Author · 366 posts

Rodrigo Ghedin

8 GB ought to be enough for anybody

Close de um pente de RAM.

The world is going through a memory shortage. Not the kind in our brains (though that may be true too), but the memory inside our computers and phones.

Blame the AI companies. “Them again!” you might be thinking. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and co. are buying up as much of the world’s memory output as they can get their hands on to feed their data centers. Very little is left, and that little — as is typical of the savagery of unregulated capitalism — is sold for its weight in gold.

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How to free your email from the clutches of Google (Gmail) or Microsoft (Outlook)

Ícones coloridos e brilhantes de cartas flutuando no escuro.

One of the first steps for anyone setting out to reduce their dependence on Big Tech is moving their email away from Google or Microsoft.

The process itself isn’t particularly complex. The problem is cultural. The dominance of these two services — Gmail and Hotmail/Outlook — has eroded our understanding of one of the oldest internet technologies we still use, and one that remains important.

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Rock Social 
geokash.com

Half social network, half relaxing practice, the daily challenge on this site is to pile virtual stones according to the proposed theme. There is a gallery with other people’s works.

Cool

Notational Velocity and nvALT, classic macOS note-taking apps, are back

App

Back when I used Windows, over ten years ago, I had a serious case of Mac envy, all because of Notational Velocity, a lightning-fast note-taking app.

Its signature look, with the list of notes at the top and the selected note’s text below, came with full keyboard control and a global shortcut to start a new note. Under the hood, everything was saved as plain text files (*.txt or similar). People loved it!

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BIGWORDS.PAGE 
bigwords.page

This site allows you to compose a giant message, which occupies the entire screen, directly in the browser, editing only the URL. (It has a visual, easier editor, too.) In addition to words, you can also put QR codes, regressive counters, images…

Cool

Blink and you missed it: Google gave itself the right to use your Gmail, Drive, and Photos to personalize ads

Google has changed an important rule in its terms regarding the use of user content stored in Drive, Photos, and Gmail. Until October 16th, the document stated:

We don’t show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos.

The new terms extend that passage with some strings attached:

We don’t show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos, unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.

(It’s worth browsing the history/archive of the terms. There’s been a lot of activity since Gemini launched.)

It’s not as if Google will start actively combing through your emails, photos, and files, but sharing anything with, say, Gemini or AI Mode in Search makes that content fair game for ad personalization. (Pretty vague wording, huh? Probably on purpose.) Given how much Google nags its users to try AI stuff, it’s easy to share something without noticing.

Android Authority, the first to spot this concession in the new terms, recommends unlinking connected apps from your Google account in the privacy settings. I’ll admit I couldn’t find the screen they mention. Maybe because everything was already turned off in my dusty old Google account? Who knows.

“Vibe coding” this blog

2 comments on ““Vibe coding” this blog”

About two years ago, curious about the buzz around generative AI for coding, I asked Claude to fix bugs and optimize the theme I use on the Manual.

It spent a good while poking around the theme files. The changes it announced made sense. And how much had been slipping through the cracks! I was living in the future. Super excited, I fired up the modified theme and… the update triggered a fatal error and took the site down. I reverted every change and went on with my life.

Unfortunately, I didn’t keep that AI-modified copy, or the pull request in the theme’s repository. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Cut to 2026.

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SHRTCTS 
shrtcts.click

An interactive keyboard that helps you memorize shortcut keys from several popular apps. (I really like keyboard shortcuts!) The studio that created this site made that “it’s faster than memorizing a cheat sheet and stickier than Googling the same shortcut for the tenth time.”

Cool

FrankMoji 
frankmoji.com

Hand drawn emojis. Frank Rausch, the author, shares the set as a font (*.ttf and *.woff2), images (*.png) and vectorized (*.svg). “Remember when the computers were fun?” he asks.

Cool

Maybe I hate technology

Opening up about my screen addiction on Manual in May drew a strong response. Among the many comments and emails I received, one message from a reader, R., stood out. A software developer, she related to my story. She said what saves her is “sort of hating technology.”

I’ve been thinking about it ever since I read that email, months ago.

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Lançamento do Plasma 6.8 marca aniversário de 30 anos do KDE

KDE’s 30 years anniversary is today (14th), with the release of Plasma 6.8 as part of celebrations.

Of all the desktop environments for Linux, Plasma is what I like the most. I hope to one day use it on a “daily driver” computer.

Curiosity: the email from Matthias Ettrich announcing the “Kool Desktop Environment” in 1996. “So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is different from elder attempts.”

Bastardica 
bastardica.mitpit.com

Create cursed fonts: every X characters, another with a different font is inserted. You can upload your own fonts or import more from Google Fonts, and download the Frankenstein font in *.ttf, *.otf or woff2.

Cool