Bookmarks

Cool Websites — July 9, 2026

Security & Privacy

ProtonVPN

A no-logs VPN from the makers of ProtonMail — built in Switzerland, open-source, and independently audited. The free tier has no data cap and no bandwidth limit, which is genuinely rare in the VPN world; paid plans unlock 9,000+ servers across 100+ countries, ad blocking, and Tor access. All apps are open-source on GitHub so the "we don't log" claim can be verified.

KeePassXC

A modern, cross-platform offline password manager that stores your vault in a locally encrypted `.kdbx` file that never touches a cloud server. Open-source under GPLv3, certified by France's national cybersecurity agency (ANSSI), and available for Windows, macOS, and Linux with browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Pair it with Syncthing (see below) if you want self-managed sync across devices.

PrivateBin

An open-source, zero-knowledge pastebin where all encryption and decryption happens in your browser using 256-bit AES — the server never sees your content. Paste text or attach a file, set a burn-after-reading timer or a one-day expiry, and share the link; even the server operator cannot read what you pasted. Self-hostable in minutes with Docker; a public instance is always available at privatebin.net.

OSINT & Investigation

GrayhatWarfare

A searchable database of publicly exposed AWS S3 buckets and URL shorteners — designed to help security researchers and organizations discover data that's accidentally been made public on cloud storage. Search by keyword to find exposed configuration files, backups, and data dumps that have been indexed from open buckets. A sobering reminder of how much ends up publicly accessible. Freemium; basic bucket searches are free.

VirusTotal

Upload any file or paste any URL and VirusTotal scans it against 70+ antivirus engines, URL scanners, and behavioral sandboxes — returning a color-coded consensus alongside per-vendor verdicts within seconds. Community comments often surface real-world context on malware families or campaign associations that the raw AV results miss. Free with a Google account; API access for integrating into security workflows.

DNSDumpster

A free domain recon tool that maps a target domain's full DNS footprint — name servers, MX records, TXT records, hostnames, and IP geolocation — and visualizes the relationships in a downloadable diagram. Security teams use it in the discovery phase of an engagement to understand which services are exposed and on which IP blocks; it finds hosts that simple whois lookups miss. No registration needed.

AI Tools

Goblin Tools

A free collection of small AI utilities built specifically for when tasks feel overwhelming. Magic ToDo breaks any intimidating goal into concrete sub-steps with adjustable "spiciness levels" for granularity; Chef suggests recipes from whatever you have in your fridge; Judge analyzes the emotional tone of a message you're about to send; Estimator predicts how long a task will take. No ads, no paywall, and designed with neurodivergent users in mind.

OpenRouter

A unified API that sits in front of 400+ language models from 70+ providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Mistral, and more — behind a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Swap models by changing one string; pay per token at competitive rates with no subscription; automatic failover routes to a backup provider if your preferred model goes down. Ideal for developers building AI apps who want to avoid vendor lock-in.

LM Studio

A free, fully graphical desktop app for running open-source large language models locally on your own hardware — no terminal, no Python environment, no cloud dependency. Browse a built-in model library, download Llama 4, Qwen 3, Gemma 3, or DeepSeek with one click, and start a local OpenAI-compatible API server that any tool expecting the OpenAI SDK can connect to. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux; enterprise tier available.

Developer Tools

readme.so

A visual drag-and-drop README builder that assembles the sections every project README needs — installation, usage, contributing guide, license, badges, API reference, environment variables, FAQ — without starting from a blank file. Select the sections you want, customize the text in a side-by-side preview, and copy the markdown. Created by Katherine Oelsner; fully open source on GitHub.

JSON Hero

An open-source JSON viewer that transforms raw JSON into a navigable column browser — similar to Finder's column view — with one key trick: it auto-detects the semantic type of every value and renders images, dates, colors, and URLs inline instead of as raw strings. Paste or upload any JSON, use fuzzy search to find any key across a thousand-line file, and share a link that points a colleague directly to a specific nested value. Also available as a VS Code extension.

Beeceptor

A no-code mock API platform: upload an OpenAPI spec, WSDL, GraphQL schema, or proto file and instantly get a working mock server with AI-generated test data, real-time request inspection, and configurable latency simulation. Perfect for frontend teams that need to develop against a backend that isn't ready yet, or for QA that needs to inject error conditions (timeouts, 500s) on demand. Handles 10M+ requests/day; free tier is generous for development use.

Video & Image Tools

Clideo

A browser-based video toolkit that covers the whole editing workflow without installing anything: cut, compress, and convert clips; add subtitles and translate them to 70+ languages; create GIFs, merge videos, add watermarks, and record your screen. Five million monthly users and 373 million videos processed. Free tier covers most basic editing needs; exports under standard resolution leave no watermark.

Pixlr

A free browser-based photo editor powerful enough to handle layers, blending modes, masking, and retouching — with AI features including background removal, generative fill, and text-to-image baked in. Works on web, iOS, and Android with no download; serves 500M+ users and processes billions of edits. A practical Photoshop substitute for anyone who doesn't need the full Adobe suite but wants more than a basic crop-and-filter tool.

Remove.bg

AI background removal in five seconds: drop in a photo and get a clean transparent PNG back, with no manual masking required. Now owned by Canva, the tool handles product photos, headshots, and vehicle images with impressive accuracy even on complex edges like hair. Free for standard previews; paid credits or API access for full-resolution output. The "Magic Brush" tool lets you touch up tricky edges directly in the browser.

Windows Software

HWiNFO

A free, professional-grade hardware monitoring and diagnostics tool that reads temperature, fan speed, voltage, clock speed, power draw, and utilization from every component in your PC — CPU, GPU, motherboard, storage, memory — at a sensor granularity far beyond what Task Manager shows. Export data as CSV or XML, set up custom dashboards in companion apps like HWiNFO Sidebar, and catch thermal issues before they crash your system. Free for personal use; available as installer and portable.

Simplewall

A tiny (~1 MB) open-source Windows firewall manager built on the Windows Filtering Platform, the same underlying API Windows Defender uses — so the two coexist without conflict. Operates in allow-list mode: nothing gets internet access until you explicitly permit it, which makes it excellent for catching applications phoning home unexpectedly. 8,000+ GitHub stars, active maintenance, portable build available. Free under GPL-3.0.

Bulk Rename Utility

A free Windows GUI for renaming hundreds of files in one pass: apply find-and-replace, insert counter sequences, strip or add prefixes/suffixes, change case, stamp modification dates, rename from EXIF metadata on photos, or rename from ID3 tags on MP3s — all with a live preview before committing. Supports regex and JavaScript for complex patterns; recurses into subfolders; handles file-system paths too long for Explorer. Free for personal and academic use.

Open Source Software

Navidrome

A self-hosted music streaming server that turns your local audio collection into your own personal Spotify — accessible from any browser or the hundreds of iOS/Android apps compatible with the Subsonic API (DSub, Tempo, Symfonium, etc.). Lightweight enough to run on a Raspberry Pi, yet tested against libraries of 900,000+ songs; supports on-the-fly transcoding, multi-user libraries, and scrobbling to Last.fm. Free under GPL; deploys with a single Docker container.

Syncthing

Peer-to-peer, end-to-end encrypted file synchronization that stores your data on your own devices only — no relay server, no cloud account, no vendor. Set it up on two machines, mark a folder to sync, and changes propagate automatically over your local network (or the internet) in real time. Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, FreeBSD, and others; open-source under MPL-2.0. The zero-server model means your files are never stored anywhere you don't control.

FreshRSS

A self-hosted RSS and Atom aggregator that scales from a personal feed reader to a multi-user instance handling 50,000+ feeds and 1M+ articles. Supports web scraping via XPath for sites that don't publish feeds, WebSub for push updates, OPML import/export, and an API compatible with Fever, Google Reader, and Nextcloud News clients — so your existing apps keep working. AGPL-licensed; deploys with PHP or Docker; a hosted demo is available to try before self-hosting.

Money & Finance

Portfolio Visualizer

Free investment backtesting and analysis tools that let you model any asset allocation from 1970 to the present using real historical returns — run Monte Carlo simulations, factor regressions against the Fama-French model, efficient frontier analysis, and drawdown comparisons across up to 25 assets on the free tier. The go-to site when you want to check whether your proposed portfolio has actually held up over market cycles before committing real money to it.

Numbeo

The world's largest crowd-sourced cost-of-living database: 9.8M+ prices contributed by 883,000+ users across 12,787 cities. Compare monthly rent, grocery costs, restaurant prices, local purchasing power, and quality-of-life indices between any two cities in seconds. Invaluable for relocation decisions, salary negotiation ("what's a fair raise to move to Austin?"), and understanding what your dollar buys abroad. Free to browse; API available for commercial use.

Splitwise

A free expense-tracking app for groups — roommates, travel companions, couples — that keeps a running tally of who owes whom and simplifies settlement into the fewest possible payments. Log a shared dinner, a utility bill, or a vacation rental split; Splitwise shows balanced debts across the whole group, not just pairwise. Available on web, iOS, and Android; Pro tier adds receipt scanning and currency conversion. Recognized by the Financial Times and New York Times for making shared finances painless.

Learning & Reference

The Odin Project

A free, open-source, community-maintained full-stack web development curriculum that takes you from "what is HTML" to deploying full-stack apps — covering HTML/CSS, JavaScript, React, Node.js, Ruby, databases, and Git through curated resources and real portfolio projects. No paywalls, no certificates to buy; the entire curriculum is community-built by developers who learned from it. One of the most respected free coding paths on the internet.

Nand to Tetris

A free course (and companion textbook) where you build a complete working computer from first principles: starting with NAND gates, you construct progressively more complex chips, an ALU, memory, a machine language, an assembler, a compiler, and finally run Tetris on the machine you built. Taught at 400+ universities worldwide; all project materials and a hardware simulator are available free for non-commercial use. One of the most mind-expanding things you can do for free online.

Learn Git Branching

An interactive, browser-based Git tutorial that visualizes branch structures as you work through challenges — you type real Git commands and watch the commit graph animate in real time, making abstract concepts like rebasing, cherry-pick, and reflog immediately intuitive. Covers everything from first commits to advanced remote-tracking scenarios. Completely free, no account needed, and arguably the fastest way to develop real Git fluency.

Games

Squaredle

A daily word-search puzzle where you trace connected letters across a grid in any direction to find hidden words — standard words score points while harder "bonus words" (archaic, obscure, or slang) appear on a separate leaderboard. Difficulty escalates Monday through Friday; the 3×3 Express variant provides a quick daily hit. Free with optional Squared subscription for archives and customization; active communities on Discord and Reddit.

Krunker.io

A fast-paced, block-art first-person shooter that runs entirely in the browser with no download or plugin required — and runs startlingly well, with 60fps gameplay, customizable classes, ranked matches, a skin economy, and a map editor. The free-to-play model is genuinely fair; cosmetics don't affect gameplay. A long-running browser game with a dedicated competitive scene.

Little Alchemy 2

Start with four basic elements — earth, fire, water, air — and combine them to discover 720 items spanning science, mythology, pop culture, and the absurd. The puzzle is entirely about intuitive reasoning: drag two elements together and see whether they combine into something new. Completely free, no ads, runs in any browser. Deceptively deep and frequently surprising.

Fun / Weird Internet

Conserve the Sound

A German digital archive dedicated to preserving the sounds of obsolete technology — rotary phones, film cameras, typewriters, Polaroids, CRT TVs, old coffee grinders — recorded in meticulous detail and organized by object type. Every sound is playable directly in your browser. Equal parts nostalgia and media preservation; there's something quietly moving about hearing a dial-up modem or an 8mm projector running while knowing the objects themselves are mostly gone.

Music-Map

Type any artist's name and Music-Map generates an interactive cloud showing other artists similar to them — the closer the bubble, the tighter the musical similarity. Built by the gnod network of discovery, which uses collaborative filtering across millions of user preferences. Not a streaming service, not a playlist generator — just a pure, visual way to explore the musical neighborhood around any act and discover who you've been missing.

The Useless Web

Click the "Take Me" button and get transported to a random bizarre, whimsical, or completely pointless website — one of hundreds curated by creator Tim Holman. Previous destinations include sites where you paint with cats, watch a spinning eel, or listen to an infinite drum machine. No goal, no account, no ads — just a portal to the weirder, more delightful corners of the internet that never made it onto the front page of anything. --- *33 sites this week. Found something broken or have a site to suggest? Reply to the email.*