Web Review, Week 2026-12
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-12.
The “small web” is bigger than you might think
Tags: tech, web, self-hosting, blog
Also, it’s likely a pessimistic estimate… Indeed, it’s mostly based on a list from Kagi, which likely doesn’t list many sites which would qualify.
https://kevinboone.me/small_web_is_big.html
Have a Fucking Website
Tags: tech, web, social-media, self-hosting
So much this… I’m sick of all those little businesses having only an Instagram or Facebook account or whatever. I wish we’d have proper websites for all of those instead.
https://www.otherstrangeness.com/2026/03/14/have-a-fucking-website/
RIP Metaverse, an $80 Billion Dumpster Fire Nobody Wanted
Tags: tech, facebook, vr, hype
This was stupid hype… Why do we have regularly this kind of fever in our industry?
https://www.404media.co/rip-metaverse-an-80-billion-dumpster-fire-nobody-wanted/
Bluesky announces $100M Series B after CEO transition
Tags: tech, social-media, bluesky, business
The writing is on the wall I think… the real question is not if but when will the enshittification begins? It’s been data harvesting for a while now.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/19/bluesky-announces-100m-series-b-after-ceo-transition/
Open Source Gave Me Everything Until I Had Nothing Left to Give
Tags: tech, foss, psychology, productivity, life
This is an account of how dark things can become when you align your identity with your contributions. Stay healthy, stay safe!
How Can Governments Pay Open Source Maintainers?
Tags: tech, foss, business, fundraising
Let’s help them help us. There are a few things to have in place for governments to be able to pay maintainers.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03/how-can-governments-pay-open-source-maintainers/
The price of accountability: corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
Tags: politics, democracy
This is definitely a disturbing result. It indeed makes democracies more fragile, all the more reason to build more democratic resilience.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2026.1779810/full
Age Verification Lobbying: Dark Money, Model Legislation & Institutional Capture
Tags: tech, gafam, facebook, law, lobbying, surveillance
It looks more and more likely that the current age verification fever has dark origins…
Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn’t About Kids, It’s About Control
Tags: tech, politics, law, surveillance
The commentaries and analysis of those unjust laws continues. The motives behind the people pushing for them are getting clearer and it isn’t pretty.
Ageless Linux — Software for Humans of Indeterminate Age
Tags: tech, law, surveillance
Good initiative to push these unjust laws to their limits. Hopefully it’ll show how absurd they are.
Lotus Notes
Tags: tech, history, email
On the little known history of Lotus Notes. Crossed its path as a teenager during an internship at a bank. Can’t say I remember it fondly though.
https://computer.rip/2026-03-14-lotusnotes.html
The Most Important Software Innovations
Tags: tech, innovation, history
Interesting list and way to frame the problem. It’s important to maintain this resource, an update is likely needed.
https://dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html
Wayland has good reasons to put the window manager in the display server
Tags: tech, wayland, x11, history, complexity, input
Let’s not forget where we’re coming from and why window managers tend to be merged with display server. It removes some complexity and some latency.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/WaylandAndBuiltinWindowManagers
Containers Are Not Automatically Secure
Tags: tech, containers, security
Kind of obvious I think, but this likely bears repeating. Containers are not a magical recipe for security. There are many attack vectors to keep in mind and evaluate.
https://www.lucavall.in/blog/containers-are-not-a-security-boundary
Why WebAssembly components
Tags: tech, webassembly, rust
Good explanation of where WebAssembly is going and why the current initiatives are important to its success.
https://blog.yoshuawuyts.com/why-webassembly-components/
How many branches can your CPU predict?
Tags: tech, cpu, hardware, performance
Not all CPUs are born equal in term of branch prediction. Interesting little benchmark.
https://lemire.me/blog/2026/03/18/how-many-branches-can-your-cpu-predict/
C++26: Span improvements
Tags: tech, c++, standard
Nice little quality of life improvements coming to std::span in C++26.
https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2026/03/18/cpp26-span-improvements
More Speed & Simplicity: Practical Data-Oriented Design in C++
Tags: tech, data-oriented, object-oriented, design, architecture, c++, performance
A very good talk which walks you through how to move from object-oriented design to data-oriented design. Shows quite well how you must shift your thinking and the difficulties you might encounter with data-oriented designs. I appreciate a lot that it’s not just throwing object-oriented design out of the window, indeed you have to pick and choose depending on the problem space. Also it’s interesting to see how C++26 reflection might make some of this easier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzjJfKHygaQ
Minecraft Source Code is Interesting!
Tags: tech, 3d, graphics, game, portability, refactoring
Lots of interesting tricks in this code base. Gives also a good idea of the shape and tradeoffs of such ports.
https://www.karanjanthe.me/posts/minecraft-source/
Oxyde ORM
Tags: tech, python, rust, orm
Looks like an interesting ORM which brings advantages of the Django one without all the bagage. It’s still young, let’s see how it evolves.
https://oxyde.fatalyst.dev/latest/
Python 3.15’s JIT is now back on track
Tags: tech, python, performance, jit
Interesting read on how the CPython JIT effort has been saved.
https://fidget-spinner.github.io/posts/jit-on-track.html
The Optimization Ladder
Tags: tech, python, performance, optimisation
Here are the main levers to make Python code faster. Tries also to distinguish the effort level of each approach.
https://cemrehancavdar.com/2026/03/10/optimization-ladder/
XML is a Cheap DSL
Tags: tech, data, declarative, xml, portability
Interesting lesson here. It looks like XML still has its place in our modern tool belts. We should stop dismissing it too quickly.
https://unplannedobsolescence.com/blog/xml-cheap-dsl/
JPEG compression
Tags: tech, graphics, compression
Wondering how JPEG works? Here is a primer.
https://www.sophielwang.com/blog/jpeg
A Decade of Slug
Tags: tech, graphics, fonts, shader, patents
Nice algorithm for rendering fonts. Turns out it’s not patent encumbered anymore, this is good news.
https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html
Video Encoding and Decoding with Vulkan Compute Shaders in FFmpeg
Tags: tech, video, codec, vulkan, computation
Vulkan compute shaders are very much capable nowadays. Exemplified by its use in FFmpeg.
https://www.khronos.org/blog/video-encoding-and-decoding-with-vulkan-compute-shaders-in-ffmpeg
The Best Darn Grid Shader (Yet)
Tags: tech, 3d, graphics, shader, mathematics
Good exploration on how to make grid shaders. It’s definitely not a simple problem.
https://bgolus.medium.com/the-best-darn-grid-shader-yet-727f9278b9d8
A sufficiently detailed spec is code
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot
Or why this latest trend in genAI hype is a fool’s errand.
https://haskellforall.com/2026/03/a-sufficiently-detailed-spec-is-code
Rob Pike’s 5 Rules of Programming
Tags: tech, programming, optimisation, performance, complexity
These are good rules. Take inspiration from them.
https://www.cs.unc.edu/~stotts/COMP590-059-f24/robsrules.html
Invest Your Political Capital
Tags: tech, architecture, organisation, politics
Interesting model for bringing architectural and organisational changes. This is indeed at least in part political games… so you need some political capital to spend.
https://architectelevator.com/transformation/political-capital/
Bye for now!