80 / Goodbye Twitter, hello Fediverse

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 (salman.io)

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

• You should maintain a transition file (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 (randsinrepose.com)

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

Tech

• Fast builds, secure builds. Choose two. (stripe.com)

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

• Thirteen Years of Go (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 (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 (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 (time.com)

  Billy Pereigo interviews Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon.

• A humane guide to Mastodon (web.archive.org)

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

• Fediverse (bastianallgeier.com)

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

• Thinking About Mastodon (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”) (ar.al)

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

• Goodbye Twitter, Hello Fediverse! (xeiaso.net)

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

• On Running a Mastodon Instance (rixx.de)

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

Cutting Room Floor

• The Beggars And Street Prophets Of London (indica.medium.com)

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

• Cruel Changes at Twitter (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)

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

• What to blog about (simonwillison.net)

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

• f.lux, but for your house (tylercipriani.com)

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

• You Might Also Like (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 (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 (jacobin.com)

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

• Mental Models to Help You Cut Your Losses (behavioralscientist.org)

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