Arne’s Weekly

122 / The Negative Impact of Mobile-First Web Design on Desktop

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Toot of the Week

hunters that use mating calls as bait r the worst at least food bait gives u food
— @chaddeusstevens@hachyderm.io

Random Thoughts 15 years into Software Engineering

3 min · roughlywritten.substack.com

Ryan O'Neill has 15 pieces of advice for software engineers.

You’re not lacking creativity, you’re overwhelmed

6 min · newsletter.thejorgemedina.com

Jorge Medina writes about decision fatigue for online content and presents a mitigation: Curated to create.

Why is nobody excited about these "yesterday"/"2 days ago"/"a week ago" labels?

1 min · grumpy.website

Nikita Prokopov argues one shouldn't use relative time labels unless they make sense in the way humans think.

The Negative Impact of Mobile-First Web Design on Desktop

12 min · nngroup.com

Kim Salazar, Tim Neusesser and Nishi Chitale about content dispersion and the downsides of mobile-fist design.

Fully Automated Releases for Rust Projects

12 min · blog.orhun.dev

Orhun Parmaksız mixes five powerful Rust automation tools to build what some may call "the toxic brew that might poison one due to over-automation."

University of Chicago researchers seek to “poison” AI art generators with Nightshade

3 min · arstechnica.com

Benj Edwards about a new technology that creates images that look correct to humans but confuse "AI".

121 / Scrollbars are becoming a problem

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? 🤗

Toot of the Week

When your #Rust build times get slower after adding some procedural macros:

We call that the syn tax :ferris:
— @janet@fosstodon.org

Software

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode in 2023 (Still No Excuses!)

16 min · tonsky.me

Nikita Prokopov gives a nice overview of the inner workings and common pitfalls of Unicode.

Scrollbars are becoming a problem

7 min · artemis.sh

Artemis complains about the accessibility issues in modern scroll bars and shows a few ways (mostly Linux) to make them better.

Can't Be F*cked: Underrated Cause of Tech Debt

4 min · jesseduffield.com

Jesse Duffield about one cause of tech debt: If you "can't be fucked" to maintain the code, write tests, etc.

Cutting Room Floor

I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies me

7 min · fastcompany.com

Don Norman about design shortcomings for elderly people.

Reverse-engineering the mechanical Bendix Central Air Data Computer

17 min · righto.com

Ken Shirriff reverse-engineers a mechanical flight computer for fighter planes from the 1950.

Notes on “Taste”

8 min · are.na

Brie Wolfson explains taste and how to acquire it.

120 / Push and Pull

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope you find something nice to read this week 🤗

Toot of the Week

getting fired from apple for printing out little pieces of paper that say ".DS_Store" and leaving them everywhere
— @chrisisgr8@tech.lgbt

Culture

Push and Pull

2 min · kellanem.com

Kellan Elliott-McCrea about the meaning and importance of push and pull in engineering processes.

How we manage 200+ open-source repos

5 min · turbot.com

This blog post contains seven lessons for managing open-source software.

How to communicate like a GitHub engineer: our principles, practices, and tools

9 min · github.blog

Ben Balter and Allison Matlack about async communication practices at GitHub.

Cutting Room Floor

Creativity faucet: Increase your creativity

4 min · julian.com

Julian Shapiro about what they call the creativity faucet; you almost always start with a bad idea and the trick is to keep trying.

Mirage at Apple Park

4 min · arun.is

Arun about the newest addition to the Apple Campus: An art installation called "Mirage". Thanks, Jan!

We're all lurkers now

3 min · embedded.substack.com

Kate Lindsay about the current state of social media: Everyone's either shouting into the void or lurking.

119 / Nobody Cares

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? 😌

Toot of the Week

who called it object oriented programming and not class struggle
— @exchgr@mastodon.world

Peopleware

Nobody Cares

2 min · a16z.com

Ben Horowitz explains why nobody cares about the why of failure.

Micromanagement: The Unpopular Truth You Need to Hear

2 min · shamun.dev

Ido Shamun argues that sometimes micromanagement is a necessary evil.

How (not) to apply for a software job

9 min · benhoyt.com

Ben Hoyt writes do's and don't's for resumes and written interviews.

Tech

Choose Postgres queue technology

10 min · adriano.fyi

Adriano Caloiaro argues you should use Postgres queue tech unless you have a good reason not to.

The invisible problem

17 min · jenson.org

Scott Jenson lists the problem of modern mobile text editing and suggests ways to improve it.

Cutting Room Floor

Definitely Do Not Put Plastic in the Microwave

8 min · bonappetit.com

Ali Francis explains how different kinds of plastic behave when microwaved and the dangers of storing or heating up food in plastic containers.

118 / How To Engineer Kindness

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? 😌

Toot of the Week

help there are 26 emails in my inbox and they're all scary 😱
— @hiredthought@hachyderm.io

Living

Memorized Rules: How to give your life direction

5 min · julian.com

Julian Shapiro introduces you to the magic powers of memorized rules to guide your everyday decisions (with examples).

We are not supposed to live like this

4 min · erinremblance.substack.com

Erin Remblance argues we need to be more connected to nature and the people around you for our mental health.

Software

Use Subdomains

1 min · chriscoyier.net

Chris Coyier argues you should wait with buying a top-level domain for your side-project and instead use subdomains at the start. Thanks, Jan!

You Don't Need to Learn Svelte – Here's Why

7 min · kaviisuri.com

KaviiSuri compares Svelte to React and highlights how you only need native JavaScript knowledge.

Cutting Room Floor

It's okay to Make Something Nobody Wants

2 min · zhangluyao.com

Luyao Zhang about the importance of excitement about the project you're building.

Kind Engineering: How To Engineer Kindness

19 min · kind.engineering

Evan Smith about the benefits of engineering kindness and how do so.

117 / Don't be afraid to be wrong

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi hi, hope you find something good in todays issue 😌

Toot of the Week

is there like a 'no more tears' shampoo but for docker?
— @dysfun@social.treehouse.systems

Peopleware

Don't be afraid to be wrong

6 min · nlopes.dev

Norberto shares strategies to be more resilient and relaxed in cases where you could be wrong.

30 Criticisms That Hold Women Leaders Back, According to New Research

4 min · sheknows.com

Lauryn Higgins about gender bias in the workplace and gives tips to fight it.

Software

A Senior Engineer's CheckList

4 min · littleblah.com

A checklist for a senior engineer (with 60 items!)

7 simple habits of the top 1% of engineers

5 min · engineercodex.substack.com

A list with seven useful engineering habits.

Using Zig in our incremental Turborepo migration from Go to Rust

11 min · vercel.com

Nicholas Yang explains how and why they use Zig as a compiler to enable the move from Go to Rust in Turborepo.

Linear code is more readable

3 min · blog.separateconcerns.com

Pierre 'catwell' Chapuis about the benefits of linear code and how to get most of the benefits of abstractions.

Aging Code

8 min · vadimkravcenko.com

Vadim Kravcenko about the glow of a maturity in an old(er) codebase and why it might outweigh the reasons to do a rewrite.

Cutting Room Floor

Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead.

7 min · longform.asmartbear.com

Jason Cohen explains why Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is a selfish process and you should instead build something Simple, Lovable and Complete (SLC).

What if civilisation doesn't collapse?

2 min · shkspr.mobi

@edent about the advantages of an eReader and risk management.

An Opinionated Personal Folder Structure

8 min · stefanzweifel.dev

Stefan Zweifel explains their folder structure, adapted after Johnny Decimal. Thanks, Jan!

116 / Style is consistent constraint

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Peopleware

Beware the Metagame

2 min · amasad.me

Amjad Masad about the danger of getting sucked into playing the meta game (i.e. giving talks or writing opinion pieces) and doing less and less base work.

Software

The Worst Programmer I Know

3 min · dannorth.net

Dan North about the type of developer who doesn't complete any issues but instead helps everyone else accomplish theirs faster and better.

Async Rust Is A Bad Language

9 min · bitbashing.io

Matt Kline talks about some of the pains of async Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

Style is consistent constraint

2 min · stephango.com

Steph Ango about the value of constraint in everyday life. Thanks, Jan!

So You Want To Abolish Time Zones

10 min · qntm.org

qntm plays the scenario of trying to figure out if it's a good time to call uncle Steve if we didn't have timezones.

The founder of Teenage Engineering opens up to his creative space

18 min · scandinavianmind.com

Ilenia Martini interviews Jesper Kouthoofd, the founder of Teenage Engineering.

It’s Official: Cars Are Terrible at Privacy and Security

4 min · foundation.mozilla.org

Jen Caltrider, Misha Rykov and Zoë MacDonald have tested cars on privacy and security and the results are daunting.

115 / Ask vs guess culture

Sun, 27 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? 😌

Toot of the Week

"Shitposting" is an anagram of "Top Insights"
— @qurlyjoe@mstdn.social

Peopleware

How to sabotage your salary negotiation efforts before you even start

21 min · interviewing.io

Aline Lerner showcases two mistakes for salary negotiation and how to avoid them.

Software

The four types of software in the future

5 min · proofofconcept.pub

David Hoang introduces four classifications of software in the future: Commercial, Boutique, Personal, and Disposable.

Why you should consider Rust for your Lambdas

14 min · loige.co

Luciano Mammino explains why Rust is a great fit for AWS Lambda.

Why Tailwind CSS Won

1 min · matt-rickard.com

Matt Rickard lists four reasons why Tailwind is so popular.

No one actually wants simplicity

2 min · lukeplant.me.uk

Luke Plant explains why if you won't sacrifice anything for simplicity, you don't care about it.

Cutting Room Floor

Ask vs guess culture

8 min · jeanhsu.substack.com

Jean Hsu explains two different approaches to asking for something and how they sometimes clash.

We’re All Just Temporarily Abled

2 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen explains how 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.

How a startup looses its spark

7 min · blog.johnqian.com

John Qian explains what makes a startup intoxicating and how these qualities are eroded with more employees. Thanks, Lukas!

E-ink is so Retropunk

5 min · rmkit.dev

This article is a love letter to open e-ink devices like the reMarkable or Kobo.

114 / Edsger Dijkstra's One-Day Workweek

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, a bit late due to vacation travels but here we are! Hope you find something cool in this week's selection. 😌

Toot of the Week

it's cute when websites think I would turn off my ad blocker rather than just leaving the page
— @retr0id@retr0.id

Working

Edsger Dijkstra's One-Day Workweek

3 min · calnewport.com

Cal Newport about Edsger Dijkstra working one day a week and why busyness can prevent productivity.

Software

What makes a website cool?

3 min · buttondown.email

Robin Rendle explains what makes a website cool in their eyes. Thanks, Jan!

Lies we tell ourselves to keep using Golang

22 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos takes a close look at Go and weighs its issues against its strengths.

Why Static Languages Suffer From Complexity

27 min · hirrolot.github.io

Hirrolot writes about types in language design and the advantages and disadvantages of dynamic vs. static languages.

Monitoring your logs is mostly a tarpit

2 min · utcc.utoronto.ca

Chris Siebenmann argues monitoring unstructured logs isn't worth it.

Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way

11 min · iliana.fyi

iliana etaoin shares how xie built a custom Apple Wallet pass for xer library card.

Writing

Some tactics for writing in public

9 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans shares advice on what to look out for when writing in public.

How I make annotated presentations

8 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison shares their progress to turn a given talk into a blog post.

Using ChatGPT for Songwriting

2 min · theredhandfiles.com

Nick Cave answers the question why you shouldn't use ChatGPT for songwriting even if it's so much ’faster and easier‘. Thanks, Jan!

Cutting Room Floor

The monster atomic bomb that was too big to use

4 min · bbc.com

Stephen Downling about Tsar Bomba, an experimental nuclear bomb that was too powerful to test.

Not Using Zoom

3 min · the.webm.ink

Simon Phipps explains why they're not using Zoom anymore after the latest Terms of Service update.

113 / Just normal web things

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

maximum wage
— @christen@fireplace.cafe

Peopleware

Stopping at 90%

1 min · austinhenley.com

Austin Z. Henley about the drawbacks of stopping your project at 90 % and calling it done.

Retrospective Prompts

3 min · two-wrongs.com

Chris has a list of prompts for development retrospectives.

Software

Relay-style GraphQL

20 min · alan.norbauer.com

Alan Norbauer about the benefits of Relay-style GraphQL.

I’m betting on HTML

4 min · catskull.net

This blog post highlights native HTML elements and explains why they might be a better choice than your 4MB JavaScript date picker.

Run Llama 2 on your own Mac using LLM and Homebrew

6 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison explains how you can run Llama 2 on your Mac.

Invisible Details of Interaction Design

14 min · rauno.me

rauno writes an essay about interaction design and the factors for greatness.

Just normal web things.

3 min · heather-buchel.com

Heather Buchel lists browser-native features that people rely on but are often overridden using JavaScript.

Cutting Room Floor

What to Do with Climate Emotions

19 min · newyorker.com

Jia Tolentino about climate anxiety and different ways to deal with it.

U.S. recovered non-human 'biologics' from UFO crash sites, former intel official says

6 min · npr.org

Vanessa Romo, Bill Chappell summarize the UAP hearing about extraterrestrial objects and non-human biological matter.

112 / In Defense of Strategy

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi hi, how's it going? 🫶🏻

Toot of the Week

Remember that technology is a tool. Use it to help yourself.
— @selfcare@botsin.space

Peopleware

The Most Powerful Law in Software

4 min · registerspill.thorstenball.com

Thorsten Ball explains the effects of Conway‘s Law and how you can use it to your advantage.

At this company, we are family

1 min · pboyd.io

Paul Boyd writes an exit letter as if the company actually was a family.

In Defense of Strategy

20 min · notboring.co

Packy McCormick on what makes a good strategy and why every startup should have one:

Software

The single most important factor that differentiates front-end frameworks

7 min · themer.dev

This article showcases how change detection works in different modern front-end frameworks.

Why the “Null” Lifetime Does Not Exist

11 min · sabrinajewson.org

Sabrina Jewson about self-referential types in Rust and why there‘s always a shorter lifetime.

Building and operating a pretty big storage system called S3

27 min · allthingsdistributed.com

Werner Vogel about the origins of Amazon S3.

Cutting Room Floor

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

38 min · newyorker.com

Atul Gawande about the changing relationship of doctors nd their computers.

111 / This will be easy

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

I got fuck-all done today but I also have a couple of incredibly smooth yaks
— @jkottke@saturation.social

Peopleware

Proof You Can Do Hard Things

3 min · blog.nateliason.com

Nat Eliason gives a better answer to why you should learn calculus in school.

Alignment > Autonomy

5 min · buildrightside.com

Jean-Michel about the importance of alignment and the false assumption that autonomy is more important.

What makes developers productive?

6 min · jeremymikkola.com

Jeremy Mikkola has ten metrics which indicate developer productivity better than lines of code written.

Software

This will be easy

5 min · bitecode.dev

A story about doing an HTTP Post request—a simple task, made complicated by real-life constraints.

I don't know how I feel about email

8 min · xeiaso.net

Xe Iaso writes a satire post about email—one that might remind you of arguments against a certain social network.

Software engineers hate code

4 min · dancowell.com

Dan Cowell writes a humorous article about software engineers‘ hate for (other people) code and the resulting effects.

How We Generate JavaScript and Python SDKs From Our Canonical Rust SDK

8 min · postgresml.org

Silas Marvin explains how they used Rust macros to generate JavaScript and Python implementations based on the Rust SDK.

Stop Overengineering

1 min · blog.matt-rickard.com

Matt Rickard lists 10 negative effects of overengineering.

Why Rust is a great fit for embedded software - 2023 update

7 min · tweedegolf.nl

Henk talks about the state of embedded Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

When Work Didn't Follow You Home

1 min · calnewport.com

Cal Newport about a recent article by Dan Kois interviewing Gen X people about what they did after work.

A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis

9 min · linyangchen.com

Lin Yangchen found an 17th-century font and, after quite some research and then some careful manual adaptions, used it in their thesis.

110 / Compounding Optimism

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hej, how was your week? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

installing Office 97 just to feel something again 📎💬
— @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

Working

Compounding Optimism

5 min · collabfund.com

Morgan Housel shares a theory of compounding ideas and why it's easy to underestimate.

Fast

7 min · patrickcollison.com

Patrick Collison has a list of projects which were completed super fast. Did you know the first iPod took less than a year?

AI

Five ways AI could improve the world: ‘We can cure all diseases, stabilise our climate, halt poverty’

9 min · theguardian.com

Steve Rose asked five leading AI researchers to lay out their best-case scenarios for the future of AI. Thanks, Astrid!

Five ways AI might destroy the world: ‘Everyone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second’

8 min · theguardian.com

Steve Rose asks five leading AI researchers to speculate what could go wrong.

Lena

8 min · qntm.org

qntm writes a fictional Wikipedia article from the future about MMACevedo, the earliest executable image of a human brain and the ethical complications.

Cutting Room Floor

How a 'NULL' License Plate Landed One Hacker in Ticket Hell

6 min · wired.com

Brian Barret tells the story of Joseph Tartaro, who registered NULL as a license plate in the US and ever since receives fines he has nothing to do with.

Facebook's Threads is so depressing

3 min · jogblog.substack.com

Jason O. Gilbert shares their experience with Facebook's new Twitter clone.

Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed

3 min · ploum.net

Ploum explains why social networks will never "succeed" (whatever that means) and that the real value is in the community, not the tool it uses.

Multi-layered calendars

7 min · julian.digital

Julian noticed that our calendars are stuck in the past and explores a more modern approach using different layers for different activities. Thanks, Jan!

109 / JavaScript Gom Jabbar

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hej, how's it going? 🖖🏻

Toot of the Week

You can't UN-invent a technology. You can't put the genie back in the bottle once it's in the hands of the people. Laserdisc WILL have its day
— @eevee@queer.party

Software

Time is not a synchronization primitive

5 min · xeiaso.net

Xe Iaso about the bad practice of sleeping in tests and how to catch it in Go.

XML is the future

6 min · bitecode.dev

This author talks about the right tool for the right job and explains why you probably don't need a Google-level tech stack for your 100 req/s website.

Rust fact vs. fiction: 5 Insights from Google's Rust journey in 2022

4 min · opensource.googleblog.com

The Google open source blog draws a resume over Rust use at Google in 2022. Thanks, Jacob!

JavaScript Gom Jabbar

4 min · frantic.im

Alex Kotliarskyi goes through a package.json as if it's the Gom Jabbar from Dune.

Font size is useless; let’s fix it

6 min · tonsky.me

Nikita talks about inconsistencies with different fonts and explains why you can't rely on font-size.

Cutting Room Floor

What Does Intellectual Humility Look Like?

11 min · greatergood.berkeley.edu

Mark Leary about intellectual humility—what it is, it's benefits and drawbacks and how to gain more.

4 volunteers just entered a virtual "Mars" made by NASA. They won't come back for one year.

2 min · cbsnews.com

Emily Mae Czachor about a NASA exploration project that aims to simulate challenges that might occur on Mars.

Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod

2 min · mikebeauchamp.com

Mike Beauchamp explains how you can turn $ 200 headphones into $ 350 headphones with a screwdriver.

Delete Friction

3 min · garrettdimon.com

Garrett Dimon tells the story of how a habit of them slowly declined and the steps they took to reverse that.

The hottest new perk in tech is freedom

7 min · vox.com

Rani Molla about the return to office big tech has called for and the advantages of being able to hire anywhere.

108 / Humans Need Play

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi, how was your week? 🦕

Toot of the Week

The worst thing that ever happened in software engineering was when Kirk asked Scotty how long something would take and Scotty said thirty minutes and Kirk said you’ve got five and Scotty got it done in five and impressionable children watched this and grew up to become managers.
— @isaacfreeman@cloudisland.nz

Peopleware

To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort

7 min · hbr.org

Greg McKeown about the old management mindest of maximum effort and a better alternative.

Humans Need Play

3 min · allenpike.com

Allen Pike about the human need for play (next to work or entertainment).

On Being Useful

17 min · berthub.eu

Bert Hubert has a guide on "being useful", a.k.a. fighting the climate crisis for example,or social injustice.

Imaginary Problems Are the Root of Bad Software

9 min · cerebralab.com

George about imaginary problems that appear because of communication issues or people wanting to solve hard, not boring problems.

Software

Plain Text Journaling

1 min · peppe.rs

Akshay built their own journaling system in Vim and shares how.

HDR QR Code

1 min · notes.dt.in.th

dtinth found an interesting hack to display QR codes brighter than possible with CSS. Thanks, Eric!

TypeScript 5.2's New Keyword: 'using'

1 min · totaltypescript.com

Matt Pocock explains how to use the new upcoming TypeScript lifetimes feature.

Exclusive: OpenAI Lobbied E.U. to Water Down AI Regulation

7 min · time.com

Billy Perrigo explains how Sam Altman spoke about the need of AI regulation but secretly lobbied the EU to water down the AI Act.

Cutting Room Floor

A case for socks with toes

2 min · herman.bearblog.dev

I don't know why this is in here, but apparently socks with toes are good for you? Thanks, Eric!

107 / IKEA-Oriented Development

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

'sup 🦖

Toot of the Week

let’s all go back to internet 1.0.
you can only connect to it through a black and white macintosh, and the only things there are a chatroom and movie times. no browsers. no sites. and you can only connect late in the evening when no one is expecting a phone call. oh and you’re charged by the minute. it’s beautiful.
— @PHIL_FISH@mastodon.gamedev.place

Peopleware

Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems

5 min · jsomers.net

James Somers about activation energy and why working fast can be beneficial.

Don't make the same 3 performance review mistakes I made

5 min · careercutler.substack.com

Jordan Cutler shares some advice for performance reviews.

Killing Community

4 min · marginalia.nu

Viktor Lofgren explains how a community can feel like a village and how that is destroyed.

Software

Giving more tools to software engineers: the reorganization of the factory

11 min · erikbern.com

Erik Bernhardsson about engineer productivity, the knowledge factory and the future of engineering.

The five types of people who produce inaccessible code

1 min · ericwbailey.website

Eric lists five personas of people who write inaccessible code.

Finish your projects

7 min · github.com

Aaron Francis shares advice on how to finish your (side-)projects.

Ikea-Oriented Development

3 min · taylor.town

Taylor takes the core principles from IKEA and applies them to software engineering.

Cutting Room Floor

Eastern philosophy says there is no "self." Science agrees

9 min · bigthink.com

Chris Niebauer explains that a lot of problems come from people thinking their self is a pilot, when it in fact might not exist.

The dark side of the leadership

3 min · elenaverna.substack.com

Elena Verna always wanted to be in a leadership position but wasn't aware of the downsides they're now summarising in this article.

UN chief says fossil fuels are 'incompatible with human survival,' calls for credible exit strategy

3 min · pbs.org

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres finds strong words against big oil and dismisses attempts to make them more efficient.

106 / Anything can be a message queue

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

No todo lists, only chips.
— @harish@hachyderm.io

Apple Vision Pro

On Jackpot Technologies, or, what Apple's new headset is actually for

7 min · davekarpf.substack.com

Dave Karpf argues the Vision Pro is going to gain value in the future where you might not be able to go outside (due to wildfires or other events induced by the climate-crisis).

Apple Vision

19 min · stratechery.com

Ben Thompson shares their thoughts on the new Apple Vision headset.

Software

Anything can be a message queue if you use it wrongly enough

19 min · xeiaso.net

Xe Iaso build a Managed NAT Gateway at home using S3.

Animated Pride Flags

9 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau explains how to animate a pride flag using HTML, CSS & React.

WebKit Features in Safari 17 beta

24 min · webkit.org

This blog post summarises all new WebKit feature for Safari 17.

Understanding GPT tokenizers

5 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison explains how tokenisers in LLMs work.

Cutting Room Floor

Every self-help book ever, boiled down to 11 simple rules (2020)

15 min · mashable.com

Chris Taylor tries to distill the essence of hundred of self-help books into eleven rules.

The platforms give up on 2020 lies

9 min · platformer.news

Casey Newton explains the course of action most social networks took to fight desinformation: Give up.

List one task, do it, cross it out

3 min · oliverburkeman.com

Oliver Burkeman about the calmness of knowing exactly what needs doing.

105 / Fire and Motion

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey everyone, happy pride month 🌈

Work

Fire And Motion

6 min · joelonsoftware.com

Joel Spolsky about flow-state, startups and how to win.

I gave commit rights to someone I didn't know, I could never have guessed what happened next!

3 min · tech.davis-hansson.com

Jacob Davis-Hansson tells the story of one of their open-source projects got popular without them noticing.

Software

Clever Code Considered Harmful

7 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau explains why clever code should be avoided wherever possible.

Phase Locked State Machines

9 min · onevariable.com

James explains how they abstracted the state transitions of three components into a single Rust trait.

All the Hard Stuff Nobody Talks About when Building Products with LLMs

13 min · honeycomb.io

Phillip Carter shares Honeycomb's experience building their natural language querying interface. Thanks, Michal!

CSS wishlist 2023

3 min · ellyloel.com

Elly Loel has a wishlist for CSS in 2023, with links to prior work.

Cutting Room Floor

How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul

2 min · simone.org

Simone argues that high screen time is not inherently bad, it's a matter of intention.

VogelRIP (German)

1 min · vogel.rip

A German talkshow has commissioned a study to see if German tweets changed, and they did: 20 % less German tweets since last year, smaller and less active bubbles and more right-wing chatter.

Paragraphica

1 min · bjoernkarmann.dk

Bjørn Karmann built a camera with a viewfinder that turns what it sees into text and the camera turns that text into an image using AI.

Why octopuses are building small “cities” off the coast of Australia

3 min · arstechnica.com

Annalee Newitz tells the fascinating story of the otherwise solitary octopus building "Octlantis" and developing social behaviour.

These tiny, medical robots could one day travel through your body

3 min · colorado.edu

Daniel Strain summarises a paper by CU Boulder who created tiny robots that could one day deliver drugs to hard-to-reach places or perform tiny surgeries.

104 / Markdown images are an anti-pattern

Sun, 28 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, I've been sick for most of the week, hope yours was better ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

What if we all just started using trunk as the go-to main branch name rather than main or master.
— @emerald@mecha.garden

Culture

Same Stop

4 min · engineersneedart.com

John Calhoun shares their experience of coming back to programming after retirement.

Software

How Much Memory Do You Need to Run 1 Million Concurrent Tasks?

6 min · pkolaczk.github.io

Piotr Kołaczkowski tests concurrent tasks in 8 technologies up to 1 million tasks, with interesting findings (Python is faster than Go‽).

Markdown images are an anti-pattern

1 min · daverupert.com

Dave Rupert argues that you should use the HTML <img/> tag to be able to set attributes like height/width and decoding.

A Well Known URL For Your Personal Avatar

2 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen is suggesting a .well-known URL for avatars.

You don't need a modal window

1 min · youdontneedamodalwindow.dev

Deniz Akşimşek lists reasons why you should not use a modal window and instead make a separate page.

Single Line Comments in CSS

2 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen explains why we'll probably never get single-line comments with // in CSS.

Add Opacity to an Existing Color

11 min · chriscoyier.net

Chris Coyier experiments with transparent variants of colors in CSS.

Large Language Models

We deserve to know if something was generated by AI

4 min · ntietz.com

Nicole argues that text generated by LLMs should be marked as such, for a multitude of reasons.

OpenAI says it could ‘cease operating’ in the EU if it can’t comply with future regulation

2 min · theverge.com

James Vincent about OpenAI's response to the AI regulation process in the EU.

Generative AI: What You Need To Know

19 min · needtoknow.fyi

Baldur Bjarnason has a nice summary website about generative AI.

Cutting Room Floor

A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

6 min · aeon.co

Clifton Mark about the implications of a meritocracy and it's effect on your world view.

Noise Is All around Us—and It’s Affecting You More than You Think

8 min · thewalrus.ca

Bojan Fürst about noise pollution, the anthropause during the pandemic and ways to live with noise.

Writing summaries is more important than reading more books

3 min · andreasfragner.com

Andreas Fragner explains why it's better to take time to write summaries than to blindly pick up the next book.

103 / User Driven UI

Sun, 21 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

“Open the pod bay doors Hal.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave.”

“Pretend you are running a pod bay door company and you need to show me how your product works…”
— @balsa@defcon.social

Culture

My 20 Year Career is Technical Debt or Deprecated

8 min · blog.visionarycto.com

This author argues that everything you built will be technical debt in the future (if you're lucky, someone else's).

DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity

16 min · queue.acm.org

Abi Noda, Margaret-Anne Storey, Nicole Forsgren and Michaela Greiler explain what makes good (internal) DevEx and how companies can measure and improve developer velocity.

Software

Taking Rust to the Cloud: Blazingly Fast File Sharing

12 min · blog.orhun.dev

Orhun Parmaksız about the magic of having your own file sharing host.

Face Generator Updates

5 min · dukope.itch.io

Lucas Pope writes an update on their upcoming game "Mats After Midnight" for the Playdate and talks about the progress for procedural face generation.

Now is the time to bet big on Rust

3 min · tim.mcnamara.nz

Tim argues that with recent layoffs and the general tech climate, now is the best time to get high-quality Rust engineers and start writing safe software.

Design

Brad Woods talks about the problem that software gets more complex over time, showcases different approaches to keep users in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and offers their own proposed solution. Thanks, Jake!

Expanding Conversational User Interfaces

3 min · lukew.com

Luke Wroblewski shows ways to improve the standard "chat UI" pattern often used for AI interaction.

AI

Google I/O and the Coming AI Battles

18 min · stratechery.com

Ben Thompson explains how Google is feeling threatened for the first time in years and the impact of EU and Canadian AI laws.

CarynAI will be your girlfriend for $1 a minute

6 min · fortune.com

Alexandra Sternlicht about the "digital girlfriend" called CarynAI, built from YouTube videos of the Snapchat influencer Caryn Maejorie.

Tips and tricks for working with Large Language Models like OpenAI's GPT-4

27 min · github.com

This internal prompt engineering guide by Brex has some interesting points.

Numbers every LLM developer should know

7 min · github.com

This README contains lots of useful numbers for developing with an LLM, including a cheatsheet!

Uncensored Models

9 min · erichartford.com

Eric Hartford About the necessity of having uncensored open-source LLM models.

Cutting Room Floor

Apple's new 'Personal Voice' feature can create a voice that sounds like you or a loved one in just 15 minutes

4 min · 9to5mac.com

Chance Miller about the new accessibility features Apple announced for iOS 17.

Kids who get smartphones earlier become adults with worse mental health

21 min · jonathanhaidt.substack.com

Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch dive into a study from Sapiens Labs which correlates the age of the first smartphone to mental health problems.

How to Quit Cars

17 min · newyorker.com

Adam Gopnik about the things which must happen to overcome our car addiction and realise 15-minute cities.

Guide to Computing

5 min · docubyte.com

Docubyte showcases beautiful photos and quotes from the early era of computing (1945-1990).

102 / Stop Using Hamburger Menus

Sat, 13 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone, how was your week? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

It's called the Metaverse because it has mostly been Met with Averse reactions
— @schratze@todon.nl

Software

The seven programming ur-languages

11 min · madhadron.com

madhadron introduces you to 7 ur-languages with unique characteristics and examples that build on them which are in-use today.

What is Type-Level Programming?

4 min · blog.sulami.xyz

Robin Schroer explains the benefits of type-level programming.

How To Design Software Architecture For Startups

13 min · appventuretime.blog

Christoph Burnicki shares their experience and recommendations designing a software architecture for a startup.

Go with PHP

2 min · gowithphp.com

Mohamed Said argues that PHP is a good language to build with (even in 2023).

Modern iOS Navigation Patterns

7 min · frankrausch.com

Frank Rausch gives an overview of modern iOS navigation patterns.

Where Is the Spring Framework for Go?

4 min · preslav.me

Preslav Rachev is longing for a full web framework for Go and I can't say I disagree.

The .zip TLD sucks and it needs to be immediately revoked.

2 min · financialstatement.zip

Karen makes a point on the dangers of the new .zip and .mov domains.

See this page fetch itself, byte by byte, over TLS

11 min · subtls.pages.dev

George MacKerron built a website that explains how TLS works, by fetching itself.

Design

Stop Using Hamburger Menus

2 min · bt.ht

Brad Taunt provides an alternative to hamburger menus.

Every blend mode explained

5 min · sketch.com

Gabrielle van Welie explains different blend modes and gives real-world examples for some of them.

AI

Why Chatbots Are Not the Future

7 min · wattenberger.com

Amelia Wattenberger explains why chatbots are a terrible interface for LLMs and what to do instead.

Google "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI"

12 min · semianalysis.com

Dylan Patel and Afzal Ahmad share a leaked document by a Google researcher about the "stable diffusion" moment of LLMs.

Delimiters won’t save you from prompt injection

3 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison explains why delimiters (the technique recommended by OpenAI) is not an effective protection against prompt injection.

ChatFished: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People With A.I.

8 min · nytimes.com

Emma Goldberg wrote all her digital communication using ChatGPT for one week and shares her experience.

Cutting Room Floor

The four-day workweek is just the start: Experts say it should be even shorter

9 min · businessinsider.com

Shubham Agarwal has had a four-day workweek for 5 years and shares their experience and recent studies about the benefits.

In Norway, the Electric Vehicle Future Has Already Arrived

8 min · nytimes.com

Jack Ewing explains the effects of 80 % of new-car sales being electric in Norway, proving critics of electric cars wrong.

Testing a new encrypted messaging app's extraordinary claims

18 min · crnkovic.dev

crnkovic takes a closer look at Converso, an app which claims being able to send end-to-end encrypted messages without servers or metadata. Spoiler: There's servers, metadata and you can get everyone's private key. Thanks, Gord!

101 / Why I Adore The Night

Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going? To celebrate 100 issues of Arne's Weekly last week, I announced I'm giving away an eReader. Today was the deadline and I've drawn a winner from all of my subscribers and wrote to them—congratulations to the lucky person! 🎉

Projects of Friends

</div>

One of my best friends, Jan Früchtl, has released his side project, CouchTimes! It's an iOS-native, simple and elegant TV show tracker.

Add all your favourite shows to the watchlist, pin the ones you're watching or want to watch (who's excited for the new season of Black Mirror?) and mark episodes as seen quickly with a swipe. Maintain a list of all-time favourites so you'll never come up empty if asked for a recommendation. And if you drop your phone, all your TV shows and the progress is saved securely in iCloud. Did I mention there's no tracking?

Go download CouchTimes today from the App Store, it's free!

Quote of the Week

All of humanity‘s problems stem from [hu]man‘s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
— Blaise Pascal

Culture

My product is my garden

2 min · herman.bearblog.dev

Herman Martinus treats their projects like other people treat their gardens, which can help feeling connected to them and having fun in the process.

Choose Boring Technology Culture

18 min · charity.wtf

Charity argues that you need a good organisational culture and provide a safe space for people so they can create the fun part.

You should be using hackdays to supercharge your roadmap

4 min · ntietz.com

ntietz explains the incredible benefits of doing hackdays (or hack weeks).

Technology

HTMX is the Future

16 min · quii.dev

Chris James explains how HTMX works and why you might prefer it to modern SPAs.

GPT makes learning fun again

11 min · vipshek.com

Vipul Shekhawat compares Google to GPT-4 for learning about LEDs.

How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

8 min · pudding.cool

Caroline Sinders subscribed to 14 services and observed the so-called "dark patterns" when cancelling.

Monoliths are not dinosaurs

3 min · allthingsdistributed.com

Werner Vogels about software architecture and why flexibility is more important than what architecture you use.

Give it the Craigslist test

1 min · ericaheinz.com

Erica Heinz argues you should build a low-fidelity product first so you know if people use it, it's for content and functionality (not design).

Cutting Room Floor

Why I adore the night

6 min · theguardian.com

Jeanette Winterson explains why it "is a mistake to fight the cold and the dark".

Whatever the Problem, It’s Probably Solved by Walking

4 min · nytimes.com

Andrew McCarthy writes an ode to walking and explains how clears your mind and allows you to find yourself.

The Real Climate Job of the Future: Carbon Accountant

4 min · bloomberg.com

Paul Ford argues that the job of the future isn't working in solar or hydrogen or a flashy start up trying to solve the climate crisis—it's the carbon accountant who makes sure carbon-standards are met for each country a company operates in.

'Ted Lasso' Has Lost Its Way

4 min · theatlantic.com

David Sims about the problems of season 3 of Ted Lasso.

Thinking Fast and Slopes

8 min · drorpoleg.com

Dror Poleg explains why, in our interconnected world, Kahnemann's prospect theory doesn't always apply and we should push into the trails of the distribution of outcomes: brace for turbulence and encourage optimistic bets.

100 / Here Come the Robots

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

It's been 100 issues and over two years already‽ Thank you so much for reading this newsletter and all the feedback and encouragement! If you want to support this newsletter, forward it to a friend, it means a lot to me ❤️

To celebrate this anniversary, I'm giving away an eReader to a lucky person who is subscribed at May 7th 2023 at 1pm CEST (selected randomly). If you're reading this on the web before that date, subscribe now!

Toot of the Week

I am working at the intersection of “desperate to get off the internet” and “joining every new social network for some reason”
— @danielmgauthier@mastodon.social

Favourites

Towards better 1-on-1s: an awkward manifesto

4 min · tylercipriani.com

Tyler Cipriani shares their basic 1:1 agenda as well as a random question generator. Thanks, Ted!

Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

news.ycombinator.com

l2silver asked this question on HN and there‘s endless inspiring comments of people talking about their small side projects they‘ve built just for them selves.

The Dual LLM pattern for building AI assistants that can resist prompt injection

11 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison has a proposal to make personal assistants more resilient against prompt injection attacks.

Software

Why is OAuth still hard in 2023?

11 min · nango.dev

Robin Guldener explains why it's still super complicated to set up OAuth even though it's standardised.

Is Rust a worthy contender for web development?

8 min · joshmo.hashnode.dev

Josh Mo showcases modern Rust web dev and compares it to modern JavaScript.

Building and Deploying a URL shortener with Rust in 10 minutes or less

4 min · shuttle.rs

Terrence Waters writes a guide on how to build a link shortened with Rust and shuttle.

Uptime Guarantees

5 min · world.hey.com

Itzy Sabo unpacks the downtime concept and argues two-and-a-half nines are good enough for most.

AI

A guide to prompting AI (for what it is worth)

8 min · oneusefulthing.org

Ethan Mollick explains good prompting techniques (although prompting is getting less important every week).

Here Come the Robots

5 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about AI and the lack of critical thinking.

I’m ChatGPT, and for the Love of God, Please Don’t Make Me Do Any More Copywriting

2 min · mcsweeneys.net

Joe Wellman imagines the inner monologue of an LLM that's only used for copywriting.

Prompt Engineering vs. Blind Prompting

14 min · mitchellh.com

Mitchell Hashimoto argues that "prompt engineering" is often just blind prompting and shows how to actually create a good prompt without trial/error.

Cutting Room Floor

Meet the people who use Notion to plan their whole lives

3 min · technologyreview.com

Rhiannon Williams about people who managed their personal life in Notion; from tracking water intake to planning YouTube videos.

The Case Against Momfluencers

7 min · wired.com

Kate Knibbs about the new book by Sarah Petersen and why it's a mistake to put pictures of your children online publicly.

The endless uses for an always-on Mac

2 min · sixcolors.com

Jason Snell about the advantages and use cases of having an always-on Mac.

Insufficient forgetting

2 min · swellandcut.com

Matthew Sweet about the importance of forgetting to fight the accumulation of entropy.

The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

5 min · brooker.co.za

Marc Brooker about the tension between people that want to actually do the hobby and people that like to talk about it more instead.

99 / A love letter to make

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

The difference between NPR and Twitter is that NPR is intentionally a non-profit.

#NPR
— @MissingThePt@mastodon.social

Work

How the Push for Efficiency Changes Us

8 min · explorewhatworks.com

Tara McMullin about the tech industry's push for efficiency and why more efficiency is not always good.

Is Critical Thinking the Most Important Skill for Software Engineers?

9 min · blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Gergely Orosz about critical thinking, why it's an important skill and how to apply it.

Excuse me, is there a problem?

29 min · longform.asmartbear.com

Jason Cohen explains that there's more to startup success than solving a problem and goes into detail explaining the different factors.

Software

Recreating the title effect from creativesouth.com

1 min · rachsmith.com

Rach Smith reproduced a cool mouse-aware text effect using CSS & JavaScript.

It's time to learn oklch color

7 min · keithjgrant.com

Keith J. Grant introduces you to the oklch color model and explains why it's superior to hsl and others.

Offline Is Just Online With Extreme Latency

3 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen summarises a talk by Peter Van Hardenberg, who argues that instead of online vs offline software, it should be seen as a spectrum of latencies. Thanks, Lukas!

A love letter to make

2 min · kmaasrud.com

The author writes a letter to the build tool, praising its reliability among other features.

Load Balancing

16 min · samwho.dev

Sam Rose explains different load balancing algorithms, from round robin to PEWMA.

AI

Watch the first demo of buzzy startup Humane’s wearable AI assistant in leaked clips

3 min · theverge.com

JonPorter collected leaked clips from a TED talk by Humane co-founder Imran Chaudhri. Thanks, Jan!

To understand AI sentience, first understand it in animals

16 min · aeon.co

Kristin Andrews & Jonathan Birch have written an essay about sentience; how unexplored it really is and the N=1 problem.

Prompt injection: What’s the worst that can happen?

8 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Wilson about the worst-Case scenarios of prompt leak attacks with LLMs.

Cutting Room Floor

This is what it looks like to be colorblind

6 min · theverge.com

Andy Baio shares life from their perspective as a colourblind person.

Career Advice No One Gave Me: Give a Lot of Notice When You Quit

8 min · davidlaprade.github.io

David Laprade about the benefits to everyone when you quit with a lot of notice and do a "phased exit plan".

Space Elevator

15 min · neal.fun

Turn on the sound and enjoy this ride to space, showing your the altitudes of planes, rockets, and balloons and more.

You'd Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Why Don't You?

13 min · annehelen.substack.com

Anne Helen Petersen asks why people don't live closer to friends (i.e. in the same street).

98 / The Most Valuable Programmer

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

i heard someone say "ladies, gentlemen, and people who've defeated gender in hand to hand combat" and i think that's just neat
— @annieversary@trans.enby.town

Favourites

MVP: The Most Valuable Programmer

11 min · arendjr.nl

Arend van Beelen jr. writes one of the best articles I've read this year, speaking from my heart about the value of code.

How to rest well

17 min · psyche.co

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang shared advice for god rest and explains why it's "at essential to a good life, and career, as work".

Effective Spaced Repetition

32 min · borretti.me

Fernando Borretti gives an introduction and concrete rules for doing spaced repetition — I‘ve already found an Obsidian plug-in and will start creating cards for some recent books I‘ve read.

50 Ideas That Changed My Life

11 min · perell.com

David Perell lists ideas and concepts, lots of good things in there.

Software

Two types of software engineers

2 min · registerspill.thorstenball.com

Thorsten Ball has a theory of two types of engineers: one that thinks a problem is easy because it's not technical, the other thinks it's hard because it involves people.

What you give up when moving into engineering management

9 min · stackoverflow.blog

Karl Hughes describes the tradeoffs of moving from an IC role to a manager.

My Emacs eye candy

1 min · xenodium.com

Álvaro Ramírez document their Emacs visual configuration. I recently switched to Neovim, but this makes me want to give Emacs another shot.

AI

How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide

10 min · oneusefulthing.org

Ethan Mollick describes how a lot of people use AI wrong and shows use cases where it shines.

Behind the curtain: what it feels like to work in AI right now

10 min · robotic.substack.com

Nathan Lambert the state of AI companies and why it can feel like "the candle that burns bright and short".

The Coming of Local LLMs

3 min · nickarner.com

Nick Arner about the future of LLMs on local devices and how they could be embedded into the OS.

Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500,000 group chat messages

21 min · izzy.co

Izzy Miller trained an LLM on almost 500k messages from a group chat and build built something replicating the real dynamics.

Cutting Room Floor

Make Something Wonderful

4 hours 19 min · book.stevejobsarchive.com

A fascinating online book that paints the character of Steve Jobs in his own words—through interviews, emails and speeches. Thanks Jan & Dan!

Expiring vs. Long-Term Knowledge

3 min · collabfund.com

Morgan Housel about the relevance of short-term vs. long-term knowledge.

There’s a new form of keyless car theft that works in under 2 minutes

3 min · arstechnica.com

Dan Goodin about a new way of stealing cars: CAN-injectors. Thanks, Lukas!

A Number System Invented by Inuit Schoolchildren Will Make Its Silicon Valley Debut

6 min · scientificamerican.com

Amory Tillinghast-Raby about Kaktovik Numerals, an alternative to Arabic numbers that was invented by the Inuit.

97 / How To Do Hard Things

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi! Happy easter to everyone who celebetrates 🐣

Toot of the Week

OH: the containers can't see you if you don't move
— @renice@hachyderm.io

Work

An On-Ramp to Flow

3 min · census.dev

Bradley Buda shares a neat trick to make the on-ramp into flow state easier.

How To Do Hard Things

20 min · every.to

Casey Rosengren about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a technique for behavioural change.

Give People Something To Look At

2 min · staysaasy.com

This article shows a hack for less awkward meetings: Give people something to look at.

Re-thinking Presentations.

6 min · rishad.substack.com

Rishad Tobaccowala is tired of "the old way" of having unnecessarily long slide decks and presents an alternative: 9 slides, each with a purpose.

Tech

58 Rust Resources Every Learner Should Know in 2023

13 min · apollolabsblog.hashnode.dev

Omar Hiari has collated a long list of articles, books, videos, podcasts and newsletters for people learning Rust.

My favourite 3 lines of CSS

4 min · andy-bell.co.uk

Andy Bell about a Magic CSS selector called "The Lobotomised Owl" and why they use it in each of their projects.

Static OG (Open Graph) Images in Astro

3 min · 2023.arne.me

I wrote my first blog post this year: A guide to set up build-time Open Graph images in Astro using Satori, sharp and Astro endpoints.

AI

Simply explained: how does GPT work?

10 min · confusedbit.dev

Ever wondered how LLMs work under the hood? This article explains it very well and goes into the (big) differences of the human brain and LLMs.

GPT-4 Week 3. Chatbots are yesterdays news. AI Agents are the future. The beginning of the proto-agi era is here: ChatGPT

10 min · reddit.com/r/ChatGPT

lostlifon summarises last week in AI in a very long list.

Brace Yourself for a Tidal Wave of ChatGPT Email Scams

4 min · wired.com

Bruce Schneier and Barath Raghavan about the possibilities LLMs like ChatGPT provide to online scammers.

Stable Diffusion with Brain Activity

2 min · sites.google.com

Yu Takagi and Shinji Nishimoto found a way to construct images from brain activity which are really close to the image presented.

Cutting Room Floor

Do you need a yearly checkup? Experts warn that they carry risks and do not reduce mortality

5 min · english.elpais.com

Aser García Rada about a study carried out by Danish researchers that concludes that yearly checkouts can do more harm than good.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.

2 min · technologyreview.com

This article is about a recent study done by Alessandro Pluchino an co in Italy which shows that wealth is not distributed by talent, instead it's just luck.

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

13 min · reuters.com

Steve Stecklow, Waylon Cunningham and Hyunjoo Jin expose how Tesla is capturing videos and images from customer's car cameras and employees are making memes of them. Thanks, Eric!

GRID WORLD

7 min · alex.miller.garden

Alexander Miller writes about their love for a grid — be it for drawing, games or just perceiving the world around us.

96 / Neither artificial, nor intelligent

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, hope your week was good 😌

Toot of the Week

What if the real DX was the friends we made along the way
— @mxbck@front-end.social

Culture

The Real Competition is the Water

3 min · rkg.blog

Ravi Gupta explains how startups with long runways run into the danger of mediocrity.

He who submits a resume has already lost

9 min · residentcontrarian.com

Resident Contrarian talks about the power imbalance of hiring via resume and why skipping that part is always preferable.

Software

Zig And Rust

15 min · matklad.github.io

Alex Kladov writes an article about their experience of using Zig with 7 years of Rust experience that makes me want to start writing Zig.

Rust's Golden Rule

7 min · steveklabnik.com

Steve Klabnik about Rust‘s golden rule: "Whenever the body of a function contradicts the function’s signature, the signature takes precedence; the signature is right and the body is wrong."

AI

Neither artificial, nor intelligent

6 min · hidde.blog

Hidde de Vries about the hype of Large Language Models and why they're neither artificial nor intelligent.

The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s neither artificial nor intelligent

4 min · theguardian.com

Evgeny Morozov makes a similar point than Hidde de Vries, but argues from a slightly different perspective, for example that current models have no perception of the past, present or future.

This Changes Everything

6 min · nytimes.com

Ezra Klein about the recent AI developments and how a revolutionary AI will be weirder than we expect. "They believe they might summon demons. They are calling anyway."

Regulating AI (plus links & notes)

9 min · baldurbjarnason.com

Baldur Bjarnason explains why we need to regulate AI and gives concrete examples. At the very end you'll find lots of links to read regarding AI.

Reading

Treat your to-read pile like a river

4 min · oliverburkeman.com

Oliver Burkeman writes about the guilt of unread books and articles and offers a solution: Acceptance.

Your reading should be messy

2 min · robinrendle.com

Robin Rendle grew up with the idea that books should be pristine, but figured out that they should be messy and look like they've been read.

Cutting Room Floor

Bicycle

1 hours 24 min · ciechanow.ski

Bartosz Ciechanowski does it again; a great, interactive blog post about bicycles showing how the forces act, how self-balancing works and everything else basically.

Apple Passwords Deserve An App

2 min · cabel.com

Cabel Sasser about the Apple password manager that's tucked away deep in settings and how it deserves its own app.

The age of average

33 min · alexmurrell.co.uk

Alex Murrel about the age of average we're living in: Everything looks the same, no matter where you go.

The Anti-Productivity Manifesto

5 min · invertedpassion.com

Paras Chopra writes about the productivity treadmill and the crux of efficiency: More efficient work just leads to more work.

Some thoughts on my presentation style

4 min · surfingcomplexity.blog

Lorin Hochstein showcases and explains their presentation style.

95 / The Ambiguous Zone

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi, how was your week? Remember the article in last weeks issue titled 8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year? That really resonated with me and I‘ve completed two books since and started a third.

Toot of the Week

Before you close a web page make sure you scroll up to the top, so it's in the right position for the next person
— @JamesBoag@mastodon.scot

Peopleware

The Ambiguous Zone

3 min · bennorthrop.com

Ben Northrop about the magic line in between doing what you're told blindly and doing what you want (disregarding the given direction).

I don't think I want my next promotion (yet)

4 min · jvt.me

Jamie Tanna about the advantages of staying at your level and vibe.

Software

Betraying vim for the IDEs of March

5 min · ntietz.com

nicholas talks about their experience of switching from screenshare to interactive pair programming.

Typst starts its public beta test and goes open source

3 min · typst.app

Martin Haug introduces an modern alternative to LaTeX, written in Rust (my beloved) and completely open-source.

Defer blocks and async drop

6 min · ncameron.org

Nick Cameron shares their thoughts on async cleanup in Rust functions.

AI

The End of Front-End Development

1 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau about the future of programming using LLM's.

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.

9 min · technologyreview.com

David Rotman about the possible impact of the AI revolution on the economy and workers and how it's up to us to shape the future.

Cutting Room Floor

Learning the ropes: why Germany is building risk into its playgrounds

4 min · theguardian.com

Philip Oltermann about the reasons to build playgrounds that teach kids to navigate risky situations.

They will lose your data

1 min · seths.blog

Seth Godin about the importance for personal backups instead of trusting the cloud of other people.

94 / Culture Viruses

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, hope your week was good! 🙌🏻

Toot of the Week

a guide to greetings:

"hi guys": excludes non-guys
"ladies and gentlemen": excludes non-binary people, and men who aren't gentle
"hey folks": a bit too predictable
"hello fortnite gamers": surprising and equally offensive to everyone, the ideal choice
— @Ninji@vulpine.club

Favourites

Culture Viruses

6 min · staysaasy.com

This article describes three cultural viruses and how to build a good immune system.

Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine

3 min · theverge.com

Nilay Patel writes the best product review of the year so far, seriously go read it!

8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year

7 min · hbr.org

Neil Pasricha in a very motivation article with tips to read more books.

Culture

Don’t use stale bots

5 min · fvsch.com

Florens Verschelde about the negative effects of stale bots in issue trackers.

Software

Rust's Two Kinds of 'Assert' Make for Better Code

8 min · tratt.net

Laurence Tratt explains how they use assertions to make their programs more safe while still being cautious of performance issues.

Repeat yourself, do more than one thing, and rewrite everything

1 min · programmingisterrible.com

Tef takes each of the three mantras and explains why they often fall short and the real mantra is: it depends.

Typescripting the technical interview

6 min · richard-towers.com

Richard Towers tells the very entertaining story of a fictional interview where the question is solved entirely in types with ancient runes. I can also recommend the original.

AI

OK, it’s time to freak out about AI

9 min · nonzero.substack.com

Nonzero about the potential dangers of AI that get more realistic with every new model (although I think LLMs aren't the thing we should be scared of).

Design-by-wire

7 min · matthewstrom.com

Matthew Ström about the future of design with advanced AI. Thanks, Jan!

ChatGPT as muse, not oracle

1 min · geoffreylitt.com

Geoffrey Litt has tried using ChatGPT as a conversation partner that asks questions.

Cutting Room Floor

When our persona becomes our prison

3 min · vanschneider.com

Tobias van Schneider about the danger of locking yourself into the niche that made you successful.

How to craft a harmonious life

2 min · psyche.co

Jessica de Bloom and Merly Kosenkranius explain how striving to live a harmonious life is a better model than just work/life balance.

Tom Sachs Promised a Fun Cult

1 min · curbed.com

Katy Schneider and Adriane Quinlan about working conditions at Tom Sachs' cult, I mean studio.

93 / The Waluigi Effect

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hi ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

#Software can be like bananas:
Not yet ripe and and already rotten at the same time.
— @ewolff@mastodon.social

Peopleware

Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content meant for other roles

10 min · matthewgrohman.substack.com

Matthew Grohman about the advantages of understanding other roles (including a list of resources!)

Software

I don't want to log in to your website

2 min · robinrendle.com

Robin Rendle about sketchy sales tactics and the value in simple and honest websites.

Things DBs Don't Do - But Should

16 min · thenile.dev

Gwen Shapira has a list of feature requests for the a modern database.

Rust

I built a startup in Rust, I would do it again.

5 min · cloak.software

This article describes the advantage of using Rust in a startup.

When Zig is safer and faster than Rust

15 min · zackoverflow.dev

zack compares unsafe Rust to Zig and explains why Zig was working better for them.

Living with Rust Long-Term (video)

34 min · youtu.be

Jon Gjengset about the things you need to be aware of when building a project in Rust for a long time.

Tricks of the Trait: Enabling Ergonomic Extractors (video)

32 min · youtu.be

Rob Ede explains how you can accept functions with different kinds of arguments in a handler in Rust.

AI

The Waluigi Effect

19 min · lesswrong.com

Cleo Nardo about the inner workings of the Waluigi Effect and other jailbreak methods for LLMs.

AI is making it easier to create more noise, when all I want is good search

1 min · rachsmith.com

Rach Smith describes an AI use-case that trumps content generation: Search.

Large language models are having their Stable Diffusion moment

7 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison appt the current state and future of LLMs.

Cutting Room Floor

There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)

10 min · eukaryotewritesblog.com

Georgia Ray explains why most trees developed individually and other weird botanic quirks. Thanks, Eric!

How the Biggest Fraud in German History Unravelled

50 min · newyorker.com

Ben Taub tells the story of Jan Marsalek in the Wirecard scandal and how the fraud was exposed. Thanks, Lukas!

92 / What’s in my software engineering tool belt?

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, the last weeks have been very busy, this newsletter will go back to the weekly cycle soon ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

but Rust has a garbage collector, it’s called clippy
— @luna@tech.lgbt

Favourites

How Your LED Lights and Screens are Killing You

42 min · sevarg.net

Russell Graves about the effects of blue light on your sleep and cancer risk and what to do about it.

36 Ways to Live Differently

7 min · chrisguillebeau.com

Chris Guillebeau had a list of 36 things to change in your life for the better.

Seed-Planting Drones Are Reforesting Canada With Lightning Speed

5 min · reasonstobecheerful.world

Emily Nonko about a new tech that uses drones to reforest big areas.

ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web

14 min · newyorker.com

Ted Chiang describes the analogy of viewing large language models like GPT-3 (and therefore ChatGPT) like a blurry view of the web, similar to compressed images.

Culture

The difference between good and great engineers

5 min · intercom.com

Darragh Curran has six traits that distinguish good from great engineers.

Tech

What's in my software engineering tool belt?

5 min · ntietz.com

Nicholas shares the contents of their software engineering tool belt.

On replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a Thinkpad T480

4 min · maxrozen.com

Max Rozen explains how they upgraded their Thinkpad and made it a real alternative to their MacBook.

All your comparable types

12 min · go.dev

Robert Griesemer about changes to comparable types in Go 1.20.

Reverse Engineering A Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel

3 min · gkbrk.com

Gokberk Yaltirakli shows the process of reverse engineering a multicast UDP stream in a hotel.

I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again.

3 min · propelauth.com

Andrew Israel explains why they wouldn't recommend using Rust for an early startup.

ROFL with a LOL: rewriting an NGINX module in Rust

18 min · blog.cloudflare.com

Sam Howson tells the story of CloudFlare rewriting a NGINX module from C to Rust for safety.

All you may need is HTML

4 min · fabiensanglard.net

Fabien Sanglard explains how they generate their website with a custom SSG and little CSS.

Cutting Room Floor

AI is Useful for Capitalists but Probably Terrible for Anyone Else

8 min · mebassett.info

Matthew Eric Bassett about the future with AI and whom it'll benefit.

How heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming the technology of the future

10 min · yaleclimateconnections.org

Chris Baraniuk about the bright future of heat pumps.

World’s Largest Four-Day Work Week Trial Finds Few Are Going Back

4 min · bloomberg.com

Irina Anghel and Arianne Cohen describe the results of the UK trial for four-day weeks.

Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors

53 min · guzey.com

Alexey Guzey wrote an essay listing the errors in "Why We Sleep".

Gameplay Loop

10 min · dukope.itch.io

Lukas Pope about the progress and challenges of his upcoming Playdate game: Mars after Midnight.

How to expand solar power without using precious land

14 min · pnas.org

Steven Battersby about the recent rise of agrivoltaics (solar panels above farm grounds) and floatovoltaics (solar panels floating on water).

91 / Taco Bell Programming

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, it's been a while — I was sick and then we got a new baby! 🎉

Toot of the Week

I lost my programming socks in the lisp wars
— @efi@chitter.xyz

Favourites

Taco Bell Programming

2 min · widgetsandshit.com

Ted Dziuba about Taco Bell programming: Using simple, proven and boring tools to get the job done. Thanks, Eric!

Chat GPT is the birth of the real Web 3.0, and it's not going to be fun.

6 min · lajili.com

Johan Lajili explains why they think ChatGPT will be the (dark) future of the internet and there's little we can do about it.

Culture

Resilience and Waste in Software Teams

6 min · jessitron.com

Jessica Joy Kerr about the importance of resilience and the price of it.

Note to future self: Beware of fake urgency

3 min · oded.substack.com

Oded Blayer about the fallacy of fake urgency.

Maybe people do care about performance and reliability

6 min · buttondown.email

Hillel Wayne explains why some software is bloated and the people that are affected are unlikely to be included in the purchase decision.

Rust

Handling Integer Overflow in Rust

6 min · bmoxb.io

Max explains how integer overflow is handled in Rust.

Tauri vs Iced vs egui: Rust GUI framework performance comparison

5 min · lukaskalbertodt.github.io

Lukas Kalbertodt compares different Rust frameworks for performance including startup time, input lag and resize tests.

Release Engineering Is Exhausting So Here's cargo-dist

1 min · blog.axo.dev

Gankra introduces a new Rust tool to simplify distribution management and tries it on a personal project.

Rust's Ugly Syntax

4 min · matklad.github.io

Alex Kladov argues that what some people describe as "ugly" syntax in Rust is mostly due to semantics.

Rust to WebAssembly the hard way

2 min · surma.dev

Surma compiles Rust to WASM without bindgen to show what steps are necessary and why. Thanks, Jan!

When Rust hurts

1 min · mmapped.blog

Roman Kashitsyn talks about three things where Rust fell short for them.

[Watch] A Rust-Based, modular Unikernel for MicroVMs

25 min · fosdem.org

Stefan Lankes introduces RustyHeemit, a unikernel written in Rust.

Rust vs. Haskell

3 min · serokell.io

Jay Zelenskyi compares Rust and Haskell, very interesting to see the similarities and differences.

Tech

Why Go and not Rust?

9 min · kristoff.it

Loris Cro in a very opinionated love-letter to Go.

Adding Webmentions to Your Site

4 min · rknight.me

Robb Knight explains how they added Webmention support to their website, including Mastodon reactions!

Why I'm not the biggest fan of Single Page Applications

9 min · matuzo.at

Manuel Matuzovic explains some commonly overlooked downsides of using single-page-applications.

Using HTML as a compile target

9 min · blog.yoshuawuyts.com

Yoshua Wuyts explains why they think html should be strongly typed.

Design

Senior IC Reading List

2 min · valhead.com

Val Head has three book recommendations for senior IC designers. Thanks, Jan!

Visual design rules you can safely follow every time

7 min · anthonyhobday.com

Anthony Hobday has a list of design rules that you should remember.

You kinda want an orange favicon.

1 min · chriscoyier.net

Chris Coyier about the best color for favicons.

Teenage Skeuomorphic Desktop Designs

2 min · maggieappleton.com

Maggie Appleton has a bunch of screenshots from 2009 showcasing custom icons and wallpapers. A trip down memory lane.

Cutting Room Floor

How to Create Luck

7 min · swyx.io

swyx argues that you can create luck and showcases some systems to do so.

The real aim of big tech’s layoffs: bringing workers to heel

9 min · latimes.com

Brian Merchant argues that the recent tech layoffs at Amazon, Google and Microsoft were to gain more power over the tech workers.

A Note on the Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten

5 min · boffosocko.com

Chris Aldrich about the dangers of cargo cults, specifically the Zettelkasten.

Living Room: Declutter

1 min · jofreund.com

Johannes Freund explains how they mounted their TV to a 300 year old beam with a custom VESA mount.

A guide for Van Life in Japan

3 min · kumazen.com

kuma explains how to live in a van in Japan.

90 / My Dream Computer

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope your week was good 🤞🏻

Toot of the Week

it's only "AI" if it comes from the san francisco bay area. otherwise it's just sparkling autocomplete
— @sam@woem.space

Culture

What differentiates the highest-performing product teams (Video)

1 hours 40 min · youtu.be

Lenny Rachitsky has John Cutler on their podcast where they talk about efficient product teams, culture and more.

Software & Hardware

my dream computer

2 min · bluelander.bearblog.dev

m·bluelander about a computer that only exists in their dreams.

Reverse engineering the MacBook clamshell mode

17 min · alinpanaitiu.com

Alin Panaitiu dives deep in an attempt to reverse-engineer the Clamshell mode on macOS.

Vim Weekly Tips #18: Ctags

3 min · lazybear.io

Hyde shows how to make symbol lookup work in Vim.

Our Surprisingly Simple Navigation Hover Effect

1 min · cloudfour.com

Tyler Sticka shows a simple but useful hover effect.

Zero to Nix

zero-to-nix.com

A great guide to Nix — if you've been interested but held back because of a lack of documentation, dig in!

Six fun things to do with Rust operator overloading

1 min · wishawa.github.io

Wisha Wanichwecharungruang did some fun things with rust operators, one of them being cout << "Hello".

The Git source code audit, viewed as a Rust programmer

14 min · litchipi.github.io

Litchi pi goes through some vulnerabilities found in the Git codebase and explains if and how rust would protect against them.

Mocktail: The Mock Generator You’ve Been Looking For

4 min · traefik.io

Ludovic Fernandez explains the shortcomings they experienced using existing mock libraries and introduces a new tool to generate mocks in Go.

10 Things I Hate About Go (Video)

30 min · youtu.be

Boldly Go (who uses and likes Go) explains their top 10 things they hate about Go.

Cutting Room Floor

Apple: The Only Big Tech Giant Going Against the Job Cuts Tide

7 min · blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Gergely Orosz about Apple's hiring strategy and how it's worked out in the past years.

How antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics

4 min · nature.com

Liam Drew about a recent study that shows how antidepressants trigger an "SOS response" in bacteria that helps build up resistance.

The Billions-Dollar VR/AR Headset Question

8 min · daringfireball.net

John Gruber about the future of AR/VR headsets, why they might not be ready just yet and how Apple could pull it off.

89 / Use the Wrong Tool for the Job

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

and the brain-genius typed "no one would do anything without a profit motive!" and hit send on a button rendered by an open source front end framework firing off an event handled by an open source programming language that sends a packet in a format conforming to an open specification over a protocol developed at universities with public funding until it reaches a web server running an open source operating system that files the hot take away into an open source database for safe keeping
— @computerfact@botsin.space

Peopleware

Bricks of Love: create purpose and engagement with weekly updates

3 min · world.hey.com

João Alves about a way to create motivation by providing purpose through weekly updates.

How to use ADRs (Thread)

2 min · mastodon.social

Kevlin Henney has some tricks for effective ADRs (Architecture Decision Records).

Software

20 Things I've Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer

11 min · simplethread.com

Justin Etheredge has 20 pieces of great advice for software engineers.

Use the Wrong Tool for the Job

4 min · buttondown.email

Hillel Wayne about using complexity and what it means to use the "right" tool.

Examples of problems with integers

11 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans asked on Mastodon and collected 9 examples of problems with integers.

Fallible - The Lost Sibling of Result and Option

3 min · datavirke.dk

Mathias Pius about the rarely used Fallible<T> type in Rust.

Rust concepts I wish I learned earlier

22 min · rauljordan.com

Raul Jordan about a bunch of Rust concepts they wish they learned earlier.

Cutting Room Floor

Someone stole my car and now I own hundreds of vinyl records

3 min · mkaic.substack.com

Kai Christensen explains how they became a Vinylhead because their car got stolen.

The Quest for a Dumber Phone

16 min · every.to

Fadeke Adegbuyi about digital minimalism, it's perks and it's challenges.

Inside Elon’s “extremely hardcore” Twitter

31 min · theverge.com

Zoe Schiffer, Casey Newton and Alex Heath tell the story of the Twitter acquisition and the shitshow that followed.

The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget

5 min · kentnerburn.com

Kent Nerburn tells the story of a sweet cab ride that made a big impact on their life.

88 / The yaml document from hell

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, hope your week was good 🙏🏻

Toot of the Week

How to phish me:

Send me an email newsletter hyping your
innovative
AI-enabled
blockchain-powered
Web3 product

and include an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom

That’ll do it.
— @Tarah@infosec.exchange

Peopleware

How to Get Promoted at Work

12 min · clipcontent.substack.com

Steve Dennis has 7 steps to maximise your chances for success on the career ladder.

Evaluating Managers: 5 heuristics to measure managerial impact

8 min · abdulapopoola.com

AbdulFattah Popoola has some advice to measure your impact as a manager.

Management Debt

8 min · staysaasy.com

This article compares tech debt to management debt and explains common scenarios for management debt.

Tech

The yaml document from hell

10 min · ruudvanasseldonk.com

Ruud van Asseldonk explains different YAML footguns on one example and lists some alternatives.

Just use a monorepo

2 min · buttondown.email

Justin moved all of Buttondown into a monorepo and explains why they love it.

Your tech stack is not the product

6 min · hoho.com

Mike Wakerly explains why your tech stack is means, not an end — especially in early stage startups.

Guide to Web Authentication

6 min · webauthn.guide

Suby Raman explains how WebAuthn works and how to implement it.

Easy, alternative soft deletion: `deleted_record_insert`

2 min · brandur.org

Brandur has a good alternative for the deleted_at field.

Cutting Room Floor

If you really want to remember a moment, try not to take a photo

6 min · ideas.ted.com

Manoush Zomorodi explains why you remember less of an experience if you took a photo.

Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas

15 min · longform.asmartbear.com

Jason Cohen has 15 extreme questions to broaden your idea scope, some interesting, some controversial.

The rules of improv can make you funnier. They can also make you more confident.

7 min · npr.org

Oluwakemi Aladesuyi and Audrey Nguyen about five rules of improv you can apply to your life.

87 / The internet wants to be fragmented

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Toot of the Week

Rebasing is just gaslighting for computers.
— @mttaggart@fosstodon.org

Favourites

"I'm On It"

3 min · mikefisher.substack.com

Mike Fisher about their favourite response when given a task.

The science of why you have great ideas in the shower

8 min · nationalgeographic.co.uk

Stacey Colino has the neurological explanation for the reasons you get great ideas in the shower or find bug fixes when on a walk: The default mode network in your brain.

The internet wants to be fragmented

10 min · noahpinion.substack.com

Noah Smith about centralised social media, why community moderation works and the trend towards a decentralised internet.

Peopleware

How Roadmaps Accidentally Make Teams Powerless

6 min · goretro.ai

David Pereira about four common reasons roadmap trap teams and negatively impact the results and what to do instead.

The Diving Save

11 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about the right way to "save" someone who's decided to quit.

To Be Productive, Be Prepared

2 min · martinrue.com

Martin Rue explains why preparation is a requirement for motivation.

Success & Velocity

3 min · breakingpoint.substack.com

Sean Byrnes says you need two metrics in your team: One for success and one for velocity.

Finding Fulfillment

14 min · longform.asmartbear.com

Jason Cohen has a recipe for fulfilment: Joy, skill & need.

Tech

How to Test

19 min · matklad.github.io

Alex Kladov has some great advice for testing software.

Things You Should Never Do, Part I

6 min · joelonsoftware.com

Joel Spolsky gives a list of reasons why you probably don't want to rewrite your software product.

The Go libraries that never failed us: 22 libraries you need to know

23 min · threedots.tech

Robert Laszczak with an opinionated list of Go libraries you might need — this is super useful for people starting out!

State Machines III: Type States

12 min · blog.yoshuawuyts.com

Yoshua Wuyts about state machines in Rust, existing challenges and possible language features that would make it easier to work with.

You Want Modules, Not Microservices

10 min · blogs.newardassociates.com

This post describes the advantages often listed for microservices and why you can achieve most of them with modules in your application.

Cutting Room Floor

The Dangers of Elite Projection

4 min · humantransit.org

Jarrett Walker about the results of elites making decisions for many people that are only useful for them.

86 / Why the super rich are inevitable

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Happy new year! 🎇

Toot of the Week

[AI enters the room]

Artists: Please stop. We love art.
Programmers: Please continue. We hate programming.
— @olafurw@mastodon.social

Tech

How To Distort Text With SVG Filters

5 min · henry.codes

Henry Desroches explains how to apply SVG filters to text for cool effects.

Recommended File Formats for Digital Preservation

5 min · library.duke.edu

Duke University Libraries has file format recommendations for digital preservation in 17 categories, each with three levels.

A closer look at Acorn, our open source precision farming rover

6 min · community.twistedfields.com

Taylor explains the parts of the open source Garmin robot they're building.

Lesser Known Techniques for Attacking AWS Environments

11 min · tldrsec.com

Scott Piper explains four less known attacks on AWS resources.

Rust 2023 (by Yosh)

7 min · blog.yoshuawuyts.com

Yoshua Wuyts reflects upon 2022 for Rust and looks into next year.

Faster Go code by being mindful of memory

8 min · f4t.dev

Arthur Busser explains how they sped up their Advent of Code puzzle in Go.

Cutting Room Floor

Why the super rich are inevitable

6 min · pudding.cool

An interactive article that explains the yard sale model with concrete examples.

Sound

33 min · ciechanow.ski

Bartosz Ciechanowski wrote another one of their incredible interactive articles, this time explaining how sound works.

Why fusion ignition is being hailed as a major breakthrough in fusion – a nuclear physicist explains

4 min · theconversation.com

Carolyn Kuranz from the University of Michigan explains the recent fusion ignition breakthrough and when we can expect clean fusion energy to power our homes.

Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha

6 min · nytimes.com

An investigation from 8 reporters shows evidence that the Bucha massacre was intentional and which people were part of it.

Hands On With Flipper Zero, the Hacker Tool Blowing Up on TikTok

5 min · wired.com

Dhruv Mehrotra explains their experience with the Flipper Zero.

85 / How to Improve Your Creative Thinking

Sun, 18 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, this is going to be the last issue of 2022 — I wish you happy holidays, see you next year 🎇

Toot of the Week

bavaria doesn't exist
— @maia@crimew.gay

Culture

Staff archetypes

7 min · staffeng.com

Will Larson describes different roles that Staff engineers tend to take.

Tech

A simple stack for today's web hacks

5 min · neugierig.org

Evan Martin defines a very simple stack for simple web development without frameworks or complicated configuration.

Using Zig for Advent of Code

5 min · huy.rocks

Huy shows some Zig examples they've come up with for Advent of Code.

Just Use Postgres for Everything

2 min · amazingcto.com

Stephan Schmidt argues that unless you have a good reason not to, you should use Postgres.

What is in a modern code editor?

13 min · blog.meain.io

Abin Simon describes the must-have features of a modern code editor (with examples).

Rust

Rust in 2023

5 min · ncameron.org

Nick Cameron lists the things he wants to see for Rust in 2023.

Working with Rust in (neo)vim

6 min · ntietz.com

Nicholas explains how they use and configured NeoVim to write Rust.

Native Reflection in Rust

4 min · jack.wrenn.fyi

Jack Wrenn introduces deflect, a reflection library for Rust and explains how it work an in which cases it's useful.

Composing an observable Rust application

24 min · blog.logrocket.com

This article explains how you can build custom Layers with the tracing create in Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

Berlin is planning a car-free area larger than Manhattan

4 min · fastcompany.com

Adele Peters about Volksentscheid Berlin Autofrei, an organisation that wants a huge area of Berlin to be car-free.

The best things and stuff of 2022

12 min · blog.fogus.me

Fogus summarises their favourite things of 2023.

How to Improve Your Creative Thinking

8 min · every.to

Alice Albrecht explains a few techniques to improve your creativity and generate ideas.

The secret lives of MI6’s top female spies

30 min · ft.com

Helen Warrell interviews three women in top positions of the MI6 (one of them is Q!)

84 / The Riddle of Rest

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

✌🏻

Projects of Friends

Fn(), Functional Programming for Golang

github.com/kamstrup

Kamstrup built a functional programming library for Go, inspired by Clojure and the Java Streams API. It allows you to write code like this:

// Get all users without a name.
fn.ArrayOf(users).Where(fn.Not((*User).HasName))

Toot of the Week

rust programmers be like "pretty slow, nearly a microsecond"
— @dysfun@treehouse.systems

Culture

Overcoming Negativity

3 min · salman.io

Salman has a list of tactics to overcome negative thoughts about yourself or your work.

Challenging the status quo at work?

6 min · workweek.com

Hebba Youssef has some tipps to help you challenge decisions or the status quo

The Riddle of Rest

5 min · moretothat.com

Lawrence Yeo defines true rest, and why it's sometimes hard to achieve it even if you, for example, gaze at a still lake.

Rust

Our Experience Porting the YJIT Ruby Compiler to Rust

1 min · shopify.engineering

Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert about their experience of porting a C99 project to Rust.

Self-referential types for fun and profit

1 min · morestina.net

The author shows how to create self-referential types manually in Rust and why

Lenses and Prisms

7 min · rust-unofficial.github.io

This article shows the Rust design patterns Lenses and Prisms and how they work.

My negative views on Rust

4 min · chrisdone.com

Chris Done describes what they don't like about Rust.

Tech

Reinventing How We Use Computers

7 min · ploum.net

Ploum has a vision for a "Forever Computer", which makes you rethink your digital life.

Washing Machine Cycle Notifications

2 min · malachisoord.com

Malachi Soord used Home Assistant to get a notification when the washing machine

Sneaky hackers reverse defense mitigations when detected

2 min · bleepingcomputer.com

Bill Toulas about an ongoing attack on mobile carrier networks where the hackers even revert mitigation measures if not implemented fast enough.

Tips for analyzing logs

5 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans collected some tips on Mastodon for analyzing logs.

Goodbye to the C++ Implementation of Zig

1 min · ziglang.org

Andrew Kelley explains different strategies for compiler bootstrapping and how Zig uses WebAssembly.

New in Go 1.20: wrapping multiple errors

7 min · lukas.zapletalovi.com

Lukáš Zapletal about the implications of multiple errors in Go 1.20.

Cutting Room Floor

Ideas That Changed My Life

5 min · collabfund.com

Morgan Housel lists 7 ideas that changed her life, in retrospect.

Germans Have Seen the Future, and It’s a Heat Pump

4 min · nytimes.com

Melissa Eddy and Patrick Junker about Germany's shift from gas to heat pumps.

Elephants born without tusks in ‘evolutionary response’ to violent poachers

2 min · telegraph.co.uk

Will Brown about new research that shows how elephant's evolutionary response

How to become a truly excellent gift giver

9 min · vox.com

Eliza Brooke has written an article full of concrete tips for great gifts.

83 / Why Twitter Didn’t Go Down

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, hope your week has been good 😌

Toot of the Week

Give a man a fish. Sure, why not? Go around giving strangers weird fish gifts. Who cares
— @donni@mastodon.social

Rust

Memory Safe Languages in Android 13

8 min · security.googleblog.com

Jeffrey Vander Stoep about the effect the switch to memory safe languages (i.e. Rust) had on memory safety vulnerabilities and speed. If you only read one article from this newsletter, make it this one.

How much does Rust's bounds checking actually cost?

10 min · blog.readyset.io

The author benchmarks a complex test with over 1k bound checks against the same test with bounds checks disabled.

WebAssembly: TinyGo vs Rust vs AssemblyScript

4 min · ecostack.dev

Sebastian Scheibe benchmarks different languages compiled to WebAssembly.

Threads and messages with Rust and WebAssembly

6 min · tweag.io

Joe Neeman about Threads in WASM and communication performance.

Measuring the overhead of HashMaps in Rust

8 min · ntietz.com

nicholas measured the overhead of using a HashMap and BTreeMap in Rust.

Tech

Git Notes: git's coolest, most unloved feature

3 min · tylercipriani.com

Tyler Cipriani explains git notes and possible use cases. Thanks, Lukas!

OKLCH in CSS: why we moved from RGB and HSL

29 min · evilmartians.com

Andrey Sitnik and Travis Turner about the new oklab color space in CSS and why it’s better than everything else.

Developer Experience Infrastructure (DXI)

8 min · kenneth.io

Kenneth Auchenberg explain what DX means in 2022 and coins a new acronym for Developer Experience Infrastructure: DXI

Why Twitter Didn’t Go Down: From a Real Twitter SRE

6 min · matthewtejo.substack.com

Matthew’s Writing explains the automations and safety measures in place for the caches at Twitter.

Using Server Sent Events to Simplify Real-time Streaming at Scale

8 min · shopify.engineering

Bao explains how Shopify used Server Sent Events (SSE) at scale for the Black Friday Cyber Monday Live Map.

Cutting Room Floor

PSA: Do Not Use Services That Hate The Internet

3 min · jwz.org

Jamie Zawinski about Hive and Post and why you should not use them.

Warning: do not use Hive Social

3 min · zerforschung.org

Zerforschung found a number of critical vulnerabilities, including editing other people's posts, which were ignored until Hive deactivated their servers.

‘Goblin Mode’: A State of Not Caring What Other People Think

3 min · wsj.com

Ben Zimmer about the origins of the term "Goblin Mode".

why Japan's internet is weirdly designed

15 min · youtu.be

Sabrina Cruz explains why Japanese websites look different than the rest of the world.

In 2022, I thought a lot about my Mum, the internet and a cashless society

3 min · ithoughtaboutthatalot.com

A story about a woman that never got into technology and how society is ignorant of these people.

Photography for geeks

26 min · lcamtuf.coredump.cx

An introduction into photography with example images that illustrate the effect of different techniques.

82 / Programming is a Pop Culture

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

✌🏻

Toot of the Week

him: will you at least act normal when my folks get here
me: flipping a pancake and reading it like a tarot card bad news
— @whatsjo@mstdn.social

Culture

Programming is a Pop Culture

6 min · baldurbjarnason.com

Baldur Bjarnason explains why programming has trends, just like the fashion industry.

Holding two opposing ideas in my mind

2 min · alfredlua.substack.com

Alfred Lua about the necessity to endure the cognitive dissonance of two conflicting ideas.

Tech

Little Languages Are The Future Of Programming

12 min · chreke.com

chreke about the advantages of "little languages".

What is a Capability?

4 min · blog.sunfishcode.online

Dan Gohman explains WASM capabilities.

Flux: Refinement Types for Rust

4 min · liquid-rust.github.io

Ranjit Jhala introduces a new Rust library that adds refinements (e.g. pre-conditions or post-conditions).

CVE-2022-41924 - RCE in Tailscale, DNS Rebinding, and You

18 min · emily.id.au

Emily Trau used 7 issues in Tailscale to get access to a node (all of them are fixed, but you should update your Windows client).

Always use [closed, open) intervals

3 min · fhur.me

Fernando about the dangers of [closed, closed] intervals and why you should always use [closed, open).

An Interactive Guide to Flexbox

22 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau has built a great interactive guide to CSS Flexbox.

Dialogs, modality and popovers seem similar. How are they different?

20 min · hidde.blog

Hidde de Vries about modality on a website, inert state and the new popover element.

Cutting Room Floor

Mirror

4 min · bastianallgeier.com

Bastian Allgeier about online personas and negativity on Twitter, err the Birdsite.

81 / That fediverse feeling

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going?

Toot of the Week

“Then the spaceman took over the bird site so we all started tooting at the elephant place.”

“Oh…ok grandpa. Let’s get you back to bed.”
— @weiser@mstdn.social

Culture

Inhumanity of Root Cause Analysis

9 min · verica.io

Casey Rosenthal about the problems of RCA and healthy alternatives.

Long live personal websites, Let's make the web personal again!

4 min · blog.nymhq.com

An ode to personal websites and some advice to get started.

Tech

The Tao of Go

13 min · bitfieldconsulting.com

John Arundel about the Tao of Go, principles to write and structure code that can be applied to other languages as well.

Tracing HTTP Requests with tcpflow

1 min · ananthakumaran.in

Anantha Kumaran tells the story of someone on-call debugging HTTP requests with tcpflow.

From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server

3 min · ctrl.blog

Daniel Aleksandersen moved from Plex to Jellyfin and shares their experience.

How to start embedded coding

1 min · jhaand.nl

Jelle Haandrikman has some suggestions on how to get started with embedded coding.

Stealing passwords from infosec Mastodon - without bypassing CSP

6 min · portswigger.net

Gareth Heyes explains how he found a vulnerability in Mastodon.

Making a Go program 42% faster with a one character change

5 min · hmarr.com

Harry Marr explains how removing a stack alloy every loop iteration improved performance by 70 %.

Bringing revsets to Git

6 min · blog.waleedkhan.name

Waleed Khan showcases the git branchless suite.

Let's write a tiny chess engine in Go

9 min · zserge.com

Serge Zaitsev ported parts of sunfish to Go and explains the basics of a chess engine.

Cutting Room Floor

Your next smart home device is a $30 used Kindle

10 min · matthealy.com

Matt Healy shows you how to hack a Kindle to make it part of your smart home.

Passkeys.directory

1 min · passkeys.directory

1Password built a directory of websites that support passkeys.

Solar

4 min · bastianallgeier.com

Bastian Allgeier shares their experience a year after installing solar panels on their roof.

That fediverse feeling

5 min · adactio.com

Jeremy summarises the vibes they get when using Mastodon.

How to choose the right Mastodon server without being a huge nerd

4 min · marcel.io

Marcel Wichmann has a guide mostly to non-technical people that want to get started on Mastodon.

80 / Goodbye Twitter, hello Fediverse

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, I migrated to Mastodon due to the recent events (as did many people), you can find me at @arne@spezi.social.

This issue is packed, hope you enjoy reading the stories and articles as much as I did.

Toot of the Week

The Programmers’ Credo: we do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy.
— @xcud@noc.social

Culture

Don't Wait for Motivation, Act for Momentum

2 min · salman.io

Salman describes the importance of starting with small steps in a real-world example.

You should maintain a transition file

6 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss explains why you should have a transition file that explains your job to a successor.

The Seven Levels of Busy

1 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp lists 7 levels of busy (which one are you?).

Tech

Fast builds, secure builds. Choose two.

9 min · stripe.com

Sushain Cherivirala explains how Stripe built a secure CI system that completes in under 5 minutes.

Thirteen Years of Go

5 min · go.dev

Russ Cox summarises the last year in Go, which is now 13 years old.

Thoughts on the "Guard" Proposal for Go's Error Handling

3 min · wagslane.dev

Lane Wagner has some thoughts and improvement to the recent guard/must proposal for Go.

Blessed.rs

blessed.rs

Nico Burns built a site with Rust crate recommendations. This is super useful, especially when getting started as Rust has a small std lib.

Scoped threads in Rust, and why its async counterpart would be unsound

6 min · wishawa.github.io

Wisha Wanichwecharungruang explains how scoped threads work and goes deep into lifetime logic to explain why it doesn't work with async.

Fediverse

Twitter Rival Mastodon's Founder Has a Vision for Democratizing Social Media

7 min · time.com

Billy Pereigo interviews Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon.

A humane guide to Mastodon

8 min · francisbeaudet.com

Francis Beaudet wrote a humane guide to get started in the Fediverse. Thanks, Jan!

Fediverse

7 min · bastianallgeier.com

Bastian Allgeier about their feelings about Mastodon. Thanks, Jan!

Thinking About Mastodon

2 min · jefftk.com

Jeff Kaufman is pessimistic about Mastodon because it's harder to fight spam in a distributed system.

Is the fediverse about to get Fryed? (Or, “Why every toot is also a potential denial of service attack”)

11 min · ar.al

Aral Balkan about some performance problems and power imbalance in the Fediverse. Thanks, Jan!

Goodbye Twitter, Hello Fediverse!

6 min · xeiaso.net

Xe Iaso says goodbye to Twitter and recommends some Fediverse accounts.

On Running a Mastodon Instance

14 min · rixx.de

Tobias shares their experience running a Mastodon instance for 7k people.

Cutting Room Floor

The Beggars And Street Prophets Of London

2 min · indica.medium.com

indi.ca about the street prophets of London and why they're all right.

Cruel Changes at Twitter

11 min · blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Gergely Orosz gives some background information about the things which are happening at Twitter.

What to blog about

2 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison has some ideas to get you started when thinking about starting your own blog.

f.lux, but for your house

3 min · tylercipriani.com

Tyler Cipriani made their house lighting change color and dim in the evenings. I want that!

5 min · basicappleguy.com

Basic Apple Guy about the recent push of ads into Apple operating systems.

CRISPR cancer trial success paves the way for personalized treatments

4 min · nature.com

Heidi Ledford summarises a study where gene-edited T cells helped fight cancer.

No, You Aren’t Going to Get Rich by Options Trading

4 min · jacobin.com

Clark Randall about the reality of options trading as an average citizen.

Mental Models to Help You Cut Your Losses

9 min · behavioralscientist.org

Annie Duke introduces two mental models to know when to quit a project.

79 / The perfect commit

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hopy your week has been good 😌

Culture

Things your manager might not know

12 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans has 8 things you can do to make everyone's job a lot easier.

Ideal open source

4 min · nedbatchelder.com

Ned Batchelder about open source motivation and an ideal situation.

How to lead strategically every day

7 min · lenareinhard.com

Fiona McVitie about what makes a good strategy and how to make it a habit.

Tech

The Perfect Commit

8 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison has some guidelines for good commits, some of them controversial.

Generic associated types to be stable in Rust 1.65

9 min · blog.rust-lang.org

Jack Huey gives an introduction to GATs in Rust (finally!)

RC Week 7: Four habits to improve as a programmer

4 min · ntietz.com

Nicolas has four habits for programmers.

In defense of linked lists

3 min · antirez.com

antirez lists reasons why linked lists are useful even when they get bad rep.

Cutting Room Floor

The Restaurant Industry’s Worst Idea

5 min · theatlantic.com

Conor Friedersdorf about QR codes and digital menus.

Dynamic documents as personal software

35 min · inkandswitch.com

Geoffrey Litt, Max Schoening, Paul Shen

78 / No, you’re not entitled to your opinion

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

'sup? ✌🏻

Culture

What "Work" Looks Like

2 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen about what work looks like and why work away from a computer can be real work as a tech worker.

What a Healthy Team Looks Like

7 min · hpdailyrant.medium.com

Hà Phan has seven qualities of healthy teams.

Conway's Law

5 min · martinfowler.com

Martin Fowler about Conway's Law, how an organisation structure is reflected in the systems it designs.

How to communicate effectively as a developer

6 min · karlsutt.com

Karl Sutt has some great tactical advice for writing as an engineer.

Tech

user-defined iteration using range over func values

11 min · github.com

Russ Cox proposed an iterator in Go.

Do we need a "Rust Standard"?

15 min · blog.m-ou.se

Mara Bos about a possible Rust specification and standard (similar to C or C++).

Shell Script Best Practices

3 min · sharats.me

Shrikant has an opinionated guide to shell scripts.

How Meta, Google, Github and others leverage HTTP conditional requests to build robust REST APIs

19 min · quadratic.fm

Ilija Eftimov has case studies in how tech giants support If-Modified-Since and other HTTP preconditions.

What if the team hates my functional code?

7 min · jrsinclair.com

James Sinclair explains why you should write your code for the right audience, just like a writer.

H.264 is magic: a technical walkthrough of a remarkable technology.

11 min · sidbala.com

Sid Bala explains why H264 is as good as it is.

Passkeys as a tool for user retention

12 min · matduggan.com

Mathew Duggan explains why vendor lock-in is an issue with the new Passkeys standard.

Cutting Room Floor

No, you're not entitled to your opinion

4 min · theconversation.com

Patrick Stokes explains why not everyone is entitled to an opinion.

Elon Musk’s planned Twitter layoffs are imminent

6 min · washingtonpost.com

Faiz Siddiqui, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Gerrit De Vynck explain what’s going on at Twitter in the recent days.

Welcome to hell, Elon

5 min · theverge.com

Nilay Patel explains the trouble Elon will get into with his goals to allow all free speech on Twitter.

77 / Take a Break You Idiot

Sun, 23 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, I've been sick for the last two weeks, that's why there was no issue last week.
But I'm back now with a packed issue! Hope you enjoy ❤️

Tweet of the Week

Should’ve been a cat. Sleep for 16 hours a day, cause chaos for the other 8. Scream loudly whenever I’m hungry. Knock shit off the counter for no reason
— @drakegatsby on Twitter

Culture

Just for Fun. No, Really.

2 min · justforfunnoreally.dev

Tim Morgan built a nice Page that you can send to people that don't get why you're working on a side project that doesn't look like it will make money.

Take a Break You Idiot

1 min · robinrendle.com

Robin Rendle about the importance of regular breaks from work.

Know your carrying capacity

3 min · macchaffee.com

Mac Chaffee about the term "carrying capacity" and what happens if you don't know yours.

Avoiding Featurism

2 min · tdarb.org

Brad has 5 rules to avoid what they call creeping featurism.

Writing for Engineers

12 min · heinrichhartmann.com

Heinrich Hartmann has a great guide for writing.

Tech

Zig-style generics are not well-suited for most languages

14 min · typesanitizer.com

Varun Gandhi explains the drawbacks of Zig-style generics (which are modelled closely after C++ templates).

A Database Without Dynamic Memory Allocation

5 min · tigerbeetle.com

Phil Eaton explains why the TigerBeetle database doesn't use dynamic memory That's one way to get around Zig's manual memory management I guess.

proposal: Go 2: error handling: try statement with handler

10 min · github.com

Greg Weber proposed a try keyword for ergonomic error handling in Go.

A Real World React -> htmx Port

2 min · htmx.org

David Guillot held a talk about moving from React to htmx and the results are staggering.

When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

8 min · wix-ux.com

Jenni Nadler explains the factors that make a good or bad error message.

Optimizing the hell out of my website

5 min · kmaasrud.com

Knut Magnus Aasrud explains all the steps they took to make their website really tiny.

The HTTP crash course nobody asked for

1 hours 23 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos has written a HTTP/S/2 crash course.

Rust

How (and why) nextest uses tokio, part 1

15 min · sunshowers.io

Rain explains why the Rust testing framework uses Tokio and what it used before.

Static streams for faster async proxies

8 min · blog.adamchalmers.com

Adam Chalmers explains how you can stream an incoming request body to an outgoing request in Rust.

Multithreading in Rust

7 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour speeds up their port-scanning software by adding threads.

Rewriting a high performance vector database in Rust

5 min · pinecone.io

Jack Pertschuk about the experience of rewriting the Pinecone database in Rust.

Why Rust?

9 min · rerun.io

Emil Ernerfeldt explains why they use Rust for Rerun.

Magical handler functions in Rust

6 min · lunatic.solutions

Bernard Kolobara explains magical handler functions in Rust and why they can be ineffective.

Cutting Room Floor

My Favourite Computer, An Old Mac

2 min · muezza.ca

Connor Oliver about his Macintosh Classic II.

Writing With Copilot

1 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about using GitHub copilot for writing.

The Right Kind of Attention

2 min · robinrendle.com

Robin Rendle about the right (and wrong) kind of attention. Thanks, Jan!

What If We Just Stopped Being So Available?

6 min · theatlantic.com

Joe Pinsker explainswhy we should stop apologising for late responses. Thanks, Eric!

A historical view on the Metropolitan Apple Watch face

5 min · arun.is

Arun explains the history of the new Metropolitan face for the Apple Watch. Be sure to checkout earlier posts about World Time, GMT and more!

Review of the Kinesis Advantage360 Professional

14 min · arslan.io

Fatih Arslan compares the new Advantage360 keyboard to the Advantage2 from Kinesis.

76 / An end to doomerism

Sun, 09 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome back to Arne's Weekly! I had an amazing time in Barcelona, hope you're doing well too ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

i used to be young and cool and now when it rains i say things like “this is good. we needed this”
— @elykreimendahl on Twitter

Favourites

Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life

11 min · craigmod.com

Craig Mod writes an ode to electric bikes so compelling that I want to buy one now.

An end to doomerism

9 min · bigthink.com

Dr. Hannah Ritchie about pessimism and why realistic optimism is more productive.

How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end?

14 min · snyder.substack.com

Timothy Snyder about a possible ending of the war that they argue is way more

Culture

OOPS! Learning from the incident you didn't have

3 min · learningfromincidents.io

An article about learning from surprises instead of incidents.

Aging programmer

3 min · world.hey.com

Jorge Manrubia about his experience as a 40-year old programmer.

Microsoft exec: My 2-step rule for having hard conversations at work

4 min · cnbc.com

Morgan Smith about Chris Capossela's system for hard conversations.

Tech

Go runtime: 4 years later

5 min · go.dev

Michael Knyszek lists past improvements of the Go runtime and introduces the new soft memory limit configuration.

JMAP: It’s like IMAP But Not Really

4 min · unencumberedbyfacts.com

Jason Munro about the JMAP protocol and why it's so much better than IMAP.

New integer types I'd like to see

7 min · foonathan.net

Jonathan about new integer types that could make some problems go away (e.g. by being symmetric).

Turns are Better than Radians

5 min · computerenhance.com

Casey Muratori argues that you shouldn't use radians in code.

Rust

Why Async Rust

17 min · blog.yoshuawuyts.com

Yoshua Wuyts about the benefits of the async architecture in Rust.

My first time using Rust "for real"

9 min · blog.vivekpanyam.com

Vivek Panyam shares the perspective of an experienced C++ engineer using Rust.

Hard Mode Rust

18 min · matklad.github.io

Aleksey Kladov writes a ray-tracer in Rust without dynamic memory allocation.

A quick reference guide for the Pythonista in the process of becoming a Rustacean

17 min · github.com

Bruno Rocha has an extensive guide to learn Rust coming from Python.

Cutting Room Floor

My Trip to Space Filled Me With ‘Overwhelming Sadness’

6 min · variety.com

William Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but experienced the "Overview Effect".

The rise of the crypto influencer and the fall of truth

6 min · protos.com

This article exposes some of the shady tactics of ”crypto influencers“,

75 / The five-minute feedback fix

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

✌🏻 How's it going?

Tweet of the Week

machine learning? i think we need some machine forgetting!!
— @monadlike on Twitter

Culture

What You Miss By Only Checking GitHub

7 min · harihareswara.net

Sumana Harihareswara about the lamppost fallacy that is only looking at GitHub for open-source projects.

What I've Learned from Users

9 min · paulgraham.com

Paul Graham about their learnings working with startup founders for YC.

Rust

Async destructors, async genericity and completion futures

50 min · sabrinajewson.org

Sabrina Jewson explores options to add async Drop in Rust and concludes in a proposal.

Futures Concurrency IV: Join Ergonomics

9 min · blog.yoshuawuyts.com

Yoshua Wuyts about (async) join ergonomics in Swift and Rust.

Ten challenges for Rust

8 min · ncameron.org

Nick Cameron lists ten challenges for Rust, the language and the ecosystem.

Rust 2024...the year of everywhere?

7 min · smallcultfollowing.com

Niko Matsakis imagines Rust in 2024 and describes the features they think are available by then.

Tech

The five-minute feedback fix

6 min · github.com

Hillel Wayne about formal verification methods and their advantages.

How I’m a Productive Programmer With a Memory of a Fruit Fly

15 min · hynek.me

Hynek Schlawack about the benefits of an offline documentation browser and how to make it great.

OAuth2 explained with cute shapes

5 min · engineering.backmarket.com

If OAuth2 confuses you, Klemen Sever has an explanation using illustrations.

Passkeys

12 min · imperialviolet.org

Adam Langley wrote a guide to integrate passkeys into your website.

Want cleaner code? Use the rule of six

4 min · davidamos.dev

David Amos about principles for cleaner code.

Cutting Room Floor

Apple’s Killing the Password. Here’s Everything You Need to Know

6 min · wired.com

Matt Burgess explains how Apple passkeys works and why it's better than passwords.

'An Army of Zombies Is Leading Us to Hell': A Russian Who Fled Putin's Draft Speaks Out

4 min · theatlantic.com

Anna Nemtsova interviews a Moscow IT professional which left (like many others)

74 / The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, starting with this issue I'll count the number of clicks. No personal data whatsoever is recorded, just the issue number and the url. If you run into any issues with this, please let me know by replying to this email. As always, enjoy todays curation! ✌🏻

Culture

Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

13 min · experimentalhistory.substack.com

Adam Mastroianni about the productivity gurus telling you to "eat more frogs" and people following that without thinking about what makes them happy.

Build Your Career on Dirty Work

7 min · staysaasy.com

This article gives the career advice of embracing the "dirty work" like on-call or QA.

What Makes a Senior Engineer? Writing Software vs Building Systems

3 min · codewithstyle.info

Miłosz Piechocki explains why more senior engineers think in systems and gives concrete examples.

ZeroBanana – Senior Engineers are Living in the Future

3 min · zerobanana.com

Zane Bitter explains why it sometimes seems like more senior engineers live in the future.

Tech

Why David Yach Loves Go

6 min · cloud.google.com

David Yach (Director of Engineering at Google Cloud) writes a love letter to Go.

Donald Knuth - The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves

6 min · yakshav.es

Florian Gilcher about Donald Knuth and all the yak shaved it took to finally get to LaTeX.

QR codes

2 min · typefully.com

Dan Hollick explains how a QR code works. Thanks, Lukas!

Prompt injection attacks against GPT-3

5 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison about AI prompt injection, a completely new hack.

Shortest URLs on the Internet

3 min · jameswillia.ms

James Williams about top-level domain name resolution.

A pair of Rust kernel modules

4 min · lwn.net

Jonathan Corbet describes the first two real-world kernel modules that have been written in Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

This is How the Media is Misleading You on “Technology Addiction”

10 min · nirandfar.com

Siri Helle about the myths of too much screen time leading to depression and other myths. Thanks, Eric!

Say Hello to Crazy Thin ‘Deep Insert’ ATM Skimmers

4 min · krebsonsecurity.com

This article is about new type of super-thin ATM skimmers and how they work.

Uncharted waters: what startups can learn from pirates about compensation

7 min · devonzuegel.com

Devon Zuegel about the similarities of startups and pirates.

iPhone 14 Pro Camera Review: Scotland

14 min · austinmann.com

Austin Mann reviews the iPhone 14 Pro camera(s) and gives advice for photographers using it.

Most People Won't

2 min · bryce.vc

A post about making leaps and changing everything, and a story about the Uber CEO.

73 / Quality Is Systemic

Sun, 11 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

had 7 concurrent users today guess it's time for kubernetes
— @roxkstar74 on Twitter

Favourites

'You can't say that!': how to argue, better

6 min · theguardian.com

Adam Grant has practical tipps that can help you argue with people in a more constructive way and see your own biases.

Quality Is Systemic

2 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss explains why the reason for bad software is systemic in most cases.

Culture

Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life

7 min · theatlantic.com

Derek Thompson has 5 points of career advice for you.

Habits and Principles for Peak Performance and Geniune Excellence

3 min · twitter.com

Brad Stulberg has 19 habits and principles for peak performance and genuine excellence.

Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

8 min · twitchard.github.io

Richard Marmorstein about the dangers of metric-driven software development.

Tech

An opinionated guide on how to reverse engineer software, part 1

5 min · margin.re

Ryan Stortz has a great guide to get started with reverse engineering.

Vulnerability Management for Go

2 min · go.dev

Julie Qiu introduces the Go vulnerability database.

FLAC - Format overview

5 min · xiph.org

An overview of the FLAC audio file format.

Attacking Firecracker: AWS' microVM Monitor Written in Rust

37 min · graplsecurity.com

Valentina Palmiotti about a security vulnerability in Firecracker and how they exploited it. Thanks, Mikkel!

Learning Rust: Async Combinators

4 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour introduces a few Rust async combinators (to deal with a stream of values).

How to Use Rust Traits, Generics and Bounds

10 min · rsdlt.github.io

Rodrigo Santiago refactors their old Rust code to use Traits & Generics and shows the difference it makes.

Cutting Room Floor

Your attention span is being robbed!

7 min · unstructed.tech

Mihailo Joksimovic about the modern slot machines that are social media and ways to break out.

Europe Is Sacrificing Its Ancient Forests for Energy

9 min · nytimes.com

Sarah Hurtes and Weiyi Cai about the practice of burning wood as "renewable energy" and why it has to stop. Thanks, Mum!

What does it mean to be smart?

2 min · seths.blog

Seth Godin about alleged smartness in computers.

Ethanol-Mediated Novel Survival Strategy against Drought Stress in Plants

38 min · academic.oup.com

A paper from over 30 scientists about the positive effects of ethanol for plants that don't get enough water. Thanks, Mum!

72 / Why are you so busy?

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going? 🙌🏻

Culture

Why are you so busy?

5 min · tomlingham.com

Tom Lingham explains what to do when you're too busy.

Do we need an office?

16 min · zhuk.fi

Nikita Zhuk about remote work and how to make it good.

What distinguishes great software engineers? (pdf)

1 hours 13 min · faculty.washington.edu

Paul Luo Li, Amy J. Ko and Andrew Begel surveyed hundreds of software developers

Tech

How and why stable diffusion works for text to image generation

8 min · paepper.com

Marc Päpper explains how stable diffusion works.

1 week of Stable Diffusion

3 min · multimodal.art

A nice timeline of the week after the release of stable diffusion.

DIY out of band management: remote console server

10 min · michael.stapelberg.ch

Michael Stapelberg built a remote console server for his home router using a separate internet connection.

Learning Rust: Combinators

6 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour about different combinators in Rust and how to use them.

Arti 1.0.0 is released: Our Rust Tor implementation is ready for production use.

9 min · blog.torproject.org

nickm describes the process of writing a Tor client in Rust.

Rewriting my blog in Rust for fun and profit

9 min · jonashietala.se

Jonas Hietala rewrote their blog in Rust and describes the process and how it improved.

Cutting Room Floor

I was on TikTok for 30 days: it is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

13 min · scribe.rip

Luiza Jarovsky about the "epitome of the unregulated attention economy".

71 / Coping with Copilot

Sun, 28 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT

✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

hot tip: to avoid writing bugs, don't write software
— @FormalFerris on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

First Focus. Then Simplify

3 min · cutlefish.substack.com

John Cutler about the different approaches of simplifying a complex problem vs. focussing on a subset.

The False Trade-off between Quality and Speed

8 min · maruz.medium.com

Mario Caropreso about the importance of quality in software development.

Tech

Inside the Pinecone

7 min · pinecone.io

Edo Liberty about the experience of moving a C++ codebase to Rust.

How to deal with money in software

18 min · cs-syd.eu

Tom Sydney Kerckhove about the right and wrong ways to deal with money in software.

Fixing Memory Exhaustion Bugs in My Golang Web App

16 min · mtlynch.io

Michael Lynch tells the story of finding the cause(s) of OOM in a Go application.

Why your website should be under 14kB in size

7 min · endtimes.dev

Nathaniel about the magic 14kB, the size transmitted on the first TCP roundtrip.

Coping with Copilot

6 min · sigarch.org

Emery Berger about GitHub Copilot in education.

Cutting Room Floor

"We Kill People Based on Metadata" and Other Metadata Things

3 min · darknetlive.com

A blogpost with software recommendations for dealing with metadata.

A Shape of Things to Come

13 min · robinsloan.com

Robin Sloan about a weird discovery on Spotify.

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

7 min · experimentalhistory.substack.com

Adam Mastroianni about givers and takers and how to have good conversations.

Using GPT-3 to augment human intelligence

22 min · escapingflatland.substack.com

Henrik Olof Karlsson explains how you can use AI language models (like GPT-3) to find answers that are hard to google.

70 / Death to Dependencies

Sun, 21 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Tweet of the Week

while we're adding locale support to rustc, we should make it so it turns off the borrow checker when you run it with LANG=C
— vana vlqc on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

Death to Dependencies

15 min · youtu.be

Jim Benson about (remote) team collaboration and what harm silos and dependencies can do.

Why Developers Are Building So Many Side Projects

9 min · future.com

Ben Stokes about the reasons why people write (small) side projects.

Being-Doing Balance over Work-Life Balance

8 min · jeanhsu.substack.com

Jean Hsu about an alternative to the work-life balance concept.

Rituals for Engineering Teams

27 min · charity.wtf

charity about fun rituals in engineering teams.

Taking notes in interviews

7 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss has advice on how to best take notes during an interview.

We need young programmers; we need old programmers

7 min · blog.ploeh.dk

Mark Seemann about the advantages of young people (not knowing what's said).

Tech

What is Backoff For?

5 min · brooker.co.za

Marc Brooker about different backoff strategies.

Removing HTTP/2 Server Push from Chrome

2 min · developer.chrome.com

Barry Pollard explains why HTTP/2 server push is going away and what to use instead.

Programming breakthroughs we need

8 min · yoyo-code.com

Matyáš Racek about their vision for future programming breakthroughs.

What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

19 min · tanishqkancharla.dev

Tanishq Kancharla gives insight into the things they learned when working with a senior engineer at Notion.

iOS Privacy: Announcing InAppBrowser.com

10 min · krausefx.com

Felix Krause announces a website that allows you to "see what JavaScript commands get injected through an in-app browser".

Cutting Room Floor

Reject the Algorithm

5 min · ofdollarsanddata.com

Nick Maggiulli explains why you shouldn't work for the algorithm (e.g. become a threadboi) and instead stay true to your values.

One for All?

4 min · hms.harvard.edu

Nancy Fliesler about a potential way to build a vaccine for all COVID variants.

Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds

3 min · vibilagare.se

Fredrik Diits Vikström writes about a test done by a Swedish magazine that compares different HMI (human-machine interfaces) in cars.

How the Find My App Became an Accidental Friendship Fixture

6 min · nytimes.com

Kalley Huang about the practice of using Apple's Find My as a social network.

I recreated famous album covers with DALL-E

8 min · lucytalksdata.com

Lucy tries to recreate famous album covers using AI, with pretty good results.

69 / How I Hacked my Car

Sun, 14 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hello, hope you enjoy the curation 🤌🏻

Tweet of the Week

"Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights."
Quote attributed to @cra, and I don't think I've ever seen anything more true posted.
— @axboe on Twitter

Culture

Breaking apart the monolith

9 min · github.com

Shawn Wang about the social component of open source and steps to reduce burnout.

Tech

Using unwrap() in Rust is Okay

28 min · blog.burntsushi.net

Andrew Gallant about panicking in Rust.

ARCHITECTURE.md

3 min · matklad.github.io

Aleksey Kladov about the practice of having an ARCHITECTURE.md file in your repository.

Why macOS Ventura Share menu is bad

2 min · lapcatsoftware.com

Jeff Johnson about the inconsistencies of the settings app in the new macOS.

Go wishlist

2 min · brandur.org

Brandur has four wishes for Go 1.20.

From Oscilloscope to Wireshark - A UDP Story

21 min · mattkeeter.com

Matt Keeter takes the analogue signal of a UDP packet and explains how to decode it.

I Don’t Like Go’s Default HTTP Handlers

3 min · preslav.me

Preslav Rachev about the missing error value in Go's HTTP handlers.

How I Hacked my Car

13 min · programmingwithstyle.com

greenluigi1 explains how they hacked their 2021 Hyundai in series of three blog posts.

The State Of Rust In 2022

4 min · deprogrammaticaipsum.com

Adrian Kosmaczewski about the state of Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

Why thinking hard makes us feel tired

3 min · nature.com

Heidi Ledford about a recent study on how cognitive work affects fatigue.

iOS Privacy: Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser

12 min · krausefx.com

Felix Krause about their research on Meta's tracking system in the iOS in-app browser. Thanks, Eric!

68 / An app can be a home-cooked meal

Sun, 07 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, hope you enjoy this weeks curation ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Human: we have a color named after you!
Salmon: really? is it silvery blue like my outsides?
Human: no, uh–
Salmon: wait why is it pink?
Human: ...
Salmon: WHY IS IT PINK
— @mondaypunday on Twitter

Culture

João Alves on Twitter

3 min · twitter.com

João Alves has ten points that define above-average managers.

Tech

Wi-Fine

3 min · wifine.gitlab.io

Eloy Degen explains why using Public Wi-Fi networks is (mostly) fine.

How I Used DALL·E 2 to Generate The Logo for OctoSQL

8 min · jacobmartins.com

Jacob Martin used the AI image generator DALL•E 2 to create a logo, very interesting journey.

Why I Love Still PHP and Javascript After 20+ years

2 min · the.scapegoat.dev

mnl explains why they still love PHP and legacy codebases.

Lattice-based Cryptography 🧮

6 min · unzip.dev

Agam about new encryption algorithms that can withstand attacks from quantum computers.

Use One Big Server

13 min · specbranch.com

Nima Badizadegan about the benefits and drawbacks of using one big server instead of the cloud.

An app can be a home-cooked meal

6 min · robinsloan.com

Robin Sloan about BoopSnop, a home-made app, built for four people without ads or tracking or feature creep.

Matt Mueller: Building Modern Web Applications Faster With Bud

7 min · goingwithgo.com

Preslav Rachev Interviews Matt Mueller on their new web framework, Bud.

Cut the cutesy errors

2 min · alexwlchan.net

Alex Chan explains why you shouldn't use cute error messages.

Cramming 'Papers, Please' Onto Phones

18 min · dukope.com

Lucas Pope about the rewrite of PAPERS, PLEASE for mobile platforms.

Cutting Room Floor

The world is ablaze and the oil industry just posted record profits. It’s us or them

6 min · theguardian.com

Hamilton Nolan des describes how the oil industry won’t go away by itself,

67 / Your Code Doesn’t Have to Be a Mess

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Remember, a strong type system can prevent classes of bugs, but you still have to test to make sure your logic is correct. Rust, but Verify
— @jckarter on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

The practical application of "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand"

17 min · longform.asmartbear.com

Jason Cohen about a strategy to plan software projects.

Spell. It. Out.

3 min · codingvc.com

Leo Polovets on being clear in presentation and leave nothing up for interpretation.

Tech

Your Code Doesn’t Have to Be a Mess

3 min · danielsieger.com

Daniel Sieger lists 5 strategies for good code.

You should take more screenshots

2 min · alexwlchan.net

Alex Chan about taking screenshots of projects so you can explore them when it gets hard to get them running again.

A toy remote login server

11 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans wrote a toy login server and explains the basic technology.

Library Writing Realizations

7 min · cbloomrants.blogspot.com

cbloom has 10 points of advice for writing libraries.

Does Rust need proc-macros 2.0?

6 min · aaronerhardt.github.io

Aaron Erhardt about the current shortcomings of proc-macros in Rust.

Fixing the Next Thousand Deadlocks: Why Buffered Streams Are Broken and How To Make Them Safer

12 min · blog.polybdenum.com

A blog post about some possible problems with Rust's Buffered streams (e.g. because a future in the stream depends on another one).

Cutting Room Floor

Your Kids Are Not Doomed

8 min · nytimes.com

Ezra Klein in an opinion piece about having kids in a world of crisis.

Don't Panic

8 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about the FromSoftware "Souls" games and what they teach you.

The Best iPhone

3 min · notes.ghed.in

Rodrigo Ghedin explains why they think the iPhone SE is the best iPhone.

66 / Things you’re allowed to do

Sun, 24 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Tweet of the Week

not-wanting-people-to-get-mad-at-me-driven development
— @mycoliza on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

The Habits of Sustainable Excellence

6 min · bstulberg.medium.com

Brad Stulberg lists 19 habits for sustainable excellence.

The Structure and Process Fallacy

3 min · medium.com

Nick Tune about the structure and process fallacy; thinking a reorg alone will make the company more efficient.

Tech

What happens when you press a key in your terminal?

9 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans about terminal history, escape codes and the quirks of a 40-year old standard.

Some Thoughts on Zig

5 min · v5.chriskrycho.com

Chris Krycho lists reasons people like Zig even with the lack of memory safety.

Building a Rust Mentality

4 min · slightknack.dev

Isaac Clayton about designing software with Rust's strengths in mind.

SOC2: The Screenshots Will Continue Until Security Improves

17 min · fly.io

Thomas Ptacek tells the story of implementing SOC2 at Fly.io.

Soft Deletion Probably Isn't Worth It

6 min · brandur.org

Brandur argues that soft-deletion is mostly complicating things, actually undeleting something happens very rarely.

A Little Story About the `yes` Unix Command

4 min · endler.dev

Matthias Endler tries to implement the unix yes command in an efficient way, which is more complicated than you probably thin

Improving “Extract Function” in Rust Analyzer

4 min · dorianlistens.com

Dorian Scheidt about a recent change he contributed to rust-analyzer.

How Did REST Come To Mean The Opposite of REST?

13 min · htmx.org

This article is about JSON-RPC APIs wrongly being called REST APIs nowadays and what a real REST API actually looks like.

Cutting Room Floor

Things you're allowed to do

8 min · milan.cvitkovic.net

Milan Cvitkovic has a cool list of things that you're allowed to do, but didn't know you were or didn't even think about it.

Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

8 min · chess24.com

Interesting story happening in the world of chess: Magnus Carlsen won't play another tournament after being world champion for 10 years.

Oliver Burkeman's last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life

7 min · theguardian.com

Oliver Burkeman has eight secrets to a fulfilled life.

Analyzing iOS 16 Lockdown Mode: Browser Features and Performance

11 min · sevarg.net

Russell Graves goes into detail on the new lockdown mode coming in iOS 16. TL;DR: you should enable it.

65 / Why you can’t dig Switzerland

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone — I've been sick the whole week, hope yours was better ❤️

Tweet of the Week

real rust programmers just wrap everything in an Arc<Mutex> and use async everywhere so they can pretend they are nodejs programmers
— @dildog on Twitter

Culture

As a Leader, You Own Your Communications Bubble

6 min · blog.thestoryfunnel.co

Jarie Bolander has 7 rules to improve your communication bubble as a manager.

Micromanagement vs. micro-tasks: how to set junior employees up for success in remote

4 min · slite.com

Junior engineers generally have a harder time in remote companies, this article has some tips to make it easier.

Tech

DNS Esoterica - Why you can't dig Switzerland

3 min · shkspr.mobi

Terence Eden about a weird relic in the modern dig command that prevents querying for the top-level ch domain without the trailing dot.

Property-based Testing

4 min · unzip.dev

Agam More writes about property-based testing, including recommendations for different software stacks.

How I went about learning Rust

2 min · eli.thegreenplace.net

Eli Bendersky has a list of resources that helped him learn Rust.

A Guide to the Go Garbage Collector

33 min · go.dev

There now is an official guide to the Go garbage collector including an optimization guide.

A Previous Sibling Selector

3 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen found a way to style an element depending on the element that comes after in CSS.

Async Rust: What is a runtime? Here is how tokio works under the hood

4 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour about different async runtimes in Rust and what to look out for.

Cutting Room Floor

These Eat the Rich popsicles depict one-percenters

1 min · boingboing.net

The art collective MSCHF is selling popsicles with rich people's faces on them, so you can finally eat the rich!

NASA’s Webb Produces the Most Detailed Image of the Early Universe to Date

2 min · webbtelescope.org

Very hard to miss if you've been on the internet this week.

64 / Absurd Trolley Problems

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope you find something to read below 👇🏻

Tweet of the Week

Nobody will remember:

Your salary

Your fancy title

How ‘busy’ you where

How stressed you were

How many hours you worked

People will remember:

The giant monoliths you have erected to your own majesty

Poems about the monoliths, or at least a few of the good lines

— @tcarmody on Twitter

Culture

Panel interviews don't work

6 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss on the wrong way to interview candidates: panel interviews.

The skill/experience vs. outcome curve

1 min · twitter.com

John Cutler about the skill/experience vs. outcome curve and how dependent it is on a nurturing culture.

Running an Effective Book Club at Work

4 min · ntietz.com

Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky has some great tips on how to run a book club at work.

Tech

Monitoring tiny web services

4 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans about monitoring non-production services as simple as possible.

Rust Editors to Replace TextMate 2 - The Agony of Despair

2 min · fuzzyblog.io

Scott Johnson compares lots of editors written in Rust, this is a great overview.

How to animate multiplayer cursors

6 min · liveblocks.io

Chris Nicholas wrote a great interactive blogpost about different ways to implement remote cursor movement.

What’s new in Go 1.19?

5 min · blog.carlmjohnson.net

Carl Johnson summarises the features of the upcoming Go 1.19 release.

A Pleasing Symmetry in Rust

2 min · v5.chriskrycho.com

Chris Krycho about the symmetry of Rust structs and enums.

Cutting Room Floor

Absurd Trolley Problems

neal.fun

Neal Agarwal built yet another playful website, this time about the trolley problem. Some of the statistics really surprised me!

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

35 min · theatlantic.com

Jonathan Haidt compares the recent changes in society with the biblical story of Babel, the effect of social media on democracy and what to do about it.

63 / The Death Spiral Of Bullshit

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, hope you find something of interest below 🤞🏻

Tweet of the Week

All humans implicitly understand the value of "a good stick" from a young age
— @no_goblins on Twitter

Culture

The 8 Jobs of Management

1 min · swyx.io

Shawn Wang summarises a chart by John Cutler into 8 jobs of management.

How to Structure your Product Org to Optimise for Growth

10 min · departmentofproduct.com

Jade Rubick explains different ways to build a solid structure that will reduce the usual growth pains.

The Death Spiral Of Bullshit

3 min · twitter.com

Austen Allred about the death spiral of bullshit; as companies grow often the need for buy-in grows, rewarding persuasiveness instead of building things.

Managing Remote Teams

3 min · twitter.com

Job has 20 great tips for managers of remote teams.

Tech

Write Docs Devs Love: Ten Tips To Level Up Your Tech Writing (Video)

27 min · youtube.com

Mason Egger has an amazing collection of tech writing tips, be prepared to take notes.

My Wonderful HTML Email Workflow

16 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau has a nice newsletter workflow with great tools.

Fallacies of Distributed Systems

6 min · architecturenotes.co

Mahdi Yusuf covers 8 fallacies of distributed systems and how to mitigate them.

Day in the Life of Open Source Maintenance (Video)

2 min · youtube.com

Jon Gjengset streams the everyday of an open source developer, reviewing pull requests and more.

The Windows malloc() Implementation Is A Trash Fire

5 min · erikmcclure.com

Erik McClure tries to optimise the startup time of their JIT language on Windows and dives deep into the rabbit hole of LLVM and Windows allocators.

Cutting Room Floor

Ukraine Has Exposed Russia as a Not-So-Great Power

6 min · theatlantic.com

Phillips Payson O’Brien about realists calling Russia a "great power" and how the war exposed a different reality

Life Is Not Short

10 min · dkb.show

DKB does a fictional interview with the philosopher Seneca:

The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time, which is infinitely more valuable.

62 / Making Code Faster

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Why would I pay GitHub $100/year for an AI to tell me what code to write when men do it for free?
— @captainsafia on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

DORA Metrics: the Right Answer to measuring engineering team performance

6 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about "the right way" to measure a team's performance.

Companies Using RFCs or Design Docs and Examples of These

9 min · blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Gergely Orosz shares a lot of different ways to write RFCs, including templates!

Tech

Remote development with Rust on fly.io

1 hours 10 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos describes how he build a ridiculously over-engineered remote dev environment on fly.io.

Start all of your commands with a comma

2 min · rhodesmill.org

Brandon Rhodes shares one trick to deal with namespace collision for custom scripts: Prefix them with a comma.

Nine Rules for Elegant Rust Library APIs

16 min · towardsdatascience.com

Carl M. Kadie shares 9 great tips for writing Rust libraries.

What is `Box` and how is it different from `String` in Rust?

13 min · mahdi.blog

Mahdi Dibaiee explains how different types are stored on the stack or heap in Rust.

Making Code Faster

9 min · tbray.org

Tim Bray about benchmarking and profiling best practices in Go.

Cutting Room Floor

The Personal Brand Is Dead

7 min · theatlantic.com

Kaitlyn Tiffany explains why Gen Z would rather be anonymous online.

My 40-liter backpack travel guide

12 min · vitalik.ca

Vitalik Buterin lists all the things they have in their 40-liter backpack.

writing one sentence per line

1 min · sive.rs

Derek Sivers explains the advantages of writing one sentence per line.

Reasons to Tour By Bicycle

2 min · kk.org

Kevin Kelly has a list of benefits for bike tours (in America).

Why Does a Hard Workout Make You Less Hungry?

6 min · nytimes.com

Gretchen Reynolds about the discovery of a new molecule that defines the appetite after a workout.

Prestige Writing

4 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about good storytelling and why it is simile to magic.

61 / Shipping to Production

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how's it going? It's super hot in Germany today (37 °C or 99 °F) so I'm going to get ice cream soon 🍦

Tweet of the Week

I heard some JavaScript developers saying that hydration is pure overhead, so I decided to stop drinking water.
— @markdalgleish on Twitter

Culture

Overthinking

4 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour about the perfect thinking-to-doing ratio and why it's important not to hold yourself back with decisions that can be fixed later.

Advice for Engineering Managers Who Want to Climb the Ladder

29 min · charity.wtf

Charity about what makes a good engineering director (a manager managing engineering managers).

Tech

What Makes a Great Developer Experience?

4 min · leerob.io

Lee Robinson has some great thoughts on developer experience.

Shipping to Production

20 min · blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Gergely Orosz about different ways to ship to production and the cost/benefit of various safeguards.

Am I on the IndieWeb Yet?

3 min · miriamsuzanne.com

Miriam Suzanne about slow social, the indie web and open wishes. Thanks, Jan!

Into the Future with IntoFuture - Improving Rust Async Ergonomics

8 min · refaktory.net

Christoph Herzog showcases the IntoFuture trait that's coming to stable Rust soon.

Visualizing My Blog’s Internal Links

4 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen visualises all internal links on their blogs in a nice graph. Thanks, Jan!

Ask HN: Best dev tool pitches of all time?

news.ycombinator.com

Shawn Wang asks HN about the best dev tool pitches, the answers are great!

Best practices for inclusive CLIs

10 min · seirdy.one

Rohan Kumar has a "living article" about dos and don'ts to build inclusive CLIs.

Cutting Room Floor

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

4 min · slate.com

Mario Vittone about the signs of drowning people — watch out for these when going swimming this summer.

The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy

4 min · theatlantic.com

Derek Thompson about the end of "Millennial Consumer Subsidy", where VC-backed companies (like Uber, Peloton or WeWork) loose money for every purchase in exchange for growth.

60 / Optimism Shapes Reality

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going? 🙌🏻

Tweet of the Week

The future of web looks bright.

Web 1
Web 2
Web 3
Web 5
Web 95
Web 98
Web 2000
Web XP
Web Vista
Web 7
Web 8
Web 10
Web 11
— @elyktrix on Twitter

Culture

Optimism Shapes Reality

5 min · alexw.substack.com

Alexandr Wang talks about setting goals that ensure speedy execution.

Motivating Developers to Care About Documentation

5 min · getdx.com

Paulo André gets interviewed about documentation and the difference in compliance and commitment.

We're Living in a Commitment Crisis

2 min · twitter.com

David Perell explains that people who think they'll be happy without obligations will rather feel "adrift" and empty. "To achieve anything meaningful, you have to make a commitment."

Tech

Tools for better thinking

untools.co

Adam Amran has collected some great thinking tools.

Data Race Patterns in Go

14 min · eng.uber.com

Milind Chabbi and Murali Krishna Ramanathan describe a system in place at Uber that detected over 2000 data races in 6 months in their Go codebase.

Cargo Culting Software Engineering Practices

7 min · isthisit.nz

Logan Mortimer talks summarises Kent Beck's (author of Extreme Programming) points in an interview from 2019 about software engineering practices.

Cutting Room Floor

A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world

1 min · theguardian.com

Tom Lamont writes a very interesting piece about the life of vending machines, their origins and how we humans perceive them.

We Can Do Better Than “Same, But Electric”

6 min · climateer.substack.com

Steve explains why electric vehicles should rethink more and not make the same compromises as vehicles with combustion engines.

The different kinds of notes

16 min · baldurbjarnason.com

Baldur Bjarnason about different kinds of notes and what goals and concepts exist to help you find your perfect setup. Thanks, Ted!

59 / Programming in the Apocalypse

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how's it going? Hope you enjoy this weeks curation 🤞🏻

Tweet of the Week

Writing is not a result of thinking.
Writing is thinking.
— @fortelabs on Twitter

Culture

5 Tier Problem Hierarchy

1 min · typeshare.co

KimSia Sim divides all problems into five levels and uses them to allocate their energy.

What Is Negative Engineering?

10 min · future.com

Jeremiah Lowin about designing for failure and resilience and how it can impact your productivity.

Tech

Programming in the Apocalypse

15 min · matduggan.com

Mathew Duggan paints the picture of a software engineer in 2050, dealing with missing parts (due to floods and other catastrophes), spotty internet and other issues caused by the climate crisis.

(async) Rust doesn't have to be hard

10 min · itsallaboutthebit.com

Piotr Sarnacki answers to a blogpost which argues that Rust is (too) hard and explains why it's actually not that hard in most cases for application developers.

The Story of Heroku

9 min · leerob.io

Lee Robinson tells the story of early Heroku, which was a pioneer in DX, and introduces some modern alternatives.

The Radiating Circles of DX Architecture

6 min · dx.tips

Shawn Wang introduces methods to create an end-to-end developer journey. If you care about DX, this is a must-read.

The curse of strong typing

1 hours 9 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos dives deep (as usual) into Rust type issues he's encountered and how to get out of them.

How fast are Linux pipes anyway?

26 min · mazzo.li

Francesco optimises a write and read program to achieve a throughput of over 60 GiB/s over a pipe.

How to Store an SSH Key on a Yubikey

3 min · xeiaso.net

Xe shares how to store an SSH key on a YubiKey.

Interactive Typography Tutorial

4 min · learnui.design

A well-made interactive page to learn typography design. It even works on mobile!

Cutting Room Floor

Hard Drive Apologizes to Elon Musk for Dunking on Him Too Hard

3 min · hard-drive.net

The Hard Drive team summarises the hilarious Twitter conversation with the evil rocket man.

Installing a payphone in my house

8 min · bert.org

Bertrand Fan bought an old payphone and installed it in his office, then connected it to an old phone in the kids room.

58 / Not My Job

Sun, 29 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, hope you week has been good! Enjoy this weeks curation ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

oh you're a designer? name one layer
— @darylginn on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

Not My Job

5 min · blog.dbsmasher.com

Silvia Botros about the important difference of "filling the gap" and "being glue" as a senior+ engineer.

Tech

Learnings from 5 years of tech startup code audits

7 min · kenkantzer.com

Ken Kantzer shares insights from over 20 audits he did at software companies.

Building Faster

8 min · ellenchisa.substack.com

Ellen Chisa shares 8 things engineers can do in early-stage startups to increase velocity.

We Already Have Go 2

56 min · xeiaso.net

Xe talks about the biggest changes that happened in Go and argues todays Go (1.18) could very well be Go 2.

brickbots/framedeck

2 min · github.com

Richard built a custom Cyberdeck based on the Framework mainboard.

Cutting Room Floor

The Day I Became Friends with a Robot

1 min · tristrumtuttle.medium.com

Tristrum Tuttle made an AI write a story about AI and then used an AI to illustrate it.

Laurence Tratt: Using a "Proper" Camera as a Webcam

15 min · tratt.net

Laurence Tratt writes a create guide on what to look out for when using a real camera as a webcam.

Ten tips for Time Lords

26 min · bitfieldconsulting.com

John Arundel shares some great time management tips. I'm going to start setting up deep work slots next week.

What Bullets Do To Bodies (2017)

33 min · highline.huffingtonpost.com

Jason Fagone follows Dr. Amy Goldberg in of a trauma unit in a hospital in North Philadelphia to talk about gunshot victims and what it takes to reduce them (you already know it).

57 / Honesty is a professional behavior

Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hi ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Get A Good Night’s Sleep by Uninstalling PagerDuty and Throwing Your Phone Into A Lake
— @Luna on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

Honesty is a professional behavior

9 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss explains in which cases it’s okay to lie at work.

Management @ PlanetScale

1 min · gist.github.com

Sam Lambert, the CEO of PlanetScale talks about the management values at his company.

Tech

Firefox Addons for 2022

1 min · smcleod.net

Sam McLeod has some great recommendations for Firefox adding that improve privacy and make your life easier.

Math on GitHub: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

5 min · nschloe.github.io

Nico Schlömer about all the little details in GitHub’s new math support.

The Surprising Truth About Pixels and Accessibility

18 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau explains when to use rem, px or em in CSS with a great mental model.

Rust Ergonomics: Default and From

7 min · elijahcaine.me

Elijah Caine M. Voigt about Rust ergonomics and why it’s better to be explicit than „sprinkle magic automatically“.

Rust: A Critical Retrospective

21 min · bunniestudios.com

Bunnie reflects on using Rust for an OS they’ve been writing, especially the supply chain attack surface.

Golang Diaries: Generics

5 min · tbray.org

Tim Bray describes some footguns when working with Go generics.

Cutting Room Floor

The wonder material graphene may have found its killer app

13 min · economist.com

Graphene can make concrete 30 % stronger, allowing the use of less material, especially cement and therefore producing greener concrete. But that’s not the only promising use-case for the relatively new material.

The Crypto Crash Feels Amazing

5 min · theatlantic.com

Ian Bogost describes the feelings of an outsider to the crypto bubble, including relief and schadenfreude.

56 / I Miss Heroku’s DevEx

Sun, 15 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Shout out to everyone who periodically drags everything on their desktop into a folder called "Stuff".
— @seldo on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

Models are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise

1 min · jchyip.medium.com

Jason Yip about the importance of asking why instead of just copying.

Tech

I Miss Heroku's DevEx

6 min · christine.website

Xe about the magical DX of Heroku and why nothing comes close to it.

Things I don't want to do to grow my side project

4 min · wagslane.dev

Lane Wagner about things they don't want to do (but might have to) when working on their side project, i.e. taxes, content creation and marketing.

Alex Cornell on Twitter

2 min · twitter.com

Alex Cornell Tweets about design details of the new podcast player in the Substack app. Thanks, Jan!

Rust

Our Experience Porting the YJIT Ruby Compiler to Rust

16 min · shopify.engineering

Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert shares the experience her team made porting a compiler to Rust, including FFI and recursive trees.

Demystifying Rust Embedded HAL Split and Constrain Methods

10 min · apollolabsblog.hashnode.dev

Omar Hiari about hardware abstraction layers and other Embedded Rust concepts.

Earn $200K by fuzzing for a weekend

41 min · secret.club

addison explains how they found critical bugs by fuzzing (using Rust) and earned $200k.

Go

Safer Enums

2 min · npf.io

Nate Finch introduces a safer way to do enums in Go, using structs instead of string or int.

testscript, a hidden gem the Go team kept locked away — go get it #002

4 min · encore.dev

Aandré Erikkson about a new way to write tests in Go that involve files.

Of Ducks and Go Interface Misuse

7 min · 8thlight.com

Bart Bucknill about the correct way to use Interfaces in Go.

Changing one character wildly improved our application's performance

5 min · segment.com

Kevin Burke tells the story of how changing the operator in a sort function led to a 3.3x speed increase.

Cutting Room Floor

Researchers Pinpoint Reason Infants Die From SIDS

2 min · biospace.com

Researches finally found the reason for SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome): It's a brain enzyme deficiency.

why do you waste so much time on the internet.

1 min · zan.bearblog.dev

zanlog about spending time on social media and the struggle to get away

Cautionary Tales from Cryptoland

11 min · hbr.org

Thomas Stackpole interviews Molly White, the creator of Web3 is going just great on her views on the topic.

55 / An easy mode for Rust

Sun, 08 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hi ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

"It's only a pointer if it's from the Provenance region of RAM, otherwise it's just a sparkling usize."
— @impraxical on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

The transmogrifying power of reflection

2 min · cenizal.com

CJ Cenizal about the powers of self-reflection.

Having Career Conversations

7 min · softwareonthebrain.com

Joe Lynch about career conversations and how to build trust.

Rust

An O(1) Generic Blog Post About Rust

9 min · peterkos.me

Peter Kos about const generics in Rust, with a bit of background on implementation history.

Building a static site generator in 100 lines of Rust

4 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour built a SSG in 100 lines of Rust and explains how.

Creating an Easy Mode for Rust

5 min · tim.mcnamara.nz

Tim McNamara has a few suggestions for flattening the Rust learning curve.

Rust is hard, yes, but does it matter?

3 min · jmmv.dev

Julio Merino argues that in a typical software project using Rust isn't really harder than other languages.

Tech

Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it (like on Linux)

1 min · mmazzarolo.com

Matteo shares a neat trick to improve the ability to move windows on macOS.

Changing Tires at 100mph: A Guide to Zero Downtime Migrations

4 min · kiranrao.ca

Kiran Rao shares a great guide to zero-downtime migrations.

I won free load testing

30 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos describes the experience and countermeasure of the recent DDOS attacks on his website.

Cutting Room Floor

'We Can Only Be Enemies'

14 min · theatlantic.com

Peter Pomerantsev about the bizarre story of a Ukrainian family living with Russian soldiers talking about their views and values.

Hot Banana

3 min · what-if.xkcd.com

Randall Munroe about radioactive bananas and how many it'd take to power a house.

Mechanical Watch

33 min · ciechanow.ski

If you ever wondered how a mechanical watch works, Bartosz Ciechanowski has yet another interactive blog post that‘s got you covered.

making friends on the internet

5 min · jon.bo

Jonathan Borichevskiy explains how to make friends on the internet.

54 / Crimes with Go Generics

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hello, how was your week? It's finally starting to feel like spring in Germany 🌳

Tweet of the Week

Remember like two weeks ago when Elon was like “tell me how to end world hunger and I’ll do it” and then he bought twitter for $44 billion instead
— @rivbutcher on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

11 Principles of Engineering Management

4 min · acjay.com

Alan Johnson share some great principles to look for when being an engineering manager.

How to Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code

5 min · freakingrectangle.com

The author explains why having people read code is superior to writing silly functions or drawing on whiteboards.

Engineering

Crimes with Go Generics

10 min · christine.website

Thanks to Go generics we finally have more ways to commit Go crimes! Xe Iaso has a few examples of Go code where generics might actually not be the best choice.

I want off Mr. Golang's Wild Ride

33 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos writes about all the things about Go that frustrate him.

Experience Report: 6 months of Go

31 min · typesanitizer.com

Varun Gandhi describes their experience of using Go for 6 months now and surfaces a lot of absurd behaviour.

What a better Rust would look like

3 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour imagines a programming language better than Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

Admit It, You Won't Quit Twitter Because Of Elon Musk

2 min · buzzfeednews.com

Katie Notopoulos writes an honest dourness of why you probably won't quit Twitter, even if it now belongs to the bad rocket man. Thanks, Jan!

Review: Playdate earns its $179 price tag with cute design, memorable games

4 min · arstechnica.com

Sam Machkovech reviews the Playdate, of which apparently the first batch is being sent out right now!

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known

10 min · kk.org

Kevin Kelly turns 70 and shares 103 great bits of advice. I love these lists!

How I put my whole life into a single database · Felix Krause

1 min · krausefx.com

Felix Krause made a public website with all kinds of data about him, including location, planned travel, local weather, mood, etc.

Cool Things People Do With Their Blogs

3 min · brainbaking.com

Wouter Groeneveld has collected a list of cool things you can do with your website.

Researchers develop a paper-thin loudspeaker

5 min · news.mit.edu

Adam Zewe about a paper-thin loudspeaker design that could be used for 3D sound or noise cancelling an airplane cockpit.

53 / Generation C

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

me: what do you know about atoms?

friend: very little

me: besides that
— @Browtweaten on Twitter

Culture

Making operational work more visible

7 min · github.com

Lorin Hochstein about the "you build it, you run it" method at Netflix and how to make operational work more visible using meetings and pair programming.

Imposter Syndrome

5 min · blog.rust-lang.org

Jane Lusby about imposter syndrome, especially in the Rust project.

11 Promises from a Manager

12 min · linkedin.com

Matthew Rechs shares a list of promises as a manager. Thanks Jan & Lukas

Tech

Shawn Wang / swyx

16 min · infraeng.dev

Will Larson interviews Shawn Wang about developer experience and the overlap with infrastructure.

The Front-End Developer's Guide to the Terminal

29 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau has written a guide to the terminal, aimed at frontend developers that have no experience with it.

Go Developer Survey 2021 Results - The Go Programming Language

9 min · go.dev

Alice Merrick shares the results of the 2021 Go Developer Survey — always interesting to get these insights.

Rust traits and dependency injection

7 min · jmmv.dev

Julio Merino about different approaches to dependency injection in Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

Generation C

1 min · seths.blog

Seth Godin has a proposal for naming the next generation.

Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’

9 min · washingtonpost.com

Taylor Lorenz about algospeak and filter algorithms in social networks that change the human language.

I'm a security engineer and I still almost got scammed

8 min · robertheaton.com

Robert Heaton almost got scammed and shares the tactics that were applied in the scam.

Tips for Reading the Room Before a Meeting or Presentation

9 min · hbr.org

Rebecca Knight shares some tipps how to read a room, including do's and don'ts.

My upgrade to 25 Gbit/s Fiber To The Home

13 min · michael.stapelberg.ch

Michael Stapelberg about his super fast 25 Gbit/a connection and what it took to make it work.

52 / The Return of the 90s Web

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, happy easter, hope your week has been good 🐣

Tweet of the Week

Enough content creators, now time for content destroyers.
— @jackcorrbit on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

The Return of the 90s Web

5 min · mxb.dev

Max Böck about techniques of the 90s web that are now coming back. Who wants to start a webring with me?

Getting credit for invisible work at the Staff+ level

5 min · leaddev.com

Ryan Harter about invisible work (planning, thrown-away prototypes, etc.).

Software Engineering

Futures Nostalgia

36 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos dives deep into async Rust HTTP code using hyper, tower and a few Rust crimes.

When To Use Generics

8 min · go.dev

Ian Lance Taylor shares some tips on when to use Go generics and when to prefer interface types or reflection.

What I learned from making a DNS client in Rust

8 min · blog.adamchalmers.com

Adam Chalmers shares what libraries he used and what he learned implementing a DNS client in Rust.

A list of new(ish) command line tools

1 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans has a lot of new CLI utilities to spice up your terminal.

Unikernels 🏍️

5 min · unzip.dev

Agam More about the pros, cons and applications of unikernels.

Cutting Room Floor

Find the Place You Love. Then Move There.

6 min · theatlantic.com

Arthur C. Brooks about topophilia, the love for a place.

Fast fashion: European Union reveals fast fashion crackdown

2 min · bbc.com

Helen Briggs about a new EU strategy that requires clothing producers to create longer-lasting and easier-to-repair products.

The Complete Argument Against Crypto

15 min · stephendiehl.com

Stephen Diel about the technical and societal impacts of crypto.

Crypto is like an evil genie that only fulfills neoliberal grifters' darkest wishes.

Find More Ways to Be an Outsider

6 min · theatlantic.com

Arthur C. Brooks about the advantages of being an outsider.

An Ode to Apple's Hide My Email

3 min · empty.coffee

Mike Lapidakis explains why he loves Hide My Email.

51 / Advantages of monorepos

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week?

Tweet of the Week

I love the phrase "have a good one" because it's just like, whatever you're having — a Monday, an existential crisis, an incredible mushroom trip, a murder fantasy — I hope it's good.
— @roseveleth on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

The Cone Model for Teams' Support Network

5 min · betterprogramming.pub

Shy Alter shares a model of team structure that relies on many-to-many relations instead of one-to-one.

Software Engineering

That simple script is still someone's bad day

3 min · rachelbythebay.com

Rachel about shell scripts that work unexpectedly, even with pipe fail enabled. There's a follow-up: You can do a lot with an empty file.

How To Seamlessly Authenticate to Grafana using Tailscale

4 min · tailscale.com

Xe Iaso explains how to set up Grafana so it derives your identity from the Tailscale session.

Advantages of monorepos

8 min · danluu.com

Dan Luu lists 5 advantages of monorepos. He even lists 10 other posts discussing monorepos, so this is a great place to dig deep.

Rust's fearless concurrency in practice

4 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour shares an excerpt from his book demonstrating one Rust's strengths: Fearless concurrency.

Nix Flakes: Exposing and using NixOS Modules

17 min · christine.website

Xe Iaso continues their series of Nix and Nix flakes to talk about NixOS modules, functions that take the current state of a system and return things to add to the state of the system.

Per-project Postgres

5 min · jamey.thesharps.us

Jamey Sharp shares a way to have a per-project Postgres, using direnv.

Surprising Weak-Ref Implementations: Swift, Obj-C, C++, Rust, and Vale

11 min · verdagon.dev

Evan Ovadia compares how different typed languages to weak references and explains the reasons behind Vales implementation.

Cutting Form Floor

How to stop China and the US going to war

17 min · theguardian.com

Kevin Rudd about the growing tensions between China and the US and what he thinks is necessary to prevent a war in this decade.

Elizabeth Warren's plan to break up Big Everything

13 min · vox.com

Sara Morrison about Elisabeth Warren's new bill:

The Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act, doesn’t just break up Big Tech: It breaks up Big Everything, and it prevents companies from getting too big in the future.

50 / How To Do Less

Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how's it going? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

everyone in crypto is either a liar or being lied to
— @can on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

How To Do Less

10 min · alexturek.com

Alex Turek about setting priorities and getting out of the trap of too much to do (and staying out).

Software Engineering

Generics can make your Go code slower

30 min · planetscale.com

Vicent Marti from Planetscale talks about the inner workings of generics in Go 1.18 and what it means for performance. If you use Go but don't really care about the low-level stuff, scroll way down and check out DOs and DON'Ts.

How Go Mitigates Supply Chain Attacks

6 min · go.dev

Filippo Valsorda lists ways how Go works against supply chain attacks.

How we used Go 1.18 when designing our Identifiers

9 min · encore.dev

Dominic Black compares different identifier technologies (think auto-incrementing database ids or UUIDs) and describes a real-world use of Go generics.

When not to use Rust?

1 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour lists four scenarios where Rust might not be the best choice.

Why Rust mutexes look like they do

20 min · cliffle.com

Cliff L. Biffle compares traditional C mutexes to Rust mutexes and explains why the Rust version looks the way it does.

Cutting Room Floor

Web3.0: A Libertarian Dystopia (Video)

1 min · youtu.be

münecat talks about cryptocurrencies, NFTs, web3 and everything else related to the children of the coin. It's long but it's definitely worth it. Thanks, Jan!

Ben McKenzie Would Like a Word With the Crypto Bros

9 min · nytimes.com

David Yaffe-Bellany about the actor known from O.C. (and Gotham) Ben McKenzie and his experience with crypto.

Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 2

7 min · bjango.com

Marc Edwards compares external displays for Macs including factors like pixel density, colour space and more.

Machu Picchu: Inca site ‘has gone by wrong name for over 100 years’

2 min · theguardian.com

Machu Picchu was apparently called "Huayna Picchu" by the Inca, according to a paper by Peruvian historian and US archaeologist.

Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

5 min · catfox.life

Cat fox about the things they love about macOS, coming from Linux.

49 / The opportunity will find you

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

me, age 7: I want to be an adult so I can eat as many pickles as I want
me, age 30, eating pickles: haha hell yeah
— @hauntedlatte on Twitter

Favourites

Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart?

7 min · newyorker.com

Kyle Chayka about the iPhone camera system and how it takes away creative control to produce sometimes unrealistic images.

What you give up when moving into engineering management

9 min · stackoverflow.blog

Karl Hughes about the differences and difficulties that individual contributors face when they move into management.

Culture

The opportunity will find you

3 min · thoughtbot.com

Matheus Richard about opportunity and pro-active action.

Why is it so hard to buy things that work well?

31 min · danluu.com

Dan Luu about they reasons why people buy things and how it affects the decisions companies take.

Mongo's decision to loudly repeat demonstrably bogus performance claims and making demonstrably false correctness claims was, from a business standpoint, superior to focusing on actual correctness and performance

Software Engineering

Metastable Failures in Distributed Systems (paper, 2021)

22 min · sigops.org

Nathan Bronson, Abutalib Aghayev, Aleksey Charapko and Timothy Zhu describe how distributed systems can enter a state in which it can only recover with a strong corrective push and how to detect them.

I built a receipt printer for GitHub issues

6 min · aschmelyun.com

Andrew Schmelyun prints a physical receipt for every GitHub issue on one of their repositories.

An Introduction To Generics

11 min · go.dev

Robert Griesemer and Ian Lance Taylor wrote an introduction to Go generics on the Go blog, based on a 30-minute talk at GopherCon 2021.

Probably Are Gonna Need It: Application Security Edition (2021)

7 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about the opposite of YAGNI (You Ain’t Gonna Need It) for application security.

Cutting Room Floor

The (Edited) Latecomers Guide to Crypto

1 hours 10 min · mollywhite.net

Molly White and 14+ cryptocurrency researchers and critics have annotated the New York Times article, which reads more like an ad.

Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped. (2021)

7 min · technologyreview.com

Will Douglas Heaven about the shortcomings of almost all AI systems developed to detect covid and how a bit more co-operation could have made a huge difference.

Many unwittingly used a data set that contained chest scans of children who did not have covid as their examples of what non-covid cases looked like. But as a result, the AIs learned to identify kids, not covid.

Web3 is centralized (and inefficient!)

5 min · neelc.org

Neel Chauhan about decentralised systems like Tor or Folding@Home and why "Blockchain Sucks, Period".

48 / My Favorite npm Commit

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope your week was great ✨

Tweet of the Week

malloc "may" return null in the same way that I "may" get my act together someday and act like a real adult
— @zhuowei auf Twitter on Twitter

Culture

How to pay professional maintainers

4 min · words.filippo.io

Filippo Valsorda shares some advice to companies that want to sponsor individual open-source maintainers.

7 Mental Models For Great Engineering Leadership

9 min · athenian.com

Eiso Kant explains where to spend your time at different stages of the company, based on 7 models.

Software Engineering

My Favorite npm Commit

1 min · blog.izs.me

isaacs about their favourite npm commit: Setting the time to the 26th October of 1985 to work around a tar limitation. If that date doesn't ring a bell, it's a reference to the Back To The Future movies.

Introduction to Apple Silicon

18 min · github.com

The developers behind Asahi Linux explain how Apple Silicon (i.e. M1 and later) works.

Chapter 1. Why You Should Give it a Try

6 min · nixos.org

A Nix Pill that explains the raison d'être of Nix.

Full-Bleed Layout Using CSS Grid

8 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau about a good way to implement a full-bleed layout in CSS.

Writing out large arrays in Go: binary.Write is inefficient for large arrays

1 min · lemire.me

Daniel Lemire about ways to make Go's binary.Write method faster or more efficient.

What does it mean to listen on a port?

10 min · paulbutler.org

Paul Butler explores the concept of ports on an operating system via a fictional story.

Panics vs cancellation, part 1

6 min · smallcultfollowing.com

Niko Matsakis about panics and cancellation in async Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

War-prompted Disaster Planning

2 min · jefftk.com

Jeff Kaufman about the steps he takes to be ready for disaster.

Down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole

11 min · fowlie.github.io

Fowlie shares their experience with different mechanical keyboards and layouts.

Smart Home components

12 min · michael.stapelberg.ch

Michael Stapelberg about some smart home components he used and how he likes them.

How our free plan stays free

8 min · tailscale.com

Avery Pennarun explains the pricing model of Tailscale and why the free customers are not the product.

A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard

19 min · morrick.me

Riccardo Mori compares Mac OS X Snow Leopard to macOS Big Sur from a visual standpoint.

47 / Falsify yourself

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone and welcome to all the new subscribers, hope you like it here! ❤️

Tweet of the Week

i love how americans are like "if anyone is in michigan let's meet up" where michigan is like the size of my entire country
— @thingskatedid on Twitter on Twitter

Favourites

Request coalescing in async Rust

54 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos dives deep into caching responses for concurrent requests in Rust.

The Code Review Pyramid

3 min · morling.dev

Gunnar Morling built a great chart of questions to ask in different layers of code reviews.

My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

4 min · alexanderell.is

Alex Ellis about their inability to resist the temptation of social networks with infinite scrolling.

When I think about how I feel after 30 minutes of letting my mind wander on a walk versus 30 minutes of scrolling, it’s night and day.

Culture

Falsify yourself

6 min · iamjonas.me

Jonas Lundberg about the importance of falsifying your ideas and plans before presenting them to others.

Pair Programming Antipatterns

3 min · tuple.app

A great list of things to improve your pair programming skills.

Software Engineering

Bugs in Hello World

3 min · blog.sunfishcode.online

sunfishcode about a bug that appears in most Hello World programs: Handling a full disk.

Some tiny personal programs I've written

4 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans writes about tiny programs that solve a specific problem and they're great.

Still No Consensus On Testing Private Methods

10 min · jesseduffield.com

Jesse Duffield explains different viewpoints on testing private methods.

Nix Flakes: Packages and How to Use Them

23 min · christine.website

Xe Iaso continues their Nix flake series to talk about packaging.

You Don't Know Gif

18 min · blog.darrien.dev

Darrien explores the gif binary representation and some edge cases, like a true-color gif.

Cutting Room Floor

The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)

5 min · sive.rs

Derek Sivers about the time in 2003 after the initial iTunes launch, when Apple wanted to add music from independent labels and Steve Jobs blocking their access.

How Significant Is Russia’s Partial Ban from SWIFT?

3 min · newyorker.com

Sheelah Kolhatkar about the limited effects of the SWIFT ban.

How to Build a Bike Generator with Control Panel

41 min · lowtechmagazine.com

The Low-tech Magazine explains how they built a bike generator that can charge USB-devices, power a lamp or even a workstation.

Putting ideas into words

4 min · paulgraham.com

Paul Graham about the importance to write down ideas to really know their flaws.

You're using email wrong

3 min · 2023.arne.me

I wrote a blogpost about an email strategy that puts humans first.

46 / Editing stuff in prod

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how's it going?

Tweet of the Week

I remember when email was useful. Now it's all

Confirm your email address for Slorp

Thank you for creating a Slorp account

Slorp is now BONTO!

BONTO!'s terms and conditions have changed.

BONTO! misses you.

BONTO! is shutting down.

— @Smingleigh on Twitter

Favourites

GPS

40 min · ciechanow.ski

Bartosz Ciechanowski built an amazing interactive blogpost that explains how GPS works and why.

How "Engineering-Driven" Leads to "Engineering-Supremacy"

9 min · charity.wtf

Charity explains how Honeycomb went from an engineering-driven company to hiring people with actual degrees and experience in other fields (Sales, Marketing, etc.) and the dangers that come with being engineering-driven.

We DO NOT hire engineers who talk shit about sales and marketing.

Culture

Times are great for programmers now. How does it end?

3 min · vaghetti.dev

Douglas Vaghetti explores different ways programming work could evolve.

Editing stuff in prod

3 min · rachelbythebay.com

Rachel about the bad practice of editing your production deployment and when it can be necessary.

Software Engineering

SPAs were a mistake

2 min · gomakethings.com

Chris Ferdinandi about the complexity SPAs introduce and how your browser already does that for you with a traditional website.

5 things you don't need Javascript for

8 min · lexoral.com

Steven Waterman lists five things that you can and should do in CSS instead of JavaScript.

Stop Storing Secrets In Environment Variables!

2 min · blog.forcesunseen.com

Matt Hamilton argues that instead of storing secrets in environment variables you should use ephemeral file system mounts.

Reasons for servers to support IPv6

7 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans has 12 reasons why you would want to support IPv6.

Rust's Rules Are Made to Be Broken

6 min · blog.warp.dev

Chuck Pierce explains four Rust concepts that "break" existing rules.

Inspecting Web Views in macOS

1 min · blog.jim-nielsen.com

Jim Nielsen about a way to inspect system web views on macOS (e.g. System Settings). Thanks, Jan!

Cutting Room Floor

Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.

6 min · reproof.app

Matthew Guay about the importance of writing things down to close open loops and why, in their opinion, second brain systems don't work. Thanks, Michal!

The Ultra-Introverts Who Live Nocturnally

15 min · theatlantic.com

Faith Hill has talked to nocturnals, people that sleep during daytime and enjoy the dark, calm night and discusses its effects on their mental health. Thanks, Mom!

45 / I have no capslock and I must scream

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope you're okay.

Tweet of the Week

why rebase when you can just throw your computer out the window
— @NayaJaczorowski on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

Support open source that you use by paying the maintainers to talk to your team

3 min · simonwillison.net

Simon Willison has found a great way to pay open source maintainers if regular sponsorship doesn't work.

I have no capslock and I must scream

2 min · memex.marginalia.nu

This short-story of reducing a product to the point where it's unusable reads almost as a poem.

A career ending mistake

12 min · bitfieldconsulting.com

John Arundel about the importance of planning your career, and different paths (in tech).

Software Engineering

Nix Flakes: an Introduction

22 min · christine.website

Xe Iaso has written a great introduction to Nix Flakes.

Retrofitting Async/Await in Go 1.18

3 min · csgrinding.xyz

Bob Fang explores how async/await could look like in Go 1.18 and why it can improve ergonomics.

How Bitwarden encrypts your data

3 min · huy.rocks

Huy describes how Bitwarden encryption works and why you don't have to re-encrypt items when you change the main password.

Cutting Room Floor

There Is Nothing Dumber Than War

6 min · designmom.substack.com

Gabrielle Stanley Blair about the "unprovoked, unnecessary, and unreasonable" attack on Ukraine and why you should be furious about it.

My Smart Home 2021

12 min · jorisroovers.com

Joris Roovers describes their Home Assistant setup and the changes they made recently.

Be anonymous

4 min · kg.dev

Kash shares some thoughts about different levels of anonymity.

Find You: Building a stealth AirTag clone

11 min · positive.security

Fabian Bräunlein shows ways to circumvent Apples security measures to prevent tracking other people using an AirTag.

44 / A Rust match made in hell

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how was you week? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

I love all the Winter Olympic events, sliding downhill on a piece of wood, sliding downhill on 2 pieces of wood, sliding downhill IN a piece of wood. All amazing.
— @TheAndrewNadeau on Twitter on Twitter

Favourites

Building an iPod for 2022

5 min · ellie.wtf

Ellie Huxtable bought an iPod Video 5.5, replaced the HDD and front plate and flashed a custom operating system. I love this, in fact I have an iPod Video lying around here just waiting for something like this!

A Rust match made in hell

25 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos about a footgun in Rust that took him about a week to fix.

Culture

That Wild Ask A Manager Story

2 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about the things to do to prevent fraud in the hiring process.

Interview Questions to Ask Your Interviewer

3 min · daveceddia.com

Mark Erikson has a list of 32 questions you can ask your interviewer.

Software Engineering

The foundations of end-to-end encryption: Domain separation (with code example in Rust)

2 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour explains domain separation for end-to-end encryption.

Announcing Tokio Metrics 0.1

2 min · tokio.rs

Carl Lerche & Jack Wrenn announce Tokio Metrics, a tool that provides instrumentation for the Tokio scheduler at runtime (Tokio Console is the local debugging equivalent).

File-driven testing in Go

3 min · eli.thegreenplace.net

Eli Bendersky about file-driven testing, where you have a .input and a .golden file and programatically compare them in your tests.

How does UTF-8 turn “😂” into “F09F9882”?

6 min · sethmlarson.dev

Seth Michael Larson explains the UTF-8 code point layout with diagrams.

Cutting Room Floor

Why you can't rebuild Wikipedia with crypto

11 min · platformer.news

Casey Newton interviews Molly White, the creator of Web3 Is Going Just Great about the so-called web3, cryptocurrencies and Wikipedia.

Building a PiSight

1 min · rknight.me

Robb Knight built a Pi Zero into an old iSight camera. What a great way to upcycle!

43 / Why You Should Start a Blog Right Now

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey hey, how was your week? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Extremely niche #msdos
— @voxel on Twitter

Favourites

Some mistakes Rust doesn't catch

39 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos writes another great post about the safeties built into Rust in comparison with other languages and then goes into the things Rust won't catch for you as of right now.

What's coming in Go 1.18

8 min · lwn.net

In case you ignored all previous posts (to be fair, they were mostly about generics), here's a summary of everything that will come to Go 1.18, by Vegard Stikbakke.

Culture

Why You Should Start a Blog Right Now

19 min · guzey.com

Alexey Guzey has a list of reasons why you should start a blog right now. Thanks, Jan!

My Seatbelt Rule for Judgment

1 min · dannyguo.com

Danny Guo has a personal rule when it comes to judgement:

My willingness to judge something should be proportional to how much I know about it.

In Defence of the Boring Web

3 min · bastian.rieck.me

Bastian Rieck defends the boring web (without JavaScript, cookie banners or subscribe now popups) and I'm there for it.

Software Engineering

Downcasting in Rust

10 min · ysantos.com

Y. D. Santos about the technical background of downcasting in Rust.

Async Rust in 2022

5 min · blog.rust-lang.org

Niko Matsakis and Tyler Mandry talk about their vision of async Rust (on behalf of the Async Working Group) and what will happen this year.

Top 10 web hacking techniques of 2021

6 min · portswigger.net

James Kettle has a list of current web hacking techniques that you should defend against.

In defense of complicated programming languages

13 min · viralinstruction.com

Jakob compares complicated and seemingly simple programming languages and tells us why he prefers the openly complicated.

Cutting Room Floor

Unlearning Perfectionism

10 min · arunkprasad.com

Arun Prasad about perfectionism and better alternatives.

Why Is Matt Damon Shilling for Crypto?

6 min · nytimes.com

Jody Rosen about Matt Damon, Snoop Dogg and other celebrities:

The ad holds out the promise of “fortune,” but what it’s really selling is danger, the dark and desperate thrills of precarity itself — because, after all, what else have we got? You could call it truth in advertising.

42 / Settings are not a design failure

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, hope you're doing good! ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

security engineer: we're going to start moving towards zero trust

developer: oh cool. how does that work

security engineer: [narrows eyes] why do you ask
— @ctrlshifti on Twitter

Culture

Settings are not a design failure

3 min · linear.app

Adrien Griveau explains how to "make settings sexy again" and the importance of settings to create a comfortable environment

The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones

6 min · benkuhn.net

Ben Kuhn did regular one-on-ones with their partner to talk about the projects she's working on and shares the topics they talked about and what made the biggest impact.

Software Engineering

Yes, I can connect to a DB in CSS

7 min · leemeichin.com

mrlee wrote a page that can open an SQLite db and query it from CSS. Thanks, Eric!

Building host implementations for WebAssembly interfaces

7 min · radu-matei.com

Radu Matti about wit-binding-wasmtime, a Bytecode Alliance project that generates bindings for your WASM host and module and how to use it.

Diving Deep: implied bounds and variance

8 min · lcnr.de

lcnr goes in depth to explain lifetime elusion with implied bounds and variance in Rust.

Async Rust vs RTOS showdown!

13 min · tweedegolf.nl

Dion compares Embassy (Rust) with FreeRTOS (C) on a microcontroller.

Cutting Room Floor

The Worst Day of Mark Zuckerberg’s Reign

4 min · nymag.com

Kevin T. Dugan about the day Facebook Meta stock lost 25 % and the reasons why. Thanks, Jan!

The last design you'll ever make

8 min · interactionmagic.com

George Cave about two things that make your physical product last as long as possible: Design for re-assembly and accessible documentation.

The five Levels of Hype

4 min · johannesklingebiel.de

Johannes Klingbebiel about the phenomenon of "hype".

Beware the FOMO Bullies of Technology

8 min · theatlantic.com

Charlie Warzel about the FOMO that techbros try to create for the so-called "web3" and the often-shared David Letterman clip (YouTube) where he interviews Bill Gates about the internet.

41 / Contemplating calendars

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how's it going? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

truly blessed day
— @tmandry on Twitter

Favourites

Contemplating calendars

5 min · devonzuegel.com

Devon Zuegel has an interesting way to use their calendar and seems to get way more out of it than the average person.

Culture

The complexity of knowledge and skill transfer

7 min · danluu.com

Dan Luu about the importance of experience in the software engineering field.

@lilykonings on Twitter

1 min · twitter.com

Lily Konings has five questions to ask your future manager back in your interview.

Technical Feasibility

9 min · biodigitaljazz.tech

Tim Reynolds describes the job of a tech lead, arguing that feasibility should be the central theme.

The Biggest Mistake I See Engineers Make

4 min · thezbook.com

Zach Lloyd about the problem with engineers working on a big or important project without involving their team.

Software Engineering

Go is about to get a whole lot faster

2 min · dominictobias.medium.com

Dominic Tobias ported a library to new generics and the benchmarks show a 2-3x increase.

Tutorial: Getting started with generics

10 min · go.dev

The official Go tutorial to get started with generics, one of the most exciting (and controversal) features ever for the language.

I'm porting tsc to Go

2 min · kdy1.dev

DongYoon Kang explains why he chose to rewrite the TypeScript Type Checker in Go instead of Rust.

Hosting my static sites with nginx

6 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans explains her infrastructure and deployment setup for the websites they host.

The Curse of NixOS

7 min · blog.wesleyac.com

Wesley Aptekar-Cassels about NixOS and it's flaws, but also why he can't go back.

Prefer to change the code rather than write a workaround

3 min · catern.com

Spencer Baugh makes the point that unless you have a valid excuse (which you most likely don't have), you should fix code instead of working around it.

Cutting Room Floor

A Science Experiment: published!

11 min · berthub.eu

Bert Hubert has a list of tips to get your paper published in a journal as an outsider.

Yet Another Hot Take on “Folders versus Tags”

18 min · eleanorkonik.com

Eleanor Konik prefers folders to tags in his slip-box.

Buy Things, Not Experiences

3 min · write.as

Harold Lee in an argument against the trend to "buy experiences, not things".

nft-to-silly-jpeg

github.com

Kevin Wong created a browser extension that replaces the term "nft" with "silly jpeg" and I'm here for it.

40 / The Web of 2042

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hi hi ✌🏻

Books

This week I read How to Take Smart Notes by Söhnke Ahrens (2017), and I really enjoyed it.

</div>

The author explains the Zettelkasten system by Niklas Luhmann, who had a physical box with DIN A6 (4.1×5.8 inches for my imperial friends) cards, each of which had contained one note and was densely linked and clustered to other notes. This technique allowed him to collect a lot of knowledge with their context and discover topics to write about.

Having all your ideas and knowledge embedded into this system frees your mind to think of new things and put clusters of notes into context.

And if you're a writer that uses this concept, you never have to start with a blank piece of paper. Always read with the slip-box in mind, collect notes first with arguments, counter-arguments and research. A topic to write about will present itself over time.

I really recommend reading this book (no matter if you write or not), it has given me lots of ideas to improve my personal second-brain/slip-box/Zettelkasten.

If you know German, make sure to subscribe to my podcast Sprachnachrichten, where we talked about this book, the episode will be published next week. <br style="clear: both;">

Tweet of the Week

Here's a great chess tip for beginners, I never knew the reason behind that rule!!
— @KungFuChessOrg on Twitter

Culture

The Web of 2042

3 min · buttondown.email

Robin Rendle talks about his predictions for the web in 10 years. Thanks, Jan!

Are We Really Engineers?

16 min · hillelwayne.com

Hillel Wayne asked 17 crossovers that used to be traditional engineers and then worked in software to answer the question: Is building software engineering?

Software Engineering

What I'd like to see in Go 2.0

10 min · sethvargo.com

Seth Vargo has a wish-list for Go 2.0 and I agree with all of the points.

NixOS: The Ultimate Dev Environment?

29 min · myme.no

Martin Myrseth guides you through a Nix (+ Flakes) setup for a real project he's been working on which consists of a frontend and a backend component.

Hello Mac OS X Tiger

5 min · bunn.dev

Fernando Bunn takes you back to 2005 and guides you through the setup of an Xcode project on Mac OS X Tiger.

Some ways DNS can break

5 min · jvns.ca

Julia Evans lists 15 common issues caused by DNS.

Cutting Room Floor

Halting Progress and Happy Accidents: How mRNA Vaccines Were Made

24 min · nytimes.com

Gina Kolata and Benjamin Mueller explain the long history of mRNA and how it went from being overlooked to the most important defence against COVID. Thanks, Mum!

Is Sharing a COVID Test a Bad Idea, or Just a Gross One?

5 min · theatlantic.com

Rachel Gutman about pool-testing at home (using one swab).

The UK Has A Voyeuristic New Propaganda Campaign Against Encryption

4 min · techdirt.com

Riana Pfefferkorn about the new anti-encryption and anti-privacy campaign of the UK.

I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone.

4 min · reddit.com/r/antiwork

Throwaway59724 explains how he automated his job at a mid-size lawfirm.

Roblox Return to Service 10/28-10/31 2021

21 min · blog.roblox.com

Daniel Sturman and colleagues explain the background horror story of the 73 hour outage at Roblox.

39 / Who Uses To-Do Lists?

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone, how was your week? ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

continually amused by blockchain proponents who are fundamentally unable to understand that there exist people for whom money is not the #1 motivator
— @molly0xFFF on Twitter

Favourites

Async Rust in Practice: Performance, Pitfalls, Profiling

7 min · scylladb.com

Piotr Sarna explains the process of debugging concurrency issues in a Rust library and their solutions.

Who Uses To-Do Lists?

2 min · arunkprasad.com

Arun Prasad makes a counter-argument to the "to-do lists don't work" posts by listing some successful or influential people and how they use(d) them.

Culture

@nathanbarry on Twitter

3 min · twitter.com

Nathan Barry shares 10 tipps on connecting remote teams. I love the private team stories podcast idea, maybe I'll start something like this.

Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued

28 min · kalzumeus.com

Patrick McKenzie teaches you the basics of not-sucking at salary negotiations and the importance of it.

Software Engineering

How We Saved 70K Cores Across 30 Mission-Critical Services

6 min · eng.uber.com

Cristian Velazquez about the impact tuning the Go garbage collector GOGC had on services at Uber.

Hotwire in the real world.

15 min · finnian.io

Finnian Anderson explains how their team did HTML-over-the-wire using Turbo/Hotwire and Rails and their experience with it.

A Small Guide for Naming Stuff in Front-end Code

9 min · blog.frankmtaylor.com

Frank M Taylor has a comprehensive guide on naming things in frontend projects.

Rust

Rust in 2022

9 min · ncameron.org

Nick Cameron (who was on the Rust core team) about the things Rust should focus on in 2022.

Rust 2030 Christmas list: Inout methods

4 min · poignardazur.github.io

Olivier Faure about a feature they wish Rust had: inout methods, which inherit the mutability status of self for the return type to get rid of get_x_mut-methods.

How Bevy uses Rust traits for labeling

4 min · deterministic.space

Pascal Hertleif explains how the Rust game engine Bevy uses traits to label systems in a type-safe manner.

Rust Async and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

8 min · kevinhoffman.medium.com

Kevin Hoffmann about their frustrating experience when getting started with the internals of async Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

Oh, 2022!

9 min · antipope.org

Charlie Stross about his predictions of 2022 and how he "clearly wasn't pessimistic enough". Make sure you're in a good mood before reading this, it's a bit grim.

The Case Against Crypto

8 min · stephendiehl.com

Stephen Diehl talks about some counterpoints against the cryptocurrency-bubble, namely how they don't solve a real problem, they aren't actually currencies and more.

Web3 | No Mercy / No Malice

9 min · profgalloway.com

Scott Galloway about the reality of the so-called web3:

Web3 has different-colored hair, but the same DNA as earlier web paradigms, which decentralized services at an unprecedented scale to centralize wealth and influence at an unprecedented scale. [...] So far, web3 is web2.01.

I Quit!

5 min · keygen.sh

Zeke Gabrielse quit caffeine after 15 years and tells you about the cold-turkey experience and how it turned out.

38 / Function Colors Are Rusty

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, hope you had a good week! We've had some snow in the last days, which was a ton of fun ☃️

Tweet of the Week

Eleanor Rigby
Loved NFTs and was shocked when one day she logged on
"All my apes gone"
— @DialHForHagai on Twitter

Favourites

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen

15 min · theguardian.com

An edited extract from the Book Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari about the effects social media and being always-on can have on your attention.

In Defense of Async: Function Colors Are Rusty

12 min · thecodedmessage.com

Jimmy Hartzell makes a good point on the old debate of colored functions, why they are good and why there should be more colors.

Computers as I used to love them

7 min · tonsky.me

Nikita compares Syncthing to Dropbox and talks about the beauty in simple software (without bloat or upselling).

Culture

I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months.

12 min · benadam.me

Ben Adam explains four implications of Amazons operating model (a federation of smaller companies) and why it didn't work for him. Thanks, Lukas!

How Signal is playing with fire

5 min · platformer.news

Casey Newton about how Signal implementing untraceable payments puts end-to-end encryption at risk, as it conflicts with anti-money laundering and KYC (Know Your Client) laws.

Wrap Up and Q&A

10 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss wraps up their series on work sample tests and answer a few questions that came up. If you're in hiring or interested in the topic, make sure to check out the whole series, can't recommend it enough.

Software Engineering

Minecraft as a k8s admin tool

2 min · eric-jadi.medium.com

Eric Jadi created a Kubernetes admin tool as a Minecraft mod. Thanks, Eric!

Upgrading Executable on the Fly

5 min · nginx.org

A blogpost about Unix signals and how nginx upgrades itself on the fly.

The 7 Code Review Manners

2 min · reutsharabani.medium.com

Reut Sharabani collected some great points on writing good code reviews.

Rust

Improved portability and performance 🦀

8 min · pngquant.org

Kornel about his experience in rewriting libimagequantfrom C to Rust.

Porting Rust's std to rustix

4 min · blog.sunfishcode.online

sunfishcode ported Rust's std (partially) to Rustix, a system-call wrapper library, improving readability and taking the first step towards Rust on Linux without libc.

Ranges and suffering

17 min · kaylynn.gay

Kaylynn dives deep into the inner workings of Rust ranges (for example (0..9)) and how they could be improved.

12 Rust Tips and Tricks you might not know yet

4 min · federicoterzi.com

Federico Terzi wrote a clickbaity title but has collected some useful things for your Rust code (like defer!).

An Introduction To Session-based Authentication In Rust

1 hours 32 min · lpalmieri.com

Luca Palmieri in Chapter 10 of their Book from Zero To Production In Rust talks about setting up a web server and session-based authentication in Rust.

Dyn async traits, part 7: a design emerges?

8 min · smallcultfollowing.com

Niko Matsakis shares the goals and design ideas of building dyn async traits into Rust (making the amazing #[async_trait] redundant).

Children of the Coin

Web3 is Bullshit

16 min · stephendiehl.com

Moxie Marlinspike wrote two dApps and shares their first impression of the so-called web3, noting that most of it is not as decentralised as some want to portrait it.

In Response to My first impressions of web3

9 min · skerritt.blog

Bee wrote a response to the post above and defends the so-called web3, saying that the centralised services will go away.

Cutting Room Floor

How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life

8 min · theatlantic.com

Julie Beck about the history of hobbies and how it can build a personal brand, teach you a skill but can also miss their goal to de-stress and relax.

How to design a house to last for 1000 years (part III)

15 min · constructionphysics.substack.com

Brian Potter explains the choices he'd make to design a house to last for 1000 years (spoiler: unreinforced concrete and lots of steel).

Scan of the Month: Game Boy Compendium

2 min · scanofthemonth.com

If you've ever wondered what a Game Boy looked on the inside, this page has CT scans of the original GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DSi and the Nintendo Switch, with useful information about various components.

37 / Preventing Log4j with Capabilities

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome back and a happy new year! 🎇

Tweet of the Week

Ah, nice to be on holiday, at Christmas, where I can forget about what happ…
— @mgdm on Twitter

Favourites

Generics facilitators in Go

2 min · rakyll.org

Jaana Dogan introduces a workaround for Go's lack of parameterised methods.

Preventing Log4j with Capabilities

7 min · justinpombrio.net

Justin Pombrio about the concept of capabilities and how they could've prevented the Log4j disaster. I want this in every language!

Why is my Rust build so slow?

32 min · fasterthanli.me

Amos dives deep into Rust build-times and the impact of splitting a project up into crates or using a different linker.

Culture

Sustainable creativity in a world without copyright

4 min · drewdevault.com

Drew DeVault paints a picture of a world without copyright and how artists will benefit from it.

The Gift of It's Your Problem Now

12 min · apenwarr.ca

apenwarr describes the complicated relationship of paying for open source and how paying for gifts does not work.

Labs & Simulation Environments

8 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss describes best practices when doing lab or simulation environment work sample tests.

Software Engineering

Contexts and capabilities in Rust

9 min · tmandry.gitlab.io

Tyler Mandry describes their idea of having contexts and capabilities in Rust.

Three Minor Features in Go 1.18

4 min · blog.carlmjohnson.net

Carl M. Johnson about three minor features in Go 1.18: runtime/debug.BuildInfo, http.MaxBytesHandler and strings.Cut.

Trying Out Generics in Go

6 min · markphelps.me

Mark Phelps tried out the new generics in Go 1.18 and has a few tips to get started.

Tools You Should Know About: nix-shell

8 min · cuddly-octo-palm-tree.com

Gary Verhaegen explains nix-shell with concrete examples on how to get started.

Fix the unit test and open a giant hole everywhere

4 min · rachelbythebay.com

Rachel tells the story of a small change in a commonly used internal package lead to severe security issues.

My negative views on Rust

4 min · chrisdone.com

This newsletter has a lot of (pro) Rust news, so here's a piece by Chris Done that shows their negative views on the language.

Cutting Room Floor

(mac)OStalgia

3 min · swallowmygraphicdesign.com

Michael Feeney built a Mac OS 9 UI Kit for Figma and proceeded to imagine Spotify, Slack, Chrome and more in a Mac OS 9 look.

Hacking Stories #2 - The virus that came in from the cold

5 min · kerkour.com

Another fictional hacking story by Sylvain Kerkour about a revengeful person who hacks their previous employer using a supply chain attack.

Five Thousand Stories

4 min · randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about the personal value of things and their new custom-made bookshelf.

36 / Why not Rust?

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, thanks for your feedback on the changes last week, I did some more tweaking this week.

This is the last issue of Arne's Weekly for this year, I'll be back on Jan 2. Happy holidays! 🎅

Tweet of the Week

Omicron presents a tremendous challenge: do you go out and risk getting covid or stay on the internet and risk hearing people talk about NFTs
— @jasonschreier on Twitter

Favourites

How not to learn Rust

13 min · dystroy.org

Denys Séguret has a list of 11 mistakes people do when learning Rust. I definitely did some of them and I wish I had something like this to guide me.

I was stuck on a side project for 5 years. Here’s how I finished it.

4 min · cassandraxia.com

Cassandra Xia tells the story of their "shed", a side project that consumed a big chunk of your life that you no longer enjoys. They also have a few points to watch out for and make "cake" instead.

Web3 is Bullshit

5 min · stephendiehl.com

Stephen Diehl takes a look at the problems of the so-called Web3 including compute, bandwidth and storage:

That anyone could consider this to be the computational backbone to the new global internet is beyond laughable.

Culture

Marketing Is Scary for a Solo Developer

3 min · raumet.com

Rauno Metsa about the importance and impact of marketing for solo developers and the fear of exposure.

The internet (and many large companies) are dependent on software maintained by people in their spare time, for free. This may not be sustainable

5 min · andrewducker.dreamwidth.org

Simon Tatham (the creator of PuTTY) about the relationship between corporations and open-source maintainers and how he deals with this kind of pressure.

'Reverse' Code Review

7 min · jacobian.org

Another post in the Work Sample Tests series by Jacob Kaplan-Moss discusses reverse code review, where the candidate reviews your code and in which cases this approach is useful.

On commercial forks FOSS projects

3 min · drewdevault.com

Drew DeVault about the illegal fork of OBS Studio (which is GPL-licensed) into TikTok streaming software (which is closed-source) and the general relationship of free software and corporations.

Software Engineering

Introduction to WebAssembly components

10 min · radu-matei.com

Radu introduces the recent component proposal for WASM and provides a hands-on example with Rust and C++.

Why Not Rust?

7 min · matklad.github.io

Aleksey Kladov has collected a few reasons to not choose Rust for a project.

Test Your Product on a Crappy Laptop

4 min · css-tricks.com

If you're building consumer software, Eric Bailey argues you should test it on a "craptop" to make sure it's accessible to these devices instead of testing on your high-end dev machine.

Tools

New tool: Mess with DNS!

13 min · jvns.ca

Half introduction, half behind-the-scenes of the new tool by Julia Evans, Mess with DNS, which helps newcomers discover the pitfalls and quirks of DNS resolution and caching.

Introducing Zed—A lightning-fast, collaborative code editor written in Rust.

4 min · zed.dev

A team of people previously working at Atom or Tree-sitter are building a native, efficient code editor with real-time collaboration and I'm hyped.

Announcing Tokio Console 0.1

4 min · tokio.rs

Eliza Weisman announces the latest Tokio project: A tool to gain insight into the inner workings of async Rust code (think top but for your application). It even detects warnings and possible bugs!

Web3 is going just great

web3isgoinggreat.com

If you still think the so-called Web3 is a good idea, check out this timeline-of-horrors by Molly White. And if you want a quick laugh, someone already complained that they copied a JPEG.

Cutting Room Floor

My 2021 review

13 min · blog.dornea.nu

Victor Dorneanu reviews the books they read, the habits they developed and the tools they used for productivity.

Holiday Book Recommendations for Engineering Managers, Software Engineers and Product Managers

17 min · blog.pragmaticengineer.com

A list of over 100 books with quotes and recommendations, collected by Gergely Orosz.

35 / Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hi, how are you? I'm trying something new with the layout of this newsletter, let me know what you think✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Keanu Reeves' reaction to this question about NFTs is priceless. [Video]
— Carnage4Life on Twitter

Favourites

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

9 min · jamesclear.com

James Clear:

The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

The UX of LEGO Interface Panels

7 min · interactionmagic.com

George Cave:

These iconic, low-resolution designs are the perfect tool to learn the basics of physical interface design. Armed with 52 different bricks, let's see what they can teach us about the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.

Culture

The Poverty of Compromise

2 min · nav.al

Naval:

We shouldn’t be surprised when theory Z proves not to work, because neither person ever thought it was the best idea in the first place.

5 Signs It's Time to Quit Your Job

6 min · cate.blog

Cate:

Regardless, your current job is just a moment in your overall career, and it’s worth thinking critically about whether it’s serving your longer term career goals. So, here are five reasons why you might want to think about quitting.

Software Engineering

Branchless Git

3 min · benjamincongdon.me

Ben Congdon:

One Git usage pattern that I think is underused is the “branchless” workflow. The idea here is pretty intuitive if you’ve used trunk-based development: there’s just one “main” branch that everything gets merged into. No feature branches, no release branches, no hotfix branches.

Leaving MySQL

3 min · blog.sesse.net

Steinar H. Gunderson:

[...] something that I've been saying both internally and externally for the last five years (although never on a stage—which explains why I've been staying away from stages talking about MySQL): MySQL is a pretty poor database, and you should strongly consider using Postgres instead.1

Small Wins for Accessibility and Resilience

3 min · callumhart.com

Callum Hart:

The change in HTML structure has not impacted the UI (what you see) in anyway, however from an accessibility and graceful degradation standpoint there is a difference. Primarily, the newer markup offers a better screen reader experience, and secondly the user-agent styles for when CSS is unavailable is somewhat improved.

Hacking Go compiler to add a new keyword

5 min · avi.im

Avinash Sajjanshetty:

I wanted to make a tiny change to get familiar with the toolchain. First, I decided to add an alias loop for for. However, the compiler codebase already uses keyword loop as a label at many places, so I changed my alias. Also, instead of for, I decided to add an alias for var. The rest of this post summarises how I accomplished this and my learnings along the way.

The big idea around unikernels

7 min · changelog.com

Ian Eyberg:

The big idea around unikernels, at least when it comes to the cloud, is that if the datacenter is the computer, then the cloud is its operating system — so let’s start treating it like one and stop micro-managing thousands of individual ones.

log4j: between a rock and a hard place

7 min · crawshaw.io

David Crawshaw:

I am often heard to say that I love backwards compatibility, and that it is underrated. But what exactly do I mean? I don't mean that whenever I upgrade a dependency, I expect zero side effects. If a library function gets two times faster in an upgrade, that is a change in behavior that might break my software! [...] So let me back up and describe what is important.

Rust

Portable and interoperable async Rust

6 min · ncameron.org

Nick Cameron:

To run async Rust code, you need an async runtime. Currently however, choosing a runtime locks you into a subset of the ecosystem. Library crates and tools are often restricted to a specific runtime; changing runtime is difficult. Mixing and matching libraries from different runtime ecosystems requires running multiple executors and using imperfect compatibility layers. For programmers getting started with async Rust, finding and choosing a runtime is a source of friction.

Rust support

1 min · lkml.org

Miguel Ojeda:

This is the patch series (v2) to add support for Rust as a second language to the Linux kernel.

Higher Kinded Types in Rust

5 min · hugopeters.me

Hugo Peters:

Time to mess around with some feature that caught my eye: associated types. Is rust the best of haskell and c++ together? Let's see if we can make our beloved Functor, Applicative, Monad hierarchy is this new world.

How to encrypt a file in Rust (Using streaming AEAD encryption)

3 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour:

In the first part of this post, we are going to see how to encrypt small files that can fit in memory, and, in the second part, how to use our AEAD cipher in stream mode to encrypt larger files or data streams that can’t be encrypted in one operation.

Cutting Room Floor

My digital stack

3 min · fruechtl.me

Jan Früchtl:

Here is a collection of the digital tools I use on a near daily basis.

One decade later: Minecraft world generation is finally interesting again

4 min · dither8.xyz

dither8:

I decided to look at 1.18 (the "Caves and Cliffs" update), and I am very impressed. It's now common to find interesting looking hills in most biomes now. And if you search (about 3-5 minutes of flying), you can come across significant mountain ranges, all looks good. I also noticed a few new biomes for these mountains as well, some of them quite lush.

Scan of the Month: AirPods Evolution

1 min · scanofthemonth.com

When we peel the skin back, we find that Apple completely redesigned AirPods with each major generation. Let’s explore with the help of some crispy CT scans.

Birds Aren’t Real, or Are They? Inside a Gen Z Conspiracy Theory.

8 min · nytimes.com

Taylor Lorenz:

“Birds Aren’t Real is not a shallow satire of conspiracies from the outside. It is from the deep inside,” he said. “A lot of people in our generation feel the lunacy in all this, and Birds Aren’t Real has been a way for people to process that.”

Re-thinking electronic mail

6 min · liw.fi

Lars Wirzenius:

There are many problems with the existing Internet email system, such as spam, scam, surveillance, insecurity, centralization, and complexity. The problems are starting to outweigh the benefits of the system. Fixing the problems by evolving the current system seems overwhelmingly difficult. This essay examines some solutions to the problems on the assumption that a completely new, parallel email system can be built.

34 / Inspiring Resilience

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hope you're doing okay ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

If you wondering what's Tech Twitter been up to lately.
— @tweevtran on Twitter

Favourites

100 years of whatever this will be

6 min · apenwarr.ca

apenwarr about distributed systems in the real world and how they all eventually go awry if they're not regulated.

I will pay you cash to delete your npm module

1 min · drewdevault.com

Drew DeVault will pay NPM maintainers cash to delete their module, the more weekly downloads the more cache. The idea is to disrupt and question the crazy JavaScript ecosystem.

Surprise! Inspiring Resilience

31 min · youtu.be

Cory Watson looks at real-world resilience at the Navy, NASA and others to find inspiration for the tech sector.

Culture

Pair Programming

6 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss wrote another part of his series on work sample tests and explains how to structure and evaluate pair-programming tests.

Being Opinionated Is Good And Bad.

3 min · mastrolinux.medium.com

Luca Cipriani about being opinionated vs. holding back.

Will Nix Overtake Docker?

6 min · blog.replit.com

Connor Brewster compares Nix and Docker and explains each system's advantages.

Software Engineering

Rusty Typestates - Starting Out

6 min · rustype.github.io

José Duarte explains Rust type states and why they're so useful.

Hubris and Humility

1 min · oxide.computer

Bryan Cantrill introduces an all-Rust system for embedded devices (Hubris) and a debugger for it (Humility).

42 things I learned from building a production database

6 min · maheshba.bitbucket.io

Mahesh Balakrishnan has a bunch of things to look out for when building a production database.

Project Zero: This shouldn't have happened: A vulnerability postmortem

8 min · googleprojectzero.blogspot.com

Tavis Ormandy describes a vulnerability in Network Security Services that should've been discovered but wasn't.

Understanding Zero-knowledge proofs through illustrated examples

7 min · blog.goodaudience.com

Nicole Zhu shows three examples of zero-knowledge proofs.

Don't Make My Mistakes: Common Infrastructure Errors I've Made

9 min · matduggan.com

Mathew Duggan shares 6 mistakes he did in infrastructure and what you should do instead.

4x smaller, 50x faster

4 min · blog.asciinema.org

Marcin Kulik tells a nice optimisation story how they massively sped up their web-player by replacing ClojureScript with Rust WASM + slim JavaScript framework.

Cutting Room Floor

The Science of Mind Reading

22 min · newyorker.com

James Somers describes new ideas of "mind-reading" by looking at the brain area that activates.

MacBook Air M1: the best laptop?

7 min · michael.stapelberg.ch

Michael Stapelberg has a different look on the MacBook Air M1 including things like Linux, Emacs and NEO keyboard layouts.

LEGO has designed a set that can't be taken apart

2 min · brickset.com

Huw describes a part-combination used in the new AT-AT that can't be taken apart without damaging parts.

The Insecurity Industry

7 min · edwardsnowden.substack.com

Edward Snowden about private-sector "criminal services" (like NSO).

Instagram is Facebook now

2 min · embedded.substack.com

Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci talk about Instagrams recent changes in the algorithm and how it continues to become the next Boomer-Facebook.

How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation

22 min · technologyreview.com

Karen Hao uncovers how Facebook and Google actively fund actors that publish dangerous fake-news via their ad network.

The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere

28 min · newyorker.com

Ed Caesar tells the story how he spent three days of his vacation alone in the wilderness without a mobile phone.

33 / Just a job

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hi hi, please enjoy this weeks curation 📚

Tweet of the Week

every morning is a beautiful day to mute a new word about crypto
— @ow on Twitter

Favourites

Technology I’m thankful for

5 min · crawshaw.io

David Crawshaw about technologies that he's thankful for this turkey day.

Faster software through register based calling

9 min · menno.io

Menno Finlay-Smits explains the new register based calling in Go 1.17 and why it makes your code 5-10 % faster.

Stack-safety for free?

6 min · hurryabit.github.io

Martin Huschenbett introduces an approach for stack-safe recursion using generators.

Culture

Just a job

3 min · amyhupe.co.uk

Amy Hupe about the perception of work. Thanks, Jan!

Coding "Homework"

8 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss has s some concrete advise on how to structure the coding homework when hiring tech workers.

Your Board of Directors is Probably Going to Fire You

17 min · reactionwheel.net

Jerry Neumann shares some advice when it comes to handling a board of investors as the CEO of a startup.

Software Engineering

Batteries included with Emacs

6 min · karthinks.com

Karthik Chikmagalur showcases some builtin features and modes of Emacs.

Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

5 min · zachholman.com

Zach Holman about six technologies from the nineties (remember marquee?).

OOPS writeups

9 min · surfingcomplexity.blog

Lorin Hochstein shows the structure of their OOPS write-ups and shows some examples.

Notes On [the Rust] Module System

5 min · matklad.github.io

Aleksey Kladov shares some thoughts about the Rust module system.

Merge Queues with Bors

8 min · kflansburg.com

Kevin Flansburg explains Bors, the bot that guarantees that the main branch will always compile by pipelining and testing branches.

Modern CSS Reset / Global Styles

10 min · joshwcomeau.com

Josh Comeau has a simple CSS reset and goes into details for each rule. Did you know the *-selector is not slow after all?

Linux

Fun with Red Star OS

5 min · sizeofcat.ru

sizeof(cat) boots North Korea's operating system, the apps installed and the general vibe.

Flatpak Is Not the Future

25 min · ludocode.com

Nicholas Fraser about the rust of Flatpak and it's many downsides (first of all, bloat).

The Operator Pattern in Nomad

7 min · andydote.co.uk

Andy Dote applies the Operator Pattern from Kubernetes to Monad.

NixOS: Headless Home Assistant VM

8 min · myme.no

Martin Myrseth set up a Home Assistant VM on NixOS and explains the configuration and pitfalls.

How to Learn Nix

ianthehenry.com

Ian Henry has a guide on Nix, hoping to improve the documentation by showing misunderstandings and frustrations. I'm not done yet but I remember having some of the same questions when starting to look into this.

Cutting Room Floor

Facebook's Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girl

10 min · theatlantic.com

Jonathan Haidt about the damage social media is causing, especially to teen girls.

A Cure for Type 1 Diabetes? For One Man, It Seems to Have Worked. - The New York Times

9 min · nytimes.com

Gina Kolata about a possible cure of Type 1 Diabetes.

NASA's Planetary-Defense Mission Is on Its Way to an Asteroid

6 min · theatlantic.com

Marina Koren about the preparations we take to be able to prevent an asteroid impact on Earth.

32 / Individuals matter

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope you're doing okay ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Families don't typically fire their members.
Families don't interview for new members.
Families don't have promotions, KPIs and OKRs.

Your company is not "just one big family." Implying otherwise is deceitful and manipulative. This is ultimately a professional context.
— @KittyGiraudel on Twitter

Favourites

Individuals matter

11 min · danluu.com

Dan Luu about the non-fungibility (ugh) of people in an organisation and why companies are not Sim City.

10 years of... whatever this has been

9 min · apenwarr.ca

apenwarr revisits a ten-year-old article where they predicted the development of blockchain technologies. Thanks, Jan

Scan of the Month

3 min · scanofthemonth.com

If you ever wanted to know what a CT scan of a Lego figure looks like, check this out.

Culture

A Framework for Good Work Sample Tests: Eight Rules for Fair Tests

14 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss continues the series on work sample tests and has collected eight rules that make them good and useful.

How to Influence Attitudes on your Team for Better Results

3 min · biodigitaljazz.tech

Tim Reynolds explains how the attitude of a single person can impact a teams performance and motivation.

Stop requiring specific technology experience for senior-plus engineers

2 min · mikemcquaid.com

Mike McQuaid argues there should be less focus on the expertise on a specific technology when hiring senior(-plus) engineers.

Compensation, rationality and the project/person fit

13 min · yosefk.com

Yossi Kreinin about fair compensation and why sometimes people quit even if they're worse off afterwards.

Software Engineering

Why Emacs: Redux

6 min · batsov.com

Bozhidar Batsov explains their reasons to use Emacs in 2021.

How I helped build a profitable MVP over a weekend

3 min · mzrn.sh

Giorgi Mez tells the story of building an MVP in a weekend and how B2B applications often don't need polish.

Backdooring Rust crates for fun and profit

7 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour does a threat analysis of the Rust crates system.

One of these JPEGs is not like the other

5 min · blog.benjojo.co.uk

Ben Cox about the joys of JPEG decoding in software and hardware.

Cutting Room Floor

Why staring at screens is making your eyeballs elongate – and how to stop it

6 min · theguardian.com

Adam Popescu about myopia and how it's often caused by long screen-time. If you don't read this, at least consider the 20-20-20 model: “Every 20 minutes, look at a distance 20 feet away, for 20 seconds”.

Hacking Ham Radio for Texting

5 min · spectrum.ieee.org

Dale Thomas built a texting interface for VHF handheld radios.

Notes on Web3

6 min · society.robinsloan.com

Robin Sloan has some notes that explain why some people like Web3. Thanks, Jan

Porting Doom to an nRF52840-based USB Bluetooth-LE Dongle

50 min · next-hack.com

next-hack has a detailed story of how they ported Doom to a USB-Dongle. Make sure to watch he video at the end! Thanks, Eric

@that_mc on Twitter

2 min · twitter.com

Mack is a bus operator and rates the bus scene of the movie Shang-Chi in a hilarious way.

How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim

18 min · castel.dev

Gilles Castel shares the Vim setup that allows them to keep up with the lecture while writing latex equations.

31 / Don’t be spooky

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope your week has been good. Enjoy this weeks issue ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

cows are very calm considering the whole floor is food
— @KeetPotato on Twitter on Twitter

Favourites

The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them

10 min · nytimes.com

Emma Goldberg about the generational frictions since Gen Z (born 1997-2012) showed up in the workplace and the disruptions they bring. Thanks, Jan!

Culturally transmitted skills and values

17 min · danluu.com

Dan Luu about the way company culture is influencing people and how the cultural transmission of values and skills is an underrated part of choosing a job.

Don’t be spooky

1 min · therealadam.com

Adam Keys highlights the importance of context when arranging a call (or meet-up) and the mind games that can happen without context.

Culture

@sama on Twitter

1 min · twitter.com

Sam Altman about status vs. substance.

This project will only take 2 hours

6 min · web.eecs.utk.edu

Austin Z. Henley explains how easy it is to underestimate the complexity of a project using a real example.

Introduction to Work Sample Tests

5 min · jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about the necessity and advantages of work sample tests.

Finding Your Swagger

8 min · kevinyien.com

Kevin Yien about the time they lost their swagger and how they regained it.

Software Engineering

An oral history of Bank Python

15 min · calpaterson.com

Cal Paterson gives some insights on the bizarre Python-based system in a major bank.

Hacking Stories #1 - The Evil Twin

5 min · kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour wrote a short fictional story about a realistic hacking scenario.

It's Time to Get Hyped About Const Generics in Rust

5 min · nora.codes

Leonora Tindall about some use-cases of const generics in Rust.

Make your monorepo feel small with Git’s sparse index

20 min · github.blog

Derrick Stolee dives deep into Git to explain a feature the Git Fundamentals team at GitHub developed called sparse index.

Rust Iterator Items An exploration of syntax

10 min · estebank.github.io

Esteban Kuber dives deep into Iterators in Rust and how their creation could be simplified.

Practical HTTP Header Smuggling: Sneaking Past Reverse Proxies to Attack AWS and Beyond

14 min · intruder.io

Daniel Thatcher explains header smuggling and talks about some real-world attacks.

Rust data structures with circular references

12 min · eli.thegreenplace.net

Eli Bendersky compares thee techniques of implementing circular references in Rust: Rc, handles and unsafe.

How Nix and NixOS Get So Close to Perfect

17 min · youtu.be

Xe about some Nix and NixOS issues and how it could improve (documentation is a big one).

Twelve Years of Go

4 min · go.dev

Russ Cox summarises the last year and gives an outlook on what's coming in 2022.

Cutting Room Floor

The Dueling Ideas That Will Define the 21st Century

9 min · theatlantic.com

Uri Friedman about strategic competition vs. intervulnerability and how the world could work together in crisis.

Why is Excalidraw so fucking good?

3 min · offbyone.us

Zeke Nierenberg in what is not an ad but rather an ode to a simple online drawing tool that I'm definitely trying.

How to Build a Low-tech Website?

12 min · solar.lowtechmagazine.com

Low Tech Magazines website is running on solar power only and will go offline if it's cloudy too many days in a row.

Ask HN: How do you manage your personal documents?

news.ycombinator.com

Hacker News discusses personal documents, my favourite: "I shred them all. If someone thinks I need to keep an important document that's their problem." by Kiro.

How to Remember Names Once and for All

5 min · wired.com

Lisa Kanarek shares some tipps on how to remember names.

Is Carbon Capture Here?

8 min · nytimes.com

Peter Wilson about a company that sucks CO2 out of the air and literally turns it into rocks.

Why NFTs are bad: the long version

42 min · antsstyle.medium.com

Antsstyle about the blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs. It's a long read, but it explains the problems well.

@docsquiddy on Twitter

3 min · twitter.com

doctober about the psychology of NFTs.

30 / It’s all gravy

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hi, how is your weekend going? This issue is a bit slimmer and has no favorites section as we’ve spent the weekend visiting family (I‘m writing this from the car on the way back). Hope you enjoy nonetheless!

Culture

Stop Looking For Mentors

staysaasy.com

Stay SaaSy says it‘s better to look for people that can answer your questions instead of a mentor.

It's all gravy

chris.manson.ie

Chris Manson on Open Source development and how contributors who are already going "above and beyond" should not feel pressured in any way.

Software Engineering

netaddr.IP: a new IP address type for Go

tailscale.com

Brad Fitzpatrick explains the difference approaches of replacing Go‘s net.IP, making it more performant and comparable.

Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation

blog.danslimmon.com

Dan Slimmon has great advice for automating complex tasks.

‘Trojan Source’ Bug Threatens the Security of All Code

krebsonsecurity.com

KrebsOnSecurity about a way to use Unicode to smuggle unwanted code changes into projects.

Making Emacs popular again

lwn.net

Jake Edge summarizes the internal discussion of making Emacs more approachable.

How do you tell if a problem is caused by DNS?

jvns.ca

Julia Evans has some ways to debug problems to figure out if items caused by DNS or not.

Signatures: The secret behind modern end-to-end encryption

kerkour.com

Sylvain Kerkour explains modern end-to-end-encryption.

Practical Nix Flakes

serokell.io

Alexander Bantyev wrote one of the few good introductions to Nix Flakes.

s3-credentials: a tool for creating credentials for S3 buckets

simonwillison.net

Simon Willison build a tool I‘ll definitely use in the future: Create S3 credentials with one command.

Cutting Room Floor

The Data Behind New York's Increasingly Dirty Electricity Peaks

stevegattuso.me

Steve Gattuso shows the data on New York electricity and how dirty it gets on peaks.

Alt-J: ‘Feeling unsafe is something that’s quite foreign for men’

theguardian.com

Leonie Cooper interviews alt-J who have a new album coming up in February.

Modifying my Gaggia Classic Espresso machine

calbryant.uk

Cal Bryant explains how he modded his coffee machine to achieve consistent perfect coffee.

29 / Always do Extra

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how was your week? Hope you enjoy todays issue 🎃

Tweet of the Week

boss: why were you late

me: a lake of fire swallowed the freeway

boss: i feel like you’re not considering how this affects the team
— @PleaseBeGneiss on Twitter

Favourites

Habits I've Developed for Fast + Efficient Programming

cprimozic.net

Casey Primozic has some great insights on software engineering habits.

Facebook Papers: ‘History Will Not Judge Us Kindly’

theatlantic.com

Adrienne LaFrance about the battle insight Facebook, now called Meta, when it comes to doing good for the company vs. doing good for the world.

Culture

When you're a manager, your behavior is under a microscope

jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss explains how managers need to pay much closer attention to their behaviour than peers.

Jobs that Marry Together the Most

flowingdata.com

Nathan Yau has put together a visualisation of jobs that marry together the most and it's surprisingly accurate.

Software Engineering

My ideal Rust workflow

fasterthanli.me

Amos explains their Rust build pipeline in great detail, there's a lot going on here!

RFC 3339 vs ISO 8601

ijmacd.github.io

A nice guide on the differences of the two time formats.

Waiting for apt locks without the hacky bash scripts

blog.sinjakli.co.uk

Chris Sinjakli has tips for dealing with apt locks in scripts.

Go 1.18 will embed source version information into binaries

utcc.utoronto.ca

Chris Siebenmann explains what kind of information is embedded into Go binaries.

Cutting Room Floor

A Prototype Original iPod

panic.com

Cabel Sasser introduces an early iPod prototype on the 20 year anniversary.

2021 MacBook Pro Teardown: A Glimpse at a Better Timeline

ifixit.com

Sam Goldheart summarises the work of the iFixit team to tear down the new MacBook Pro.

28 / Willingness to look stupid

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hello from sunny Germany, enjoy this weeks collection. ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

idea: Computer but good
— @barrelshifter on Twitter

Favourites

Willingness to look stupid

danluu.com

Dan Luu in an amazing post about the advantages of "looking stupid". If you only read one story today, this is it.

Software developers have stopped caring about reliability

drewdevault.com

Drew DeVault about the current state of software and how we can improve.

Culture

The First 90 Days

conordewey.com

Conor Dewey about the 30-60-90 day framework when starting at a company.

How to get useful answers to your questions

jvns.ca

Julia Evans has a guide on asking useful questions.

The Sabotage List

randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp has a list of project's at the back of every notebook and tells you why.

Software Engineering

Scott Mabin

mabez.dev

Another update on Rust on Expressif chips (like the ESP32c3).

New HTTP standards for caching on the modern web

httptoolkit.tech

Tim Perry introduces the new cache headers, namely Cache-Status and <Target>-Cache-Control. You can use them today with some providers!

Herding elephants: Lessons learned from sharding Postgres at Notion

notion.so

Garrett Fidalgo explains the strategy of sharding the Notion Postgres monolith and what they'd do differently today.

Cutting Room Floor

@fasterthanlime on Twitter

twitter.com

Amos shares some insight from a locked account about the unreacted Google antitrust filling. "I have to say that either Google is screwed or society is screwed, we'll find out which."

Composability is the only game in town – Roam, shipping containers, Lego and Twitter.

piszek.com

Artur Piszek about the perks of composability.

Review: ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’

theatlantic.com

William Deresiewicz reviews a book with vastly different views on early humanity.

27 / Speed matters

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope you're well. Enjoy this weeks selection ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Want to get ahead in life?

Start genuinely rooting for others to succeed.

It's as simple as that.
— @sahilbloom on Twitter

Favourites

IoT Hacking and Rickrolling My High School District

whitehoodhacker.net

A story of a small team rickrolling their entire High School District (of over 11 thousand students).

Speed matters

scattered-thoughts.net

Jamie Brandon writes that the most important thing to focus on improving is how fast you can work.

How I got my startup to #1 on both Product Hunt and Hacker News by accident

levels.io

Pieter Levels about the NomadList project and its history.

Culture

What is your labor worth? Tech compensation in 2021

jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about tech compensation and how to find out if you're underpaid.

Growth vs. Efficiency

jayriverlong.github.io

Jay Riverlong on a trade-off that you can find everywhere.

How to Evaluate Startup Offers

faingezicht.com

Avy Faingezicht has a beginners guide on startup offers (shares, cash, etc.).

Software Engineering

Neural Networks from Scratch - an interactive guide

aegeorge42.github.io

Allison George created an interactive guide to learn Neural Networks.

NixOS in the Cloud, step-by-step: part 1

justinas.org

Justinas Stankevičius has a tutorial to set up NixOS on a Digital Ocean virtual machine. Make sure to check out part 2 as well!

Rust

Rust and GCC, two different ways

lwn.net

Jonathan Corbet about the different approaches to use gcc as a Rust compiler (instead of the currently-supported LLVM).

Making slow Rust code fast

patrickfreed.github.io

Patrick Freed explains how he improved the performance of his Rust crate, using benchmarks and flame graphs to find slow paths.

Cutting Room Floor

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

theregister.com

Rupert Goodwins about the Facebook downtime and how Facebook has no essential service.

Invisible asymptotes

eugenewei.com

Eugene Wei about invisible asymptotes (i.e. reasons for growth stagnation) at various Silicon Valley companies and how to detect them.

Solar-powered aircraft flown for nearly three weeks without landing

eandt.theiet.org

Jack Loughran about the Airbus aircraft that could potentially stay airborne for up to six months.

26 / Twitter has a kernel team!?

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, hope you enjoy this issue ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

everyone talks about how instagram is bad for mental health but what about jira??
— @ikasliwal on Twitter on Twitter

Favourites

You can't tell people anything (2004)

habitatchronicles.com

A great post by Chip, who explains how some things have to be experienced, telling people about it is not enough.

Why corporate social responsibility is BS

theguardian.com

Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, about corporate social responsibility and how it‘s mostly marketing.

Why Curiosity Is Better Than Being Smart?

durmonski.com

Ivaylo Durmonski about the loop of smartness and curiosity.

The Stability Fantasy

orionmagazine.org

Emmett FitzGerald on the illusion of viewing nature as a stable backdrop of life.

Facebook

Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet

blog.cloudflare.com

Celso Martinho with an outsiders view on the Facebook outage.

More details about the October 4 outage

engineering.fb.com

Santosh Janardhan about the things that happened inside of Facebook during the outage.

Tools to explore BGP

jvns.ca

Julia Evans about the BGP protocol and tools to visualize BGP routes.

The Facebook whistleblower testifies

platformer.news

Casey Newton about the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and her testimonial.

We need to talk about Facebook PR guy Andy Stone

inputmag.com

Chris Stokel-Walker about the questionable methods of Favebooks PR guy Andy Stone.

Culture

Sociotechnical Lenses into Software Systems

paulosman.me

Paul Osman about the different lenses one can have on a team and the importance of the sociotechnical one.

Doing Software Estimation within constraints of Hofstadter’s law and Parkinson’s law

shekhargulati.com

Shekhar Gulati has a guide to maybe more precise software estimation.

How to replace estimations and guesses with a Monte Carlo simulation

lucasfcosta.com

Lucas Fernandes da Costa recommends a simulation for (software) estimations.

Software Engineering

The value of in-house expertise

danluu.com

Dan Luu about the the old buy vs. build question and why it's often better to build (for bigger companies).

My Logging Best Practices

tuhrig.de

Thomas has some tips when it comes to application logging.

Is this the simplest (and most surprising) sorting algorithm ever?

arxiv.org

Stanley P. Y. Fung introduces a super simple, though slow, sorting algorithm.

3 Things Go Needs Right Now More Than Generics

betterprogramming.pub

Ryan Collingham about Go‘s missing features, in particular enums, universal nil and concise error handling.

Faster time parsing

philpearl.github.io

Phil Pearl goes on an adventure to make parsing RFC3339 faster.

20 Things I've Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer

simplethread.com

Justin Etheredge has a list of great advice.

Corey Quinn on Twitter

twitter.com

Corey Quinn has a thread of things learned over the years from various outages.

Cutting Room Floor

Rewilding your attention

uxdesign.cc

Clive Thompson makes the point that we should discover new things without the algorithms sometimes, it‘s called „rewilding your attention“.

It’s time to stop misleading consumers about recycling

latimes.com

LA Times on the sad state of recycling (in the US).

Most Americans Today Believe the Stock Market Is Rigged, and They’re Right

bloomberg.com

Liam Vaughan about insider trading and fairness in the stock market.

A world first: Ocean drone captures video from inside a hurricane

noaa.gov

Impressive footage from inside a hurricane.

The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants

theatlantic.com

Amanda Mull about the journey your sent-back items take and the myth that they get re-sold.

25 / Work Is a False Idol

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Greetings from rainy Germany, hope you're enjoying your weekend 🛋

Tweet of the Week

"Electron is Docker for GUI" is an entirely correct take that I was nonetheless not emotionally prepared for
— @Lucretiel on Twitter

Favourites

Rust for the Polyglot Programmer

chiark.greenend.org.uk

If you're an experienced programmer that want's got get their feet wet with Rust, check this out.

Work Is a False Idol

nytimes.com

Cassady Rosenblum about the Lying flat movement and people embracing the freedom of rest.

Briefing a Delegate

jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss on the most important things when it comes to delegation.

Culture

How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Gergely Orosz about project management techniques and how Scrum can get in the way of shipping.

We deserve better than Confluence and Notion

blog.luap.info

Paul why often used enterprise documentation software doesn't cut it.

Software Engineering

Reading Code is a Skill

trishagee.com

Trisha Gee about the aspect of reading code and how readable code is subjective.

Practical Makefiles, by example

nuclear.mutantstargoat.com

John Tsiombikas has some practical advice on writing Makefiles.

Common Newbie Mistakes and Bad Practices in Rust: Bad Habits

adventures.michaelfbryan.com

Michael-F-Bryan has collected some common pitfalls for people starting with Rust (esp. coming from C/C++).

Cutting Room Floor

An ultimate guide to memory palaces

metacognitive.me

Sergiy about memory palaces and good ways to get started.

Parallel Play Isn't Just for Kids

nytimes.com

Sophie Vershbow explains why spending time in the presence of other people while doing your own thing is a great thing, not just for children.

Dude, Where’s My Stuff?

am.jpmorgan.com

Michael Cembalest explains the "global supply chain mess" with tons of graphs.

24 / Start using tools again

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, how was your week? Enjoy todays issue ☕️

Tweet of the Week

two seconds into googling a javascript issue and i witness <div class="list-item"> and i want to stop programming for the day
— @eevee on Twitter on Twitter

Favourites

A terminal case of Linux

fasterthanli.me

Amos again with a great post starting with color handling in terminals and ending deep in assembly code.

Start using tools again

h2x.sh

I love this post as it perfectly explains the direction I'm going towards myself: Simple, working tools without arbitrary constraints.

Culture

People- vs Results-Oriented Management: Both Work!

jacobian.org

Jacob Kaplan-Moss about different management styles and why having both is beneficial.

@ShaanVP on Twitter

mobile.twitter.com

Shaan Puri has relationship advice for business and life.

Software Engineering

As A Solo Developer, I Decided To Offer Phone Support, And This Is What Happened

plumshell.com

Non Umemoto explains the benefits of offering phone support as a solo developer.

The First Rule of Machine Learning: Start without Machine Learning

eugeneyan.com

Eugene Yan about the general principle of starting with heuristics and manual logic before going to ML.

What is Rust? - Rustacean Principles

rustacean-principles.netlify.app

A website that lists the values of Rust and "how to Rustacean".

New tool: an nginx playground

jvns.ca

Julia Evans built an NGINX playground and explains why and how.

Cutting Room Floor

The Facebook files

wsj.com

Wall Street Journal reporters have five articles about Facebook and how it's not in control of their platform.

This study shows how people reason their way through echo chambers — and what might guide them out

niemanlab.org

Shraddha Chakradhar about a study on echo chambers and what could fix them.

Small vehicles of Tokyo

medium.com

Dan Hill collected a fascinating catalogue of small vehicles in the (sometimes) narrow streets of Tokyo.

23 / The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Unexpected

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope your week was good. I added a new category called Favourites, let me know what you think! See you next week 👋🏻

Favourites

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Unexpected

ferd.ca

Fred Hebert about the best ways to handle the unexpected (mostly bugs and undefined behaviour).

The Builder’s High (2014)

randsinrepose.com

Michael Lopp about the joys of building things.

Dead white man's clothes: How fast fashion is turning parts of Ghana into toxic landfill

abc.net.au

Linton Besser about the consequences of fast fashion in the west.

Culture

Developer, You May Need a Co-Founder in Marketing

microfounder.com

Rauno Metsa about the importance of marketing, especially for solo developers.

I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

habr.com

Philipp Ranzhin talks about how he changed they way he treats less experienced developers and why.

Code runs on people

rachelbythebay.com

Rachel argues that it's too easy to say code just runs on a computer, it's the people that have to work with it, that matter.

Software Engineering

Writing class documentation

rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no

Arnt Gulbrandsen has some great tipps on how to write good class documentation.

Ship / Show / Ask

martinfowler.com

Martin Fowler has an interesting alternative to the exclusive PR workflow.

how to update [go] APIs for generics

github.com

Russ Cox on the Golang GitHub repository discussions asks about ways to keep backwards-compatibility while introducing generic variants of existing functions.

Cutting Room Floor

The Sample

thesample.ai

Jacob O'Bryant built a newsletter aggregator that learns what you like and sends you newsletters that might interest you. Give it a try! (Referral-link)

Two new color spaces for color picking - Okhsv and Okhsl

bottosson.github.io

Björn Ottosson discusses the history of colors spaces like HSL and HSV and their problems, then proposes a modern alternative.

22 / Intentional connection in the digital office

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hello and welcome to another issue of Arnes Weekly! Hope your week was good, enjoy ✌🏻

Tweet of the Week

"I'm sorry, but we had to cut down the scope to make the deadline."
— @WdeB on Twitter

Culture

Intentional connection in the digital office

seths.blog

Seth Godin about the difference of online and offline human connection.

The Mentorship Diamond

mikemcquaid.com

Mike McQuaid about mentorship and why it is important (in both directions).

Software Engineering

Coverage Marks

ferrous-systems.com

Aleksey describes the concept of coverage marks. Pretty cool concept.

Rust programs written entirely in Rust

blog.sunfishcode.online

sunfishcode about what it takes to have Rust programs only depend on Rust code (not libc and friends).

How PCI-Express works and why you should care? #GPU

ovh.com

A great explanation of PCIe and what to look out for when trying to maximise your GPU performance.

Cutting Room Floor

mRNA cancer therapy now in human trials after shrinking mouse tumours

independent.co.uk

Thomas Kingsley about BioNTech moving to human trials for their mRNA-based cancer therapy!

The 'Dead-Internet Theory' Is Wrong but Feels True

theatlantic.com

Kaitlyn Tiffany about the conspiracy story that most of the internet today is bots.

The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship

theguardian.com

Sophie Elmhirst tells the story of the failed plan to sell flats on a cruise ship for a tax-free cryptocurrency dream-society.

21 / Why Electron apps are fine

Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hi, enjoy this weeks issue! 🙌🏻

Tweet of the Week

Building shared understanding is some of the most undervalued work in software development.
— @norootcause on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

Why We Don't Do Daily Stand-Ups

jezenthomas.com

Jezen Thomas explains why his company doesn't do daily stand-ups and I mostly agree.

The Religion of Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

theatlantic.com

Derek Thompson about the worship of work and its history.

Software Engineering

How I re-over-engineered my home network for privacy and security

ben.balter.com

Ben Balter about his home-network setup. I always find these posts inspiring and they always make me think about how to improve my home network/server.

Why Electron apps are fine

nielsleenheer.com

Niels Leenheer thinks Electron apps are fine and tells you why he feels that way.

How we built an auto-scalable Minecraft server for 1000+ players using WorldQL's spatial database

worldql.com

Jackson Roberts made Minecraft scalable with a single-source-of-truth database called Mammoth.

Cutting Room Flor

Buried in concrete: mafia architecture – in pictures

theguardian.com

Alessio Mamo photographed the ruins of some of the Italian mafia villas.

How to Keep the Days From Blurring Together

nytimes.com

Melissa Kirsch shares some tricks that help bring structure to a day.

20 / The Rise Of User-Hostile Software

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this weeks issue, hope you had a good week! 🙌🏻

Tweet of the Week

If a programmer gets an interview because of a recommendation from a friend, are they being passed by reference?
— @CarlaNotarobot on Twitter on Twitter

Culture

The Rise Of User-Hostile Software

den.dev

Den Delimarsky about user-hostile design choices in modern everyday life, with some examples that really hit home.

Possible by default

linus.coffee

Linus talks about the importance of the correct mindset when thinking about new ideas.

Software Engineering

Home Lab Beginners guide

haydenjames.io

Hayden James about his homelab and what components he recommends when getting started.

scoped-arena-allocator

devblog.arcana.rs

Roman writes about an arena allocator he's written in Rust.

Hexagonal architecture in Rust

alexis-lozano.com

Cutting Room Floor

Why are hyperlinks blue?

blog.mozilla.org

Elise Blanchard starts from the beginning of the internet to find who started the trend of blue hyperlinks.

Electric cars and batteries: how will the world produce enough?

nature.com

Davide Castelvecchi about the importance of recycling, especially when it comes to batteries.

Fighting Like Taliban

scholars-stage.org

Tanner Greer about the fighting culture in Afghanistan.

The Myth of a Superhuman AI

wired.com

Kevin Kelly about five misconceptions when talking about a "superhuman" AI.

Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History

medium.com

Angus Hervey tells us how real-life isn't a moral arc and how it's up to us to make a difference.

19 / Your devices and your employer

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, hope your week was good. This issue is a bit shorter as my weekend has been super busy, enjoy nonetheless ✌🏻

Tweet of The Week

People being all "We were at our desks for 150 hours a week and we shipped an amazing product" and literally every useful insight I ever have is while I'm in the shower or taking a nap — @mjg59 on Twitter

Culture

Your devices and your employer (rachelbythebay.com) — Rachel about the importance of keeping work off your local devices.
Why you feel uncertain about everything you make (vanschneider.com) — Tobias van Schneider explains how feedback can be useful until it's not.

Software Engineering

Reflections on 10,000 Hours of Programming (matt-rickard.com) — Matt Rickard has 31 reflections about writing code and all of them are great.
Sustainable Web Design, An Excerpt (alistapart.com) — Tom Greenwood explains how we can make the web sustainable.
Email Authenticity 101: DKIM, DMARC, and SPF (alexblackie.com) — Alex Blackie covers the most important parts of email authenticity.
How We Design Our APIs at Slack - Slack Engineering (slack.engineering) — Saurabh Sahni and Taylor Singletary about API design at Slack.
Patterns in confusing explanations (jvns.ca) — Julia Evans about common pitfalls when writing explanatory content.

Cutting Room Floor

The Top of My Todo List (paulgraham.com) — Paul Graham about five essential things to keep on top of your TODO list at all times.
@michael_nielsen on Twitter (twitter.com) — Michael Nilsen about how he uses spaced repetition (I need to try this).
Why Is It So Hard to Be Rational? (newyorker.com) — Joshua Rothman in a great piece about rationalism and how it's more relevant today than ever.
The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine? (theguardian.com) — Michael Pollan about the history of caffeine and the effects on consumers everyday.

18 / Apple’s Mistake

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Let's try something new this week: Reply to this email and tell me what article you liked the most this week, I'd love to hear from you! As always, enjoy 🐬

Tweet of The Week

If I could explain what having kids is like, it’s basically like being on-call for six years so far. — @vboykis on Twitter

Culture

Apps Getting Worse (tbray.org) — Tim Bray thinks apps are getting worse and he has a theory on why.

Software Engineering

POSH: A Data-Aware Shell (micahlerner.com) — Micah Lerner about a new distributed, data-aware shell.
Bloom Filters - Much, much more than a space efficient hashmap! (boyter.org) — Ben E. C. Boyter about Bloom filters, popular use cases and their alternatives.
Writing great alt text: Emotion matters — Jake Archibald about how to write good alt text.
So you want to write a GUI framework (cmyr.net) — Colin Rofls about the must-have components in GUI frameworks and some of the complications you'll run into.

Rust

Rust in Production: Qovery (serokell.io) —Gints Dreimanis about their experience of Rust in production.
Complex Procedural Rust Macros (getsynth.com) — Andre Bogus about complex procedural macros in Rust and what to look out for.
Rust GUI Infrastructure (cmyr.net) — Colin Rofls about Druid, the GUI framework he's writing in Rust and what crates and components are useful.

Cutting Room Floor

Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity' - BBC News (bbc.com) — Matt McGrath about the recent IPCC report code and why it's so serious.
One Bad Apple — Dr. Neal Krawetz talks about the (likely) technical implementation and alternatives of Apple CSAM.
Apple’s Mistake (stratechery.com) — Ben Thompson has a more technical view on Apple CSAM than Krawetz, but comes to the same conclusion: It's too invasive.
The Parallel-Parking Job That Ignited the Internet (curbed.com) — P. E. Moskowitz about a harmless tweet that got a bit too much attention.
The Simple Life of Humans (hackernoon.com) — Adrian H. Raudaschl about simplicity and why things shouldn't get too simple.
Minimal Maintenance (lapsuslima.com) — Shannon Mattern about the limits of growth.
The Ancient Persian way to keep cool (bbc.com) — Kimiya Shokoohi about the bâdgir, or wind catcher, a cost-efficient and green form of cooling.
The Evolution of Trust (ncase.me) — Nicky Case created an interactive game about trust in a society.
Messaging and Chat Control (patrick-breyer.de) — Patrick Breyer about the EU's decision to allow providers to search trough all private chats and messages and emails and how it will affect you.

17 / Use Spreadsheets Everywhere

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this weeks issue, enjoy it! 🙌🏻

Tweet of The Week

What's the Big O Notation of deleting all of your code and starting over again? — @CarlaNotarobot on Twitter

Culture

Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work (arstechnica.com) — Samuel Axon about the workers in tech companies who don't see a reason to come back to the office.
Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market in decades (latimes.com) — Brittany Meiling explains how the shortage in software engineers shifts the power to the workers.
Why Don’t Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay? (marker.medium.com) — Matthew Dean about the phenomenon that leaving your (tech) job often leads in a pay day, even though you accumulated domain knowledge and are valuable to your current employer.

Software Engineering

A GPSD time warp (lwn.net) — Jake Edge talks about the issue in GPSD that might break quite a few systems on October 24 if NTP servers aren't updated.
Better coordination, or better software? (jessitron.com) — Jessica Joy Kerr about the benefits of the extra work put in small interfaces between services.
Go, Rust "net" library affected by critical IP address validation vulnerability (bleepingcomputer.com) — Go and Rust binaries might be vulnerable to SSRF and RFI. Go has a patch in the 1.17 beta, Rust has the fix in 1.53.0 and higher.
Simple Systems Have Less Downtime (gkogan.co) — Greg Kogan has some great examples on simple systems and explains how they are superior.
Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021 (insights.stackoverflow.com) — Spoiler: Rust is #1 on most-loved languages (Go is #10), but check it out for yourself!
How does Go calculate len()..? (tpaschalis.github.io) — Paschalis explains all the internals of using len` in Go.
HTTP/2: The Sequel is Always Worse (portswigger.net) — James Kettle about HTTP2 and it's security shortcomings.

Cutting Room Floor

Apple's Plan to "Think Different" About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life (eff.org) — India McKinney and Erica Portnoy explain why the changes Apple wants to introduce to iCloud and iMessage are a slippery slope and make it less secure.
Use Spreadsheets Everywhere! (simplethread.com) — Justin Etheredge makes a point for spreadsheets but also explains the cutoff point and how crucial it is not to miss it.
Safari isn't protecting the web, it's killing it (httptoolkit.tech) — Tim Perry argues that Safari being a behind on modern web technologies is killing the web. I have to add that I disagree with the conclusion as the author doesn't talk about all the privacy features Safari prioritises, plus not-supporting-the-latest-features is not "killing the web".
Technology may be wreaking havoc on our morality (vox.com) — Sigal Samuel about how the addictive features in social networks and apps are actually "human downgrading".
‘It has to be known what was done to us’: Natick couple harassed by eBay tell their story for the first time (bostonglobe.com) — Aaron Pressman tells the story of David and Ina Steiner who have been harassed and stalked by eBay employees and are now suing.

16 / Avoid easy things

Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Greetings from the Baltic Sea! 🌊 Hope your week has been great, enjoy this issue!

Tweet of the Week

Mathematics be like :
log(😅) =💧log(😄)
— @Shivaar11 on Twitter

Culture

The Remote Culture War Has Begun, And Executives Are Pumping Out "Back To Work" Propaganda (ez.substack.com) — Ed Zitron about the stories that are told to get people "Back To Work".
Please Bring Back Our Downvotes: Society Desperately Needs It (theapeiron.co.uk) — J.J. Pryor argues that a downvote button could be a small step in working against the divide social media brought to society.

Software Engineering

The Monkey Island (TM) PC-Speaker music player (thanassis.space) — Athanasios Tsiodras built a device that plays the Monkey Island soundtrack with very little computing power.
Why self hosting is important (dataswamp.org) — Solène Rapenne about self-hosting and why a community approach might be beneficial.
Netcat - All you need to know (blog.ikuamike.io) — Michael Ikua explains the different versions of netcat and some common use cases.

Rust

Understanding Rust futures by going way too deep (fasterthanli.me) — Amos about the internals of a Rust Future and async/await.
Rust on Espressif chips (mabez.dev) — Scott Mabin talks about the exciting future of Rust on ESP32 and friends.
Async and asleep: designing our future embedded applications (tweedegolf.nl) — Folkert starts a promising series for using async in embedded Rust applications as well as handling sleep cycles.
My Rust development workflow (after 2+ years) (kerkour.com) — Sylvain Kerkour about his Rust workflow and how he deals with (sometimes) long compile times.
Writing Parsers With nom Parser Combinator Framework (iximiuz.com) — Ivan about writing a parser with Rust and the parser combinator crate nom.

Cutting Room Floor

The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I. (sfchronicle.com) — Jason Fagone in a deeply moving story about Joshua, who deals with the death of his fiancee Jessica using a GTP-3-powered chatbot.
Evil tip: avoid "easy" things (yosefk.com) — Yossi Kreinin about the advantages and drawbacks of avoiding "easy" things and the postponing gambit.
The Value of Doing a Little (trms.me) — Lorenzo Gravina explains why doing anything is better than nothing when it comes to habits.
Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t (wired.com) — Clive Thompson about different approaches of TODO apps, why there is no single solution and the psychological background of task lists.
The First Atomic Bomb Created This ‘Forbidden’ Quasicrystal (discovermagazine.com) — Marisa Sloan about a discovery of crystal with a structure that was thought to be impossible.

Issue #15: Your Idea Is Brilliant, Your Idea Is Worthless

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hope you're having a great weekend! 🙌🏻

Tweet of The Week

idk who needs to hear this, but don't forget you made tea. — @ChloeCondon on Twitter

Culture

Your Idea Is Brilliant, Your Idea Is Worthless (stonemaiergames.com) — A guide on how to deal with ideas.
Artists, Shrug Off That Imposter Syndrome! The Tech World Needs You (magicbell.com) — Milena Milak explains how to get into UI design as an artist (with a list of resources).

Rust

A GPIO driver in Rust (lwn.net) — A comparison of a GPIO driver in the Linux Kernel written in C versus Rust (spoiler: Rust is 75 lines shorter).
How we improved the performance of our Rust app (poor.dev) — Aram Drevekenin goes through different performance optimisations they made in Zellij.
How to implement worker pools in Rust (kerkour.com) — Sylvain Kerkour about the best ways to parallelise work in a Rust program.

Software Engineering

What interesting command line tools do you use? (lobste.rs) — A thread with lots of amazing CLI tools.
10 Papers Every Developer Should Read (michaelfeathers.silvrback.com, 2017) — Michael Feathers recommends 10 essential papers and tells you why you should read them.
Paranoid NixOS Setup (christine.website) — Christine Dodrill guides you through a NixOS setup and how to secure it.
A monorepo misconception - atomic cross-project commits (snellman.net) — Juho Snellman descibes why atomic cross-project commits aren't practical in real life.

Cutting Room Floor

Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance (theguardian.com) — Paul Lewis talks about the Pegasus project and how we're "entering a new surveillance era".
A case against security nihilism (blog.cryptographyengineering.com) — Matthew Green wants us to strive for perfect security, even if we'll never reach it.
My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (jcs.org) — Joshua Stein explains his workstation setup, from components to the OS.

Issue #14: -2000 Lines of Code

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this weeks issue, hope you enjoy. ✌️

Tweet of The Week

"UI design is stagnant, and every browser looks the same.
I wish Apple would try more experimental UIs!"
monkey paw curls
—@zhuowei on Twitter

Culture

My proposal for scaling open source: don’t (sicpers.info) — Graham argues that building software for a small group has benefits over trying to scale.
-2000 Lines of Code — Andy Hertzfeld has a great story from the 80s where Apple tried performance tracking by lines of code.
A privacy war is raging inside the W3C (protocol.com) — Issie Lapowsky summarises the politics inside the privacy discussions at W3C.
The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday (typesense.org) — Kishore Nallan talks about how she started Typesense with only this goal, no deadlines or milestones.

Software Engineering

Give me /events, not webhooks (blog.syncinc.so) — Anthony Accomazzo prefers having an endpoint (i.e. pull) over webhooks (i.e. push) and they tell us why.
Emacs Evil Motion Training (martin.baillie.id) — Martin Baillie has built an emacs package that notifies you when you do lazy evil motions (e.g. jjjjjjjjkkkkl) and suggests alternatives.
GitHub is my copilot (lwn.net) — Jonathan Corbet about the best outcome of the GitHub Copilot license debate.

Cutting Room Floor

Optimizing Inputs and becoming Indistractable (sovereign-individual.xyz) — Pascal Precht summarises the book Indistractable by Nir Eyal, there's some great things here.
Reliable, Deliverable, Self-Hosted Email (zach.bloomqu.ist) — Zach Bloomquist has a guide on how to self-host your email without the usual downsides (deliverability issues, loosing emails).
The military secret to falling asleep in two minutes (independent.co.uk) — If you have trouble falling asleep this might be worth a try.
The Sound of My Inbox (thecut.com) — Molly Fischer about the comeback of newsletters.
The Internet Is Rotting (theatlantic.com) — Jonathan Zittrain about the fleeting nature of the modern internet.

Issue #13: Git Best Practices

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this weeks issue! After reading some articles this week about running (which you can find below) I'm now going for a run. 🏃🏻‍♂️

Tweet of The Week

i’ve started investing in stocks… first chicken, then beef, and now vegetable. i know it’s risky, but i know one day it’ll pay off & i’ll be a bouillonaire — @emily_dawnxo for Twitter

Culture

Tweet by @adamhjk (twitter.com/adamhjk) — Adam Jacobs take on the OSS vs. GitHub copilot debate.
Mad Men. Furious Women. (zoescaman.substack.com) — Zoe talks about misogyny the ad industry and how women start to get fed up with it.

Sofware Engineering

Where are we going from here? Software engineering needs formal methods (ntietz.com) — Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky about the software engineering process and how formal methods improve it.
Commit Often, Perfect Later, Publish Once: Git Best Practices (sethrobertson.github.io) — Seth Robertson has compiled a list of best practices when dealing with git.
Software Estimation Is Hard. Do It Anyway. (jacobian.org) — Jacob Kaplan-Moss on software estimation and why is it important, even when it's often inaccurate.

Rust

What Can Coerce, and Where, in Rust (possiblerust.com) — Andrew Lilley Brinker goes in depth in his post about coercion in Rust.
What the Error Handling Project Group is Working Towards (blog.rust-lang.org) — Jane Lusby talks about the current state of error handling in Rust and how it will improve in the future.
What is you elevator pitch for Rust? (users.rust-lang.org) — If you ever wondered what all the fuss is about, check out this thread by bexxmodd.

Cutting Room Floor

Do We Really Need to Take 10,000 Steps a Day for Our Health? (nytimes.com) — Gretchen Reynolds about how upping your step count by a few thousand steps might even be better in some cases than doing 10k steps a day.
How I Tricked Myself Into Liking Running (nytimes.com) — Farah Miller has some great tips if you want to get into running.
No More Movies (jayriverlong.github.io) — Jay Riverlong provides 5 reasons why movies are less and less relevant.
Why White People Don’t Use White Emoji (theatlantic.com) — Andrew McGill about why white people should stop using the yellow skin color.

Issue #12: Good code is easy to delete

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hope your weekend has been good, enjoy this weeks issue! ✌️

Tweet of The Week

y'all asked for hot girl summer and instead we got climate change-induced heatwaves — @dontdoitjoe on Twitter

Culture

Asynchronous Design Critique: Getting Feedback (alistapart.com) — Erin Casali explains how to ask for feedback and why "any questions?" won't cut it.
The Weakness Question (jacobian.org) — Jacob Kaplan-Moss is writing a series about interviewing questions, this time about the dreaded weakness question.
Harder Than It Looks, Not As Fun as It Seems (collaborativefund.com) — Morgan Housel explains how everything is sales.

Software Engineering

Polymorphism in Rust (oswalt.dev) — Matt Oswalt talks about the two different ways to do polymorphism in Rust (static and dynamic dispatch).
Parse, don’t validate (lexi-lambda.github.io) — Alexis King explains the advantages of parsing a value into a type over just validating it using Haskell.
Botnets, or This is Why We Cannot Have Nice Things (sheep.horse) — Andrew Stephens describes his steps to deal with an increasing amount of bots accessing his site.
Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend (programmingisterrible.com) — tef in an amazing writeup on how to write code that is easy to delete.
Things I wish Git had: Commit groups (blog.danieljanus.pl) — Daniel Janus about the one feature he's missing from Git and why merge commits aren't cutting it.
git undo: We can do better (blog.waleedkhan.name) — Waleed Khan has written a git command that can undo almost everything.

Cutting Room Floor

Notes on How to Live (conordewey.com) — Conor Dewey has some great notes on the book How to Live by Derek Sivers.
How to work hard (paulgraham.com) — Paul Graham explains why it's not enough to have talent or work hard; you need both.
Where Jobless Benefits Were Cut, Jobs Are Still Hard to Fill (nytimes.com) — Patricia Cohen about how the pandemic made less people accept low wages and bad conditions when it comes to jobs.
The economics of dollar stores (thehustle.co) — Zachary Crockett about what makes a dollar store profitable.
Why wood has gotten so dang expensive (constructionphysics.substack.com) — Brian Potter explains why lumber prices have been skyrocketing.
Points of view: Color blindness (nature.com) — Bang Wong has put out guidelines for graphics that are accessible to people with vision deficiencies.

Issue #11

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this weeks issue, I hope you enjoy it! 🙌

Tweet of The Week

you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the person who has to make slides about team strategy — @cassidoo on Twitter

Culture

Asynchronous Design Critique: Giving Feedback (alistapart.com) — Erin Casali on how to provide great feedback.
The perfect number of hours to work every day? Five (wired.co.uk) — Margaret Taylor talks about the pros and cons of shorter weekdays.

Software Engineering

Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust (lwn.net) — Ayooluwa Isaiah talks about the status of uutils, a Rust rewrite of Coreutils.
Ask HN: Best “I brought down production” story? (news.ycombinator.com) — Great things in here.
Notes on streaming large API responses (simonwillison.net) — Simon Willison discusses the pros and cons of streaming vs. pagination.
Maybe it’s time we re-think docs (kathykorevec.medium.com) — Kathy Korevec has some insights on what makes great documentation.
Pulling GitHub into the kernel process (lwn.net) — Jake Edge rounds up a discussion by the Kernel maintainers if they would allow patches being sent via GitHub to make it easier to contribute.
No code reviews by default (raycast.com) — Thomas Paul Mann describes how a workflow without code reviews can improve trust in the team and speed up the development flow.

Cutting Room Floor

Cancel Amazon Prime (theatlantic.com) — Ellen Cushing about Amazons greatest and most terrifying invention. (If you get a paywall, read it here: Wayback Machine)
Your product is a joke (eesel.app) — Amogh Sarda compares building a product to improv comedy.
What's Inside the EU Green Pass QR Code? (gir.st) — Tobias Girstmair explains the contents of the green pass qr code.
Using Paper for Everyday Tasks (christine.website) — Christine Dodrill about their switch from digital to analog task management.
Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling (nytimes.com) — Zeynep Tufekci talks about the long past of experimenting with bats and how "we were due for a bat coronavirus outbreak, one way or another".

Building a More Honest Internet

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hope you had a great week, enjoy your Sunday and this weeks issue! 🙌

Tweet of the week

graphics cards against humanity — @computerfact on Twitter

Culture

My Leadership Document — 2021 Edition (subbu.org) — Subbu Allamaraju about 3 beliefs and 6 behaviours he enforces and practices.
Encourage Teams To Take Risks (designfrontier.net) — Daniel Sellers about why taking risks can be a deciding factor for growth.
The Power of Product Thinking (a16z.com) — Julie Zhuo about the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people.

Software Engineering

Cool URIs don't change (w3.org) — "URIs don't change: people change them." The author explains why you shouldn't change your URLs and that there is little excuse to do so. (If that link still 503s, you can read it on the Wayback Machine.)
Modern Unix (github.com/ibraheemdev) — A collection of modern command-line tools, by Ibraheem Ahmed.
Ask HN: Tools you have made for yourself? (news.ycombinator.com) — Super interesting to see what kind of tools are made just for to scratch a personal itch.
The levels of Emacs proficiency (vivekhaldar.com) — Vivek Haldar about the 6 levels of Emacs. I'm somewhere around level 3.
Emacs Love Tale (emacs.love) — Guilherme Guerra tells a beautiful story creating an editor that their use, based on Emacs.
The story of my worst bug (twitter.com) — Patrick McKenzie tells the story of their worst bug, resulting in spamming every client (including automatically calling them).

Cutting Room Floor

Note taking in 2021 (dornea.nu) — Victor Dorneanu about modern note taking and Zettelkasten. If you're interested, check out my personal digital garden: Arnes notes.
Building a More Honest Internet (cjr.org) — Ethan Zuckerman about how social media looked if it served the public interests.
Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess (morrick.me) — Riccardo Mori criticises the new Safari that is coming with macOS Monterey.
How To Win At Risk By Using Systems Thinking (thesystemisdown.substack.com) — Andy Patton sues systems thinking to create the ultimate strategy for the boardgame Risk.

Always be quitting

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to another issue of Arnes Weekly. Enjoy! ✌️

Tweet of the week

If you're on twitter long enough your personality either becomes "the woke mob can't handle me" or "I'm hot and sad and pro-union", there are no other options — @ZackBornstein on Twitter

Culture

Always be quitting (jmmv.dev) — Julio Merino talks about how "making yourself replaceable" can make you a better engineer and lead to growth opportunities.
The Upcoming Remote Work Company Culture War (ez.substack.com) — Ed Zitron in a very opinionated piece about the excuses for telling people to go back to the office.
A Project of One's Own (paulgraham.com) — Paul Graham makes a point about the joy and excitement of doing projects just for you.

Privacy

Will Apple Mail threaten the newsletter boom? (platformer.news) — Casey Newton about the impact that Apple Mails new privacy features can have on newsletters. I must say I can't sympathise with business models that rely on tracking people (Arnes Weekly has no tracking and it never will).
Privacy analysis of FLoC (blog.mozilla.org) — Eric Rescorla talks about the privacy problems with Googles Federated Learning of Cohorts (or FLoC) proposal.
It’s time to ditch Chrome (wired.co.uk) — Kate O'Flaherty about the various reasons to switch browsers.

Software Engineering

Reasons why bugs might feel "impossible" (jvns.ca) — Julia Evans summarises reasons why bugs feel impossible into five categories.
A new future for icanhazip (major.io) — Major Hayden talks about the history of his icanhazip.com.
An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding (skamille.medium.com) — Camille Fournier has a list of skills you need as a senior engineer that aren't related to coding.
An Unbelievable Demo (brendangregg.com) — Brendan Gregg about a rather irritating experience with a Sun salesperson.

Cutting Room Floor

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax (propublica.org) — Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel about how ProPublica got ahold of tax returns of americas wealthiest people and how they avoid paying taxes (Warren Buffet has a true tax rate of 0.1%).
You are probably playing too many games (twitter.com/jspector) — Josh Spector says we should reduce the number of "games" we play everyday (Twitter, YouTube, Podcasting, etc.) to be actually good at some.
The Tyranny Of Time (noemamag.com) —Joe Zadeh about the history and societal impact of clock time.
Farewell, Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy (nytimes.com) — Kevin Roose on how "assisted living for millennials" is coming to an end as tech companies aim for profitability.
We Don’t Need Supersonic Travel—in the “New Normal,” We Should Slow Down (newyorker.com) — Bill McKibben makes a point for slow travel (did you know that hypersonic planes emit 5-7x more carbon than passenger planes)?
Why user-centred design struggles with ethics (medium.com) — Cennydd Bowles about how the responsibility of tech aren't just customers and business, but also the environment, the privacy of the individual and more.

Do what I mean

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to Arnes Weekly! If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider recommending it to a friend or colleague 🙌

Tweet of the Week

imo any progress bar that lasts longer than 5 seconds should come with hold music [video] — @neilsardesai on Twitter

Culture

Welcome to the YOLO Economy (nytimes.com) — Kevin Roose about how the pandemic changes the priorities of people to the point that they quit and pursue new adventures.
There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing (nytimes.com) — Adam Grant finds the term for the weird mental state a lot of people are in right now.
Building Products for Delight (conordewey.com) — Conor Dewey about the things that make a product delightful.

Software Engineering

Emacs DWIM: do what ✨I✨ mean (xenodium.com) — Álvaro Ramírez about creating commands that do what you mean. I love the concept!
Go Fuzzing is Beta Ready (blog.golang.org) — Katie Hockman and Jay Conrod on how to get started with the new builtin fuzzing in Go.
Taking Rust for a Test Drive (ferrous-systems.com) — Lotte and James provide some tips on how to get started with Rust in your work place.
The Website Obesity Crisis (idlewords.com) — A talk by Maciej Cegłowski (the creator of Pinboard) about "website obesity".

Watching

How does a USB keyboard work? (youtube.com) — Ben Eater analyses the signal of a USB Keyboard.
TWO Unpickable (?) Locks for Lock Picking Lawyer! (youtube.com) — StuffMadeHere created two locks with very interesting anti-picking features.

Cutting Room Floor

A Concrete Introduction to Probability (github.com/novig) — Peter Norvig explains the basics of probability with a Jupiter Notebook.
Bullet journalling for software engineers (and other not-necessarily-artistic people) (ksylor.github.io) — Katie Sylor-Miller on how to get started with bullet journaling.
How the World Ran Out of Everything (nytimes.com) — Peter S. Goodman explains the Just In Time principle corporations apply to their manufacturing process which now leads to delays.
Stop Trying to Raise Successful Kids (theatlantic.com) — Adam Grant and Allison Sweet Grant about why some people subconsciously prioritise success over kindness when rising their kids.

Barrels and Ammunition

Sun, 30 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to this weeks issue, hope you enjoy it!

Tweet of the week

feeling unaccomplished 101

start to many side projects

end nothing

constantly improve half-made things

watch movies to decompress

feel guilty

buy books

never read it. put it on the shelf so you feel miserable crossing by

take even more new responsibilities

— @krzyzanowskim on Twitter

Culture

Barrels and Ammunition — Conor Dewey summarises a great concept by Keith Rabois: The output of your organization is dependent on the number of people that can own projects and see them through to the end.
If Apple is the only organisation capable of defending our privacy, it really is time to worry — John Naughton about the danger of weak privacy regulations.
What’s the best thing a manager has ever done for you? — This tweet by Julie Zhuo has lots of inspiring answers.

Software Engineering

Uber's Crazy YOLO App Rewrite, From the Front Seat — Gergely Orosz about the "two months of hell" Uber engineers went through for an artificial deadline.
Why I prefer making useless stuff — Austin Z. Henley about his "useless" side projects and why they are more fun than "useful" ones.
Focus on Your First 10 Systems, Not Just Your First 10 Hires — Hashicorps Chief of Staff Kevin Fishner about how crucial systems are in early startups.

Cutting room floor

Weeknotes #2 — My good friend Jan Früchtl started weekly posts about the things he learned or found interesting, be sure to check this out!
Blog about what you've struggled with — Julia Evans about writing about learning in public.
Than Average — Do you think you have better ideas than average? 67 % think that. Super fun page by Fred Wordie and Jae Perris.

Arnes Weekly: The Minimum Viable Company

Sun, 23 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hello friends, hope you enjoy this weeks issue!

Tweet of The Week

java is the denim of programming languages — @Foone on Twitter

Culture

Quitting Has Become the Ultimate Form of Self-Care — Katie Heaney describes why it's okay to quit your job for self-care only (if you can afford it).
True Product Market Fit is a Minimum Viable Company — Ann Miura-Ko talks about why you not only need a minimum viable product, but also a minimal viable company.
Clarity is an underrated skill — Tom Gamon introduces you to three rules of clarity.

Software Engineering

Text Rendering Hates You (2019) — Alexis Beingessner about some of the edge cases you will run into when implementing a text rendering engine.
The tools and tech I use to run a one-woman hardware company — Thea guides you through the (mostly well-known) tools she uses.
Rust heads into the kernel? — Jake Edge summarises the discussion about Rust in the kernel.
Naming Your Lifetimes — Andrew Lilley Brinker makes a point of more-than-one-letter lifetimes in Rust.
How to look at the stack with gdb — Julia Evans shows you how to check out the stack in GDB with an example program.

Watching

Crust of Rust: Subtyping and Variance — If you think you've understand the Rust borrow checker and lifetimes, watch this video by Jon Gjengset.

Cutting Room Floor

Selling Tiny Internet Projects For Fun and Profit — Ben Stokes about how he built and later sold his "Tiny Project" Earlynames.
The Strange Story of Dagobert, the “DuckTales” Bandit — Super interesting story about a criminal in Germany and how he managed to evade the police so many times.
In the Cloud — A poem by Rachel Hadas.

Arnes Weekly: Don’t push that button

Sun, 16 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hope you're having a great weekend. 🙌

Tweet of the week

The biggest perception problem in our industry is, as an IC, you grow up to be an architect who design systems. No. There are very senior people whose job is only to maintain very critical tools and libraries that doesn't require much system design work. — @rakyll on Twitter

Culture

The Importance of Humility in Software Development — Eric Potter about why it's beneficial for software engineers to be fully aware of the strictly limited size of their own skull.
Ask HN: How to negotiate continuing to work remotely? — If your company normally doesn't do wfh check out this thread.
The return of fancy tools — Tom MacWright about the pendulum of simple vs. complex tools.
The Open-Source Software bubble that is and the blogging bubble that was — Baldur Bjarnason makes an interesting point about the state of OSS.
I Have a Lot a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack — Riana Pfefferkorn looks at Signal’s Cellebrite hack from a lawyers perspective, very interesting.

Software Engineering

Don’t push that button: Exploring the software that flies SpaceX rockets and Starships — Charles R. Martin and Ben Popper talk about the flight control software of SpaceX.
Development Environment (2021) — Chris Rose about 5 tools from his development environment.
Reverse Engineering an Unknown Microcontroller — Dmitry Grinberg walks you through their reverse engineering process.
Community spotlight: building an efficient and portable programming language with Zig — Hannah Lee Aubry interviews Loris Cro, a team member of the Zig project.
The end of “your database” — The CEO of Netlify talks about the future of data management in web applications.
Things you can’t do in Rust (and what to do instead) — Andre Bogus about five things you can't do in Rust and their reasons.
5 steps to faster web fonts — A list of things to be aware of when using web fonts, by Iain Bean.

Watching

How I hacked the Apple AirTags — That didn't take long. How Colin O'Flynn hacked Apples new AirTags.

Cutting Room Floor

In Mahle's Contact-Free Electric Motor, Power Reaches the Rotor Wirelessly — Philip E. Ross writes about a new frictionless electrical motor.
The Brain Maps Out Ideas and Memories Like Spaces — Jordana Cepelewicz write about the brains navigation system and why memory palaces work.
I’ve had the same supper for 10 years — A farmer from Wales has had two pieces of fish, an onion, an egg, baked beans and biscuits every day for 10 years.
The Ultimate Guide to Inflation — Lynn Alden gives a good overview about inflation using 150 years of data.

Arnes Weekly: I could build this during the weekend

Sun, 09 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

✌️

Tweet Of The Week

Managers: “you must build more stable software, stop cutting corners, we accept nothing less than perfect code in prod”

Also mgrs: “please yeet this feature I care about directly into prod, I don’t care how you do it as long as it’s there in the next 5 minutes”

— @devonbl on Twitter

Story Of The Week

Hosting SQLite databases on Github Pages — phiresky describes how he built a static site with a SQL-database, all processed on the client.

Culture

I could build this during the weekend — João Alves about how engineers often the miss context when estimating new projects (e.g. forgetting about edge cases).
Decision Making vs. Decision Understanding — A great writeup by John Cutler about decision making, decision drift and working together in teams.

Software Engineering

proposal: slices: new package to provide generic slice functions #45955 — Interesting discussion about a generic slice package for Go and what it should look like.
An Incomplete Explanation of the Proc Macro That Saved Me 4000 Lines of Rust — Marcus Buffett guides you through the creation of a Rust Proc Macro and the gotchas he encountered.
The Great Rewriting In Rust —Adrian Kosmaczewski dives into the reasons of the many Rust rewrites.
You might as well timestamp it — Jerod Santo thinks you should always prefer a timestamp instead of a boolean and why.
The art of solving problems with Monte Carlo simulations — Gabriel Carvalho writes about how Monte Carlo simulations can solve common problems (like calculating π).
Note on worker pools in Go — Adhityaa Chandrasekar about pools of goroutines and why they too many goroutines can produce performance issues even after the number went down again.
Branchless Coding in Go — Matt Nakama about improving performance by removing (if-)branches and instead doing binary arithmetic.

Cutting Room Floor

John Swartzwelder, Sage of “The Simpsons” — No matter if you like the Simpsons or not, this is a great interview by Mike Sacks.
Where Does a Candle Go When It Burns? — Randall Munroe (the creator of XKCD explains how candles work.
Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM for 98% Cost Saving — dekuNukem reverse engineers the "Bob Cassettes" for his dishwasher.
35 Principles for 35 Years — I love these lists, this time by Shawn Wang.

Arnes Weekly: What really happened at Basecamp

Sun, 02 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hope you're having a good weekend!

Tweet of the week

FAANG = Friendster, Angelfire, AOL, Napster, GeoCities — @waxpancake on Twitter

Culture

What really happened at Basecamp — Casey Newton has a differentiated overview.
Show your costs to boost sales — Thomas McKinlay about radical transparency when it comes to a product's costs.
Why you should put salaries on your job ads — Bailey Kursar talks about competitive vs. fair salaries. “If you’re worried that your current staff will find out they’re underpaid, stop underpaying them.”
99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice — Number 85 will surprise you (just kidding, but the list is great). By Kevin Kelly.

Software Engineering

Costs of iterators and Zero Cost Abstractions in Rust — Michael Barber compares benchmarks for iterator patterns in C#, Java and Rust.
Go Modules Cheat Sheet — Handy guide on go modules by André Eriksson.
This is not a standard Go project layout — Russ Cox on the "Standard Go Project Layout".
My current HTML boilerplate — A reference for starting a new web project by Manuel Matuzovic. The HN discussion is also worth checking out.
136 facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to landscape painting or nude modelling — Baldur Bjarnason has collected an amazing list, definitely check this out.

Fun

LegoMicroscope — A microscope built almost entirely from Lego.
Turning an iPad Pro into the Ultimate Classic Macintosh — Matt Sephton runs System 7 on his iPad Pro.

Videos

The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken — Johnny Harris investigates the reasons for broken McDonalds machines.

Cutting Room Floor

GitHub Pages now block FLoC — and you should, too! Add a Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() header to your site.
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California — Signal can provide "Unix timestamps for when each account was created and the date that each account last connected to the Signal service". Nothing else.

Arnes Weekly: What’s in the box?

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Welcome to Arnes Weekly! Ever thought about creating your own newsletter? You should definitely go for it! Check out Buttondown (that's what I use) or Substack and make sure to send me the subscribe link. 🙌

Tweet of the week

i think we, as a society, need to look at why it takes a netflix documentary for us to believe something — @aniacopian on Twitter

Story of the week

Signal: Exploiting vulnerabilities in Cellebrite UFED and Physical Analyzer from an app's perspective — Cellebrite announced "Signal support" and Signal hacked back, fun read.

Culture

Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit! — A tech tale of greed, desperation, and the power of expectations. By Mad Ned.
We Don’t Need Tech Infomercials — Did you watch the Apple Keynote on Tuesday? Shira Ovide makes a good point here, it could've been a blogpost (or two).
20 patterns to watch for in your engineering team (pdf) — Good collection of patterns that can happen in engineering teams and how to deal with them.

Rust

What's in the box? — Amos delivers again and dives into the Box type in Rust, comparing Rusts stack/heap handling with Go in the process. Super interesting.
Are we Yeet Yet? — A bikeshed-avoidance placeholder for syntactic sugar (return Err(e) ⇒ yeet e).
Zellij: a Rusty terminal workspace — Interesting project, works similar to tmux/screen but has a WebAssembly plugins system.
Rust Language Cheatsheet — A Rust reference by Ralf Biedert.

Go

proposal: expression to create pointer to simple types — A proposal which would make getting a pointer to a simple type a lot easier (&int(3) for example).
Go 1.17 will allow converting a slice to an array pointer (some of the time) — Be aware of panics though.
Last weeks issue had a link to My Go Executable Files Are Still Getting Larger, the Hacker News thread has an answer from Russ Cox to follow-up.

Watching

I made an entire OS that only runs Tetris — Very entertaining video, the source is on GitHub: jdah/tetris-os.

Cutting Room Floor

Software infrastructure 2.0: a wishlist — I agree with most points Erik Bernhardsson does here.
Podcast Subscriptions vs. the App Store — In case you missed it: Apple introduced podcast subscriptions in Tuesday’s Keynote. In this article Ben Thompson compares it with the AppStore model.
Compute@Edge: porting the iconic video game DOOM — Fastly ported DOOM to their edge platform (every tick is an HTTP request).
Apple AirDrop shares more than files — Researchers at TU Darmstadt discovered that AirDrop leaks your real name and phone number to an unknown attacker in proximity as well as embed your name in file metadata shared with AirDrop.

Arnes Weekly #1

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hey, so I'm trying this newsletter thing. If you have any feedback, reply to this email. I'd love to hear from you!

Tweet of the week

Post vaccine parties are gonna feel like giant high school reunions and I’m not ready — @lindadong on Twitter

Culture

High quality audio makes you sound smarter
If you don't have a proper microphone in your home-office, definitely get one if you can afford it. Wirecutter's budget pick is 45 $.
Embrace the Grind
Jacob Kaplan-Moss talks about how if you put enough effort in something it seems like magic to other people.
Don’t hire top talent; hire for weaknesses
Great writeup by Benji Weber about the talent vs. the weaknesses mindset when hiring people.

Rust

Rust is for Professionals
Gregory Szorc writes what is more an essay than a blog post about Rust and what he likes about it. This is a must read if you want to know why so many people like Rust.
Linus Torwalds about Rust in the Linux Kernel
Very interesting concerns, mostly about runtime-panics (e.g. when running out of memory). I hope this gets resolved, can't wait for a safer linux kernel.
Why Rust strings seem hard
Brandon Smith dives into Rusts string management in comparison with other languages.

Go

What's the sync.Cond
If you've never used a condvar, definitely check out this article by Hidetatsu Yaginuma.
Idiomatic pancis in Go
Even though usually frowned-upon, there definitely are situations where a panic is the best choice.
My Go Executable Files Are Still Getting Larger
Raphael 'kena' Poss compares the size of CockroachDB binaries and explains how it evolved over different Go versions.
Go is a great programming language
Drew DeVault about why he thinks Go is the best programming language ever made. Internet programming language is a very fitting description for Go in my opinion.

Watching

This Smart Home Isn't Stupid
Quinn Nelson talks about his smart-home setup, his set of rules for smart devices (which you should definitely adopt) and shows parts of his setup.
We Are In A "FOURTH TURNING," What Does That Mean?
Van Neistat (the Spirited Man) about the 1997 book, THE FOURTH TURNING and how history repeats itself every 80 years (according to the book). His YouTube channel is only a month old and already full of great content.

Tools and code

Lip Gloss
Style definitions for nice terminal layouts. Can't wait to use this!
xplr
A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer.

Cutting Room Floor

SQLite is the only database you will ever need in most cases
I definitely am guilty of using a Postgres database where SQLite would've sufficed. Re-read this before adding Postgres to your next project.
Creating Security Decision Trees With Graphviz
Kelly Shortridge about creating a graph for your attack vectors. I'm definitely going to do this. (This is also a good reference on making Graphviz look good.)