Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-38.

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KDE Plasma is now my favorite desktop

Tags: tech, linux, desktop, foss, kde

Let’s have some well deserved praise. The product is definitely good, the community is great. Who said I’m biased?

https://kokada.dev/blog/kde-is-now-my-favorite-desktop/

Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released 30 years ago today

Tags: tech, web, email, history

A tiny piece of history which was instrumental in the way the web and email developed back then.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/09/netscape-navigator-2-0-was-released-30-years-ago-today/

Ton Roosendaal to step down as Blender chairman and CEO

Tags: tech, blender, 3d, foss

Clearly a big step in Blender history. I wish them success through this transition. Blender is a very important and influential product in its space.

https://www.cgchannel.com/2025/09/ton-roosendaal-to-step-down-as-blender-chairman-and-ceo/

The Last Days Of Social Media

Tags: tech, web, social-media, attention-economy, fediverse

Interesting, there are definitely some trends benefiting saner alternatives… But are we really seeing the end of the big social media platforms as we know them? Let’s wait and see.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/

Slow social media

Tags: tech, social-media, attention-economy

I think I would use something like this.

https://herman.bearblog.dev/slow-social-media/

Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment

Tags: tech, music, surveillance

They are clearly making a statement here. Feeling uneasy about it? Well you should.

https://www.gadgetreview.com/massive-attack-turns-concert-into-facial-recognition-surveillance-experiment

Danish Minister of Justice and chief architect of the current Chat Control proposal…

Tags: tech, surveillance, politics, democracy

It won’t disappear that easily… Clearly the most radical supporters and architects of the Chat Control proposal won’t let go. They don’t want to respect people privacy and freedoms. Keep fighting!

https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115204439983078498

The Internet Coup: A Technical Analysis on How a Chinese Company is Exporting The Great Firewall to Autocratic Regimes

Tags: tech, surveillance, politics

The full report is really chilling. The amount of shady practice around that surveillance apparatus is staggering. It’s apparently becoming somewhat successful commercially too.

https://interseclab.org/research/the-internet-coup/

What do you call that thing when your vendor gets hacked?

Tags: tech, services, security, supply-chain

Good idea to standardise this for vendors just like we do using CVEs for software components. This would definitely improve dealing with breaches.

https://mayakaczorowski.com/blogs/vendor-vulnerability

Shai-Hulud: The novel self-replicating worm infecting hundreds of NPM packages

Tags: tech, supply-chain, security

Unsurprisingly ends up with an advertisement for their own security tool. That said the vector used for the attack is interesting, with more npm like ecosystems available nowadays, should we expect to see more such attacks?

https://www.sysdig.com/blog/shai-hulud-the-novel-self-replicating-worm-infecting-hundreds-of-npm-packages

crates.io phishing campaign

Tags: tech, rust, security, supply-chain

Bad actors will go to great length to try to compromise your supply chain.

https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/12/crates-io-phishing-campaign/

Protecting Rust against supply chain attacks

Tags: tech, rust, supply-chain, security

A good explanation of why you likely don’t want a centralised package manager for your ecosystem.

https://kerkour.com/rust-supply-chain-attacks

Automating Distro Updates in CI

Tags: tech, maintenance, automation, supply-chain

Nice automation for such updates. I’m discovering endoflife.date this looks very handy.

https://paretosecurity.com/blog/automating-distro-updates-in-ci/

KSON

Tags: tech, config

Looks like we got a new and interesting language for configuration. Might become a nice alternative to yaml and its traps.

https://kson.org/

A deep dive into the ACPI.sys DPC latency problems on Asus ROG laptops

Tags: tech, hardware, acpi

Very interesting deep dive pointing to a very flawed firmware.

https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive

The Cache Crash

Tags: tech, debugging, processes, memory, system

Interesting dive into an heisenbug… Definitely not easy to debug.

https://www.fastmail.com/blog/the-cache-crash/

In Defense of C++

Tags: tech, c++, safety

For as much as we collectively like to complain about C++ it’s important to also give credit where its due. Now I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this one even though it provides a few good arguments.

https://dayvster.com/blog/in-defense-of-cpp/

Reflection — C++’s decade-defining rocket engine

Tags: tech, c++, standard, reflection

OK the coming compile time reflection features coming with C++26 are definitely mind blowing. It really opens the door toward a very different evolutionary path for C++. Many things can be done from libraries now and producing bindings to other languages shall become much simpler to.

Now it’s once again about adding more to the language… This makes the question of how to extract a safer and leaner subset even more important. It’s also asking for more tooling to support it, like the constexpr debugger mentioned during the questions.

https://herbsutter.com/2025/09/18/yesterdays-talk-video-posted-reflection-cs-decade-defining-rocket-engine/

Rating 26 years of Java changes

Tags: tech, java, programming

Ver much biased of course. Still it’s a good way to see how much Java evolved over time.

https://neilmadden.blog/2025/09/12/rating-26-years-of-java-changes/

Algebraic Types are not Scary, Actually

Tags: tech, type-systems, mathematics

Nice write up with very simple mathematics metaphors to easily understand algebraic types.

https://blog.aiono.dev/posts/algebraic-types-are-not-scary,-actually.html

Setsum - order agnostic, additive, subtractive checksum

Tags: tech, syncing, mathematics

This checksum approach has interesting properties. Can come in handy when syncing.

https://avi.im/blag/2025/setsum/

Beyond Orthogonality: How Language Models Pack Billions of Concepts into 12,000 Dimensions

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

Interesting stuff about the mathematics behind how embedding spaces work in LLMs.

https://nickyoder.com/johnson-lindenstrauss/

React Won by Default – And It’s Killing Frontend Innovation

Tags: tech, web, frontend, framework, react

I strongly agree with this piece. There are very interesting web frameworks out there. They should be evaluated on their own merits but are too often just ignored.

https://www.lorenstew.art/blog/react-won-by-default/

You Want Technology With Warts

Tags: tech, web, maintenance, sqlite

Interesting take on building software that lasts. I’m not sure I’m fully aligned with this but its good food for thought.

https://entropicthoughts.com/you-want-technology-with-warts

How to Create a Useful Project Charter in Less Time Than You Think: Overview - Johanna Rothman

Tags: project-management, vision

Indeed many projects are started without such a charter and that creates issues.

https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/2025/09/how-to-create-a-useful-project-charter-in-less-time-than-you-think-overview/

Why We Spiral

Tags: psychology, management

Interesting stuff. Indeed, we can easily trigger such negative feedback loops… Makes me think that compounded with impostor syndrome or unsupportive management you can really create dysfunctional teams in the workplace. This gives insights on how to get out of it.

https://behavioralscientist.org/why-we-spiral/

You’re a Slow Thinker. Now what?

Tags: cognition, learning

Interesting essay… Indeed not everyone think or learn in the same way or at the same speed. It’s not the end of the world though, you tend to develop different strengths or weaknesses due to this.

https://chillphysicsenjoyer.substack.com/p/youre-a-slow-thinker-now-what

Sing, sang, sung and other linguistic fossils

Tags: linguistics, history

Interesting exploration of where the strong verb system of the English language is coming from.

https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/history-english-strong-verbs

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Bye for now!