Tags: web-review, qrcode, dependencies, gpt, performance, consistency, sustainability, ai, surveillance, foss, memory, web, microsoft, tdd, tech, browser, java, version-control, remote-working, system, google, multithreading, copyright, craftsmanship, quality, rust, tech engineering, json, meetings, barcode, parsing, api, culture, atlassian, buildsystems, economics, tests, apple, licensing, c++, blog, cost, services, safety, firefox, machine-learning
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-04.
Tags: tech, web, blog, culture
Good continuation of “where have all the websites gone?”. They’re still here but we changed, all the more reason for curating.
https://daverupert.com/2024/01/where-have-all-the-websites-gone/
Tags: tech, foss, sustainability
Yes, there’s something to do in this space. More funding is necessary, some form of platform might help… but it definitely won’t be enough.
https://openpath.chadwhitacre.com/2024/the-open-source-sustainability-crisis/
Tags: tech, firefox, web, browser, google, apple, microsoft
Nice call from Mozilla to make this public. This way it is very obvious where the blockers are on some platforms.
https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/01/19/platform-tilt/
Tags: tech, surveillance
Still a long way to go but definitely a move in the right direction.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copyright, licensing
This is an interesting move, we’ll see if this certification gets any traction.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copyright
The tooling to protect against the copyright theft of image generator models training is making progress. This will clearly turn into an arm race.
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
Tags: tech, barcode, qrcode
Another great way to understand how QR codes work.
Tags: tech, java, multithreading, memory
Very interesting talk. It gives a good idea of some properties of the JVM memory model. It also shows how the CPU architecture properties can leak all the way through changing some of the behavior of JVM code. Too bad this particular thing seems badly documented on the JDK side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFkpmFt61Jo
Tags: tech, c++, dependencies, buildsystems
Clearly I can understand the feeling. That’s yet another attempt at a solution for this… it’s young, will it get traction? Has the benefit of being kind of simple, too simplistic maybe?
https://david-delassus.medium.com/thats-it-i-m-making-my-own-c-package-manager-555eecbf7d2e
Tags: tech, rust, c++, safety, system
Very interesting contribution to the FreeBSD hackers mailing list. Gives quite a good background about Rust, C++ and safety. Debunks a few claims you can easily hear in many places as if they were common knowledge.
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-hackers/2024-January/002876.html
Tags: tech, json, parsing, performance, c++
Very interesting approach to JSON parsing. Comes with a very thorough performance analysis.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/spe.3313
Tags: tech, api, services, consistency
On the difficulties of dealing with third party APIs. How to handle failures and reach eventual consistency? A few good solutions and patterns are proposed here.
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/handling-errors-when-working-with-external-apis
Tags: tech engineering, craftsmanship, quality
Understandability is indeed a very important goal. There are easy ways to improve it in a system.
https://ntietz.com/blog/the-most-important-goal-in-designing-software-is-understandability/
Tags: tech, tdd, tests
Nice talks, debunks very well quite a bit of the fallacies around people wrongly practicing TDD. I never realized how the root cause of those fallacies was the misusing of the “unit tests” term instead of “developers test”. This was indeed the wrong term, knew it, but first time I realize how profound the effects were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN9lftH0cJc
Tags: tech, version-control
A nice knowledge base about what is probably my favorite branching model. Goes in the variations you can have, the trade-offs and the other techniques you need to bring in for it to work well.
https://trunkbaseddevelopment.com/
Tags: tech, economics, cost, licensing, services, foss
Good exploration on how the total cost of ownership is spread depending on how is licensed the software you use and where you get your support from. I think there’s one point a bit too glanced over in the analysis of the cost for the proprietary SaaS case: what’s the cost of fixing a bug that affect your team? You might be a tiny fish in a large pond, good luck getting attention from support in this case.
https://avdi.codes/on-owning-software/
Tags: tech, atlassian, remote-working
Interesting report about distributed and remote work at Atlassian. They really did their homework. I recommend reading the whole report, they came up with a few original ideas.
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/distributed-work-report
Tags: tech, meetings
Interesting approach to handling meetings. Start thinking about what happens if you’re not there.
https://andygrunwald.com/blog/cancel-your-meetings-if-you-can-live-with-the-outcome/
Bye for now!