Web Review, Week 2025-24
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-24.
Google’s nightmare: How a search spinoff could remake the web
Tags: tech, web, google, search, monopoly, economics
There’s clearly something tempting about a web index somehow separated from Google. It always felt like a natural monopoly and so a type of public service. Now that push arrives a tad late so the impacts are unclear. Overall I still think this would be a net positive if there are more web search companies built onto such an index.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/06/googles-nightmare-how-a-search-spin-off-could-remake-the-web/
How much EU is in DNS4EU?
Tags: tech, dns, privacy
Early days for that service. Let’s hope it improves infrastructure wise.
https://techlog.jenslink.net/posts/dns4eu/
Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI’ is a huge risk
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, programming, cognition, scam, criticism
An excellent piece which explains well why the current “debate” is rotten to the core. There’s no good way to engage with those tools without reinforcing some biases. Once the hype cycle is over we have a chance at proper research on the impacts… unfortunately it’s not happening now when it’s badly needed.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/
Avoiding generative models is the rational and responsible thing to do – follow-up to “Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI…’”
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, programming, cognition, scam, criticism
A nice followup which acts as a TL;DR for the previous piece which was fairly long indeed.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/followup-on-trusting-your-own-judgement/
Poison everywhere: No output from your MCP server is safe
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, security
OK, this is definitely concerning for the use of tools with so called coding agents. The trust model is really not appropriate at this stage and that opens the door to a wide range of attacks.
How we decreased GitLab repo backup times from 48 hours to 41 minutes
Tags: tech, gitlab, git, complexity, profiling, optimization
Nice simple fix in Git but with a large impact on backups. A good proof that profiling and keeping an eye on algorithmic complexity can go a long way in improving software.
Sandboxing Adoption in Open Source Ecosystems
Tags: tech, unix, system, sandbox
Interesting paper about the use of sandboxing in several ecosystems. It’s not used much directly but there are clear differences in term of complexity to set them up.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06447
Curate your shell history
Tags: tech, tools, shell
Interesting thinking and trick. We clearly pile up too much noise in our shell history.
https://esham.io/2025/05/shell-history
magic namerefs
Tags: tech, shell, scripting
Didn’t know bash got this feature now. I’m torn between “it looks so cool” and “we’ll never see the end of debugging issues which use this”.
https://gist.github.com/izabera/e4717562e20eb6cfb6e05f8019883efb
Too Many Open Files
Tags: tech, unix, system, filesystem
Need to play with file descriptors on Unix systems? This is a fun and gentle introduction.
https://mattrighetti.com/2025/06/04/too-many-files-open
Is Rust faster than C?
Tags: tech, rust, c, performance
Or why this kind of question never have an absolute answer.
https://steveklabnik.com/writing/is-rust-faster-than-c/
Patterns for Modeling Overlapping Variant Data in Rust
Tags: tech, programming, rust, type-systems, data
Interesting selection of options to model data structure with some variability in Rust.
https://mcmah309.github.io/posts/patterns-for-modeling-overlapping-variant-data-in-rust/
GPU Memory Consistency: Specifications, Testing, and Opportunities for Performance Tooling
Tags: tech, gpu, memory, performance
The memory models for GPU programming are complex. This isn’t easy to squeeze more performance without introducing subtle bugs.
The Concurrency Trap: How An Atomic Counter Stalled A Pipeline
Tags: tech, multithreading, caching, cpu, rust
A good example of how you can get bitten by cache coherency algorithms in the CPU.
https://www.conviva.com/platform/the-concurrency-trap-how-an-atomic-counter-stalled-a-pipeline/
Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps
Tags: tech, programming, ux, design
A long essay but contains a lot of interesting insights. There’s definitely more to do design wise to produce software people can really bend to their needs.
https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/
Write Unit Tests, Don’t Waste Our Money!
Tags: tech, tests, business
This is one way to frame it I guess. Code is indeed an investment, tests are here to protect it.
https://www.yegor256.com/2025/06/08/pull-request-without-test.html
Test Contra-variance
Tags: tech, tdd, tests, design
A good reminder of the reasons why the organization of your tests shouldn’t necessarily match the organization of the application code. You don’t want fragile tests, do you?
https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/10/03/TestContravariance.html
Pinning Tests
Tags: tech, legacy, tests
I’m using the term regularly when dealing with legacy code. Finally remembered when I saw it first.
https://wiki.c2.com/?PinningTests
Analyzing Metastable Failures in Distributed Systems
Tags: tech, failure, safety, distributed
Interesting paper about metastable failures and novel approaches to try to analyse them. It’s early days but we would need to get toward better prevention.
https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/06/analyzing-metastable-failures-in.html?m=1
How I structure my apps (in Rust and other languages)
Tags: tech, architecture, design, rust
Of course, don’t take everything at face value here. Still this gives good ideas on how to combine some design and architectural ideas together. The whole thing is not really Rust specific.
https://dpc.pw/posts/how-i-structure-my-apps-in-rust-and-other-languages
ADRs
Tags: tech, architecture
Nice little post helping advocate for the use of Architectural Decision Records.
https://www.beflagrant.com/blog/adrs
Beck Design Rules
Tags: tech, xp, design
Nice and short explanation on the design rules Kent Beck had in mind when devising XP. It still generally applies in my opinion.
https://martinfowler.com/bliki/BeckDesignRules.html
Tech debt can’t be solved as a roadmap item. It needs to be part of your daily routine
Tags: tech, quality, technical-debt, project-management
Definitely this, too often I see projects treating the technical debt as one-off large tasks. Really it’s something you should deal with bite sized and over time.
https://software.rajivprab.com/2025/05/10/tech-debt-cant-be-solved-as-a-roadmap-item/
The Real Cost of Change
Tags: tech, agile, technical-debt, planning, risk
It will fluctuate with time so it needs to be kept in check. Indeed, some things are commodities so can be decided upfront, but the rest of the functional envelope will change over time. Also make sure you drive the project by risks to have early feedback where it matters most.
https://lizkeogh.com/2012/01/30/the-real-cost-of-change/
Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture
Tags: tech, failure, culture, management
Mistakes happen, but shrugging them off with blaming people or pushing them to be more careful is counter-productive. Instead, you want to find the organizational issues which made them possible in the first place.
https://www.etsy.com/codeascraft/blameless-postmortems/
Building An Impact Brewery: A Toolkit for R&D Leaders to Drive Impact
Tags: tech, research, leadership, tech-lead, organization
Not fond of the metaphor used here which leads to quite some noise. Still, this article contains interesting ideas to try to push R&D initiatives forward. Definitely needed to improve any kind of organisation.
Elephant Carpaccio facilitation guide
Tags: tech, agile, tests, tdd, teaching
This is one of those workshops I like to do with teams from time to time. Didn’t do it for a while. I wish this resource was on a safer space than google docs.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TCuuu-8Mm14oxsOnlk8DqfZAA1cvtYu9WGv67Yj_sSk/pub
5 People Who Destroy Your Culture
Tags: management
This kind of articles are always a bit caricatural. Still there is some good advice in there. Keep an eye open for the harmful behaviors.
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/5-people-who-destroy-your-culture
Bye for now!