Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2022-07.

Amazon Co-Owns Deportation Airline Implicated in Alleged Torture of Immigrants

Tags: amazon, deportation

Yet another lovely company… very lucrative business, so it’s unsurprising it attracts fat cats with dubious values like Amazon.

https://theintercept.com/2022/02/17/amazon-ice-deportation-flights-omni/

Everyone Hates Facebook (but this is more than just about Facebook)

Tags: tech, facebook, surveillance, social-media

Indeed, let’s not forget this is systemic.

https://ar.al/2022/02/07/everyone-hates-facebook-but-this-is-more-than-just-about-facebook/

How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation | MIT Technology Review

Tags: tech, capitalism, gafam, fake-news, social-media, facebook, google

The big platforms clearly created the incentives for clickbait actors to rise… And then political actors entered the scene.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/20/1039076/facebook-google-disinformation-clickbait/

Google Search Is Dying | DKB

Tags: tech, google

Indeed, authenticity in the search results slowly died due to ads and SEO.

https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying

The European Parliament paves the way for removable and replaceable batteries - Right to Repair Europe

Tags: tech, battery, ecology

Definitely a welcome move… will need to be enforced of course. Let’s hope it won’t turn into yet another text without teeth.

https://repair.eu/news/the-european-parliament-carves-the-path-to-removabe-and-replaceable-batteries/

Static B-Trees - Algorithmica

Tags: tech, optimization, performance, SIMD, algorithm, b-tree

Really cool optimizations for B-Trees. Once the layout is reworked this is a neat way to use SIMD as well.

https://en.algorithmica.org/hpc/data-structures/s-tree/

Building for the 99% Developers

Tags: tech, tools, processes, craftsmanship

A good reminder that there is not a one size fits all solution in the tech world. Also be skeptical of the silver bullets that “obviously” everyone should use. Project context matters above all.

https://future.a16z.com/software-development-building-for-99-developers/

Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator

Tags: tech, map, generator, medieval

Very cool tool to generate random maps, go all the way to per-city generators through this: https://watabou.github.io/city-generator/

Really cool stuff.

https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/

This scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories—and why

Tags: science

Definitely a fascinating research. It’s surprising how little we know about the topic… the article shows how difficult it is to collect data about it in the first place.

https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-busts-myths-about-how-humans-burn-calories-and-why

Bye for now!