Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-12.

There is no cookie banner law

Tags: tech, gdpr, law, surveillance

It’s not the regulation which brings the banners, it’s the companies insisting on tracking us.

https://www.amazingcto.com/cookie-banners-are-not-needed/

Hackers Found a Way to Open Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks in Seconds

Tags: tech, security

This is bad. Unlocking many doors is just a couple of taps a way if you’re already a guest.

https://www.wired.com/story/saflok-hotel-lock-unsaflok-hack-technique/

Vision Pro is an over-engineered “devkit”

Tags: tech, apple, vr

Very thorough analysis of the Vision Pro value proposition. It shows quite well where it shines and where it should be improved.

https://hugo.blog/2024/03/11/vision-pro/

Microsoft reportedly runs GitHub’s AI Copilot at a loss • The Register

Tags: tech, gpt, copilot, economics

The price hike on the generative AI services will happen sooner or later. That much is clear.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/11/github_ai_copilot_microsoft/

The demise of coding is greatly exaggerated

Tags: tech, programming, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot

Definitely this. It might ultimately impact the abstraction levels accessible to us for coding… but the skills will still be needed. Natural language is too ambiguous for the task.

https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-demise-of-coding-is-greatly.html?m=1

Core Guidelines are not Rules - Simplify C++!

Tags: tech, c++, complexity

When guidelines contradict each other. You need a proper way to communicate where a piece of code stands.

https://arne-mertz.de/2024/03/core-guidelines-are-not-rules/

The wrong way to speed up your code with Numba

Tags: tech, python, performance

As usual measure and don’t just assume when you want to optimize something. This is an interesting case in Python using Numba.

https://pythonspeed.com/articles/slow-numba/

How web bloat impacts users with slow devices

Tags: tech, web, frontend, performance

Indeed this. It’s not only about payload size, it’s also about CPU consumption. Our profession is still assuming too much that users will get faster CPU on a regular basis.

https://danluu.com/slow-device/

Obsolescence Paths: living with aging devices

Tags: tech, mobile, obsolescence

Interesting paper showing the main reasons why people ultimately change their phones. I find interesting that the opacity of storage management on mobile devices is such a factor.

https://hal.science/hal-04097867

A Few Words on Testing - by Thorsten Ball

Tags: tech, tests, tdd, quality

Indeed, don’t mindlessly add tests. I find interesting that the doubts raised in this piece are once again concluded using an old quote of Kent Beck. What he was proposing was fine and then over time people became clearly unreasonable.

https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/a-few-words-on-testing

Measuring Developer Productivity via Humans

Tags: tech, programming, productivity

Very interesting piece. The DORA metrics are a good thing but I always felt they’re kind of dry and missing something. On the other hand surveys which are more qualitative give also interesting results but come with their own biases. The idea pushed here for better qualitative surveys and to combine them with quantitative metrics like the DORA one is definitely a tempting way forward.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/measuring-developer-productivity-humans.html

Occasional paper: When Armor Met Lips — Crooked Timber

Tags: history, evolution

Very interesting theory on why the nautiloids started disappearing. A specie developed lips…

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/03/16/occasional-paper-when-armor-met-lips/

Bye for now!