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

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 (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 (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 (reasonstobecheerful.world)

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

• ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web (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 (intercom.com)

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

Tech

• What's in my software engineering tool belt? (ntietz.com)

  Nicholas shares the contents of their software engineering tool belt.

• On replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a Thinkpad T480 (maxrozen.com)

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

• All your comparable types (go.dev)

  Robert Griesemer about changes to comparable types in Go 1.20.

• Reverse Engineering A Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel (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. (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 (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 (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 (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 (yaleclimateconnections.org)

  Chris Baraniuk about the bright future of heat pumps.

• World’s Largest Four-Day Work Week Trial Finds Few Are Going Back (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 (guzey.com)

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

• Gameplay Loop (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 (pnas.org)

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