Web Review, Week 2025-10
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-10… somehow this one is really packed with content. Brace yourselves!
The Digital Packrat Manifesto
Tags: tech, culture, streaming, vendor-lockin
Looks like I’m a digital packrat of some sort! There are reasons behind it and it’s well explained.
https://www.404media.co/the-digital-packrat-manifesto/
‘Flow’ wins best animated feature film Oscar
Tags: tech, blender, foss, movie
Behind the movie this is a big win for Blender. It proves Blender is viable for full length movies at this point. The movie was nice too. :-)
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/flow-wins-best-animated-feature-film-oscar-2025-03-03/
Who is Free Software for?
Tags: tech, foss, politics, culture
Interesting piece, we indeed need to move beyond from the “for hackers by hackers” mindset. I don’t even think it was really the whole extent of the political goals when the Free Software movement started. Somehow we got stuck there though.
https://tante.cc/2025/03/03/who-is-free-software-for/
Kagi review - Tim Hårek
Tags: tech, web, search, attention-economy
I admit I’m more and more tempted to pay for my search service as well. It’s unfortunately not FOSS… But it’s not like the alternatives are better there either anyway.
https://timharek.no/blog/kagi-review/
Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)
Tags: tech, journalism, politics
In case it wasn’t clear yet that the tech industry was eminently political, this editorial drives the point home. It’s also a good reminder that it’s been the case for a long while.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/04/why-techdirt-is-now-a-democracy-blog-whether-we-like-it-or-not/
Infrastructural problems and instabilities caused by cloud services
Tags: tech, self-hosting, infrastructure, cloud
Or why you need to own at least some part of your infrastructure.
https://mental-reverb.com/blog.php?id=15
Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge - Neowin
Tags: tech, browser, attention-economy, privacy, microsoft
The writing was on the wall. This is an unsurprising development but Edge users should know where it’s going…
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-begins-turning-off-ublock-origin-and-other-extensions-in-edge/
WASM Wayland Web (WWW)
Tags: tech, web, browser, webassembly
Is it the future of web browsers? Maybe… I’m not sure this would be a good thing though.
https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/WASM_Wayland_Web_WWW/
The Empty Promise of AI-Generated Creativity
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, culture, criticism
Sure it makes generating content faster… but it’s indeed so bland and uniform.
https://hey.paris/posts/genai/
AI versus the brain and the race for general intelligence
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, cognition, neuroscience, science, research
Friendly reminder that AI was also supposed to be a field about studying cognition… There’s so many things we still don’t understand that the whole “make it bigger and it’ll be smart” obsession looks like it’s creating missed opportunities to understand ourselves better.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/ai-versus-the-brain-and-the-race-for-general-intelligence/
Structured data extraction from unstructured content using LLM schemas
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, nlp, data
This is one of the handful of uses where I’d expect LLMs to shine. It’s nice to see some tooling to make it easier.
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/28/llm-schemas/
Zen and the Art of Microcode Hacking
Tags: tech, cpu, amd, security, complexity
Nice exploration of the microcode patching flaw which was disclosed recently. This gives a glimpse at the high level of complexity the x86 family brings on the table.
https://bughunters.google.com/blog/5424842357473280/zen-and-the-art-of-microcode-hacking
Hardware discovery: ACPI & Device Tree
Tags: tech, system, hardware, kernel
Nice post explaining the need of ACPI or Device Tree and how they are leveraged by kernels.
https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/hardware-autoconfiguration
How fast can you open 1000 files? – Daniel Lemire’s blog
Tags: tech, filesystem, system, performance, multithreading, linux, apple
Nice performance comparison of file handling in multithreaded context. It’s surprising how slow MacOS seems to be there.
https://lemire.me/blog/2025/03/01/how-fast-can-you-open-1000-files/
3,200% CPU Utilization
Tags: tech, multithreading, safety
Another illustration that with race conditions all hell can break loose. It’s not only about data corruption or deadlocks. This case is explored in depth which is nice, also compared across several languages.
https://josephmate.github.io/2025-02-26-3200p-cpu-util/
Git without a forge
Tags: tech, git, tools, version-control
There are pros and cons to using a forge, same thing when not using a forge. Let’s not forget you don’t have to use one though. Also this piece mentions git bundles which I didn’t know about, it looks interesting.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/quasiblog/git-no-forge/
Globstar - The Open-Source Static Analysis Toolkit
Tags: tech, static-analyzer
Looks like an interesting toolkit to make your own code checkers.
Is Rust a good fit for business apps?
Tags: tech, programming, rust
A long piece which explore the reasons why Rust is likely not the best pick for enterprise software. It’s niche is clearly system programming but beyond that and because of its qualities in that space it quickly become a sharp and dangerous tool.
https://www.bartoszsypytkowski.com/is-rust-a-good-fit-for-business-apps/
Some things that make Rust lifetimes hard to learn
Tags: tech, rust, programming, memory
This is an important concept in Rust… but clearly it’s harder to grasp than you’d expect.
https://ntietz.com/blog/rust-lifetimes-learning/
Succinct data structures
Tags: tech, data, programming, science
Interesting class of data structures with funny properties. Looks like there’s a lot to do with them.
https://blog.startifact.com/posts/succinct/
Binary search as a bidirectional generator | mathspp
Tags: tech, python, programming
Nice little Python trick using bidirectional generators.
https://mathspp.com/blog/binary-search-as-a-bidirectional-generator
Falsehoods programmers believe about languages
Tags: tech, language, translation, complexity
Translation and localisation is a complex topic too often overlooked by developers. This is a modest list of widespread misconceptions. If you get in the details it get complex fairly quickly.
https://www.lexiconista.com/falsehoods-about-languages/
Troubleshooting: The Skill That Never Goes Obsolete
Tags: tech, problem-solving, debugging
An excellent article, that troubleshooting skill is really important in many fields… In particular software engineering. It’s hard to teach and learn but it makes all the difference.
https://www.autodidacts.io/troubleshooting/
Cleaner codebase, happier mind
Tags: tech, programming, craftsmanship, technical-debt
Makes sense, the “boyscout rule” has a psychology impact as well.
https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2025/03/02/cleaner-codebase/
Your Next Two Zeroes
Tags: tech, engineering
It like this parallel. The bigger the endeavour, the more complexity… And that will require thinking in very different ways for each order of magnitude.
https://taylor.town/next-two-zeroes
Should managers still code?
Tags: tech, engineering, management, leadership
There’s clearly a tension on that topic and the expectations from engineering managers tend to change over time. I like the proposed answer here and the distinction made between writing code and being in the code.
https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/should-managers-still-code/
Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it
Tags: neuroscience, cognition, research
Interesting study even though it bears some important limitations. Still it seems to indicate that one shouldn’t rest on its laurels and keep practicing cognitive skills even when older (actually might have to get started in the 20s latest).
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.ads1560?af=R
Bye for now!