Friday, 13 December 2024
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-50.
Census III of Free and Open Source Software
Tags: tech, foss, supply-chain
Interesting report, some findings are kind of unexpected. It’s interesting to see how much npm and maven dominate the supply chain. Clearly there’s a need for a global scheme to identify dependencies, hopefully we’ll get there.
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/census-iii
Open Source Archetypes: A Framework For Purposeful Open Source
Tags: tech, foss, business, strategy
An important white paper which probably went unnoticed. It gives a nice overview of the strategies one can build around Open Source components.
https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/MZOTS_OS_Archetypes_report_ext_scr.pdf
Fool Me Twice We Don’t Get Fooled Again
Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse
Excellent post from Cory Doctorow about why he is only on Mastodon. Not being federated should indeed just be a deal breaker by now. Empty promises should be avoided.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/
Firefox is the superior browser
Tags: tech, web, browser, firefox
Obviously I agree with this. It’s time people stop jumping on chromium based browsers.
https://asindu.xyz/posts/switching-to-firefox/
TRELLIS: Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generation
Tags: tech, 3d, ai, machine-learning, generator
Looks like a nice model to produce 3D assets. Should speed up a bit the work of artists for producing background elements, I guess there will be manual adjustments needed in the end still.
Who and What comprise AI Skepticism? - by Benjamin Riley
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism
Excellent post showing all the nuances of AI skepticism. Can you find in which category you are? I definitely match several of them.
https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/who-and-what-comprises-ai-skepticism
Reverse engineering of the Pentium FDIV bug
Tags: tech, cpu, hardware
It’s interesting to see such a reverse engineering of this infamous bug straight from the gates layout.
https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/113606898880486330
How to Think About Time
Tags: tech, time
A good summary on the various concepts needed to reason about time.
https://errorprone.info/docs/time
Galloping Search - blag
Tags: tech, algorithm
Nice principle for a search in a sorted list when you don’t know the upper bound.
https://avi.im/blag/2024/galloping-search/
I’m daily driving Jujutsu, and maybe you should too
Tags: tech, version-control, git
Jujutsu is indeed alluring… but its long term support is questionable, that’s what keeps me away from it for now.
https://drewdevault.com/2024/12/10/2024-12-10-Daily-driving-jujutsu.html
mise-en-place
Tags: tech, tools, developer-experience
A single tool to manage your environment and dev tools across projects? Seems a bit young and needs a proper community still. I’m surely tempted to give it a spin though.
Raw loops vs. STL algorithms
Tags: tech, c++, algorithm
An old one now, but since I keep giving this advice it seems relevant still. If you’re using raw loops at least that no again, there is likely a good alternative in the STL.
https://www.meetingcpp.com/blog/items/raw-loops-vs-stl-algorithms.html
Generic programming to fight the rigidity in the C++ projects
Tags: tech, architecture, type-systems, generics, c++
A good reminder that genericity can help fight against the rigidity one can accumulate using purely object oriented couplings… but it comes at a price in terms of complexity.
https://codergears.com/Blog/?p=945
Nobody Gets Fired for Picking JSON, but Maybe They Should? · mcyoung
Tags: tech, json, safety, type-systems
JSON is full of pitfalls. Here is a good summary. Still it is very widespread.
https://mcyoung.xyz/2024/12/10/json-sucks/
JSON5 – JSON for Humans
Tags: tech, json
Interesting JSON superset which makes it more usable for humans. I wonder if it’ll see more parsers appear.
Improving my desktop’s responsiveness with the cgroup V2 ‘cpu.idle’ setting
Tags: tech, systemd, cgroups
Nice little systemd trick, definitely an alias to add to your setup.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/CgroupV2CpuIdleForResponsiveness
“Rules” that terminal programs follow
Tags: tech, shell, tools, unix
Good list of the undocumented rules terminal programs tend to follow. It’s nice to have this kind of consistency even though a bit by accident.
https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/26/terminal-rules/
htmy
Tags: tech, web, backend, frontend, python, htmx
The idea is interesting even though it probably needs to mature. It’s interesting to see this kind of libraries popup though, there’s clearly some kind of “backend - frontend split” fatigue going on.
https://volfpeter.github.io/htmy/
The errors of TeX (1989)
Tags: tech, latex, history, estimates, craftsmanship
A very precious document. Shows great organization in the work of Knuth of course but the self-reflection has profound lessons pertaining to estimates, type of errors we make, etc.
https://yurichev.com/mirrors/knuth1989.pdf
An Undefeated Pull Request Template
Tags: tech, codereview
This is indeed a nice template for submitting changes for review. It’s very thorough and helps reviewers.
https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/pull-request-template/
On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules
Tags: tech, design, architecture, research
We’re still struggling about how to modularize our code. Sometimes we should go back to the basics, this paper by Parnas from 1972 basically gave us the code insights needs to modularize programs properly.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145⁄361598.361623
TDD as the crack cocaine of software
Tags: tech, tdd, flow
Indeed, it is often overlooked that TDD can really help finding a state of flow. Unlike other addictive activities presented in this article it requires a non negligible initial effort though, that’s why I wouldn’t describe it as an addiction though.
https://jefclaes.be/2014/12/tdd-as-crack-cocaine-of-software.html
Demo Driven Development
Tags: tech, agile, product-management
A good reminder of what agile is about from the product management perspective. If you can regularly demo your work you ensure a feeling of progress.
https://oanasagile.blogspot.com/2013/12/demo-driven-development.html
The 6 Mistakes You’re Going to Make as a New Manager
Tags: tech, leadership, management
Good points, this is indeed often where we are struggling when we move to a leadership role. This changes the nature of the work at least in part and we need to adjust to it.
https://terriblesoftware.org/2024/12/04/the-6-mistakes-youre-going-to-make-as-a-new-manager/
Bye for now!