Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2021-26.


FarmBot | Open-Source CNC Farming

Tags: tech, farming, free-software

Interesting product, and it’s fully Open Source, even the hardware.

https://farm.bot/


Microsoft signed a malicious Netfilter rootkit | G DATA

Tags: tech, windows, security, supply-chain

A rootkit in a driver… OK that’s not new. Signed by the provider of the number 1 desktop OS and there you got a major security issue. Again a supply chain attack.

https://www.gdatasoftware.com/blog/microsoft-signed-a-malicious-netfilter-rootkit


When it comes to git history, less is more - Stephen Brennan

Tags: tech, git, system

A good reminder of why you don’t want to mess too much with the VCS history for systems with long term maintenance and several stable releases.

https://brennan.io/2021/06/15/git-less-is-more/


When To Rewrite

Tags: tech, architecture, programming, legacy

Very good rant which explains nicely why rewriting some software from scratch is almost never the right answer.

https://www.anthropicstudios.com/2021/06/25/when-to-rewrite/


How to build remote teams properly

Tags: remote-working, hr

Lots of good advice in there. Per usual quite some of it also makes sense in non-remote teams. Not sure I’d do everything exactly in the same way but that gives a good overall idea of the important points.

https://www.vadimkravcenko.com/en/how-to-build-remote-teams-properly/


Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

Tags: tech, social-media

It is indeed important that serious research and conversation arise on this topic. The bomb is ticking.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/26/22550981/carl-bergstrom-joe-bak-coleman-biologists-ecologists-social-media-risk-humanity-research-academics


Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects | July 2021 | Communications of the ACM

Tags: tech, free-software, university

Obviously I’m convinced it’s necessary for students to learn how to contribute as soon as possible. That being said, this leave unanswered the very important question of not burning out project maintainers. Indeed, it needs to be structured in some way, most projects can’t cope up with swarm of students dropping potential contributions on them.

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/7/253459-why-computing-students-should-contribute-to-open-source-software-projects/fulltext


gProfiler is a system-wide profiler, combining multiple sampling profilers

Tags: tech, profiling, performance

This looks like an interesting full system profiler.

https://github.com/granulate/gprofiler


Windows 11, Amazon, and Uncomfortable Questions

Tags: tech, security, supply-chain, surveillance

Seeing the bad practices of Amazon with its Android AppStore, it really feels like another supply chain mess in the making with Windows 11 Android support…

https://commonsware.com/blog/2021/06/26/windows-11-amazon-uncomfortable-questions.html


Windows 11: TPMs and Digital Sovereignty

Tags: tech, vendor-lockin, windows

If it wasn’t clear that Microsoft never abandoned it’s Palladium plans but merely went for a detour after the backslash… now it’s getting very clear with Windows 11. They’re clearly back at it and this could become a problem to install something else than Windows on PCs…

https://secret.club/2021/06/28/windows11-tpms.html


Smocker

Tags: tech, tests, http

Looks like an interesting tool for testing when a HTTP server is involved.

https://smocker.dev/


Fair✦TEC

Tags: tech, commons, smartphone, fair

Interesting approach. Nice to see several coops and non-coops forge an alliance like this for a better all encompassing offering.

https://fairtec.io/en/


Why do conspiracy theories flourish? Because the truth is too hard to handle | Edward Snowden | The Guardian

Tags: tech, surveillance, conspiracy

Very interesting and insightful point of view… I think this hits the nail on the head: “we talk about conspiracy theories in order to avoid talking about conspiracy practices, which are often too daunting, too threatening, too total”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/01/edward-snowdon-conspiracy-theories-belief-powerlessness



Bye for now!