Web Review, Week 2024-48
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-48.
Are Overemployed ‘Ghost Engineers’ Making Six Figures to Do Nothing?
Tags: tech, algorithm, productivity, business
Can you see this kind of models getting abused quickly? Clearly it says something about the tech industry wanting to reduce costs.
https://www.404media.co/are-overemployed-ghost-engineers-making-six-figures-to-do-nothing/
the tech utopia fantasy is over
Tags: tech, politics
Technology isn’t neutral. It’s impossible to ignore the ideologies of the moguls funding or leading big tech companies. We can’t afford to trust their promises.
https://blog.avas.space/tech-utopia-fantasy/
X’s Objection to the Onion Buying InfoWars Is a Reminder You Do Not Own Your Social Media Accounts
Tags: tech, social-media, twitter, law
Everything is in the title… if you thought you owned anything on those platforms, think twice.
OpenAI blamed NYT for tech problem erasing evidence of copyright abuse
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, law, copyright
More shady practices to try to save themselves. Let’s hope it won’t work.
‘Thirsty’ ChatGPT uses four times more water than previously thought
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, ecology, water
The water problem is obviously hard to ignore. This piece does a good job illustrating how large the impact is.
Self-Hosting Isn’t a Solution; It’s A Patch
Tags: tech, self-hosting, privacy, gdpr, law, politics, decentralized
Definitely this. Sure we should seek for decentralization, but this is not going to happen or be effective without regulation. Ensuring privacy is a legislative and political problem as much as a technical one.
https://matduggan.com/self-hosting-isnt-a-solution-its-a-patch/
How decentralized is Bluesky really?
Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse, decentralized, bluesky
A long and comprehensive analysis of Bluesky. Also brings interesting critiques about both Bluesky and the Fediverse. Clearly Bluesky as of today is not effectively decentralized and shouldn’t be considered as such.
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization
Tags: tech, social-media, bluesky, fediverse, decentralized
The debate about how BlueSky and decentralisation or federation continues. It’s nice to see how civilized the people involved are. This is how we can make progress.
https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t
So you want to write a KMail plugin?
Tags: tech, kde, documentation
Since the documentation is severely lacking in this area, this ends up being a nice how to. I wish we’d have more like this in the official documentation.
https://datagirl.xyz/posts/kontact_plugin_writing.html
The two factions of C++
Tags: tech, c++, safety, community
It’s clear that a split is forming in the C++ community on how to evolve the language. Could it lead to a full fledged divorce?
https://herecomesthemoon.net/2024/11/two-factions-of-cpp/#fnref:4
if constexpr requires requires { requires }
Tags: tech, c++, metaprogramming, type-systems
Are you confused with the use of requires in C++20? This post might help.
https://www.think-cell.com/en/career/devblog/if-constexpr-requires-requires-requires
Unsafe for work
Tags: tech, rust, safety
Good explanation of what Rust’s unsafe really does.
https://oida.dev/unsafe-for-work/
Mark–Scavenge: Waiting for Trash to Take Itself Out – Inside.java
Tags: tech, java, memory, garbage-collector
Looks like there is a new venue to improve garbage collectors performance. This should be interesting down the line.
https://inside.java/2024/11/22/mark-scavenge-gc/
SLAX: an alternative syntax for XSLT which is tailored for readability and familiarity
Tags: tech, xslt
Tempted to do some XSLT? Did you notice it’s almost 2025? So yeah, just don’t. At least there’s a proper alternative if you still need to process that XML input.
https://github.com/Juniper/libslax/wiki
Petnames: A humane approach to secure, decentralized naming
Tags: tech, security, dns
Interesting approach to have secure and decentralized naming while keeping it human readable.
https://files.spritely.institute/papers/petnames.html
Naming things
Tags: tech, programming, design, craftsmanship
This is a good point. Idiosyncrasies are not necessarily a bad thing for naming things. Natural languages are fickle friends, you might need to rely to specific metaphors in order to disambiguate.
https://wiki.dpk.land/Naming_things
Codin’ Dirty
Tags: tech, programming, complexity, design, tests
Another rebuttal of Clean Code. Most of it makes sense if not overdone. There’s the usual confusion around the “unit tests” term though, so take that section with a pinch of salt.
https://htmx.org/essays/codin-dirty/
Bye for now!