Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2021-12.


On the reappointment of Richard Stallman as a director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) | KDE e.V.

Tags: kde

This kind of moments make me proud of the KDE e.V. in general and the current board in particular. This is a very level headed statement. Way more honorable than the mudslinging we’ve been seeing lately. It points at the right issue which is institutional.

https://ev.kde.org/2021/03/24/on-the-reappointment-of-rms-fsf/


Sécurité Globale : le Sénat dit oui à la surveillance de masse

Tags: dystopia, surveillance

Article in French

French Senate validated a whole lot of surveillance measures… More cameras and biometric controls everywhere. We have money for that apparently but not to have decent prison cells or to fight inequalities… This country is really on an authoritarian path.

https://www.laquadrature.net/2021/03/19/securite-globale-le-senat-dit-oui-a-la-surveillance-de-masse/


CodeTour - Visual Studio Marketplace

Tags: tech, tutorial, mentoring, vscode

Looks like a very interesting extensions to help people get into a codebase or to record tutorials.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vsls-contrib.codetour


A Short Cautionary Tale About Refactoring

Tags: tech, refactoring, craftsmanship

Or why you should think twice before embarking into a refactoring when it’s not directly related to some feature development…

https://zigamiklic.com/cautionary-tale/


Speeding up SQL queries by orders of magnitude using UNION – Foxhound Systems

Tags: tech, databases, sql

Not exactly new, but easy to loose sight of it when in the hamster wheel. Clearly a good reminder.

https://www.foxhound.systems/blog/sql-performance-with-union/


A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16

Tags: tech, security, sms, 2fa

Or why you can’t really trust SMS for 2FA… it’s just too much of a wild west there.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g8wb/hacker-got-my-texts-16-dollars-sakari-netnumber


Darker Corners of Go - Rytis Biel

Tags: tech, go

I like this kind of list of “gotchas” for languages or frameworks. This one seems to be fairly comprehensive in the case of Go. There are a few I wouldn’t expect in such a recent and fashionable language, oh well…

https://rytisbiel.com/2021/03/06/darker-corners-of-go/


The Mobile Performance Inequality Gap, 2021 - Infrequently Noted

Tags: tech, performance, web, html, css, javascript, ecology

Very thorough analysis on the kind of web frontend performances you can expect for most people on mobile. Since we basically need to reduce the footprint of such frontends to make this sustainable again this is a very welcome article.

https://infrequently.org/2021/03/the-performance-inequality-gap/


Color Theme Switcher | Max Böck

Tags: tech, css, javascript, frontend, web

Interesting use of CSS custom properties to make dynamic color schemes easy and manageable for webpages.

https://mxb.dev/blog/color-theme-switcher/


Plan 9 from Bell Labs in Cyberspace! - Nokia Bell Labs

Tags: tech, plan9

Plan 9 is getting its own foundation. That’s kind of unexpected, I wonder where this will lead. :-)

https://www.bell-labs.com/institute/blog/plan-9-bell-labs-cyberspace/


Introduction to Apache Arrow with Rust | by Andrew Leverette | Level Up Coding

Tags: tech, rust, data-science

Still keeping an eye on what’s available for crunching numbers in Rust. Apache Arrow looks like an interesting option.

https://levelup.gitconnected.com/introduction-to-apache-arrow-with-rust-394f391ea455


Sylvain Kerkour - The biggest threat to Rust’s sustainability

Tags: tech, rust

Interesting take, it’s a bit what I feel coming from C++ and keeping an eye on Rust, it’s accumulating features fast and there’s a risk of things becoming inconsistent.

https://kerkour.com/blog/the-biggest-threat-to-rust-sustainability/


SQLite is not a toy database | Anton Zhiyanov

Tags: tech, sql, sqlite

SQLite keeps being a fun database full of little nuggets. Plenty of cases when it could fly but when somehow we use the bigger players instead.

https://antonz.org/sqlite-is-not-a-toy-database/


OpenSSL Security Advisory [25 March 2021]

Tags: tech, openssl, security

Friendly reminder to update your OpenSSL regularly. :-)

https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20210325.txt


Misunderstanding Malthus’ mistake

Tags: economics, malthus, medecine, hygiene, biology

Interesting take on the Malthusian argument. It’s been debated for a while now and was clearly wrong. Still maybe we didn’t draw the right lessons from that mistake.

https://andrewbatson.com/2021/03/16/misunderstanding-malthus-mistake/


The Little-Known Story of Violet Gibson, the Irish Woman Who Shot Mussolini | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine

Tags: history

Very interesting story, I didn’t know the fate of that woman. A bit crazy? Perhaps. Brave? Definitely.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1926-irish-woman-shot-benito-mussolini-and-almost-altered-history-forever-180977286/



Bye for now!