Blogs

Happy new year 2022! Let’s go for the first web review for this year.


You (probably) don’t need ReCAPTCHA | nearcyan

Tags: tech, web, security, captcha, gafam

Indeed, don’t use this by default. This is likely overkill and has terrible side effects. Look up for the alternatives proposed in this article first.

https://nearcyan.com/you-probably-dont-need-recaptcha/


A.I. Is Solving the Wrong Problem | by Marianne Bellotti | OneZero

Tags: tech, ai, design, decision-making, knowledge

Interesting article about how we badly design AI systems which make them very vulnerable to the quality of the data they receive. That’s in part why I’d expect that somehow we’ll see knowledge representation somehow come back in fashion because they have some potential to lead to better explicability in models.

https://onezero.medium.com/a-i-is-solving-the-wrong-problem-253b636770cd


Chatbots: Still Dumb After All These Years | Mind Matters

Tags: tech, ai, neural-networks

Very well makes the point on why general AI or good conversational bots are nowhere in sight with neural networks. It’s just freaking hard to push general knowledge into those networks… Also there’s the limit of not having a body and not feeling pain. This is indeed still a requirement to learn things and give them meaning.

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/01/will-chatbots-replace-the-art-of-human-conversation/


My Setup for Self-Hosting Dozens of Web Applications + Services on a Single Server

Tags: tech, self-hosting, infrastructure

Interesting ideas for hosting your own infrastructure. Some things I do similarly, others I do differently. Good food for thought.

https://cprimozic.net/blog/my-selfhosted-websites-architecture/


ntfy.sh | Send push notifications to your phone via PUT/POST

Tags: tech, monitoring, notifications, web

Looks like a nifty little tool for sending notifications from a script to your phone or such.

https://ntfy.sh/


You don’t need that CORS request - Nick Olinger

Tags: tech, http, cors, performance

Good reminder that CORS can have an impact regarding the performance of your application.

https://nickolinger.com/blog/2021-08-04-you-dont-need-that-cors-request/


How a Single Line of Code Made a 24-core Server Slower Than a Laptop

Tags: tech, multithreading, performance, profiling

Good reminder on how a shared atomic can become a huge bottleneck in multi-CPU setups.

https://pkolaczk.github.io/server-slower-than-a-laptop/


Floating Point Visually Explained

Tags: tech, mathematics, floats

Now this is a really neat way to explain how floats work and how you loose precision. Definitely a good trick I should keep in mind when I have to talk about them, it’s always been a chore to explain them.

https://fabiensanglard.net/floating_point_visually_explained/


Work Sample Tests - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: hr, management, interviews

Excellent series about work sample tests during interviews. Definitely good food for thought in there, I already changed how I was doing a few things with it and what I tested worked nicely so far.

https://jacobian.org/series/work-sample-tests/


How German Librarians Finally Caught an Elusive Book Thief - Atlas Obscura

Tags: book, history, surprising

Very astonishing story, this is a long career in rare maps theft…

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-german-librarians-caught-a-book-thief


The UX on this Small Child Is Terrible - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Tags: funny, ux, children

This is a funny satire about children from the UX point of view. You can tell this designer would want a few improvements. :-)

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-ux-on-this-small-child-is-terrible



Bye for now!