Web Review, Week 2024-15
Turns out I managed to squeeze reading here and there and have enough content for a regular review… So let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-15.
Fairbuds are Fairphone’s proof that we really could make better tiny gadgets | Ars Technica
Tags: tech, repair, sound, hardware
Another type of devices where clearly they could be repairable and batteries could be swappable if manufacturers would put care in the design. At least, Fairphone is showing it’s doable.
The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics
Tags: tech, gpu, 3d, history
Interesting history behind the company which was instrumental in pushing computer graphics forward during its time.
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-silicon-graphics
Software eco-design: investigating and reducing the energy consumption of software
Tags: tech, performance, energy, ecology, java, research
More work about eco-design of software. This is definitely welcome. I found this work a bit weak on the state of the art and the interview parts (10 people in the same company). But the field is so nascent that it’s to be expected I guess, PhD students have to do with what they have access to. Unsurprisingly this shows a great lack of proper tools to tackle the measurement problem. This thesis shows interesting prospects to reduce variations in measurements though, some of the proposed guidelines might help but cannot offset the hardware heterogeneity completely… The parts focusing on practical advices around Java use and deployment are interestingly easy to apply though. You need to take into account the context of your application to make the right choices of course.
https://theses.hal.science/tel-03429300/document
The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, cognition, criticism, scam
Interesting take on why people see more in LLM based systems than there really is. The parallels with psychics and mentalists tricks are well thought out.
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
The Assist @ Things Of Interest
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, gpt, programming
All the good reasons why productivity increases with code assistants are massively overestimated. To be used why not, but with a light touch.
Hello OLMo: A truly open LLM
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, open-access, research
This is how it should be done. This one comes with everything needed to reproduce the results. This is necessary to gain insights into how such models work internally.
https://blog.allenai.org/hello-olmo-a-truly-open-llm-43f7e7359222
The lifecycle of a code AI completion
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, programming, architecture
Wondering how one can design a coding assistant? Here is an in depth explanation of the choices made by one of the solutions out there. There’s quite some processing before and after actually running the inference with the LLM.
https://sourcegraph.com/blog/the-lifecycle-of-a-code-ai-completion
Results summary: 2024 Annual C++ Developer Survey “Lite” : Standard C++
Tags: tech, c++
Some interesting insights in this survey. It helps identify common concerns.
https://isocpp.org/blog/2024/04/results-summary-2024-annual-cpp-developer-survey-lite
Glory is only 11MB/sec away
Tags: tech, cloud, infrastructure, cost
When you do the math, the cloud offerings look very expensive for most workload indeed.
https://thmsmlr.com/cheap-infra
Building My First Homelab Server Rack · mtlynch.io
Tags: tech, hardware, homelab, self-hosting
Considering using a server rack for a homelab? This is a nice tutorial with plenty of advices.
https://mtlynch.io/building-first-homelab-rack/
Intro to TLS Certificates
Tags: tech, cryptography, tls, certificates, security
The title says it all. This article is a nice introduction to certificates, how they work, how the trust model is setup, etc.
https://carrickbartle.com/certificates.html
ratarmount: Access large archives as a filesystem efficiently
Tags: tech, tools, archive
Looks like a nice tool to manipulate large archives.
https://github.com/mxmlnkn/ratarmount
Hermit: A reproducible container
Tags: tech, debugging, tools, multithreading
Looks like an interesting tool to analyze hard to reproduce bugs, especially when concurrency is involved. This could be useful to find the source of flaky tests as well.
https://github.com/facebookexperimental/hermit
my deployment platform is a shell script
Tags: tech, self-hosting, deployment, complexity, shell, scripting
Keep things as simple as possible, they might turn out to be robust too.
https://j3s.sh/thought/my-deployment-platform-is-a-shell-script.html
Shell History Is Your Best Productivity Tool
Tags: tech, shell, zsh
A few interesting tips to improve history management with ZSH.
https://martinheinz.dev/blog/110
The Blessing of the Strings
Tags: tech, web, browser, javascript, reliability
Looks like an interesting mechanism to improve the reliability of web applications. Let’s see what people make with those trusted types.
https://bkardell.com/blog/blessing-strings.html
Don’t require people to change ‘source code’ to configure your programs
Tags: tech, programming, portability, craftsmanship
Hopefully nobody is handling configuration by assuming the user will modify the source code or build scripts by hand. Unfortunately I still encounter it from time to time…
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/ConfigureNoSourceCodeChanges
If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it? • Buttondown
Tags: tech, object-oriented, history
Interesting look at the history of inheritance in programming languages. There’s clearly still room for improvements on this concept.
https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/if-inheritance-is-so-bad-why-does-everyone-use-it/
Thoughts on Pair Programming - DEV Community
Tags: tech, programming, pairing
Good criteria to decide to pair or not. This is still not practiced enough. Maybe knowing when it’s best to reach out to pair will help get more into it.
https://dev.to/shaharke/thoughts-on-pair-programming-1i8g
What I think about when I edit — Eva Parish
Tags: documentation, writing
Good advices to improve writing. I should apply such rules to myself more often.
https://evaparish.com/blog/how-i-edit
Simple Ways to Show Appreciation at Work
Tags: management, empathy
Plenty of good tricks in there. It has to be genuine of course, but said tricks reduce chances of unwillingly dropping the ball on the topic.
https://hbr.org/2023/10/simple-ways-to-show-appreciation-at-work
On Generating Ideas - Leadership & Work
Tags: meetings, leadership
This is indeed the best approach I’ve seen for brainstorming. It gives a chance to everyone to bring something forward, even the introverts.
https://read.perspectiveship.com/p/on-generating-ideas
Bye for now!