Web Review, Week 2026-09
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-09.
Easily Replaceable USB-C Port Spawned By EU Laws
Tags: tech, usb, repair
Since these ports are becoming more and more pervasive, it’s nice to see a replaceable and repairable option on the market.
https://hackaday.com/2026/02/26/easily-replaceable-usb-c-port-spawned-by-eu-laws/
On Alliances
Tags: politics, ethics, culture
The previous piece about the disagreement with Cory Doctorow was a good one even though I didn’t put it in my review. This one is more important though! It’s a necessary reminder that we can’t put allies on a pedestal and then scream at them making mistakes or having different opinions. We can’t afford this kind of purity culture… Especially right now.
https://tante.cc/2026/02/20/on-alliances/
The Slow Death of the Power User
Tags: tech, foss, hacking, culture, business, surveillance, vendor-lockin, knowledge
Clearly the author is angry and he has every right to be. By closing platforms and fighting against tinkering, the big tech companies try to kill of the power user and hacker cultures. By letting this happen we all loose as a society.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/
Velocity Is the New Authority. Here’s Why
Tags: tech, information, attention-economy, culture, journalism
Interesting food for thought about the information ecosystem we live in. It’s been distorted by the constant stream of content, so it’s very hard to find the good journalism within the noise.
https://om.co/2026/01/21/velocity-is-the-new-authority-heres-why/
I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here’s What I Actually Handed Over
Tags: tech, linkedin, social-media, surveillance
Could it get more intrusive than this? It’s really handing over sensitive data to shady companies…
https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/
I hacked ChatGPT and Google’s AI - and it only took 20 minutes
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, knowledge, security, trust
One more example that it should be used for NLP tasks, not knowledge related tasks. The model makers are consuming so much data indiscriminately that they can’t easily fine comb everything to remove the poisoned information.
Facebook is absolutely cooked
Tags: tech, gafam, facebook, attention-economy, ai
If you’re wondering the kind of dumpster fire Facebook is now, that gives an idea. It was crap all along for sure, but clearly they crossed another threshold.
https://pilk.website/3/facebook-is-absolutely-cooked
Child’s Play - Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking
Tags: tech, culture, business
It feels like staring in the abyss… rather sad I’d say.
https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai-startup-roy-lee/
Vulnerability as a Service
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, security
The OpenClaw instances running around are really a security hazard…
https://herman.bearblog.dev/vulnerability-as-a-service/
Reviewing “How AI Impacts Skill Formation”
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, science, research
I was so waiting for someone motivated enough to publish a review of that paper. I indeed threw it away as weak after reading it. Thanks for taking the time to write this up! This is good scientific inquiry… and it shows there were interesting findings in the paper that the authors decided to just ignore.
https://jenniferplusplus.com/reviewing-how-ai-impacts-skill-formation/
The path to ubiquitous AI
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, hardware, performance, power
Still a bit mysterious but could be interesting if they really deliver.
https://taalas.com/the-path-to-ubiquitous-ai/
The power play behind Hyperion
Tags: tech, gafam, facebook, ai, machine-learning, gpt, politics, business, economics, ecology
This planned giant data center by Meta shows how the big players are grabbing land to satisfy their hubris. So much waste all around.
https://sherwood.news/tech/hyperion/
Too many satellites? Earth’s orbit is on track for a catastrophe – but we can stop it
Tags: tech, geospatial, law, politics
There’s clearly a regulation gap for satellites. We’ve been putting way too many of them in orbit the past decade and it’s currently going to accelerate. This jeopardizes the night sky, astronomy and the possibility of space exploration. Clearly we’re making the wrong choices here.
Cosmologically Unique IDs
Tags: tech, uuid, physics, mathematics, funny
Really fun thought experiment. What if we need truly unique IDs at universe scale? Several options are explored.
https://jasonfantl.com/posts/Universal-Unique-IDs/
Making WebAssembly a first-class language on the Web
Tags: tech, web, standard, webassembly
There is indeed a path for better support for WebAssembly on the Web platform. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take a decade to get there.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/02/making-webassembly-a-first-class-language-on-the-web/
Cleaning up merged git branches: a one-liner from the CIA’s leaked dev docs
Tags: tech, git, version-control, tools
Nice little git trick. We can all thank the CIA I guess?
brat: Brutal Runner for Automated Tests
Tags: tech, unix, posix, shell, tests, tools
Interesting shell based test framework targeting pure POSIX. This makes it fairly portable. It feels a bit raw but there are a few interesting ideas in there.
https://codeberg.org/sstephenson/brat
codespelunker - CLI code search tool that understands code structure
Tags: tech, command-line, tools, programming, search
Looks like a good tool when you need to search for stuff in codebases.
sandbox-exec: macOS’s Little-Known Command-Line Sandboxing Tool
Tags: tech, security, sandbox, apple
Looks like a neat little tool in the Mac ecosystem. It seems to make sandboxing easy despite a couple of caveats.
https://igorstechnoclub.com/sandbox-exec/
Lyte2D
Tags: tech, game, lua
Looks like a neat little lua based game engine for simple 2D.
Ordered Dithering with Arbitrary or Irregular Colour Palettes
Tags: tech, colors, graphics
There’s something I find fascinating about dithering somehow. Here are more algorithms and approach to compare side by side.
https://matejlou.blog/2023/12/06/ordered-dithering-for-arbitrary-or-irregular-palettes/
Django ORM Standalone: Querying an existing database
Tags: tech, django, orm, databases
Interesting first article, I wonder what the rest of the series will have in store. In any case this shows how practical it is to use the Django ORM standalone. This opens the door to nice use cases.
https://www.paulox.net/2026/02/20/django-orm-standalone-database-inspectdb-query/
Parse, don’t Validate and Type-Driven Design in Rust
Tags: tech, rust, reliability, failure, type-systems
Short explanation of why you want to make invalid state impossible to represent. This leads to nice properties in your code, the price to pay is introducing more types to encode the invariants of course.
https://www.harudagondi.space/blog/parse-dont-validate-and-type-driven-design-in-rust/
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures
Tags: tech, algorithm, data
An interesting resource, good way to match problems to algorithms and data structures.
SFQ: Simple, Stateless, Stochastic Fairness
Tags: tech, services, distributed, queuing, performance
Interesting approach to provide more fairness to client requests.
https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/02/25/sfq.html
Read Locks Are Not Your Friends
Tags: tech, multithreading, performance
A good reminder that on modern hardware read-write locks are rarely the solution despite the documentation claims.
https://eventual-consistency.vercel.app/posts/write-locks-faster
On the question of debt
Tags: tech, technical-debt, organisation, ai, machine-learning, copilot
Interesting point, there are indeed different types of “debt” in the systems we build. It likely help to be more precise about their nature, and indeed assisted coding might help grow a particular kind of debt.
https://medium.com/mapai/on-the-question-of-debt-aca1125d4a62
The Man Who Stole Infinity
Tags: science, mathematics, history
Fascinating story about the little known Cantor big mistake. This also shows once more, that even though we like to put people on pedestals and look for a “lone genius” or a “hero”, discoveries are always a process of several minds playing of each other.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-stole-infinity-20260225/
How far back in time can you understand English?
Tags: linguistics, history
This is an excellent piece if you like linguistics and its historical component. It shows quite well how much English changed over the centuries.
https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-understand-english
We need to talk about naked mole rats
Tags: science, biology, nature, funny
Yes we do need to talk more about them. They are ugly… but they are awesome! (in a scary way)
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/naked_mole_rats
Bye for now!