Web Review, Week 2023-37
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-37.
Willingham Sends Fables Into the Public Domain
Tags: culture, law, public-domain
This is unclear on the technicalities (is it even possible to just claim it like this? is CC0 required? etc.). Still this is a bold move, hats off to this renowned author.
https://billwillingham.substack.com/p/willingham-sends-fables-into-the
Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome | Ars Technica
Tags: tech, google, surveillance, attention-economy
If you’re still using Chrome, maybe you shouldn’t… They’re clearly making it easier to overcome ad blocker and the tracking won’t be a third party thing anymore, this browser will directly report on your behavior.
Meet the Guy Preserving the New History of PC Games, One Linux Port at a Time
Tags: tech, gaming, maintenance, culture
Interesting conservation work. Video games being part of our culture, especially indie ones, it’s important for such work to happen and be funded.
Touch Pianist - Tap in Rhythm and Perform Your Favourite Music
Tags: tech, music, funny
Really cool and fun experiment. Surprisingly relaxing I find.
If a hammer was like AI…
Tags: tech, ai, gpt, ethics, ecology, bias
Lays out the ethical problems with the current trend of AI system very well. They’re definitely not neutral tools and currently suffer from major issues.
Against LLM maximalism · Explosion
Tags: tech, ai, gpt, language
Now this is a very good article highlighting the pros and cons of large language models for natural language processing tasks. It can help on some things but definitely shouldn’t be relied on for longer term systems.
https://explosion.ai/blog/against-llm-maximalism
Computer Science from the Bottom Up
Tags: tech, system, unix, cpu, memory, filesystem
I didn’t read it since it’s basically a whole book. Still from the outline it looks like a very good resource for beginners or to dig deeper on some lower level topics.
A systematic approach to debugging | nicole@web
Tags: tech, debugging
Good process for fixing bug. Definitely similar to how I approach it as well.
https://ntietz.com/blog/how-i-debug-2023/
A user program doing intense IO can manifest as high system CPU time
Tags: tech, io, storage, cpu, kernel, performance
A good reminder that depending what happens in the kernel, the I/O time you were expecting might turn out to be purely CPU time.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/UserIOCanBeSystemTime
Linear code is more readable
Tags: tech, programming, craftsmanship
A bit of a rambling, there’s something interesting in it though. Splitting small functions early will do more harm than good if they’re not reused. Don’t assume they automatically make things easier to read.
https://blog.separateconcerns.com/2023-09-11-linear-code.html
Async Rust Is A Bad Language
Tags: tech, rust, asynchronous, criticism
More details are surfacing regarding async and Rust… definitely not a match in heaven it seems.
https://bitbashing.io/async-rust.html
Good performance is not just big O - Julio Merino (jmmv.dev)
Tags: tech, performance, programming
Good list of things to keep in mind when thinking about performances. Of course, always measure using a profiler when you want to be really sure.
https://jmmv.dev/2023/09/performance-is-not-big-o.html
Response Time Is the System Talking
Tags: tech, queuing, networking, system, performance
Interesting way to approximate how loaded a system is.
https://two-wrongs.com/response-time-is-the-system-talking.html
FIFO queues are all you need for cache eviction
Tags: tech, caching
Interesting caching strategy. Looks somewhat simple to put in place as well.
https://blog.jasony.me/system/cache/2023/08/01/s3fifo
Death by a thousand microservices
Tags: tech, microservices, criticism, complexity
Looks like the morbid fascination for microservices is fading. This is very welcome. This piece is a good criticism of this particular fad and gives an interesting theory of why it came to be.
https://renegadeotter.com/2023/09/10/death-by-a-thousand-microservices.html
Making visually stable UIs | Horizon EDA Blog
Tags: tech, gui, fonts
Think of the typography and fonts if you don’t want to have text jumping around in your GUI.
https://blog.horizon-eda.org/misc/2020/02/19/ui.html
Bricolage | Some notes on Local-First Development
Tags: tech, web, frontend, crdt
Interesting, “state of the union” regarding local-first we frontend. Lots of pointers towards other resources too.
https://bricolage.io/some-notes-on-local-first-development/
Multi-page web apps
Tags: tech, web, frontend, complexity
Good reasoning, multi-page applications should be the default choice for web frontends architecture. The single page applications come at a cost.
https://adactio.com/journal/20442
The Tyranny of the Marginal User - by Ivan Vendrov
Tags: tech, attention-economy, criticism, design, ux
OK, this is a very bleak view… maybe a bit over the top I’m unsure. There seems to be some truth to it though.
https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
On Waiting - Tim Kellogg
Tags: management, organization, patience
This is a sound advice. In other words, don’t commit too early, only when you got enough information. Of course monitor to make sure you don’t miss said information.
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2023/09/14/wu-wei
Bye for now!