Early in 2026, a Chinese app that alerts trusted contacts if the user is still alive made some noise. The premise, somewhat morbid, is useful for certain groups, like activists, journalists covering high-risk areas, and people who live alone. The person has to check in at regular intervals. If they fail to, their contacts are notified automatically.

Wellness Ping is a variation on this kind of service with an approach that promises greater privacy: it’s free, requires no app download, and everything happens over email or Signal (preferred). Announcing version 2.0, its creator, who goes by Micr0byte, said that the code (which is open source) went through a full security review.

Cool links of the week

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.

The phone in your hand. A detailed breakdown of the components inside the phone you’re probably reading this on.

OpenHistoricalMap. Built on OpenStreetMap, this site shows a timeline of the world’s borders throughout human history. Tip from Daniely.

Loading UI. A huge collection of “loading” state animations. Nobody likes seeing them, but if it’s unavoidable, it might as well be cute.

Interactive assembly guides. An unofficial digital version of IKEA’s famous assembly instructions. Best viewed on a big screen.

Why are some people better at mowing lawns? An interactive game where the goal is to mow the whole lawn in the shortest path/fewest moves.

How to build a Nintendo 64 game in 2026. Ever heard of Xibalba 64? If not, you probably don’t own a Nintendo 64 or an M64.

Moist Towelette Online Museum. Tear open the packet, pull out the wipe, and use it.

More linked devices are on the table (and the Android tablet) 
signal.org

The latest update for Signal Android [8.20] introduces comprehensive support for linked devices. Now you can easily link another Android phone or Android tablet to your Signal account. […]

We’re also expanding linked device support on iOS [in version 8.22] so you can link an iPhone to your Signal account in addition to our ongoing support for iPads.

A few weeks ago, I went the opposite direction — I stripped messaging apps down to just my phone. It’s part of a personal experiment to steer conversations toward channels I find better suited for urgent matters (phone calls) or more complex discussions (email). That said, it’s still great to see the Signal team cross another item off the never-ending wishlist of features people keep asking for in messaging apps.

Time has started serving ads to AI agents 
digiday.com

Put another way, the ads give brands like Ally and the non-profit professional organization Project Management Institute another lever to pull on how they show up in generative search. LLMs can pick up a brand’s information from the ad and index it, which can then shape AI-generated responses, which in turn, can influence humans using those AI answer engines.

Maybe my idea of “poisoning” AIs with a text hidden by steganography is not that crazy.

cool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game that afternoon, one kid’s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.

White man, with dark and short hair, with dark circles.Sam Altman
OpenAI CEO and co-founder

This one goes to the list of great ideas of the AI bros. As someone replied on X, “What if you just talked to your children?”

Cool links of the week

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.

Where’s Tamara?. A virtual logbook, with real-time tracking, of Tamara Klink’s current voyage. Tip from Digão on Órbita.

Dustin Mierau. Another one of those personal sites designed to look like a computer desktop. I never get tired of these!

The Closet. Criterion’s famous closet in an interactive virtual version, with 1,327 titles from the renowned American film distributor’s catalog. (The reference for those unfamiliar with it.)

The AI Compass. A quiz similar to a well-known one in psychology that places you on the “compass” of AI. There are 30 possible archetypes, from the Luddite to the Prophet.

Radio Senado’s music programming. You can dig up some good Brazilian music here. (The last update was on 7/22; have they stopped updating it?)

BBC sound effects archive. Thousands of categorized sound effects, free for personal, non-commercial use. Tip from Lucas on Órbita.

Jelly UI. A library for giving web page interface elements a jiggly consistency. The website has several interactive examples to see how it works in practice.

I don’t really like the “Human-made” badging trend

Two years ago, I wrote about one of those “human made” badges used to signal content free of AI. Since then, these badges have spread across corners of the internet hostile to generative AI.

In a somewhat viral post from the indie web, Case Duckworth lists a few reasons to reject them. His criticism isn’t aimed at the badges themselves, but at initiatives that centralize this kind of signaling. His view is condensed in this paragraph:

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Cool links of the week

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.

The Sites We Lost. An archive of sites that used to be part of The Useless Web and have since gone offline.

clipart.studio. Make collages with paper magazines, except digitally.

Anti-AI font. This font disguises content by overlaying different words on top of it. Cool, except for the small detail that the original text is also hard for humans to read (me, at least). Tip from arrthur.

Steganographr. Another way to hide messages, this one for humans. This system uses obscure Unicode characters to hide the original text using steganography.

Nokia 210 4G with an AI button. Straight out of an alternate timeline, a Nokia “Snake game” phone with an AI button. Nothing is sacred anymore.

Omniget. yt-dlp is a small marvel for downloading videos from YouTube and other platforms, but the command line scares a lot of people off. Omniget offers a graphical interface. FOSS, for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Tip from Antonio.

MOBU. An “action roguelite” (don’t ask me) developed by siblings Matheus and Alicia. (He’s a reader of this blog.) For Windows and Linux, for less than USD 5.

Keli Vasconcelos’s “beat-up” 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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I’m Keli Vasconcelos (she/her), journalist, freelance writer, and postgraduate in Public History, 44 years old, living in São Paulo (SP), in the far reaches of the east side (S. Miguel Paulista). I write about Occupational Health and Safety and the Environment, I’ve published two books, and in 2024, I sent in my desk setup.

This time, I’m showing the crossbody bag that goes everywhere with me, affectionately known as my “beat-up bag,” from so much use!

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The scrolly chair 
newcartographies.com

I’ll say it right up front: I’ve written my share of pieces on this topic, which doesn’t invalidate the observation Nicholas Carr made in his newsletter:

I hate to be a cynic, but I’m guessing the main reason for the proliferation of these sorts of articles [about using your phone less] is that they’re algorithmic catnip. They’re symptoms of the illness they seek to cure. We’re addicted to reading about our addiction to phones. If the pieces have a therapeutic value, it probably lies less in helping people gain control over media than in renewing a reassuring fantasy of such control.

Which leads to funny situations, like two chronic phone addicts giving tips on how to use your phone less (podcast).

I get the feeling that content created as an offering to the algorithm god shows up around any popular topic, even niche ones. It hooks people who are idly browsing the internet, across their multiple algorithmically curated feeds that amplify the slightest flicker of interest in a given subject to the extreme.

Another topic, an underlying one, is “PKMs” — personal knowledge management — with their needlessly complex organizational methods and that cool connection graph generated by Obsidian. The promise is that by organizing your ideas in text and linking them all together, you’ll gain the superpower of never forgetting anything.

The outcome for those who manage to break out of these endless content cycles is the same: what was all that for, anyway?