Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-07.

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Non-code contributions are the secret to open source success · GitHub

Tags: tech, foss, community

Good reminder that contributions are not only about code. Documentation, support, release management and so on are very important as well and too often underrated.

https://github.com/readme/featured/open-source-non-code-contributions

Extending our Mastodon social media trial - BBC R&D

Tags: tech, bbc, social-media, fediverse

Looks like the BBC likes the fediverse experiment so far. Engagement is even better than on Twitter at times. Let’s hope they keep expanding.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-02-extending-our-mastodon-social-media-trial

European Court of Human Rights bans weakening of secure end-to-endencryption

Tags: tech, politics

Excellent news, let’s hope this thwarts the commission plans as expected.

https://www.eureporter.co/world/human-rights-category/european-court-of-human-rights-echr/2024/02/14/european-court-of-human-rights-bans-weakening-of-secure-end-to-endencryption-the-end-of-eus-chat-control-csar-mass-surveillance-plans/

Estimating the environmental impact of Generative-AI services using an LCA-based methodology

Tags: tech, ecology, energy, ai, machine-learning, gpt

Interesting paper evaluating a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method to estimate the power consumption and environmental impact of generative AI services. This is illustrated on a single service, hopefully we’ll see more such assessments.

https://inria.hal.science/hal-04346102

Short history of all Windows UI frameworks and libraries

Tags: tech, windows, gui

Confused about which UI frameworks are used in Windows? Here is the list in chronological order.

https://irrlicht3d.org/index.php?t=1626

The Stupidity Manifesto

Tags: culture, empathy

Definitely this, it’s better when you don’t make people feel stupid.

https://insimpleterms.blog/the-stupidity-manifesto

RSS is still pretty great

Tags: tech, rss, blog

Good explanation of what RSS is, where its weaknesses and strengths are.

https://www.pcloadletter.dev/blog/rss/

Too dangerous for C++

Tags: tech, rust, c++, type-systems, multithreading

It’s hard to argue that the Rust type system isn’t superior to the C++ type system… it’s definitely nice how it actively prevents data races at compile time.

https://blog.dureuill.net/articles/too-dangerous-cpp/

The History of Python: Why Python’s Integer Division Floors

Tags: tech, python, mathematics, floats

Some reasons why Python and C behave differently on this matter. It’s a source of mistakes.

https://python-history.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-pythons-integer-division-floors.html

CUDA on AMD GPUs

Tags: tech, gpu, amd, nvidia, computation

Interesting project, could bring a boost in AMD GPUs usage for CUDA workloads.

https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA

Not just NVIDIA: GPU programming that runs everywhere

Tags: tech, python, gpu, computation, webgpu

Interesting to see WebGPU bindings for Python.

https://pythonspeed.com/articles/gpu-without-cuda/

WebGPU Best Practices

Tags: tech, 3d, gpu, computation, webgpu

Looks like a nice list of resources to dive deeper with WebGPU

https://toji.dev/webgpu-best-practices/

Open-source data multitool | VisiData

Tags: tech, tools, data, python

Looks like a nice tool for quick data exploration straight from the command line.

https://www.visidata.org/

Magika: AI powered fast and efficient file type identification | Google Open Source Blog

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, tools, command-line

Interesting tool for file type detection. Seems very accurate too.

https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/02/magika-ai-powered-fast-and-efficient-file-type-identification.html

Why Bloat Is Still Software’s Biggest Vulnerability - IEEE Spectrum

Tags: tech, security, architecture, dependencies, supply-chain

Definitely this, the software bloat directly impacts the attack surface of what gets shipped. Even though this is far from a panacea in terms of security, it’s time for people to critically examine their dependencies also for other reasons.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/lean-software-development

Mastering Programming - by Kent Beck

Tags: tech, craftsmanship, programming

As always from Kent Beck, an excellent set of advices to improve you programming skills.

https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/mastering-programming

Deciphering Glyph :: Let Me Tell You A Secret

Tags: tech, communication, management, team

This is a bit cartoonish I’d say but there’s some truth to it. I indeed regularly get onto consulting gigs where you find out that the people already had the solution to their problem. In those cases it’s very often because communication channels are broken somewhere (team don’t feel at liberty to share what they noticed, managers having a hard time to listen, etc.).

https://blog.glyph.im/2024/02/let-me-tell-you-a-secret.html

Tracking Engineering Time - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: tech, management, metrics, estimates

Interesting approach when managing at a distance. It tries hard to stay lightweight which is definitely welcome.

https://jacobian.org/2024/feb/7/tracking-engineering-time/

What Is in Your Organizational Closet? - esther derby associates, inc.

Tags: management, organization

Interesting idea… indeed organizations can carry legacy processes and ideas as well.

https://estherderby.com/what-is-in-your-organizational-closet/

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Bye for now!