Rodrigo Ghedin

If you take away AI and the new Siri, is there anything new in Apple’s OS 27?

This year, unlike 2025, I updated my computer as soon as macOS 27 Golden Gate was released. The positive feedback during the testing period was encouraging, and deep down I figured that the original Liquid Glass, from macOS 26 Tahoe, was so bad that it couldn’t get any worse.

No surprise: macOS 27 looks better. Aesthetically and in actual use: buttons look like buttons again, there are visible dividers in windows, the comically rounded windows’ corners, and the sidebar no longer floats around for… whatever reason it was floating.

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This Wednesday (16th), the stable version of Gnome 51, the famous desktop environment for Linux, was released. (Announcement video.) The highlight is improvements in performance and graphics. I don’t know if it was already there, but I’m glad to see that Sushi is a default app and was ported to GTK4. It displays file content by pressing the Space key in the file manager — similar to the quick Look of macOS.

Unfortunately the new overlay of the search results, which was expected to land in Gnome 51, didn’t make the cut.

ReelSwap 
reelswap.net

Browse and organize your physical media collection on this website. The standout feature is the display: a three-dimensional shelf. “Take down” (click on) a movie and examine the box from every angle. For free.

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With Apple Watch that eavesdrops on conversations, what’s at stake is public perception

Foto de um Apple Watch Ultra 4 no braço de alguém, mostrando a transcrição de uma conversa recente captada pelo recurso Live Rewind.

I’ve published more than a couple of pieces on this blog trying to raise awareness about the risks of viral photo-editing apps, like FaceApp back in 2019 [pt_BR].

We are curious beings. The promise of looking into a magic mirror that shows us old, as a different gender, or in another era is nearly irresistible — a force that makes many people ignore the warning signs, even the obvious ones.

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Any human ever 
anyhumanever.com

This site allows you to draw the life of a random person among all 100 billion who have ever lived on this planet, based on statistics and historical fragments of each period. I thought it was cool to analyze the lives of people who lived centuries or millennia ago and then trace my own profile.

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In search of the hypothetical iPhone Duo buyer and other foldable phones

Dois iPhones Duo segurados por mãos, um fechado e outro aberto.

At the end of August, I had the chance to fiddle with a Galaxy Z Fold8, Samsung’s passport-style foldable phone. It’s smaller than I expected. I found it somewhat curious. My time with the device was brief and I think I saw enough. It’s not for me.

This Wednesday (9th), Apple made its debut in the foldable phone segment with the announcement of the iPhone Duo. It looks a lot like the Galaxy Z Fold8. The biggest highlight from first impressions is the animation on the screens when opening and closing them. (It’s cool, indeed.)

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myNoise 
mynoise.net

Stéphane Pigeon, a signal processing engineer and passionate about sounds, keeps this site alone. He runs the world to record various noises with the highest possible quality. Why? The short answer, according to himself, is because he is crazy.

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Jellyfin 12

App

After several beta and RC versions, Jellyfin 12 was released this Monday (7th). This is the server application, which other devices access to display stored videos, music, and other digital media. It also comes with a client accessible via the web.

The versioning scheme has changed, and this new release comes with a handful of breaking changes and pre-installation precautions. It’s well worth reading the full release announcement — it’s in English, but an automatic translation should do the job.

All these hurdles will pay off in plenty of fixes and improvements. Among the visible ones, notable additions include support for multiple versions of the same episode, improvements to digital books and comics and their recommendations, support for plugins that expand search functionality, and the modern layout becoming the new default. The changelog is really long.

Wire Loop 
keithcirkel.co.uk

From the most boring television game shows to your computer or phone, in the game Wire Loop you have to take the disc from one point to another without touching the wire, as fast as you can. Includes a level editor.

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The Asahi Project, whose mission is to make Linux distributions viable on post-2020 Apple computers, announced on Sunday 6th support for the Apple Silicon M3 chip family. There are still important limitations, such as the lack of 3D acceleration and the inability to put the system to sleep, but it works. Because of these, support is hidden behind “expert mode.”

LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

LibreOffice 26.8, released on August 26th, became the software’s most popular update. LibreOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office that’s been around for nearly two decades. In one week, the installer was downloaded more than 1 million times — not counting updates via Linux distribution repositories.

Someone might say the improvements to the writing system and typography are a hit among NGOs, government agencies, and offices that use LibreOffice. I’m putting my money on a “non-feature,” though: the statement that LibreOffice doesn’t come with generative AI features due to the technology’s (lack of) privacy.

A day after celebrating the download record and the wide media coverage, The Document Foundation (TDF), which manages the software, spelled out its position in a post titled “Yes, no AI is now a feature”.

The article, signed by Italo Vignoli, says TDF “does not reject artificial intelligence out of hand,” but that the technology doesn’t yet meet an exhaustive list of principles to be included by default. Those principles are:

  • User-controlled execution.
  • No content may leave the computer without authorization.
  • No telemetry of any kind.
  • No dependency on a single vendor.
  • No compromises on [file] format.
  • Entirely optional.

For now, TDF recommends community plugins to integrate AI into LibreOffice.

TDF’s distinctive stance “has almost nothing to do with the technology,” the article continues, before taking a jab at rivals that dove headfirst into AI. For the foundation, “an AI assistant justifies a price increase and strengthens the case for keeping all documents within its own infrastructure,” referring to companies that rely on selling subscriptions.

The Document Foundation’s detailed explanation may disappoint anyone who read the announcement at the LibreOffice 26.8 launch as an anti-AI manifesto.

Whatever the reasons, the LibreOffice 26.8 case answers a question I and others have had since 2023: if the whole market now offers AI baked in software of every kind, is there really no room for AI-free alternatives to stand out? Apparently, there is.

Man built an exclusionary pseudo Linux distro instead of going to therapy

I avoid giving stage time to weird people (in the bad sense) here at the Manual. I’m making an exception to link to a July post by DHH, the Danish co-founder of 37Signals (the company behind Basecamp), creator of Omarchy, and author of a blog full of wrong ideas about immigrants and non-white people.

He became the “men do [stupid and/or difficult thing] instead of therapy” meme. I mean, literally. This man built an exclusionary pseudo Linux distro instead of going to therapy. And he’s proud of it! It’s right there on his blog:

Something many people will encounter at some point in their lives. Studies have shown that exercise, for example, is a more effective treatment than talk therapy (and pharmaceuticals!) when dealing with such episodes. But I’m just as interested in the role building competence can have in warding off the demons.

And partly because of this meme.

I’ve talked about it before, but I keep coming back to the fact that it’s exactly backwards. That signing up for an educational quest into Linux, history, or motorcycle repair actually is an incredibly effective alternative to therapy

Congrats on the discovery, DHH, keep it up. Clearly it’s working.

DHH is back in the spotlight after raising USD 12 million from other tech bigwigs for a somewhat shady foundation built around Omarchy, which sparked backlash from employees and customers of the companies involved, like 1Password.

ReKindle 
rekindle.ink

A website full of services to be accessed by Kindle and other tablets with E-Ink screen. Just open the site to notice why. There are even games! (Some services are behind a paying subscription.)

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What’s inside Isabella’s bag?

In this series, readers showcase what they carry in their backpacks on a daily basis. Check out the other backpacks that have been published and submit yours — the this series depends on you.

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Hey everyone! I’m Isabella (@yawlle/Instagram), a mobile Android developer at a bank working fully remote, 28 years old, living in Vitória, Brazil, and a huge fan of this blog! [Editor: Thank you, Isabella!]

I’m a firm believer that having a prepped bag is like heading out on a quest in an open-world game with your inventory close at hand. I don’t get how anyone leaves the house with just a wallet in their back pocket!

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I didn’t set a cookie 
kuber.studio

Despite the persistent nags to accept or decline tracking cookies on websites, the online surveillance industry already has more advanced techniques for monitoring your wanderings across the web. Collectively, this is called “fingerprinting”. This site shows everything a website can extract from you without needing cookies.

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