Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2021-13.


Three Ways the Pandemic Has Made the World Better - The Atlantic

Tags: pandemic, tech, vaccines

Granted the whole pandemic thing is horrible, but there’s still some light in the darkness. Despite all the suffering we made a couple of steps forward as a species.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/three-ways-pandemic-has-bettered-world/618320/


Buildings made with fungi could live, grow — and then biodegrade | CBC News

Tags: science, fungi, surprising

Now this is a very surprising and intriguing approach. I’m fascinated about all the uses we find for fungi lately.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-mycelium-fungi-building-1.5963938


Dystopia Prime: Amazon Subjects Its Drivers to Biometric Surveillance

Tags: tech, amazon, dystopia

They keep piling on the outright evil ideas… It shows so much lack of empathy and humanism…

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/dystopia-prime-amazon-subjects-its-drivers-biometric-surveillance


Hackers backdoor PHP source code after internal repo hack | The Record by Recorded Future

Tags: tech, security, php

When you can’t trust your git repository anymore you’re in big trouble… This makes GitHub even more of a tempting target now though and it has its own ACLs challenges…

https://therecord.media/hackers-backdoor-php-source-code-after-internal-repo-hack/


How Long Does It Take to Hire Someone? - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: hr, hiring, interviews

Interesting data point about hiring someone. I stay convinced that it needs to take time, it kinds of confirm it.

https://jacobian.org/2021/mar/11/hours-to-hire/


Longueur du processus de recrutement – Carnet de notes

Tags: hr, hiring, interviews

Article in French

Another one about the hiring process. Focuses mostly on the time used for the interviews though. Same thing it takes time: several long interviews. Also especially interesting it focuses on the real questions underneath the interview and there are not many of them: it’s mostly about can we work together and if yes where is the candidate positioned skill wise compared to current employees. As it’s very well put: “everything else is literature”.

https://n.survol.fr/n/longueur-du-processus-de-recrutement


Study on future demand and supply security of nickel for electric vehicle batteries | EU Science Hub

Tags: economics, ecology, tech, green-it

When we’re reminded that “software eating up the world” is in fact a very material things. More and more things around us are getting electronics and batteries due to this. This should all be treated as a non renewable resource because the raw materials it depends on are getting depleted fast. Tension on nickel could increase as early as 2027.

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/study-future-demand-and-supply-security-nickel-electric-vehicle-batteries


Font size is useless; let’s fix it @ tonsky.me

Tags: tech, frontend, fonts

Yes, fonts are hard to deal with… No it doesn’t need to be like this. I suspect it’ll stay like this for a long while though.

https://tonsky.me/blog/font-size/


Using Rust to corrode insane Python run-times

Tags: tech, rust, python, profiling, optimization

Interesting use of Rust to optimize an otherwise completely Python base code. This is properly done, first profiling the problematic system finding where the bottleneck is, evaluating other options first, then finally biting the bullet. Leads to a dramatic improvement by just replacing a few lines of Python. This is far from the “let’s rewrite everything in Rust” which is a good thing.

https://www.vortexa.com/insight/using-rust-to-corrode-insane-python-run-times


Ultimate Plumber is a tool for writing Linux pipes with instant live preview

Tags: tech, tools, unix

Interesting little tool for exploring pipe expressions with live previews on the command line.

https://github.com/akavel/up


What does sponsorship look like? | Lara Hogan

Tags: hr, mentoring, sponsorship, diversity

Interesting take on mentorship vs sponsorship. I indeed tend to mentor more than I sponsor. Definitely something I need to adjust.

https://larahogan.me/blog/what-sponsorship-looks-like/


Apple’s cooperation with authoritarian governments · Jesse Squires

Tags: tech, privacy

The difference between words and actions. A good reminder for those who still think that the Apple ecosystem is more virtuous regarding privacy than the Google one. Think again.

https://www.jessesquires.com/blog/2021/03/30/apple-cooperation-with-authoritarian-governments/


The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Online Anonymity | How I learned to start worrying and love privacy

Tags: tech, privacy, anonymity

Looks like a very comprehensive guide on the topic. I wish they produced an epub version as well. :-)

https://anonymousplanet.org/guide.html



Bye for now!