Web Review, Week 2026-30
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-30.
Online Friends Are Real Friends
Tags: tech, internet, culture, life, friendship
Indeed, friends we make online are no less real than the ones we see in the flesh first. I would know… guess how I made friends with KDE people?
https://blog.absurdpirate.com/online-friends-are-real-friends/
Europe’s digital sovereignty needs challenges
Tags: tech, europe, politics, foss, commons
Excellent piece. I’m feeling unease at this widespread confusion between european ownership and digital freedom. What we collectively need is the latter. There’s no sovereignty to be had in a proprietary ecosystem, be it owned by an European company or not.
https://hamishcampbell.com/europes-digital-sovereignty-needs-challenges/
Mullvad and Daniel Berntsson’s Failed Cleanup
Tags: tech, ethics, politics, vpn
No the technology we use isn’t neutral… In this case it directly funds fascists. Whatever the technical merits from the Mullvad VPN, such ties disqualify them to be used.
https://markwrites.io/mullvad-and-daniel-berntssons-failed-cleanup/
Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics
Tags: tech, mathematics, science, research, ai, machine-learning, gpt
This is a very good declaration and call to actions from the mathematics field. I wish we’d have something well thought out like this for computer science and software engineering as well.
AI advice suppresses people’s willingness to say “I don’t know”
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, linguistics, cognition, bias
Interesting study which measures our propensity to be more confident while being more wrong when using LLMs to answer questions. Those models really tap into our cognitive bias to mistake linguistic fluency for competence.
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5y6m4_v1
Not enough water for UK’s datacentre plans, trade body says
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, water, ecology, politics
If you still don’t think data centres have a water consumption problem, especially since the LLM weapon race… Think again.
The Week of Sandbox Escapes
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, security
In other words: the security boundaries of coding agents are very porous and not where you expect. Handle with extreme care until they have a proper security model.
https://www.pillar.security/blog/the-week-of-sandbox-escapes
email encryption
Tags: tech, email, cryptography, history
Wondering about the landscape of email encryption? This gives a good historical tour.
https://computer.rip/2026-07-19-email-encryption.html
Minimal Git CI using hooks
Tags: tech, git, tools, ci, complexity
Little reminder that a got forge doesn’t and shouldn’t need much. Sprinkle gitolite if you need to manage rights, maybe gitweb and then you’re all set.
https://mccd.space/posts/26-06-29/simple-git-ci
The startup’s Postgres survival guide
Tags: tech, databases, postgresql
Quite a few nice Postgres tips. The first ones are rather basics the less common tips are toward the end. Could have a few more details at times, but that’s a good starting point.
https://hatchet.run/blog/postgres-survival-guide
When ‘if’ slows you down, avoid it
Tags: tech, programming, performance
This is too often forgotten. If you can avoid the “if” and your CPU will thank you for it.
https://easylang.online/blog/branchless
Everyone Should Know SIMD
Tags: tech, simd, cpu, performance, zig
Nice post on how to approach problems suitable for SIMD.
https://mitchellh.com/writing/everyone-should-know-simd
Static search trees: 40x faster than binary search
Tags: tech, cpu, simd, performance, optimisation
Excellent piece diving deep into the opportunities to optimise an algorithm. The final speed up is impressive.
https://curiouscoding.nl/posts/static-search-tree/
Rust service hardening and production checklist
Tags: tech, rust, containers, security
Good checklist to reduce your attack surface as much as possible when deploying your service.
https://kerkour.com/rust-service-hardening-and-production-checklist
Hardening Rust Code For Production
Tags: tech, rust, containers, security
More ideas of things to check to harden a service, goes beyond just what’s deployed. Many good points on how to handle errors and such.
https://corrode.dev/blog/hardening-rust/
The PImpl idiom and the C++26 std::indirect type
Tags: tech, c++, memory
Looks like a nice improvement over std::unique_ptr for managing pimpl indeed. Really interesting stuff coming in C++26.
https://mariusbancila.ro/blog/2026/07/23/the-pimpl-idiom-and-the-cpp26-stdindirect-type/
Software rendering in 500 lines of bare C++
Tags: tech, graphics, 3d, shader
Wondering how the graphics pipeline works for 3D rendering? This is a nice lecture on how to implement a purely software one. If gives a good idea of what needs to happen.
Prefactoring: Clear the Way for Your New Feature
Tags: tech, refactoring
Short and to the point to illustrate the use of refactoring at the beginning of the work on a feature.
https://testing.googleblog.com/2026/07/prefactoring-clear-way-for-your-new.html
The Value of Domain Knowledge in Software
Tags: tech, knowledge, craftsmanship
This is too often forgotten by developers. Our job isn’t only about the technical side of things, we must also understand the domain the users are working in. It’s a part of the craft.
https://www.gustavwengel.dk/value-of-domain-knowledge
The Most Ridiculous War Humans Ever Fought
Tags: history, funny
OK, didn’t know about this one. It was indeed ridiculous… we’re really a weird species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv5qQu0yMaU
The Deadliest Thing in Your Kitchen
Tags: biology, science, funny
You won’t look at your kitchen the same way after this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cK8l5Yg5w8
Bye for now!