LinkedIn changed its terms to share more data with Microsoft for advertising purposes. It’s routine — nothing dramatically new or alarming — but I liked that, in the explanatory document, LinkedIn included direct links to the three settings that, when turned off, stop that data sharing. Thanks…?
Just click the links while logged in and disable all of them:
While you’re at it, also disable sharing content to train generative AIs.
I’m not in a hurry to update my Apple devices to the 26 “crop” of OSs, but Safari on macOS… why not?
Every year Apple ships the big update to its browser for older macOS releases. It’s an exception to the rule of updating native apps only with the OS. The list of changes is always long and this year’s is no different.
Unfortunately, Safari 26 is broken for the five people who use the “compact” tab layout. And yes, I am (or was) one of them.
In December 2023, this blog joined the fediverse (pt_BR). Thanks to a WordPress plugin — the publishing platform used by Manual do Usuário — it became possible to follow updates here without leaving Mastodon, Pleroma, GoToSocial, or any other application compatible with the ActivityPub protocol.
Over nearly two years the plugin has improved a lot. And it’s set to improve further, judging by the developers’ roadmap, to the point that — if all goes well — it may one day be possible to turn blogs into full actors in the fediverse.
Despite that, I plan to remove ActivityPub support soon. Here’s why.
Since the early days of this Manual, my goal has been the “slow web,” which here translates to being the last to cover a topic. Even so, I didn’t expect I’d ever write about something eight years late.
Anyway — here we are. Let’s talk wireless earphones.
Editor's note: Every week, I publish the phone's home screen from a blog reader. Want to participate? Fill out this form. Want more? Check out the archive. All app links go to the App Store, Play Store, or F-Droid.
Leonardo, 40, southern Brazil, makes educational videos on the internet and has been a regular reader of the Manual do Usuário for years.
Google
via Search Engine Roundtable
Sam Altman
Co-fundador e CEO da OpenAI
If only we knew who was the “genius” who started all this mess…
For roughly 20 years, from the 1990s to the 2010s, the family computer (always a desktop) was the household symbol of modernity in Brazil, a prerequisite for promising futures and the only gateway to the internet. It competed for space with the TV or, in larger homes, earned its own room where residents did schoolwork, casual research, played games, and spent time on primitive sites from a web dominated by written text.
It was the “family computer.”
The US ruled the “remedies” to be applied to Google in the case where the company was found guilty of monopolistic practices in the search market:
And that’s it.
It wasn’t much and everyone complained. Well, almost everyone: Apple and Mozilla — which receive huge payments from Google to keep its search engine as the default in iOS/Safari and Firefox, respectively — are relieved.
If you host a paid newsletter on Substack, pay attention to the platform’s new in-app subscription offering for iOS. The company published a long FAQ about the change.
Apple requires all apps that sell digital content to use its in-app payment system — the one that charges a 15–30% fee. Substack relied on a loophole created by the recent Epic Games ruling in the US to make its iOS app compliant with App Store rules, giving iOS users the (default) option to subscribe via the web and avoid Apple’s fee.
The problem is that this exception applies only to the United States.
Editor’s note: This week issue arrives a little later and after a mistake that triggered last week’s sent over the newsletter. My apologies for that!
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
“We will not use an LLM to add a chatbot, a summarization solution or a suggestion engine to fill up forms for you, until more rigorous ways to do those things are available.” In a moment of euphoria in which even Mozilla — which would have the most to gain from caution around reckless adoption of generative AI — at least one web browser embraces that stance.
The size of Adobe Reader installers over the years. I would never have guessed the Adobe Reader installer is nearly 700 MB. (SumatraPDF’s is ~8.2 MB.)
Mavericks Forever. This person loves macOS 10.9 “Mavericks” so much they decided to modernize Apple’s 2013 OS that was discontinued in 2016. (Don’t try this at home.)
doxx. A Word document (*.docx) viewer for the terminal.
Drawmote. I haven’t tried it, but this site promises you can draw by waving your phone. (I think it only works in Chromium-based browsers.)
MakeACopy. An Android app that scans and transcribes documents (OCR). Private, offline, and open source.
Karousel. A script that turns KDE Plasma into a “scrollable” interface.
dnsperftest. A simple script that tests the speed of popular public DNS servers from your connection.
Gamer Church. I’m not entirely sure whether this is a blog or a video-game directory. The layout is pretty cool. Tip from Juan.
Instapaper integration with Kobo goes live.
Typepad is shutting down. Everything will be deleted on September 30rd.
SuperTuxKart Evolution promises a “new experience”, Omg! Ubuntu. Backstage disagreements over the most iconic Linux game resulted in a split. (They could’ve settled it with a best-of-three match in STK, right?)
Microsoft Copilot launches on Samsung TVs and monitors. Is this what Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification”?
Koko Analytics 2.0. A WordPress analytics plugin. The new version expands monitoring site-wide, not just for posts and pages.
Essayist. An academic writing editor. For iOS, iPadOS and macOS, about USD 5,99/month.
digitalsolitude. A site that only works when a single person is accessing it.
bookmarks.txt. A concept for keeping URLs (bookmarks) in plain text files.
TiledScreen. If for any reason you want KDE Plasma 6 to look like Windows 8, this theme is all you need.
A presentation app that works on your phone. As long as your phone is an iPhone.
SVG Crop. A web tool that “trims” whitespace around any *.svg file.
EPSON MX-80 Fonts. A font that simulates dot-matrix printers.
In ❤️ with PDA. A site that emulates an old PDA.
The Useless Web. A classic: press the button and go to a random “useless” site.
Jon von Tetzchner
Vivaldi co-founder and CEO
In a moment of euphoria in which even Mozilla — which would have the most to gain from caution around reckless adoption of generative AI — at least one web browser embraces that stance.
I collect cool, interesting links spread all over the web and share them here in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy!
Revisiting Facebook. If Zuckerberg himself admits that Facebook is much more than a site (or app) for connecting people, since “seeing friends’ status updates” became something from the “OG Facebook,” the question remains: what is Facebook today?
What’s on your phone, João? Every week, I publish the phone’s home screen from a blog reader.
How to remove “stuck” iCloud Tabs in Safari. Things at Apple work great until the day they don’t. A silly example that really bugs me is “stuck” iCloud tabs on Safari — a glitch in Apple’s tab syncing feature that lets me access tabs from one device on others.
Big list of free, non-AI generated stock images.
Flashword. An app to save and review unknown words. Free, for iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS.
Logoipsum. Fake logos you can drop into mockups.
Web materials map. A sort of “mind map” of the elements that make up web pages. Click the yellow items for interactive demos.
Email is easy. Think you know everything about email? Take this quiz. (I got 14 out of 21.)
DigiPaws. Android app with a bunch of tools to cut down on screen time. If the one that blocks only YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels actually works, it might be worth it. (Haven’t tested it.)
Which Year. The challenge: guess the year the photo shown was taken. The closer you are, the more points you get.
HappyCow. A search engine for vegan and vegetarian restaurants. Listings seem to be up to date (at least the ones in my city).
The State of CSS 2025. The annual survey results are out, highlighting trends in web development. (Still haven’t used :has().)
The mathematically optimal way to cut an onion, The Pudding. A neat example of how something ordinary can be looked at in an absurdly complex (and brilliant) way.
The lyrics to the Jaws theme song. Deep.
Helium. A new browser based on ungoogled-chromium. Still experimental and macOS-only, but it promises to be “usable” as a daily driver.
copyparty. A portable, feature-packed file server. “Inverted Linux philosophy: do all the things, and do an okay job.” 😁 (Looks pretty fun!)
Straw.Page. Yet another site builder, this one with a “web 1.0” vibe but adapted for mobile. Free with a premium plan at USD 49/year.
Quoted posts coming to Mastodon. It’s happening.
Mozilla testing web apps in Firefox. If you’re on Firefox 142 for Windows (not from the Microsoft Store), you can try it out. The feature has to be enabled in “Labs” inside browser settings.
corner-shape superellipse() generator. You can do some wild stuff with CSS these days.
domain-check. A command-line app that checks whether domains are available.
Croissant. A new feed reader by David Bushell.
In March, in a rare moment of sobriety from the artificial intelligence drug, a revamped Mark Zuckerberg — gold chain around his neck, wild hair — promised that Facebook, or at least part of it, would return to simpler times, when the social network was… well, a social network. An innocent era when he himself looked like a wax figure rather than a wannabe rapper.
Editor's note: Every week, I publish the phone's home screen from a blog reader. Want to participate? Fill out this form. Want more? Check out the archive. All app links go to the App Store, Play Store, or F-Droid.
My name is João and I’ve been a designer and photographer for at least 20 years. I love technology.