) seriously.

PixiEditor 2.0. New version of the “universal 2D graphics editor.” This video shows the new features and capabilities. For Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Openvibe gets RSS support. For Android and iOS.

Fonts for wireframing, Frontend Masters. I didn’t know fonts like these existed, that look like scribbles (or “doctor’s handwriting”).

If the Moon were only 1 pixel. Beautiful presentation of the Solar System’s scale. Try accessing from a computer/large screen.

Siará+. Free platform from the Ceará government, a Brazilian northeast state, that offers audiovisual pieces by local artists for free.

KittenTTS. An open source and tiny synthetic speech model (TTS, or text-to-speech): it’s less than 25 MB and “works on literally everything,” according to the developers. Demo of available voices. Still in “developer preview.”

Killed by Mozilla. A list of all Mozilla products and services that have been discontinued.

Tiny Awards 2025 opens voting. Runs until September 1^st.

eightyeightthirty. A site that collects links from those 88×31 pixel badges and puts them in a web visualization. (Site is a bit heavy.)

permacomputing. “Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture.”

High quality, low filesize GIFs, Christian Selig. A Bash script to resize and optimize *.gif files.

AirSync. Various “continuity” features between iPhone and Mac, but with Android instead. Still in beta.

Abode. An app for groups of friends that revolves around widgets. iOS only.

Apple: The First 50 Years. American journalist David Pogue tells Apple’s story in this new book. Coming out March 17^th, 2026.

CloudGazing. Draw and see drawings in clouds.

“It must be AI”. Ewerton Assunção, from the hit “I’m going to delete you from my Orkut,” strikes again. (The video was made with AI, as expected.) Song lyrics in Portuguese.

Podcast Details. Enter a podcast feed and see detailed show statistics.

“linux” on DuckDuckGo. DDG’s mascot, a duck, becomes a penguin when you search for “linux.”

Time Flies. “A little adventure
about our limited time in this world.” For PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Windows and macOS.

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.

This option disables Meta AI and increases privacy in WhatsApp conversations.

TrackWeight. An app (FOSS) that turns the MacBook trackpad into a scale.

Moe Counter. The old web 1.0 visitor counters persist.

A medieval king’s daily life. Kind of an ancestor to Instagram’s “morning routine” videos.

elle’s homepage. elle’s website is a room in isometric perspective “decorated” with HTML.

Social media specifications. Always useful to have a page like this handy.

Blip. A new app for transferring files over the internet. Free for non-commercial use.

Tooooools. A handful of crazy and super flexible filters for editing images.

Inside China’s mini PC production: How tiny computers are made (video). Fascinating.

Font comparison and review: Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono, anthesis. Beauty is in the details.

Fruit Ninja Classic+ developer gives up to 2 months free of Apple Arcade.

DuckDuckGo’s new browser. A purely aesthetic update. Looks pretty nice.

VSCO Capture. New camera app from the VSCO social network. iOS only.

Tender. Tinder for the committed: the app only shows photos of your loved one and the only option is to swipe right. For now, iOS only.

LookAway Mirror. LookAway, the nice macOS app that reminds you to take breaks during the day, got an iOS companion that blocks sites and apps when the computer is also locked.

Pebble is called Pebble again. They got the trademark back.

Spiral Getty. A Wikipedia-based visual search tool.

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.

What’s on my phone. I started a series on the Portuguese version of the blog where readers and friends show what they have on their phones. The first one is mine.

Don’t publish your podcast only on Spotify. I’ve been coming across small or personal podcasts that can only be listened to on Spotify. Intrigued by this trend, I created a new podcast on Spotify to find out what’s happening.

The new emojis in Unicode 17.0. They arrive in the second half of the year.

Where’s Firefox going next? You tell us. The Mozilla folks want to hear from Firefox users to define Firefox’s future.

Macrowave. A service for listening to music together. The broadcaster needs an app (available for iOS and macOS). To listen, the website is enough. Developer’s report.

Station: a social network for Gemini. A microblog, Twitter-style, running on the Gemini protocol.

Centaur slider. Just HTML and CSS!

Transfer.zip. Open source service for sending files through the cloud. (Alternative to WeTransfer.)

Lettervoxd. Rare words (~1 in 1 billion) in a corpus of subtitles from 25,000 movies. Developer’s explanation.

Scribe. An alternative, much lighter interface for Medium articles. Just replace medium.com with scribe.rip in the URL of the article you want to read. (Example.)

MeTube. Graphical interface for yt-dlp, a command-line application for downloading videos from YouTube and other platforms. Unfortunately, the installation is a bit annoying (a little less if you know Docker).

Folio. From ex-Mozilla employees involved in the late Pocket, this new app presents itself as “a new kind of read-it-later app.” It looks a lot like Pocket from the good old days.

DOGWALK. A free game made by the Blender folks to explore integration with the Godot language. For Linux, macOS and Windows.

No days off. This guy has been running every day for ten years. Ok, good for him. The cool thing is this website where he compiled the data from this decade of running into beautiful charts.

FFmpeg in plain english. An “AI” that converts natural language descriptions into an FFmpeg command.

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!

Petrichor. New offline music player for macOS. Reminds me of iTunes from the good old days. And it’s open source.

Blanket. A Linux app (Gnome/GTK) that creates sounds and noise. On macOS? Try Blankie.

Abdisa Dev. I have a soft spot for websites that simulate terminals.

Export YouTube subscriptions into RSS. Much easier than adding channels one by one to a feed aggregator.

A history of Mac settings, 1984–2004. Try accessing it on a computer to see (and interact with!) the preference screens from various system versions.

URL to Any. Various tools for manipulating web page content. Free.

Reachy Mini. Hugging Face, an LLM (AI) repository, has put this cute (and open source) robot on pre-order, designed for teaching robotics with artificial intelligence. For USD 449 (wireless) or USD 299 (“lite” version, works tethered to a computer).

CPU-X. Linux alternative to Windows’ CPU-Z, an app that displays information about your computer’s processor, motherboard, and graphics card.

Notepin. An “extremely simple” blogging platform.

Weather Watching. An “AI” camera analyzes clothing and the presence of umbrellas among pedestrians on a New York street to give a weather forecast. Perhaps the world’s most inefficient weather forecasting.

Packet. Linux app compatible with Android’s Quick Share protocol (the “Android AirDrop”).

FolderDrive. An external drive (128 GB) shaped like the macOS folder icon.

Hued. Try to guess the color of the day. You get three chances.

Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Primesweeper. A minesweeper game but with prime numbers instead of bombs.

Katamari Node-Modules. The Katamari game, but with node.js modules as objects.

⚠️ This Slack error page “weighs” over 50 MB. Here (Safari, cache disabled) it hit 110 MB.

Open RSS. A service that turns any page into an RSS feed.

I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!

Six years of Gemini. The protocol, not Google’s AI.

New Ensō, first public beta. A text editor without editing, which made some noise on the internet years ago.

zenta. Mindfulness without leaving the terminal.

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