Rodrigo Ghedin

Your digital life isn’t yours: The hidden battle for software freedom  fsf.org

I am very sympathetic to free software. (And I regret not using more software of this kind.) On the Free Software Foundation blog, Jason Self reinforces the importance of the four freedoms of FOSS in the face of machine learning — which, in this context, is confused with what is commonly referred to as “artificial intelligence.” He defines it as follows:

[…] software that doesn’t just follow instructions, but learns and makes autonomous decisions. It’s a powerful new kind of code, and it has become the most profound black box ever created.

His post uses AI as a threat to revisit the foundations of the movement. This is always a good thing and, from time to time (as in this case), reveals stories unknown to the public (or to me, at least). It is because of one of these — the creation of the concept of free software — that I brought this link here:

At MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, a programmer named Richard Stallman grew frustrated with a new Xerox laser printer that frequently jammed. His solution was simple: modify the program to automatically notify users on the network about the jam, saving everyone time and frustration. The problem was that he wasn’t allowed to; the source code of the program was a secret. Though a programmer at another university had the code, he was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and refused to share it. This wasn’t just an inconvenience; it was an ethical crisis in miniature. A practical problem had become impossible to solve, not for technical reasons, and most definitely not because it was better this way. A barrier was intentionally placed to deny users control over the software they used.

This moment of frustration ignited the spark for the free software movement.

The next time my printer jams, I will handle the situation with a little more enthusiasm. Stretching it a bit, it has a sacred quality, as it reproduces the moment of the creation of free software. Amen!

Tech CEOs: Workers MUST be present in the office. The job simply cannot be done remotely.

Also tech CEOs: Most workers can be replaced by AI. Hosted remotely.

White woman, with glasses, sitting and wearing a free software T-shirt.SaraMG
@saramg@fosstodon.org

Dell and Microsoft, marketing geniuses

Remember when Warner Bros. changed the name of its streaming service from HBO Max to Max, and then less than a year later back to HBO Max? Or when the richest person in the world proved that money has no relation to intelligence and threw the “Twitter” brand in the trash? Marketing geniuses!

Maybe it's late capitalism, maybe it's a side effect of new drugs circulating among the bigwigs of the world's most powerful companies. Or maybe it's just plain stupidity. The fact is that the practice is spreading, and fast.

In early 2025, Dell revamped its line of notebooks and retired traditional names, including XPS, perhaps the most recognizable after Apple's MacBook. The goal was to simplify. No one understood anything.

Cut to 2026, and Dell announced at CES, to no one's surprise, that it will return to using the XPS brand. They look nice.

Running behind is Microsoft. When accessing the office.com website, we come across this gem (my highlight):

Welcome to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot.*

Just imagine, replacing the brand that has been synonymous with productivity apps for three decades with… Copilot, a slop generator that people generally dislike and only use because their employer requires them to.

Good for us. The less we associate critical software with big tech brands, the better. Long live Microsoft 365 Copilot — or whatever other weird name Word, Excel, and company end up with in the future.

Office files in BentoPDF; customizable YouTube subscriptions in Miniflux

Two services from PC do Manual, our FOSS apps server, have gotten some cool new features in recent weeks. These versions are already active on our server.

BentoPDF, a Swiss Army knife for file actions *.pdf, has received its "biggest update" yet.

The flagship feature of version 1.15.1 is support for Office files. And not just Microsoft 365; it also converts to *.pdf files in OpenDocument Format (LibreOffice), *.pages (Apple Pages), *.pub, *.vsd, *.psd (Photoshop), *.rtf and csv. Phew!

In the opposite direction (*.pdf to Office), for now there is only support for Word and Excel files.

Other file formats have been added, notably e-books and images.

BentoPDF processes files locally, on the device of the person accessing it. This ensures the privacy of the files processed by the tool.

***

Another piece of good news comes from Miniflux, an RSS feed aggregator exclusively for paying subscribers.

Version 2.2.15 has improved support for YouTube subscriptions. Now, when registering a channel feed there, Miniflux offers four options:

  • Channel: All videos.
  • Videos: Only long videos, no Shorts or live videos.
  • Short videos: Only short videos/Shorts.
  • Live streams: Only live videos.
Screenshot of the feed options when subscribing to a YouTube channel.
Goodbye, Shorts!

It is possible to do this in other ways, by directly editing the feed URL. Thiago showed how to do this on Órbita last year (pt_BR). However, Miniflux's one-click option is much more intuitive and expands the option to get rid of Shorts to a larger/less technical audience.

2025 has been a disaster for Windows 11  windowscentral.com

Zac Bowden wrote a long article stating that Windows fans (the author's definition) have been sold a “disastrous 2025 for Windows 11.” I haven't used Windows in many years and have barely touched version 11, so I read it with extra attention.

Anyway, I'm sure you can guess the most obvious problem with Windows 11 in 2025:

(more…)

New year, new theme

I was working on a revision of the Manual WordPress theme to coincide with our upcoming migration from WordPress to ClassicPress. I couldn't resist and implemented it here on the blog while still on WordPress. (ClassicPress is scheduled to come into play in March.)

One of the new features is this behind-the-scenes "mini-blog" separate from the main blog's front page. For those who follow via RSS feed, nothing changes. The distinction is purely structural and only valid for the pt_BR version — in English, all posts appear on blog’s homepage.

The new version of the dez theme, 4.0, brings other cool new features that I intend to explore thoroughly. (I follow the "pride versioning" approach, which calls for major releases when the person is proud of what they've done.)

Of what is noticeable to readers in dez 4.0, I highlight three things:

  • A new post format, link, which I will use to comment on texts by other authors. The inspiration for this is Jim Nielsen's blog notes. I will suspend the holiday break on next Monday (5th) and publish the first of this kind.
  • Now, all of the cool links posts appear on the home page. Until yesterday, only the last one published was displayed, and to see the others, you had to access the archive.
  • Several minor adjustments to the layout in order to simplify it. For example, the main menu has been vanished in the English version. The margins and spacing between elements are now more consistent, and I have made greater use of dashed borders to separate them visually.

In addition to more granular behind-the-scenes information about the site, which was previously restricted to the newsletter log, I will also replicate the news from the PC Manual here, our public FOSS apps server.

The first of the year, in fact, is the Readeck test, a free and modern FOSS alternative to the late Pocket, Instapaper, ReadWise Reader, and the like — a “read it later” type app. If you are a paying subscriber, send an email requesting your access credentials.

The drawing for Brazil’s largest lottery prize ever — BRL 1 billion (USD 180 million) — was postponed due to the volume of bets, which reached 125,000 per second, 120,000 of them via digital channels. The draw, originally scheduled for 10 PM on Wednesday (31st), was moved to this morning. I hope they actually make it this time.

Via O Globo (pt_BR).