Blog (in English)

“Capitão Astúcia” takes an alternative path in filmmaking: straight to YouTube, free of charge

The first time I spoke with Filipe Gontijo was in 2015. He had just directed a virtual reality film, at a momento when big techs were promising that the future of entertainment lay in virtual reality packaged in a piece of cardboard with a phone stuffed inside.

Fast forward to 2025, and this time, still in the same email conversation, Filipe is innovating behind the scenes. His first feature film, Capitão Astúcia, was released directly on YouTube, for free, without ads. The business model? Anyone who enjoys the film can contribute with a Pix donation of any amount. And by “Pix” I mean the Brazilian instant money transfer systems.

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Firefox logo. Silhouette of a red panda wrapped in a blue circle.

Firefox 138, released this Tuesday (29th), introduces the long-awaited profile manager. The official documentation explains that “creating multiple profiles allows you to keep separate browsing data, themes or settings for different purposes, such as work and personal use.”

There are also new contrast options focused on accessibility, and in Windows 11, context menus now have that translucent (“acrylic”) look that is standard in the OS. Release notes and download.

The backpack of anthropologist Rafael Cristaldo.

Hello, everyone! How are you? My name is Rafael, I was born in November 1997, I’m from Farroupilha (RS), and I’m currently an anthropologist living in the capital, Porto Alegre. You can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

I’m writing this inspired by my artist friend and roommate Tiago Gasperin, who recently wrote about his fanny pack.

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Hypertext TV is a celebration of small, handmade games and sites

Screenshot of the channel guide of the Hypertext TV website.

Hypertext TV is “a celebration of small, handmade games and sites.” The interface simulates an old tube TV, and the available “channels” (sites) vary depending on the day and time — come back on different days to receive different content. It serves as a kind of answer to the unlimited on-demand content offered by modern web. (The code is open source, and you can suggest sites to be added.)

MusicBrainz Picard identifies songs from *.mp3 files and automatically fixes metadata

Picard icon/logo.

In my first attempt to switch from streaming to move back to listening to *.mp3 files, one of the issues I encountered was organization: how to standardize the metadata of the songs?

The solution I was familiar with at the time — manually editing each song — was impractical. Who has time for that?

In my second (and this time, successful) attempt in 2024, I came across a free app that is almost too good to be true, MusicBrainz Picard (Linux, macOS, Windows).

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The 404s website is an ode to the not found web pages.

Screenshot of 404s website's home page, entitled “Page not found”.

The 404s is an ode to the not found web pages. The name of the site refers to the standard response code of the HTTP protocol for pages not found. This site celebrates the error — and I believe that celebrating our mistakes to the point of taking pride in them is somewhat healthy.

I also think that the 404 page of this Manual could use a little attention, don’t you think?

A quick look at the iPhone 16e made in Brazil

I was at my parents’ during the Easter holiday when I came across an iPhone 16e. I asked the owner for permission to take a closer look at the spiritual successor to the best iPhone. What a responsibility!

Despite the new name and being part of the current iPhone family, the iPhone 16e is, for all practical purposes, a new iPhone SE: a Frankenstein phone, made up of parts from older versions (the base is the iPhone 14), some components from the latest model (A18 chip and 8 GB of RAM), and features missing due to Apple’s stingy upselling tactics (previously it was the night mode in the camera, unavailable; now, there’s no MagSafe).

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Portuguese is the second most popular language (by far!) on Buttondown

The partnership between this Manual do Usuário and Buttondown, a newsletter service, has been renewed for the second time. Buttondown will continue to sponsor the (Portuguese-only) directory of Brazilian newsletters and the (also in pt_BR) series of interviews with newsletter creators.

In the conversation to renew the partnership, Justin Duke, founder and CEO of Buttondown, revealed to me that Portuguese is “Portuguese is now by far our second most popular language or locale,” and that “I have to assume you [Manual] are a huge reason why.” I was flattered by the comment and pleased with the results!

(Brands, see what you’re missing!? Advertise with us.)

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Windows on Game Boy Color

The Spanish Ruben Retro has created a version of Windows for the Game Boy Color — the predecessor of the Nintendo Switch. You can play Minesweeper, listen to music, draw (and print your drawing on the quirky Game Boy printer)… even the infamous blue screen of death is there. Fascinating! I couldn’t find any technical details about this feat, and the cartridge is sold out.

Another chapter in the series “fascinated by the details of CSS,” this time featuring the attribute text-wrap: pretty and how browsers handle line breaks, “typographic river” (a concept I wasn’t familiar with), and the length of the final line.

Safari is the second-to-last major browser to implement text-wrap: pretty, a feature announced in a super detailed post, which is quite interesting. “Pretty” in English means “beautiful”; I find it lovely that the CSS specification delegates the decisions for presenting beautified text to each browser.

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The undercut-f1 is a command-line application (TUI) that displays Formula 1 race data…

Terminal displaying the classification of a Formula 1 race.

The undercut-f1 is a command-line application (TUI) that displays Formula 1 race data — in real-time or replay sessions. It shows sector times with colors for personal and overall bests, tire types, gaps between drivers and the leader, and race information.

ChatGPT can guess the location of photos

Not that I take pride in it, but the truth is that I’ve lost track of OpenAI’s releases. On Wednesday (16th), the company announced two new models, o3 and o4-mini, with intriguing developments.

The o3 is described by OpenAI as “our most powerful reasoning model”; the o4-mini is a “smaller model optimized for fast, cost-efficient reasoning.” Both are accessible through the ChatGPT UI and can handle various tools, such as “visual tasks” (analyzing uploaded image files).

One of the examples of visual task provided by OpenAI in the official announcement seems to have sparked a new craze: discovering the location of images based on the images themselves, a sort of reverse search or, as it’s been referred to on social media, “the end of Geoguesser.”

TechCrunch noted that the o3 isn’t much better than GPT-4o, an earlier and faster model, and that it’s not perfect, misidentifying the locations and sometimes failing to make a guess at all. Nonetheless, this capability of ChatGPT can be unsettling and already creates a new vector of paranoia regarding online privacy: it’s no longer enough to just clean the metadata from photos before uploading them.

By the very nature of LLMs, it’s challenging to distinguish genuine advancements from the enthusiasm of supporters. Techmeme, an aggregator of news and reactions from the tech industry, picked up this comment from someone on X:

I’m obsessed with o3. It’s way better than the previous models. It just helped me resolve a psychological/emotional problem I’ve been dealing with for years in like 3 back-and-forths (one that wasn’t socially acceptable to share, and those I shared it with didn’t/couldn’t help)

I find myself wondering what kind of “psychological/emotional problem I’ve been dealing with for years” a conversation with an AI released just hours ago could possibly resolve.

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OpenAI’s blitz of releases is having an impact. In March, driven by trends like those from Studio Ghibli and the action figure boxes, ChatGPT became the most downloaded app in the world, according to consulting firm Appfigures, surpassing Instagram and TikTok, the usual leaders in recent months.

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On Thursday (17th), Google released Gemini 2.5 Flash, which “delivers a major upgrade in reasoning capabilities, while still prioritizing speed and cost.” One of these days, a new model will be able to guess the color of our underwear and bring about world peace.

The trial that can break Instagram and WhatsApp from Meta

Antitrust trials in US courts may be the country’s greatest contribution to humanity after eggs benedict and the golden age of Hollywood.

On Monday (14th), one of the most anticipated trials in recent times began, in which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accuses Meta of monopolizing the personal social networking market by blocking potential competitors through its billion-dollar acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. One possible remedy is the breakup of the company, restoring Instagram and WhatsApp as independent alternatives and rivals to Facebook.

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FBI warns of online file converter scam

In April 2024, WordPress 6.5 introduced, among other features, native support for the *.avif image format.

Most people only care about image file formats when faced with compatibility issues — Apple and its *.heic format for photos taken with the iPhone is, I think, the biggest awareness driver in this regard. I, unlike most people, spent months pondering whether the clear advantages of *.avif outweighed the universality of less efficient predecessors like *.jpg and *.png.

A few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and adopt *.avif for (almost) all the images in this Manual do Usuário.

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