Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-36.

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Your Phone Already Has Social Credit

Tags: tech, surveillance, politics

Interesting point of view. We point to China’s system, but it’s of course already in Western countries too… we just like to lie about it.

https://www.thenexus.media/your-phone-already-has-social-credit-we-just-lie-about-it/

The Web We Lost

Tags: tech, web, social-media, criticism, culture

This is already an old article now. Still the core of it rings true. The optimistic note at the end of it didn’t come to pass though.

https://www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

Default search engine: Wikipedia

Tags: tech, web, search, wikipedia

The idea is interesting… Seeing how the search engine space is degrading quickly I’m tempted to try this actually.

https://paste.sr.ht/~awal/2310cfca431e9f723df281d02558eaebd77e2091

Are We Decentralized Yet?

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse, bluesky, decentralized

Nice and clear indicators of how decentralized the fediverse and the “atmosphere” really are.

https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/

Passwords are okay, impulsive Internet isn’t

Tags: tech, security, vendor-lockin

This is quite a rant. Now I admit I’m not in love with passkeys and this piece shows quite well a lot of arguments against them.

https://www.dedoimedo.com/life/passwords-passkeys.html

What Every Argument About Sideloading Gets Wrong

Tags: tech, hardware, system, vendor-lockin, foss

Interesting point, let’s not forget those devices indeed don’t give us enough access to run whatever operating system you want on them.

https://hugotunius.se/2025/08/31/what-every-argument-about-sideloading-gets-wrong.html

Processors are getting wider

Tags: tech, hardware, cpu

Interesting trend in the CPU space. We’re getting more simultaneous instructions with the passing generations.

https://lemire.me/blog/2025/09/01/processors-are-getting-wider/

SQLite’s Durability Settings are a Mess

Tags: tech, databases, safety, sqlite

This is indeed an area which could be better handled in SQLite. It needs to be carefully checked when introduced in a project.

https://www.agwa.name/blog/post/sqlite_durability

Git exclude, a handy feature you might not know about

Tags: tech, git, tools

A nice git trick, there are options between the global .gitignore file and the local ones in the repository.

https://marijkeluttekes.dev/blog/articles/2025/09/03/git-exclude-a-handy-feature-you-might-not-know-about/

Python has had async for 10 years – why isn’t it more popular?

Tags: tech, python, multithreading, asynchronous

Its use cases are indeed limited. It’s a success for network IO. For everything else, the free threading might be the path forward once it stabilizes.

https://tonybaloney.github.io/posts/why-isnt-python-async-more-popular.html

Sharing a mutable reference with Python

Tags: tech, rust, python, type-systems, bindings

This is not an easy case, even with the support of PyO3. This short article gives a nice blueprint to share a reference between Rust and Python.

https://blog.lilyf.org/posts/python-mutable-reference/

A practical introduction to parsing

Tags: tech, parsing, rust

Need a refresher on how to write a parser? This is a good one. Also gives a few ideas of Rust libraries you can use to make the task easier.

https://jhwlr.io/intro-to-parsing/

Destructure as a Reminder

Tags: tech, design, pattern, type-systems, refactoring, rust

It’s indeed a nice little pattern to use when the type system allows for exhaustiveness checks of destructure operations. Allows to gracefully handle extension of structs in the future.

https://home.expurple.me/posts/destructure-as-a-reminder/

Rust ints to Rust enums with less instructions

Tags: tech, rust, type-systems, memory

Due to the strict type system this kind of conversion is not necessarily a given. There are ways though, and you can even keep it performing well.

https://sailor.li/ints-to-enums

Wild Performance Tricks

Tags: tech, rust, compiler, performance, optimization

Nice bag of tricks for better Rust performance at low level. The compiler is indeed helping quite a bit here.

https://davidlattimore.github.io/posts/2025/09/02/rustforge-wild-performance-tricks.html

A tour of dyn Trait

Tags: tech, rust, type-systems

Nice chapter to better understand Rust dyn traits (also called trait objects).

https://quinedot.github.io/rust-learning/dyn-trait.html

Adding #[derive(From)] to Rust

Tags: tech, rust, pattern, language

This is indeed a welcome improvement in my opinion. It’s nice to get a glimpse of the process of adding such features in Rust.

https://kobzol.github.io/rust/2025/09/02/adding-derive-from-to-rust.html

Structured bindings in C++17, 8 years later

Tags: tech, c++, type-systems

We got this nice feature a while ago now. It deserved to be used more, and it keeps improving.

https://www.cppstories.com/2025/structured-bindings-cpp26-updates/

std::exchange Patterns: Fast, Safe, Expressive, and Probably Underused

Tags: tech, c++

A good reminder to use std::exchange more. Years after it’s been introduced it’s clearly still underused.

https://www.fluentcpp.com/2020/09/25/stdexchange-patterns-fast-safe-expressive-and-probably-underused/

Leaky 🕳 Lambdas

Tags: tech, c++

It’s indeed quite possible to sneak in some symbols even in capture less lambdas. It all makes sense in the end.

http://videocortex.io/2016/leaky-closures-captureless-lambdas/

We need to seriously think about what to do with C++ modules

Tags: tech, c++, standard, criticism

Yes, this one feature in the standard doesn’t seem to reap much benefits… It’s sad that it got there.

https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2025/08/we-need-to-seriously-think-about-what.html

Triangle Grids

Tags: tech, game, mathematics, geometry

A little article about a different type of grids for strategy games. Some of the consequences are very interesting.

https://kvachev.com/blog/posts/triangular-grid/

Physically based rendering from first principles

Tags: tech, graphics, 3d, pbr, shader, physics, mathematics

Nice deep dive into the theory behind PBR approaches.

https://imadr.me/pbr/

Video Game Blurs (and how the best one works)

Tags: tech, graphics, shader, game, gui, 3d

Very interesting exploration of the various types of blurs used in games and GUIs. Starting simple then building up all the way to the Dual Kawase Blur… and a bit beyond.

https://blog.frost.kiwi/dual-kawase/

Implementing a foil sticker effect

Tags: tech, graphics, shader, pbr

Nice effect, well explained with a shader implementation.

https://www.4rknova.com/blog/2025/08/30/foil-sticker

Making XML human-readable without XSLT

Tags: tech, xml, html, xslt, javascript, css

This is indeed a nice trick. There are ways without XSLT, it might even be less painful.

https://jakearchibald.com/2025/making-xml-human-readable-without-xslt/

Style your underlines

Tags: tech, web, frontend, css, ux

We got many options nowadays. Most of them are likely better than just making the underline disappear on links.

https://adactio.com/journal/22084

You Don’t Need Animations

Tags: tech, ux, animation

Some good point in there. For sure you don’t want to animate everything.

https://emilkowal.ski/ui/you-dont-need-animations

Look Out For Bugs

Tags: tech, codereview, debugging

Indeed, carefully reading larger chunks of code and looking for the historical context around it can go a long way in finding bugs.

https://matklad.github.io/2025/09/04/look-for-bugs.html

Replacing a cache service with a database

Tags: tech, architecture, databases, caching

Databases do improve and provide more “cache like” features, but such caches are still needed for the time being.

https://avi.im/blag/2025/db-cache/

Presentation Domain Data Layering

Tags: tech, architecture

A short and to the point reminder on how to manage properly a “layer cake” architecture.

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/PresentationDomainDataLayering.html

On Wheels and Reinvention

Tags: tech, dependencies, supply-chain, complexity

Sometimes, it’s indeed better to not pull an extra dependency.

https://taggart-tech.com/reinventing-wheels/

Do the simplest thing that could possibly work

Tags: tech, architecture, complexity

Good reminder of this important but imperfect guide to software design. There is some ambiguity on what “simplest” actually means. Still it helps keeping in mind that simple is rarely easy to find.

https://www.seangoedecke.com/the-simplest-thing-that-could-possibly-work/

Software gardening

Tags: tech, craftsmanship

It’s been around for a long while now. This is an interesting way to complete the software craftsmanship view which didn’t quite capture the “living ecosystem” side of our field.

https://codingjourneyman.com/2015/08/03/software-gardening/

How Long Are Your Feedback Loops? (Are You On an Agile Death March?)

Tags: tech, agile, project-management

This is indeed one of the core questions on you “agile” project management. If the feedback loops are very long, you’re in for trouble.

https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/2025/09/how-long-are-your-feedback-loops-are-you-on-an-agile-death-march/

Imposter Syndrome

Tags: tech, leadership, management, psychology, imposter-syndrome

This is a widespread syndrome. It’s not only in our industry of course but has real consequences in terms of leadership.

https://mikefisher.substack.com/p/imposter-syndrome

30 minutes with a stranger

Tags: sociology, psychology

Nice visualization of a study where people are paired with strangers for a 30 minutes conversation. It’s a fascinating social experiment with neat outcomes.

https://pudding.cool/2025/06/hello-stranger/

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Bye for now!