Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-03.

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How This “Basic” Robot Solves REAL Life Problems (without AI) - YouTube

Tags: tech, robots, disability, empathy

This is definitely an excellent use of robotics. Probably one of the best I’ve seen. The things we can do when we’re not just focusing on increasing productivity. These people get a shared sense of belonging they’d have a hard time to have without those robots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iLcOLvNfz0

Common misconceptions about the complexity in robotics vs AI

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, robots

Nice reminder that the tasks necessary to robotics are clearly much harder to develop through machine learning than language.

https://harimus.github.io//2024/05/31/motortask.html

The cod-Marxism of personalized pricing

Tags: tech, surveillance, politics, economics, privacy

The wonderful world of personalised pricing in the age of widespread surveillance… Also becoming personalised wage fixing in the case of gig workers. Shameful.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

I was just censored by Meta

Tags: tech, social-media, facebook, politics, censorship

I think the trend is clear: don’t criticise the powerful or else…

https://boehs.org/node/meta-censorship

Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse, foss, politics

Definitely a good move, especially when we see the behavior of the tech moguls…

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/mastodon-becomes-nonprofit-to-make-sure-its-never-ruined-by-billionaire-ceo/

WordPress is in trouble

Tags: tech, foss, community, wordpress

The WordPress is still unfolding… I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends with a fork.

https://anderegg.ca/2025/01/11/wordpress-is-in-trouble

Speech and Language Processing

Tags: tech, language, nlp

Looks like a good resource if you’re interested in natural language processing.

https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/

an autoflusher

Tags: tech, system, programming

This is definitely a neat trick. This way you can flush stdout regularly without modifying the code of a command.

https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/an-autoflusher

Rewrite it in Rust: A Computational Physics Case Study

Tags: tech, rust, computation, performance

More studies needed to confirm this, it is a single data point. Still it looks like Rust could take the HPC world by storm once it gets a better GPGPU story (still early days there).

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.19146

Django vs. FastAPI, An Honest Comparison

Tags: tech, python, backend, django, fastapi

Nice comparison of both approaches. Some of the criteria used I would have left out but otherwise it seems fair.

https://www.david-dahan.com/blog/comparing-fastapi-and-django

Open source and its power demonstrated in PostgreSQL

Tags: tech, foss

Very good demonstration of why you want open source code on your projects. I often end up doing this kind of forensics myself, this is truly powerful.

https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/the-power-of-open-source-in-postgresql/

Thinking About Risk - Sidebar #1: “Exposure” - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: tech, project-management, risk

Interesting extra dimension to think about risks. I don’t think I ever encountered it in the wild but that can make sense to use it.

https://jacobian.org/2025/jan/15/risk-exposure/

Thinking About Risk - Sidebar #2: The Swiss Cheese Model - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: tech, project-management, risk

Or why you can’t consider risks in isolation. It’s too often forgotten.

https://jacobian.org/2025/jan/16/swiss-cheese-model/

The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

Tags: science, research

Wondering what a Ph.D. is about? This is a good illustrated summary.

https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

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Bye for now!