Tags: web-review, rss, criticism, ethics, mozilla, power, gpt, complexity, craftsmanship, fediverse, tools, python, mathematics, tech, performance, ai, social-media, project-management, science, graphics, machine-learning, c++, kde, agile, apple, version-control, architecture, law, video, management, transparency, frontend, google, 3d, hdmi, git, physics, programming, trust, browser, learning, privacy, autonomy, web, software, matrix, foss
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-09.
Tags: tech, kde, foss
A nice little review of our latest major releases. Looks like it’s well accepted so far. Very glad!
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/963851/0c64b8038c62432c/
Tags: tech, mozilla, browser, privacy
All good reasons to use Firefox! I’m always about the market share of engines where we need diversity, but more good points are brought up here. It’s the only going the extra mile to respect your privacy while bringing innovative features too (tested the in browser translation recently and it’s great).
Tags: tech, hdmi, transparency, criticism, foss
The HDMI Forum is really an annoying body to say the least… they lack so much transparency.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected
Tags: tech, rss, google, criticism
I’m not sure if it’s malice… but for sure they harmed RSS use a lot during the years.
https://openrss.org/blog/how-google-helped-destroy-adoption-of-rss-feeds
Tags: tech, apple, web, criticism
A bit of a long rant, still the core of the argument stays true. Apple will do everything in its power to keep their platform captive of their app store.
https://infrequently.org/2024/02/home-screen-advantage/
Tags: tech, fediverse, social-media, law, ethics
A good exploration of the Fediverse to Bluesky bridging debate from the angle of consent and the GDPR. It’s complicated and that shouldn’t come as unexpected.
https://write.as/ulrikehahn/bridging-to-bluesky-the-open-social-web-consent-and-gdpr
Tags: tech, fediverse, browser, web
Neat extension to blend your web browsing and discovering people on the Fediverse.
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt
Interesting paper attempting to prove that hallucinations are unavoidable in those models. It is well balanced though, and explains why it’s not necessarily a bad thing in theory. In my opinion, the problem is the marketing talk around those models making grand claims or denying the phenomenon.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11817
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt
Might be an interesting trick to reduce the computation and energy costs of large language models. Let’s see if it gets replicated and generalized, this is a single short paper not peer reviewed anywhere as far as I can tell.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.17764
Tags: tech, version-control, git, tools
Nice list of tips and recent git features to manage large repositories.
https://blog.gitbutler.com/git-tips-3-really-large-repositories/
Tags: tech, c++, python, performance
Interesting library if you got to do a lots of heavy analysis work with strings.
https://github.com/ashvardanian/StringZilla
Tags: tech, graphics, 3d, video
Ever wondered how look-up tables are used for graphics? This is a good summary. Shows quite a few use cases which can come in handy.
https://blog.frost.kiwi/WebGL-LUTS-made-simple/
Tags: tech, mathematics, 3d, matrix
Interesting exploration of what could be done in a 3D engine using plane-based geometric algebra (PGA). This brings in nice properties that matrices don’t have. And the performance impact is apparently not as bad as one could have suspected. I definitely look more into it.
https://enkimute.github.io/LookMaNoMatrices/
Tags: tech, mozilla, frontend, web, learning
Looks like a nice way to properly learn the web frontend basics.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/curriculum/
Tags: tech, programming, craftsmanship, complexity
Definitely this, mind the complexity you introduce in your code. Looking smart is not the goal here…
https://matthewrocklin.com/write-dumb-code.html
Tags: tech, foss, architecture
Good advice yes. Having a rough architecture document in a repository is more than welcome, it’s needed to help on-boarding. This is unfortunately not the norm in FOSS projects.
https://matklad.github.io/2021/02/06/ARCHITECTURE.md.html
Tags: tech, software, performance, power
Interesting take even though I’m not sure I buy it completely. This is an interesting pledge for aiming at power efficiency and squeezing performance out of software.
https://pythonspeed.com/articles/software-jevons-paradox/
Tags: tech, management, project-management, transparency, autonomy, craftsmanship, agile
To take with a pinch of salt since it has a couple of biases (most notably it focuses a lot on satisfaction) and the sample size is a bit small. A few interesting insights nonetheless. In particular it hints at autonomy, transparency, technical skills and vision as being the most important factors for satisfaction and success within teams. The applied project management method? Not so important it seems if the other factors are satisfied.
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/project-management-at-big-tech/
Tags: tech, agile, trust
Good summary of all the “fake agile” practice one can see. Without enough trust it’s not possible to put in place an agile organization.
Tags: science, physics
Ever wondered how planes fly? What the Navier-Stokes equations lead to in practice? This is the right article.
https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/
Bye for now!