Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-17.


Red Alert: ICANN and Verisign Proposal Would Allow Any Government In The World To Seize Domain Names – FreeSpeech.com

Tags: tech, dns, politics

Concerning moves on the ICANN side… already in the agreements around .com and now trying to make its way into .net.

https://freespeech.com/2023/04/19/red-alert-icann-and-verisign-proposal-would-allow-any-government-in-the-world-to-seize-domain-names/


NitroKey disappoints me

Tags: tech, smartphone, android

Yep, disappointing indeed… I got a phone with a third party ROM and had to debug the A-GPS in there (don’t ask), it’s indeed reaching to this website as well. There’s enough to criticize without crying wolf for nothing.

https://blog.brixit.nl/nitrokey-dissapoints-me/


GitHub Copilot Emits GPL. Codeium Does Not. | Codeium

Tags: tech, ai, copilot, foss, ethics, law

Are we surprised? Not at all… this is an ethical problem, this is a legal risk. The alternatives will hopefully know better.

https://codeium.com/blog/copilot-trains-on-gpl-codeium-does-not


[2304.09655] How Secure is Code Generated by ChatGPT?

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, security

Interesting experiment even though it’s still early days for this kind of research and we’d need more such evaluations. They found that it produces mostly insecure code. This is not really surprising in the end, this manipulates language but has not execution model. It can be fixed only by coupling to some outside system.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.09655


Announcing Babylon.js 6.0. Our mission is to build one of the most… | by Babylon.js | Apr, 2023 | Medium

Tags: tech, web, 3d

This is really a huge update. Brings in lots of features which were clearly missing.

https://babylonjs.medium.com/announcing-babylon-js-6-0-dcb5f1662e3a


The weird world of Windows file paths | Fileside

Tags: tech, windows, filesystem

Definitely complicated to identify and resolve paths on this platform. I had to deal with it from time to time and this can definitely turn into a pain in the neck.

https://www.fileside.app/blog/2023-03-17_windows-file-paths/


Are pull requests bad because they originate from open-source development?

Tags: tech, foss, git, codereview, mob-programming, criticism

Since I’ve seen this argument floating around more than once, it’s nice to have a properly done rebuttal of it. This is nicely done, listing the own bias of the author, still in the end that shows the logical flaw of the argument.

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2023/04/24/are-pull-requests-bad-because-they-originate-from-open-source-development/


Best practices for writing code comments - Stack Overflow Blog

Tags: tech, programming, comments

Good article on when to use comments or not. Also gives a few tips on how to write them properly.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/23/best-practices-for-writing-code-comments/


Results summary: 2023 Annual C++ Developer Survey “Lite” : Standard C++

Tags: tech, c++

Interesting results. This gives a couple of insights in terms or adoption, perception of problems by people on C++ projects and tooling. It’s definitely worth skimming through.

https://isocpp.org//blog/2023/04/results-summary-2023-annual-cpp-developer-survey-lite


50 Shades of Rust Or emerging Rust GUIs in a WASM world

Tags: tech, rust, gui

This is currently a real zoo. I knew about a few of them but not that many. I guess it will slowly converge toward a few major options.

https://monadical.com/posts/shades-of-rust-gui-library-list.html#Pet-Sematary


Nine ways to shoot yourself in the foot with PostgreSQL

Tags: tech, databases, postgresql, performance

Nice set of tips, I knew a few but not all of them. The discussion around CTEs is interesting.

https://philbooth.me/blog/nine-ways-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-with-postgresql


Measuring the Impact of False Sharing

Tags: tech, multithreading, performance

Nice exploration of false sharing on performances in several hardware scenarii. A couple of surprises along the way.

https://alic.dev/blog/false-sharing.html


Leverage the richness of HTTP status codes

Tags: tech, http, web, api

There are many more useful codes than are generally used. We shouldn’t shy away from using them when it makes sense, it also means the client side must be ready for them. Very often client code makes wrong assumptions on the possible codes.

https://blog.frankel.ch/leverage-richness-http-status-codes/


Characterizing Tech Debt

Tags: tech, technical-debt, craftsmanship

Nice short post listing the main positions (and linking to corresponding articles) on the debate around technical debt. Worth mulling over all those.

https://justinblank.com/notebooks/characterizingtechdebt.html


Distractions Cause Bad Code | nicholas@web

Tags: tech, notifications, remote-working, focus

So much this, managing notifications and making sure not to get disturbed when we need to focus is essential in our line of work.

https://ntietz.com/blog/distractions-cause-bad-code/


What complex systems can teach us about building software

Tags: tech, architecture, complexity, product-management, project-management

Interesting train of thoughts. Indeed we should keep in mind that large scale software is almost always a complex adaptative system, even more so if we don’t forget the people developing it and not just focusing on the code. This can give us guidelines on how to organize the development.

Also does a good recap about what a complex system is and how it behaves. Definitely worth a read at least for this.

https://sookocheff.com/post/systems/what-complex-systems-can-teach-us-about-building-software/


Tags: tech, tech-lead

If regularly see people propelled tech leads without really knowing what it means. This short post is a good summary of the skills one needs to build to fit the role.

https://medium.com/@bullyCOP/navigating-the-transition-from-individual-contributor-to-tech-lead-fbf8b29b878e


Key practice: Aligned, autonomous cross-disciplinary teams. | by Jason Yip | Apr, 2023 | Medium

Tags: tech, product-management

What the title say. This is especially important for product development. This is not emphasized enough in the article I think but the “aligned autonomy” section is a crucial part of this. I very often see in teams either alignment or autonomy, it’s rarer to see teams with both.

https://jchyip.medium.com/key-practice-aligned-autonomous-cross-disciplinary-teams-d73c1cddc352


Rescuing a project in progress

Tags: project-management

Very good advice: stop, status, selection, focus, finish, next. If it feels like “stop starting and start finishing”, it’s probably no surprise.

https://world.hey.com/jason/rescuing-a-project-in-progress-d31883f7


Some mistakes I made as a new manager | benkuhn.net

Tags: tech, management

Nice post full of good advises for new (or not so new) managers.

https://www.benkuhn.net/newmgr/


Why the Brain’s Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed | Quanta Magazine

Tags: neuroscience, geometry, science

We still don’t really know (actually it’s super hard to have a definitive reason on this topic). This article presents more of a theory based on geometry… and this is interesting, we often don’t think about this kind of things.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-brains-connections-to-the-body-are-crisscrossed-20230419/


Researchers Taught Parrots to Video Call Other Parrots

Tags: tech, science, surprising

OK definitely surprising research. Some of the results are interesting. Clearly it shows a high level of socializing with those birds.

https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/21/parrots-talking-video-calls/



Bye for now!