Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-38.

---

Unity’s New Pricing: A Wake-up Call on the Importance of Open Source in Gaming – Ramatak Inc.

Tags: tech, 3d, foss, gaming, business, licensing

Unsurprisingly after people massively converged to two main closed source engines for their games, they start to be massively screwed over. Maybe it’s time for them to finally turn to Free Software alternatives?

https://ramatak.com/2023/09/15/unitys-new-pricing-a-wake-up-call-on-the-importance-of-open-source-in-gaming/

Your New Apple Watch Series 9 Won’t Be Carbon Neutral | WIRED

Tags: tech, apple, ecology

Sure they’re pulling some effort on the way their hardware is produced and cheap. But don’t be fooled by the grand claims, this can’t be carbon neutral.

https://www.wired.com/story/new-apple-watch-series-9-wont-be-carbon-neutral/

We Are Retroactively Dropping the iPhone’s Repairability Score | iFixit News

Tags: tech, apple, ecology, repair

What are the hardware improvements good for if it’s all locked down through software? This is wasted.

https://www.ifixit.com/News/82493/we-are-retroactively-dropping-the-iphones-repairability-score-en

Organic Maps: An Open-Source Maps App That Doesn’t Suck

Tags: tech, map, foss

Interesting review, this seems mostly aligned with my own experience. That said I got less mileage since I use it mostly when walking around places I don’t know well.

https://hardfault.life/p/organic-maps-review

Long-term support for Linux kernel to be cut as maintainence remains under strain

Tags: tech, linux, kernel, community

Interesting, the situation for kernel maintainers is actually harder than I thought. You’d expect more of them could do the maintainer job on work time…

https://www.zdnet.com/article/long-term-support-for-linux-kernel-to-be-cut-as-maintainence-remains-under-strain/

Matrix.org - Matrix 2.0: The Future of Matrix

Tags: tech, messaging, matrix

Lots of progress, they’re finally delivering on past announcements at FOSDEM it seems. Let’s hope the spec effort catches up though.

https://matrix.org/blog/2023/09/matrix-2-0/

This month in Servo: upcoming events, new browser UI, and more! - Servo, the embeddable, independent, memory-safe, modular, parallel web rendering engine

Tags: tech, web, servo, rust

Nice to see this effort keeps bearing fruits. This is a very needed engine to avoid a monoculture.

https://servo.org/blog/2023/09/15/upcoming-events-and-new-browser-ui/

Should I Rust or should I go?

Tags: tech, rust

Keep the downsides in mind. Rust has an ecological niche, but it’s maybe not that big.

https://kerkour.com/should-i-rust-or-should-i-go

Supply Chain Issues in PyPI - by Stian Kristoffersen

Tags: tech, python, supply-chain

There’s still some work to secure the Python supply chain. It’s clearly suffering from fragmentation and ambiguous data.

https://stiankri.substack.com/p/supply-chain-issues-in-pypi

Java 21 makes me actually like Java again - WSCP’s blog

Tags: tech, java, type-systems

This is definitely a big deal for the Java type system and its ergonomics.

https://wscp.dev/posts/tech/java-pattern-matching/

Java 21 Is Available Today, And It’s Quite The Update | Foojay.io Today

Tags: tech, programming, java

This is definitely a big release! Lots of changes and improvements in this language.

https://foojay.io/today/java-21-is-available-today-and-its-quite-the-update/

Monkey-patching in Java

Tags: tech, java, metaprogramming

Lots of possibilities in the JVM to monkey-patch some behavior. Most of them are a bit involved though.

https://blog.frankel.ch/monkeypatching-java/

SQL join flavors

Tags: tech, sql, databases

Everything you wanted to know about SQL joins, and more.

https://antonz.org/sql-join/

B612 – The font family

Tags: tech, fonts

Interesting free font. Made for aeronautics, but brings interesting properties which might be useful in other contexts as well. Created around Toulouse and my old University too!

https://b612-font.com/

The Frustration Loop | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman’s blog

Tags: tech, spam, blog, funny

This is a funny spammer deterrent. I like the idea.

https://herman.bearblog.dev/the-frustration-loop/

1 Trick to Finish Your Next Talk in Style - David Nihill

Tags: communication, talk, presentation

Interesting trick indeed. I’ll try this when I get the chance. Clearly this avoids the underwhelming atmosphere closing after most Q&A session.

https://davidnihill.com/1-trick-to-finish-your-next-talk-in-style/

---

Bye for now!