Blogs

Web Review, Week 2026-01

Jan 2, 2026 | 6 minutes read

Tags: web-review, technical-debt, filesystem, community, attention-economy, social-media, criticism, europe, zig, design, tests, art, machine-learning, estimates, ai, 3d, data-science, copilot, agile, web, learning, tools, indie, bluetooth, shader, politics, philosophy, serialization, unix, failure, performance, team, email, go, assembly, meshstatic, python, debugging, type-systems, safety, distributed, linux, gaming, DRM, security, project-management, maintenance, system, music, rust, processes, programming, memory, cpu, privacy, sustainability, architecture, radio, business, gafam, foss, pairing, product-management, exceptions, graphics, hardware, communication, systemd, c++, gpt, tech

And we’ve finally reached 2026! I wish you all lots of nice Free Software contributions and good news regarding sustainability. Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-01.

How We Lost Communication to Entertainment

Tags: tech, social-media, communication, community

Indeed, social media even the fediverse isn’t really about communication or community, it’s about consuming content.

https://ploum.net/2025-12-15-communication-entertainment.html

I’m brave enough to say it: Linux is good now

Tags: tech, linux, foss, gaming

Another call for gamers to switch to Linux. Let’s see if the numbers are following in 2026.

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/linux/im-brave-enough-to-say-it-linux-is-good-now-and-if-you-want-to-feel-like-you-actually-own-your-pc-make-2026-the-year-of-linux-on-your-desktop/

Europe gets serious about cutting US digital umbilical cord

Tags: tech, politics, business, europe

Looks like Europe is finally waking up. It needs to pick up the pace now.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/22/europe_gets_serious_about_cutting/

A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet

Tags: tech, business, politics, DRM, attention-economy, privacy, gafam, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, technical-debt

Probably one of the most important talks of 39C3. It’s a powerful call to action for the European Union to wake up and do the right thing to ensure digital sovereignty for itself and everyone else in the world. The time is definitely right due to the unexpected allies to be found along the way. It’d be a way to turn the currently bad geopolitical landscape into a bunch of positive opportunities.

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet

Beyond the Machine

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, philosophy, music, art, programming

Long but interesting piece. There’s indeed a lot to say about our relationships to tools in general and generative AI in particular. It’s disheartening how it made obvious that collaborative initiatives are diminishing. In any case, ambivalence abounds in this text… for sure we can’t trust the self-appointed stewards of the latest wave of such tools. The parallel with Spirited Away at the end of the article is very well chosen in my opinion. The context in which technologies are born and applied matters so much.

https://frankchimero.com/blog/2025/beyond-the-machine/

Thanks AI!

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

I think Rich Hickey hit that nail on the head.

https://gist.github.com/richhickey/ea94e3741ff0a4e3af55b9fe6287887f

My first meshtastic network

Tags: tech, radio, distributed, meshstatic

This is really fun tech. I need to find time to experiment with it.

https://rickcarlino.com/notes/electronics/my-first-meshtastic-network.html

Gaming Couch – Play Couch Co-Op Games Instantly

Tags: tech, gaming, indie, web

Looks like a neat option for quick party games.

https://gamingcouch.com/

Email Privacy Tester

Tags: tech, email, security, tools

This looms like a handy help to check your email client is doing the right thing and is not leaking information.

https://www.emailprivacytester.com/about

Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: Full Disclosure of Airoha RACE Vulnerabilities

Tags: tech, bluetooth, security

This is definitely a bad one, there seem to be quite a few popular devices affected. And there might be more devices affected of course.

https://insinuator.net/2025/12/bluetooth-headphone-jacking-full-disclosure-of-airoha-race-vulnerabilities/

A Modern Recommender Model Architecture

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, data-science

Very comprehensive resource to make your own recommender model.

https://cprimozic.net/blog/anime-recommender-model-architecture/

How uv got so fast

Tags: tech, rust, python, design, performance

Unsurprisingly, this is mostly not related to the use of Rust. The design choices are what male uv so fast.

https://nesbitt.io/2025/12/26/how-uv-got-so-fast.html

witr: Why is this running?

Tags: tech, processes, system, tools

Early days for this little system tool. I really like the idea though.

https://github.com/pranshuparmar/witr

TIL: Restarting systemd services on sustained CPU abuse

Tags: tech, system, processes, systemd

Might be an interesting pattern to avoid a service going awry.

https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2025/12/28/1400

Huge binaries

Tags: tech, system, assembly, hardware, cpu

Nice little introduction in the fascinating world of very large binaries.

https://fzakaria.com/2025/12/28/huge-binaries

On the Brokenness of File Locking

Tags: tech, linux, filesystem

It’s been written a while ago now… and it’s admittedly still a mess. Be sure to read the addendum as well.

https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/locking

Everything you never wanted to know about file locking

Tags: tech, unix, linux, filesystem, python

The situation about file locking is really complicated in the Unix systems family.

https://chris.improbable.org/2010/12/16/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-file-locking/

By how much does your memory allocator overallocate?

Tags: tech, system, memory

A good reminder that allocators generally do more than you expect.

https://lemire.me/blog/2025/12/30/by-how-much-does-your-memory-allocator-overallocates/

The production bug that made me care about undefined behavior

Tags: tech, c++, memory

Careful of undefined behaviours. They can be reached fairly quickly. Especially in C++ and its initialisation maze.

https://gaultier.github.io/blog/the_production_bug_that_made_me_care_about_undefined_behavior.html

Software taketh away faster than hardware giveth: Why C++ programmers keep growing fast despite competition, safety, and AI

Tags: tech, c++, community, safety

This piece is (unsurprisingly) biased. Still there’s some truth there. C++ is here to stay, like it or not. The safety issues are overblown and are getting addressed. Now where the article is lacking is that the language has other issues. Also, will profiles ever become a real thing?

https://herbsutter.com/2025/12/30/software-taketh-away-faster-than-hardware-giveth-why-c-programmers-keep-growing-fast-despite-competition-safety-and-ai/

The Second Great Error Model Convergence

Tags: tech, exceptions, failure, go, zig, rust, type-systems

This is indeed interesting to see how the landscape evolved around error handling. There’s clearly a tension between exceptions and the result types we’ve seen popping up everywhere now.

https://matklad.github.io/2025/12/29/second-error-model-convergence.html