Blogs

Happy new year! Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-01.

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BREAKING: Meta prohibited from use of personal data for advertisment

Tags: tech, attention-economy, surveillance, facebook

This could be huge if properly enforced. This would reduce profits of personalized ads quite a bit.

https://noyb.eu/en/breaking-meta-prohibited-use-personal-data-advertisment

In 2022, web3 went just great - Molly White

Tags: tech, web3, scam

Maybe they’ll finally realize it just make no sense? It’s time for this absurdity to be put to rest.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/in-2022-web3-went-just-great

I am not a supplier - Software Maxims

Tags: tech, foss, commons, supply-chain

Friendly reminder, if you’re not paying authors of FOSS libraries, they owe you nothing.

https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/not-a-supplier

Journalists (And Others) Should Leave Twitter. Here’s How They Can Get Started | Techdirt

Tags: tech, attention-economy, twitter, fediverse

Let’s hope journalists hear that call. It’s indeed sad that so far it’s mostly words and not many actions to move away from Twitter in that profession.

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/01/04/journalists-and-others-should-leave-twitter-heres-how-they-can-get-started/

The internet wants to be fragmented - by Noah Smith

Tags: tech, social-media, internet

Interesting take, let’s see if it’s true and things will decentralize (or at least audiences fragment, the author seems to confuse both) more in the future.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-internet-wants-to-be-fragmented

Bring back personal blogging - The Verge

Tags: tech, web, blog, culture

Let’s hope it’s one good resolution for 2023 that plenty will go for. We need blogs to be back, massively. It would be better for everyone.

https://www.theverge.com/23513418/bring-back-personal-blogging

The state of HTTP in 2022

Tags: tech, http, web

That’s a lot which happened in this community over the past year. It’s important that is keeps pushing forward and luckily it does.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-state-of-http-in-2022/

The Rise of Monolithic Software

Tags: tech, web, protocols, http, vendor-lockin

Interesting piece. It shows quite well what users have lost with the over reliance on HTTP for everything. Moving more and more things in the brother fosters walled gardens indeed. Compound this with branding obsession from most company and you indeed end up with an absurd situation.

https://itnext.io/the-rise-of-monolithic-software-9e538cfec6e4

You Want Modules, Not Microservices

Tags: tech, microservices, architecture, organization

Excellent piece, looking back to history to justify why microservices are mostly a fad. Check what your needs really are and depending on them pick the right way to decompose the problem or organize your teams.

https://blogs.newardassociates.com/blog/2023/you-want-modules-not-microservices.html

Parallelizing C++ using Execution Policies | Azeem Bande-Ali | Engineering Manager

Tags: tech, multithreading, c++

A little reminder that those too often forgotten execution policies for C++ algorithms actually exist and can give interesting results nowadays.

https://azeemba.com/posts/cpp17-execution-policy.html

Performance of WebAssembly runtimes in 2023 | Frank DENIS random thoughts.

Tags: tech, performance, webassembly

Time to look a bit at the maze of WebAssembly runtimes. Good overview on how they currently perform and how well they are documented or easy to use.

https://00f.net/2023/01/04/webassembly-benchmark-2023/

Microfeatures I’d like to see in more languages • Buttondown

Tags: tech, programming

Since I’m also a bit of a nerd of nice programming language features, that’s an interesting list (mostly) coming from less known languages. Some of that syntactic sugar would be welcome in more main stream languages I think.

https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/microfeatures-id-like-to-see-in-more-languages/

Test Desiderata. Go placidly amid the noise and haste… | by Kent Beck | Medium

Tags: tech, tests, tdd

This what we should strive for with our tests. I like how he keeps it flexible though, again it’s likely a trade-off so you can’t have all the properties fully all the time. Still you need to know what you give up, how much of it and why.

https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/test-desiderata-94150638a4b3

Fast Path to a Great UX – Increased Exposure Hours — UX Articles by UIE

Tags: tech, ux

A bit old but interesting finding. Kind of confirms my own view about it: it’s best when everyone (not just designers) can interact with the users of the system you’re building.

https://articles.uie.com/user_exposure_hours/

Sign-up Versus Assignment - by Kent Beck - Geek Incentives

Tags: tech, project-management, management

It’s clearly a choice in management style. For such choices, always keep in mind the trade offs this create, maybe it’ll push you to revise your choice.

https://geekincentives.substack.com/p/sign-up-versus-assignment

Navigating power dynamics as a manager

Tags: management, empathy

Like it or not (I’m part of those who don’t like it) but the role of manager will necessarily create power imbalances. This article is thus a must read to managers at any level to know how to deal with it properly.

https://leaddev.com/communication-relationships/navigating-power-dynamics-manager

Conversation Skills Essentials – Tynan.com

Tags: culture, empathy

Interesting list of tips for better conversations. Some of them are common knowledge at that point, some others less so.

https://tynan.com/letstalk/

Tangram Heightmapper

Tags: tech, 3d

OK, this is really cool for all your realistic height map needs!

https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/

Why the super rich are inevitable

Tags: economics, politics

Very interesting model, I didn’t know about this one. As pointed out you can’t really base policy decisions upon it but that’s still powerful since it explains some of the phenomena at play in the real world. In this way it is enough to debunk some of the assumptions taken a bit too much for granted.

https://pudding.cool/2022/12/yard-sale/

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Bye for now!