Web Review, Week 2024-35
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-35.
Telegram is neither “secure” nor “encrypted”
Tags: tech, telegram, security, privacy
Here a good reminder that the PR of Telegram is highly misleading. It’s not very secure, they don’t really care about your privacy.
How Telegram’s Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr
Tags: tech, telegram, law
Yes, such an arrest is concerning. Now, lots of people are voicing the wrong concerns… this article actually does a good job explaining it.
https://www.404media.co/how-telegrams-founder-pavel-durov-became-a-culture-war-martyr/
Is the Open Source Bubble about to Burst?
Tags: tech, foss, values, licensing, fundraising
I’m not sure the “bubble” comparison properly applies. Still there are indeed signs of the Open Source movement getting in troubles. It’ll be all the more important to stick to the Free Software values.
https://tarakiyee.com/is-the-open-source-bubble-about-to-burst/
Elasticsearch is Open Source, Again
Tags: tech, foss, licensing
It’s about time… I wish they would have gone for the AGPL + proprietary double license scheme instead of their odd licenses the last time.
https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-is-open-source-again
Top Programming Languages 2024 - IEEE Spectrum
Tags: tech, language
Interesting to see Typescript and Rust picking up pace slowly. Otherwise Python, Java, Javascript and C++ are still the big four overall. For jobs, C# and SQL are good to have in your tool belt.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2024
What RSS Needs
Tags: tech, rss
Very good list of the challenges ahead for RSS as a popular protocol. It’d be great to see some of it being tackled.
https://www.mnot.net/blog/2024/08/25/feeds
OpenSSH Backdoors
Tags: tech, supply-chain, security, linux
Interesting comparison between old attempts at backdooring OpenSSH and the latest xz attempt. There are lessons to be learned from this. It makes a good case for starting to sandbox everything.
https://blog.isosceles.com/openssh-backdoors/
Bypassing airport security via SQL injection
Tags: tech, security, airline
Woops, this was clearly a very bad security issue allowing to completely bypass airport security screening in the US.
SQL Has Problems. We Can Fix Them: Pipe Syntax In SQL
Tags: tech, databases, sql
Looks like an interesting way to improve SQL. This feels like a nice extension, it’s much better than throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
https://research.google/pubs/sql-has-problems-we-can-fix-them-pipe-syntax-in-sql/
Python’s Preprocessor
Tags: tech, programming, python, metaprogramming
Interesting to see how far you can go preprocessing Python.
https://pydong.org/posts/PythonsPreprocessor/
Don’t use complex expressions in if conditions | Volodymyr Gubarkov
Tags: tech, programming, maintenance
Definitely a good advice, I see very complex expressions in if (or while BTW) conditions way too often. They tend to accumulate over time.
https://maximullaris.com/if_condition.html
Why Playwright is less flaky than Selenium
Tags: tech, web, frontend, tests, performance, reliability
Interesting reason which would explain the Selenium flakiness. It’s just harder to write tests with race conditions using Playwright.
https://justin.searls.co/links/2024-08-29-why-playwright-is-less-flaky-than-selenium/
Putting a meaningful dent in your error backlog
Tags: tech, monitoring, reliability, debugging
How to avoid drowning in errors when getting serious about monitoring. Finding class of errors and treating them one by one will definitely help.
https://blog.danslimmon.com/2024/08/15/putting-a-meaningful-dent-in-your-error-backlog/
There can’t be only one
Tags: tech, design, databases
A weird detour via baseball obscure rules to justify why we should pay attention to the “Highlander problem”. This should be kept in mind especially for designing databases.
https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2024/aug/27/highlander-problem/
Building with purpose
Tags: tech, business, architecture
Definitely something architects should do more. Understanding the business needs should be the input to the technical decisions. Otherwise you might just happily build the wrong thing.
https://cremich.cloud/building-with-purpose
Bye for now!