Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-33.


Why We Picked AGPL - ParadeDB

Tags: tech, foss, business

I wish more product companies would pick this license. Going for AGPL with a support and/or double license offering is a strong model in my opinion.

https://blog.paradedb.com/pages/agpl


Fellowship for Maintainers | Sovereign Tech Fund

Tags: tech, foss, economics

Interesting initiative. I’m looking forward to the results of this first pilot.

https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/programs/fellowship


Breaking Up Google

Tags: tech, google, monopoly, law, economics

Of course it sounds complicated to break Google up… but that’s not the point. It’s about avoiding its monopolistic position, the fact that it’s complicated is just another symptom.

https://micro.webology.dev/2024/08/14/breaking-up-google.html


The Dying Web

Tags: tech, google, browser, web, standard

Yes, please let’s increase the market share of non-Chromium based browsers.

https://endler.dev/2024/the-dying-web/


Hacking the Scammers

Tags: tech, security, hacking

Someone was about to get revenge, this gives an interesting exploration.

https://blog.smithsecurity.biz/hacking-the-scammers


‘Sinkclose’ Flaw in Hundreds of Millions of AMD Chips Allows Deep, Virtually Unfixable Infections | WIRED

Tags: tech, cpu, amd, security

Luckily this kind of very low level vulnerabilities are not too common and difficult to exploit. But when they get exploited all things break loose and you can’t trust your hardware anymore.

https://www.wired.com/story/amd-chip-sinkclose-flaw/


Why exploits prefer memory corruption

Tags: tech, security, memory

Interesting take, those bugs are more convenient to exploit. Logic bugs are too specific to easily exploit at scale.

https://pacibsp.github.io/2024/why-exploits-prefer-memory-corruption.html


Some thoughts on OpenSSH 9.8’s PerSourcePenalties feature

Tags: tech, security, ssh

Clearly a new OpenSSH feature to keep an eye on. This should improved security of the server by default. That said, it needs to be a bit more in the wild before knowing how to best tune it.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/OpenSSHPerSourcePenaltiesThings


slow TCP connect on Windows

Tags: tech, windows, networking

This is indeed surprising behavior and specific to Windows. If you wonder why TCP connect is slow and you got IPv6 support active this might be why.

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/14/slow-tcp-connect-on-windows/


Recent Performance Improvements in Function Calls in CPython

Tags: tech, python, performance

Interesting dive into some of the performance improvements introduced into recent CPython releases.

https://blog.codingconfessions.com/p/are-function-calls-still-slow-in-python


Approximating sum types in Python with Pydantic

Tags: tech, python, type-systems

Here is an interesting use of Pydantic to properly model inputs.

https://blog.yossarian.net/2024/08/12/Approximating-sum-types-in-Python-with-Pydantic


Reflection-based JSON in C++ at Gigabytes per Second – Daniel Lemire’s blog

Tags: tech, c++, reflection, type-systems, performance

Compile time reflection in C++ will indeed be a big deal.

https://lemire.me/blog/2024/08/13/reflection-based-json-in-c-at-gigabytes-per-second/


High-precision date/time in SQLite

Tags: tech, time, databases, sqlite

Looks like a neat extension which can come in handy.

https://antonz.org/sqlean-time/


PostgreSQL masking and obfuscation tool

Tags: tech, databases, postgresql, tools

Looks like an interesting tool for creating anonymized pre-production environments.

https://greenmask.io/latest/


The fastest way to copy data between Postgres tables

Tags: tech, databases, postgresql

Need to duplicate data in Postgres? Several options are on the table.

https://ongres.com/blog/fastest_way_copy_data_between_postgres_tables/


blocking=render: Why would you do that?!

Tags: tech, web, browser, frontend, html

A new HTML attribute to keep an eye on. I can expect people to abuse it with hard to debug problems in the frontend if you don’t know it is there.

https://csswizardry.com/2024/08/blocking-render-why-whould-you-do-that/


Garbage Collection and Metastability - Marc’s Blog

Tags: tech, garbage-collector, performance, safety, memory

Interesting, it confirms garbage collectors can be the source of unrecoverable performance degradation in request based systems.

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/08/14/gc-metastable.html


Good Retry, Bad Retry: An Incident Story

Tags: tech, distributed, failure, recovery

Retries are becoming common place to deal with transient errors. That said, they can be a problem with recovery of longer failures due to amplification. There are options on the table to solve this though.

https://medium.com/yandex/good-retry-bad-retry-an-incident-story-648072d3cee6


The Perils of Future-Coding

Tags: tech, design, complexity, performance

Or why anticipating too much is merely a gamble. You can be lucky, but how often will you be? Also I agree that in such cases the performance will be impacted longer term leading to a death by thousands of paper cuts.

https://www.sebastiansylvan.com/post/the-perils-of-future-coding/


How we deleted 4195 code files in 9 hours - by Anton Zaides

Tags: tech, technical-debt, organization, leadership, funny

I’m not sure the incentives are right… it’s better to clean up as you go. Still some places would benefit from such an event from time to time and even if you clean up as you go missed opportunities happen.

https://zaidesanton.substack.com/p/organizing-the-best-cleanathon-your


Stop Team Topologies. Reevaluating Team Topologies

Tags: tech, organization

Surprisingly, I bumped into this article as I’m wrapping up reading the Team Topologies book. This highlight fairly well some of the concerns I have with it and where it shines. I think it’s right to turn to the principles it’s built on rather than use the model it proposes as a blueprint.

https://martyoo.medium.com/stop-team-topologies-fd954ea26eca


How to build a strategy

Tags: business, organization, management, strategy

It’s bloody hard to build a strategy. This article is full of good wisdom to make one. This won’t make it really easier, but at least you won’t start in the wrong direction and will be able to know if what you produce is any good.

https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/how-to-build-a-strategy/


Anime girl breaking the fourth wall

Tags: tech, blender, 3d, funny

Funny short video, I guess it has also some tutorial value to know what you can do with Blender? (and no, you can’t break the fourth wall with it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTi_-HGtsDY



Bye for now!