Tags: web-review, ai, research, complexity, memory, fediverse, hype, machine-learning, copyright, engineering, design, google, craftsmanship, cryptography, community, copilot, burnout, law, xmpp, technical-debt, architecture, tech, distributed, gpt, surveillance, rust, static-analyzer, github, management, criticism, france, logic, standard, gafam, tests, productivity, safety, java, foss, art, facebook, programming, c++, compiler
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-26.
Tags: tech, france, law, foss, surveillance, criticism, cryptography
A reminder of what’s going on in France… and it’s bleak. Lots of things can turn you into a suspect at this point.
You encrypt your communications or data? You try to avoid surveillance from the GAFAM? You use Tor or a VPN?
If anything bad happens around you, then you’ll turn into a suspect, this is due to the “clandestine behavior” you entertain… so for sure you are part of some “conspiracy”.
This is very worrying.
https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2023/06/05/criminalization-of-encryption-the-8-december-case/
Tags: tech, gafam, facebook, fediverse, xmpp, standard, community
Facebook getting interested in the fediverse indeed looks like XMPP or OOXML all over again. Beware of those old tactics, they are very efficient against communities.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, art
Excellent piece from an excellent artist. I really thought this through and I think he’s going in the right direction.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, google
It smells a bit like hypocrisy isn’t it? On one hand they claim it can make developers more productive on the other they think they shouldn’t use it.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/19/even_google_warns_its_own/
Tags: tech, github, copyright, copilot
Basically the wording allows them to feed whatever system they want with your code… even in private repositories.
https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/privacy-on-github/about-githubs-use-of-your-data
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, research
Very comprehensive (didn’t read it all yet) guide about self-supervised learning. It’ll likely become good reference material.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.12210
Tags: tech, tests
Especially important in the context of tests indeed. As soon as you depend on some form of elapsed time you get into the territory of flaky tests.
https://xeiaso.net/blog/nosleep
Tags: tech, programming, distributed
Nice set of advises when dealing with concurrency. Don’t fall into some of the anti-patterns which are pointed out.
https://catern.com/concur.html
Tags: tech, programming, compiler, safety
This is a neat example of what programming languages could check at compile time. This clearly brings way more safety when you get such contract validation at build time.
https://whileydave.com/2023/06/27/programming-languages-going-above-and-beyond/
Tags: tech, static-analyzer, c++, memory, safety
Long but fascinating article on a blend of guidelines which could be statically checked to enforce a memory-safe subset of C++.
https://verdagon.dev/blog/vale-memory-safe-cpp
Tags: tech, programming, rust
Interesting to see what gets confirmed (slow compiler, nice compiler error messages, code quality) or debunked (steep learning curve, interoperability).
Tags: tech, java
This would be an interesting extension to the Java Stream API. Maybe one day it’ll make its way to the standard…
https://cr.openjdk.org/~vklang/Gatherers.html
Tags: tech, architecture, design, programming, craftsmanship
I always felt uneasy around this “law” as well. It’s a good deconstruction of it and proposes proper alternatives. It’s all about dependencies really.
https://www.tedinski.com/2018/12/18/the-law-of-demeter.html
Tags: tech, hype, complexity, technical-debt
Good piece about the hype cycles our industry constantly fall into. So much undue complexity for nothing in some projects… and then we’ll complain about technical debt. It would have been much easier to pick the right tool instead of wanting to use whatever new got released by some big tech company.
https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles
Tags: tech, programming, logic, engineering, craftsmanship
Interesting way to look at our profession… I wonder if this is the core reason of why we have a hard time to turn into a proper engineering discipline, is it even possible at all then?
https://danielbmarkham.com/twilight-of-the-programmers/
Tags: management, productivity, burnout
Good tips on how to create some slack and prevent burnout.
https://hbr.org/2023/06/to-build-a-top-performing-team-ask-for-85-effort
Bye for now!