Blogs

Let’s go for last web review of 2024!

This is Your Brain On Surveillance: New Study Reveals How Awareness of Being Watched Alters Our Brains - The Debrief

Tags: tech, surveillance, psychology, cognition

It looks like it’s not only impacting negatively our privacy. The linked paper (good to read as well) hints at negative impacts on mental health as well. Still needs to be fully validated but it doesn’t look good already.

https://thedebrief.org/this-is-your-brain-on-surveillance-new-study-reveals-how-awareness-of-being-watched-alters-our-brains/

The era of open voice assistants has arrived - Home Assistant

Tags: tech, smarthome, foss

Nice move from the home assistant people. Such open and privacy respecting hardware is needed.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/12/19/voice-preview-edition-the-era-of-open-voice/

The Ghosts in the Machine, by Liz Pelly

Tags: tech, music, copyright

You love artists and their music? You probably should get off Spotify then… because they’re clearly at war to reduce even further how much they pay artists. Clearly it’s not about discovering artists anymore, it’s about pumping cheap stock music to increase their margin. Also its clear the remaining musicians trapped in that system will be automated away soon… you don’t need humans to create soulless music.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

My colleague Julius

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism, knowledge

OK, this is a nice parabole. I admit I enjoyed it.

https://ploum.net/2024-12-23-julius-en.html

Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, mathematics

Looks like we’re still a long way from mathematical accuracy with the current generation of models. It made progress of course.

https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2024/12/22/can-ai-do-maths-yet-thoughts-from-a-mathematician/

Lua is so underrated

Tags: tech, programming, language, lua

It’s a not niche indeed but has its place in some applications.

https://nflatrea.bearblog.dev/lua-is-so-underrated/

Simpler and faster parsing code with std::views::split – Daniel Lemire’s blog

Tags: tech, c++, performance

A good reason to use more modern C++20 APIs for parsing code.

https://lemire.me/blog/2024/12/21/simpler-and-faster-parsing-code-with-stdviewssplit/

A Simple ELF

Tags: tech, unix, elf, system

Nice little introduction to the ELF format.

https://4zm.org/2024/12/25/a-simple-elf.html

Electronics Test Gear on the Cheap

Tags: tech, electronics

Price of such gear definitely went down indeed.

https://bigdanzblog.wordpress.com/2024/12/25/electronics-test-gear-on-the-cheap/

Server-Sent Events (SSE) Are Underrated

Tags: tech, web, http

This is definitely an overlooked alternative to websockets. It doesn’t apply everywhere of course but when it does it’s a good pick.

https://igorstechnoclub.com/server-sent-events-sse-are-underrated/

On Long Term Software Development - Bert Hubert’s writings

Tags: tech, engineering, supply-chain, complexity, dependencies, maintenance

There is some good advice in this piece. If you want to maintain something for a long time, some aspects need to be thought out from the beginning.

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/on-long-term-software-development/

Problem Driven Development | Stay SaaSy

Tags: tech, project-management, product-management, engineering, quality

Struggling with making your first technical roadmap? Driving it from measurable problems is a good first step.

https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2024/12/17/problem-driven-development.html

The number pi has an evil twin… - Mathstodon

Tags: mathematics

Interesting thread. I didn’t know about this family of constants. Fun stuff.

https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/113703444230936435

Bye for now!