Web Review, Week 2024-04
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-04.
Where have all the flowers gone? | daverupert.com
Tags: tech, web, blog, culture
Good continuation of “where have all the websites gone?”. They’re still here but we changed, all the more reason for curating.
https://daverupert.com/2024/01/where-have-all-the-websites-gone/
The Open Source Sustainability Crisis
Tags: tech, foss, sustainability
Yes, there’s something to do in this space. More funding is necessary, some form of platform might help… but it definitely won’t be enough.
https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-open-source-sustainability-crisis/
Platform Tilt: Documenting the Uneven Playing Field for an Independent Browser Like Firefox - Open Policy & Advocacy
Tags: tech, firefox, web, browser, google, apple, microsoft
Nice call from Mozilla to make this public. This way it is very obvious where the blockers are on some platforms.
https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/01/19/platform-tilt/
Victory! Ring Announces It Will No Longer Facilitate Police Requests for Footage from Users | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Tags: tech, surveillance
Still a long way to go but definitely a move in the right direction.
Fairly Trained launches certification for generative AI models that respect creators’ rights
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copyright, licensing
This is an interesting move, we’ll see if this certification gets any traction.
Nightshade: Protecting Copyright
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copyright
The tooling to protect against the copyright theft of image generator models training is making progress. This will clearly turn into an arm race.
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
Reading QR codes without a computer!
Tags: tech, barcode, qrcode
Another great way to understand how QR codes work.
Journey to the Centre of the JVM — Daniel Spiewak
Tags: tech, java, multithreading, memory
Very interesting talk. It gives a good idea of some properties of the JVM memory model. It also shows how the CPU architecture properties can leak all the way through changing some of the behavior of JVM code. Too bad this particular thing seems badly documented on the JDK side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFkpmFt61Jo
That’s it! I’m making my own C++ package manager…
Tags: tech, c++, dependencies, buildsystems
Clearly I can understand the feeling. That’s yet another attempt at a solution for this… it’s young, will it get traction? Has the benefit of being kind of simple, too simplistic maybe?
https://david-delassus.medium.com/thats-it-i-m-making-my-own-c-package-manager-555eecbf7d2e
Re: The Case for Rust (in the base system)
Tags: tech, rust, c++, safety, system
Very interesting contribution to the FreeBSD hackers mailing list. Gives quite a good background about Rust, C++ and safety. Debunks a few claims you can easily hear in many places as if they were common knowledge.
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-hackers/2024-January/002876.html
On‐demand JSON: A better way to parse documents? - Keiser - Software: Practice and Experience - Wiley Online Library
Tags: tech, json, parsing, performance, c++
Very interesting approach to JSON parsing. Comes with a very thorough performance analysis.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spe.3313
Handling external API errors: A resumable approach
Tags: tech, api, services, consistency
On the difficulties of dealing with third party APIs. How to handle failures and reach eventual consistency? A few good solutions and patterns are proposed here.
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/handling-errors-when-working-with-external-apis
The most important goal in designing software is understandability | nicole@web
Tags: tech engineering, craftsmanship, quality
Understandability is indeed a very important goal. There are easy ways to improve it in a system.
https://ntietz.com/blog/the-most-important-goal-in-designing-software-is-understandability/
TDD Revisited - Ian Cooper - NDC Porto 2023 - YouTube
Tags: tech, tdd, tests
Nice talks, debunks very well quite a bit of the fallacies around people wrongly practicing TDD. I never realized how the root cause of those fallacies was the misusing of the “unit tests” term instead of “developers test”. This was indeed the wrong term, knew it, but first time I realize how profound the effects were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN9lftH0cJc
Trunk Based Development
Tags: tech, version-control
A nice knowledge base about what is probably my favorite branching model. Goes in the variations you can have, the trade-offs and the other techniques you need to bring in for it to work well.
https://trunkbaseddevelopment.com/
On “owning” software - avdi.codes
Tags: tech, economics, cost, licensing, services, foss
Good exploration on how the total cost of ownership is spread depending on how is licensed the software you use and where you get your support from. I think there’s one point a bit too glanced over in the analysis of the cost for the proprietary SaaS case: what’s the cost of fixing a bug that affect your team? You might be a tiny fish in a large pond, good luck getting attention from support in this case.
https://avdi.codes/on-owning-software/
Lessons learned: 1,000 days of distributed at Atlassian
Tags: tech, atlassian, remote-working
Interesting report about distributed and remote work at Atlassian. They really did their homework. I recommend reading the whole report, they came up with a few original ideas.
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/distributed-work-report
Cancel your meetings if you can live with the outcome - Andy Grunwald
Tags: tech, meetings
Interesting approach to handling meetings. Start thinking about what happens if you’re not there.
https://andygrunwald.com/blog/cancel-your-meetings-if-you-can-live-with-the-outcome/
Bye for now!