Blogs

A bit later than usual since I got a failure on my hosting infrastructure which required some love. Anyway, let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-45.


A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

Tags: tech, matrix, licensing

Interesting move in the Matrix space. It’s nice to see them go for a dual license business model involving AGPLv3. I’m a bit more concerned about the CLA though. Let’s hope they setup something equivalent to the KDE-FreeQt Foundatio going through the Matrix Foundation. Otherwise, AFAICT, there’s no safeguard against some nefarious relicensing years down the line.

https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/


Rule Ambiguity, Institutional Clashes, and Population Loss: How Wikipedia Became the Last Good Place on the Internet

Tags: tech, wikipedia, community, politics

Interesting exploration of the Wikipedia community dynamics. This explains quite a few things on its evolution. It highlights how it became a beacon of sanity in the insane political landscape we’re collectively facing.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/rule-ambiguity-institutional-clashes-and-population-loss-how-wikipedia-became-the-last-good-place-on-the-internet/FC3F7B9CBF951DD30C2648E7DEFB65EE


Introducing Steam Deck OLED

Tags: tech, kde, hardware, repair

Looks like Valve is delivering on its promise to do further iterations on their hardware. Looks like they paid further attention to repairability which is very welcome. It’ll put KDE products in an even better light now. 😉

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/oled


Critical vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence server is under “mass exploitation” | Ars Technica

Tags: tech, atlassian, security

This is indeed a very nasty vulnerability. This won’t improve my low trust in this product. They’ve been trying to phase it out for a while, it shows now.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/11/critical-vulnerability-in-atlassian-confluence-server-is-under-mass-exploitation/


AI Entity Resolution: Bridging Records Across Human Languages - TerminusDB

Tags: tech, vector, databases, ai, machine-learning

Ever wondered what you can do with vector databases and LLMs? Here is an interesting use case.

https://terminusdb.com/blog/ai-entity-resolution/


tailspin: 🌀 A log file highlighter

Tags: tech, logging, tools, command-line

Looks like a nice tool. Should complete nicely my trusty lnav for unsupported formats.

https://github.com/bensadeh/tailspin


Ninja is enough build system | Max Bernstein

Tags: tech, tools, buildsystems, ninja

Interesting tidbits I didn’t know about. The little Python API provided to generate Ninja files could turn out interesting.

https://bernsteinbear.com//blog/ninja-is-enough/


dotree: A small, interactive command runner

Tags: tech, tools, command-line

Looks like a neat tool for the less common commands you still need to reach easily.

https://github.com/KnorrFG/dotree


Backtraces with strace :: Words from Shane

Tags: tech, system, tools, command-line

OK, I admit I missed the introduction of this flag in strace as well. Super interesting, it can definitely be useful.

https://shane.ai/posts/backtraces-with-strace/


git rebase: what can go wrong?

Tags: tech, git, tools

I tend to encourage people to master git rebase. In any case this comes with a few warnings so do it with care. This article does a good job pointing the caveats of the rebase command.

https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/11/06/rebasing-what-can-go-wrong-/


What Happens When You Enter a URL into a Browser

Tags: tech, web, browser, http, learning

Nothing groundbreaking if you already know about the topic. But very nice introductory resource for people who wish to learn about it. Nicely put together.

https://medium.com/@atakanserbes/web-navigation-demystified-what-happens-when-you-enter-a-url-into-a-browser-39d8f2043b19


What is a Query Optimizer for?

Tags: tech, sql, databases

Interesting view on the motives and overall behavior of query planners.

https://justinjaffray.com/what-is-a-query-optimizer-for/


5 Inconvenient Truths about TypeScript

Tags: tech, web, frontend, typescript

I like this kind of balanced view. Indeed Typescript isn’t all roses, still it’s worth using in complex cases.

https://oida.dev/5-truths-about-typescript/


Going up in color bit depth

Tags: tech, graphics, colors

This is a nice trick when converting colors.

https://30fps.net/pages/bit-depths/


Shoelace: A forward-thinking library of web components.

Tags: tech, webcomponents, web, frontend

Another library of web components. This seems to pick up and it’s welcome.

https://shoelace.style/


A better explanation of the Liskov Substitution Principle

Tags: tech, object-oriented, teaching

One of the toughest object-oriented programming principles to apply properly in my opinion. At least it looks like we found a better way to teach it now.

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/lsp/


10 hard-to-swallow truths they won’t tell you about software engineer job

Tags: tech, engineering, career

It sometimes feel a bit like caricature… but there’s some truth grounded into this article. The faster new software engineers internalize the proposed “truths”, the better for their own mental health.

https://www.mensurdurakovic.com/hard-to-swallow-truths-they-wont-tell-you-about-software-engineer-job/


no hello

Tags: tech, messaging, remote-working

Yes, we definitely shouldn’t use chats as the phone. I often fails at this, it’s also a good reminder for me.

https://nohello.net/en/



Bye for now!