Web Review, Week 2026-07
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-07.
The Media Can’t Stop Propping Up Elon Musk’s Phony Supergenius Engineer Mythology
Tags: tech, politics, journalism, business
There’s really a problem with journalism at this point. How come when covering the tech moguls they keep leaving out important context and taking their fables at face value?
https://karlbode.com/the-press-is-still-propping-up-elon-musks-supergenius-engineer-mythology/
But they did read it
Tags: tech, literature, scifi, business, politics
Indeed, don’t assume they misunderstood the sci-fi and fantasy they read and you know. Clearly they just got different opinions about it because their incentives and world views are different from your.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/12/but-they-did-read-it/
Microsoft’s AI-Powered Copyright Bots Fucked Up And Got An Innocent Game Delisted From Steam
Tags: tech, game, dmca, copyright, law
Automated DMCA take downs have been a problem for decades now… They still bring real damage, here is an example.
Launching Interop 2026
Tags: tech, web, browser, interoperability
This is a very important initiative. For a healthy web platform we need good interoperability between the engines. I’m glad they’re doing it again.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/02/launching-interop-2026/
How I built Fluxer, a Discord-like chat app
Tags: tech, foss, messaging
Clearly early days… Could that become a good place to land for people fleeing off Discord?
https://blog.fluxer.app/how-i-built-fluxer-a-discord-like-chat-app/
New And Upcoming IRCv3 Features
Tags: tech, messaging, irc
It’s nice to still see some activity around IRC.
https://libera.chat/news/new-and-upcoming-features-3
Uses an ESP8266 module and an Arduino sketch to display the local time on a inexpensive analog quartz clock
Tags: tech, hardware, embedded, ntp, time
This is definitely a cool hack. Now I feel like doing something like this to every clock I encounter.
https://github.com/jim11662418/ESP8266_WiFi_Analog_Clock
LLVM: Concerns about low-quality PRs beeing merged into main
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, foss, codereview
Clearly Free Software projects will have to find a way to deal with LLM generated contributions. A very large percentage of them is leading to subtle quality issues. This also very taxing on the reviewers, and you don’t want to burn them out.
https://discourse.llvm.org/t/concerns-about-low-quality-prs-beeing-merged-into-main/89748
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, foss, commons
I guess when you unleash agents unsupervised their ethos tend to converge on the self-entitled asshole contributors? This raise real questions, this piece explains the situation quite well.
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/
Spying Chrome Extensions: 287 Extensions spying on 37M users
Tags: tech, browser, security, attention-economy, spy
Oh this is bad! The amount of data exfiltrated by those malicious extensions. Data brokers will do anything they can to have something to resell. This is also a security and corporate espionage hazard.
https://qcontinuum.substack.com/p/spying-chrome-extensions-287-extensions-495
ReMemory - Split a recovery key among friends
Tags: tech, tools, security
Accidents can happen in life. This might come in handy if you loose memory for some reason. It requires planning ahead though.
https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
Penrose
Tags: tech, tools, data-visualization
Looks like a nice option for visualisations.
Boilerplate Tax - Ranking popular programming languages by density
Tags: tech, programming, language, statistics, type-systems
Interesting experiment even though some of the results baffle me (I’d have expected C# higher in the ranking for example). Still this gives some food for thought.
https://boyter.org/posts/boilerplate-tax-ranking-popular-languages-by-density/
The cost of a function call
Tags: tech, c++, optimisation
If you needed a reminder that inlining functions isn’t necessarily an optimisation, here is a fun little experiment.
https://lemire.me/blog/2026/02/08/the-cost-of-a-function-call/
It’s all a blur
Tags: tech, graphics, blur, mathematics
Wondering if blurs can really be reverted? There’s some noise introduced but otherwise you can pretty much reconstruct the original.
https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/its-all-a-blur
Simplifying Vulkan One Subsystem at a Time
Tags: tech, graphics, vulkan, api, complexity
There are lessons and inspirations to find in how the Vulkan API is managed. The extension system can be unwieldy, but with the right approach it can help consolidate as well.
https://www.khronos.org/blog/simplifying-vulkan-one-subsystem-at-a-time
What Functional Programmers Get Wrong About Systems
Tags: tech, data, architecture, system, type-systems, functional, complexity
Interesting essay looking at how systems evolve their schemas over time. We’re generally ill-equipped to deal with it and this presents options and ideas to that effect. Of course, the more precise you want to be the more complexity you’ll have to deal with.
Modular Monolith and Microservices: Modularity is what truly matters
Tags: tech, architecture, modules, microservices, services, complexity
No, modularity doesn’t imply micro services… You don’t need a process and network barrier between your modules. This long post does a good job going through the various architecture options we have.
https://binaryigor.com/modular-monolith-and-microservices-modularity-is-what-truly-matters.html
Using an engineering notebook
Tags: tech, engineering, note-taking, memory, cognition
I used to do that, fell into the “taking notes on the computer”. And clearly it’s not the same, I’m thinking going back to paper notebooks soon.
https://ntietz.com/blog/using-an-engineering-notebook/
On screwing up
Tags: tech, engineering, organisation, team, communication, failure
Everyone makes mistakes, what matters is how you handle them.
https://www.seangoedecke.com/screwing-up/
Why is the sky blue?
Tags: physics, colors
Excellent piece which explains the physics behind the atmospheric colours. Very fascinating stuff.
https://explainers.blog/posts/why-is-the-sky-blue/
Bye for now!