27 / Speed matters

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).
• Designing Low Upkeep Software (jefftk.com) — Jeff Kaufman about his approach to minimal-maintenance side projects.
• Speed matters (scattered-thoughts.net) — Jamie Brandon writes that the most important thing to focus on improving is how fast you can work.
• Hey linker, can you spare a meg? (tailscale.com) — Josh Bleecher Snyder explains how the Tailscale team reduced memory usage in their iOS app by improving the Go linker, with a nice twist at the end.
• 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.
• The Skill of Org Design (commoncog.com) — Cedric Chin has some insights on org design (spoiler: iteration is key).
• Growth vs. Efficiency (jayriverlong.github.io) — Jay Riverlong on a trade-off that you can find everywhere.
• Setting goals (scattered-thoughts.net) — Jamie Brandon about the benefits of goal setting and some principles.
• 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.
• Parsing JSON is a Minefield (seriot.ch) — Nicolas Seriot about the difficulty of parsing JSON and the inconsistencies in parser implementations.
• 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!
• go: don't change the libraries in 1.18 (github.com) — Rob Pike proposes to wait with adding generics to the standard library: "It's too much to do all at once, and we might get it wrong."

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).
• Rust: Does the published crate match the upstream source? (codeandbitters.com) — codeandbitters about the verification technologies of Rust crates.
• 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.
• Designing an API Client in Rust: New Rspotify Version a Year Later (nullderef.com) — Mario Ortiz Manero has great points on Rust API design. I especially like the async/blocking split.

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.
• The Ship That Became a Bomb (newyorker.com) — Ed Caesar about the oil tanker F.S.O. Safer which will likely sink, catch fire or explode soon.
• 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.
• A study of data collection by Android devices (lwn.net) — corbet summarises a study by researchers at Trinity College in Dublin, called "Android Mobile OS Snooping By Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme Handsets".
• 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.