I‘m taking a break from this newsletter.

I love reading and sharing all these interesting, sometimes polarizing, stories with you all and I thoroughly enjoyed the notes of encouragement some of you sent over the years.

But sometimes things that are really fun for a long time suddenly become another item on your to-do list; an obligation. The newsletter is taking up space in my head and time in my weekend that I would sometimes rather spend reading a newspaper or a book or nothing at all.

Maybe I‘ll come back in a month because I miss it, maybe not. In any case, here are some of my favourite newsletters, to fill the Arne‘s Weekly-shaped hole in your weekend:

• Hacker Newsletter by Kale Davis
• Dense Discovery by Kai Brach
• Weekend Reading by Assaf Arkin
• Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends by Caitlin Dewey
• software lead weekly by Oren Ellenbogen

xoxo
Arne

Toot of the Week

In the last five years, we've gone from "employees will never have to go into an office" to "employees need to be in the office because creative and innovative work can only be done face-to-face between humans" to "lol we don't need humans" — @quillmatiq@mastodon.social

AI

• Rolling the ladder up behind us (xeiaso.net)

  Xe Iaso about the grim impact of AI on future generations.

• Why I Won't Use AI (agentultra.com)

  James explains the moral and ethical reasons they're not using AI.

• Contra Ptacek's Terrible Article On AI (ludic.mataroa.blog)

  Nikhil Suresh replies to Thomas Ptacek‘s "My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts" in a hilarious way.

Software

• Selfish reasons for building accessible UIs (nolanlawson.com)

  Nolan Lawson lists reasons to build accessible UIs other than making them accessible for disabled people.

• my website is one binary (j3s.sh)

  Jes Olson explains the perks of building a website that's you can run on any server with a single binary.

• I really like the Helix editor. (herecomesthemoon.net)

  Mond writes a love letter to the Helix editor that makes me want to switch back to it.

Cutting Room Floor

• YouTube’s new anti-adblock measures (iter.ca)

  loops explains why your ad-blocked YouTube videos started to have a delay.

Toot of the Week

Going "fungal". Like going viral, but more organic because you're on the Fediverse and no artificial algorithm helped. — @inanedirk@metalhead.club

Software

• Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (inkandswitch.com)

  Geoffrey Litt, Josh Horowitz, Peter van Hardenberg and Todd Matthews write an essay on software that you can customize to your needs in an accessible manner.

AI

• Trusting your own judgement on 'AI' is a huge risk (baldurbjarnason.com)

  Baldur Bjarnason explains what “AI”, homeopathy, naturopathy, and psychic cons have in common.

• Field Notes From Shipping Real Code With Claude (diwank.space)

  Diwank shares a guide how to get most out of your AI-assisted development.

Cutting Room Floor

• Never Forget What They've Done (wheresyoured.at)

  Edward Zitron explains how tech giants actively make our lives worse, purely out of greed.

• The Relationship Is the Job (workingtheorys.com)

  Anu Atluru about the importance of human relation in the workplace.

• My website is my safe space (sightlessscribbles.com)

  Robert Kingett reacts to an email asking him why he doesn't leverage his "digital real estate".

Toot of the Week

Oops, I forgot to have generational wealth again — @donni@mastodon.social

AI

• My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts (fly.io)

  Thomas Ptacek cannot understand AI skeptics (in the context of software development), and explains why.

• Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (velvetshark.com)

  Radek Sienkiewicz about the sameness in modern design, particularly AI logos.

Work

• Big Bets (jackdanger.com)

  Jack Danger about the danger (hah) of big bets in companies.

• If you are useful, it doesn’t mean you are valued (betterthanrandom.substack.com)

  This post makes the distinction between being useful (being trusted with important work) vs being valued (included in strategic planning).

• Avoid the nightmare bicycle (geoffreylitt.com)

  Geoffrey Litt warns about interfaces with "superficial labels that hide the underlying system".

Toot of the Week

I select all images with traffic lights, therefore I am — @colingourlay@bne.social

Software

• You Can Choose Tools That Make You Happy (borretti.me)

  Fernando Borretti comments on how we try to rationalize our choice of obscure tools, when using them making us happy is reason enough.

• Type-level Bounded Recursion in Rust (catgirl.ai)

  Ash documents it's type crimes to build a stack depth counter.

AI

• Toolmen (aworkinglibrary.com)

  Mandy Brown disects AI as a political instrument to enforce inequality:

  If those in power cannot prove that a great many people are already inferior then they will bring that inferiority about by forcing them to use a tool that diminishes their intellectual and creative capacity.

• GitHub MCP Exploited: Accessing private repositories via MCP (simonwillison.net)

  Simon Willison explains how the GitHub MCP fulfills the lethal trifecta for prompt injection, and how the attack works.

Cutting Room Floor

• Researchers Say New Contact Lenses Let You See in the Dark (futurism.com)

  Victor Tangermann describes a new study developing contact lenses that detect infrared light.

• [video] How we lost the internet (youtube.com)

  Cory Doctorow gives an incredible Keynote at PyCon US about enshittification, wage-theft and surveillance capitalism. If you prefer to read, LWN has a shortened text version, but I recommend watching the talk.

• We Know A Good Life When We See It (seekingsignal.substack.com)

  Matt Duffy explains how we as a society forgot virtue, and how we can create a better moral culture.

Toot of the Week

As a website visitor, I want a modal popup to appear when I start to scroll down so that I can subscribe to your newsletter and increase shareholder value. — @benpocalypse@mastodon.social

AI

• The Copilot Delusion (deplet.ing)

  Jj published an incredibly well written post about Copilot, or using LLMs for software development.

• The Future of Customer Support is Lies, I Guess (aphyr.com)

  Kyle Kingsbury shares a shocking conversation with LLM-based customer support.

• Thoughts on thinking (dcurt.is)

  Dustin Curtis write sabout the impact LLMs have on their thinking skills.

• System Card: Claude Opus 4 & Claude Sonnet 4 (simonwillison.net)

  Simon Willison highlights some parts of the Claude 4 system card. No matter how you think about AI, this is fun to read.

Software

• Reinvent the Wheel (endler.dev)

  Matthias Endler reasons why you should, in fact, reinvent the wheel from time to time.

• You probably don't need a DI framework (rednafi.com)

  Redowan Delowar makes the case against dependency injection frameworks in Go.

Cutting Room Floor

• If nothing is curated, how do we find things? (tadaima.bearblog.dev)

  Tadaima explains how the rise of social media has killed the art of curation.

Toot of the Week

I need a 20-year long nap to cope with the current state of the world. — @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange

Working

• Experts have it easy (boydkane.com)

  Boyd compared novice vs expert work with escaping a maze as the example.

• 5 Powerful Persuasion Methods for Engineering Managers (newsletter.manager.dev)

  Chaitali Narla explains how persuasion is a big part of being an engineering manager, and gives examples of different techniques.

Software

• Mastodon Comments (beej.us)

  Beej walks you through how they added Mastodon comments to their blog posts.

• Static types are for perfectionists (mmapped.blog)

  Roman Kashitsyn argues your preference of programming preferences stem largely from your childhood.

• Falsehoods software teams believe about user feedback (thoughtbot.com)

  Fritz Meissner wrote a painfully relevant list of falsehoods for user feedback.

Cutting Room Floor

• What the Comfort Class Doesn't Get (theatlantic.com)

  Xochitl Gonzalez explains how policy makers often have generational wealth and live a different live than the people without. (Archive without paywall.)

• Spaced Repetition Systems Have Gotten Way Better (domenic.me)

  Domenic Denicola explains a relatively new scheduling algorithm for spaced repetition that is way more efficient.

Toot of the Week

My kid has started saying “[x] is a social construct” to get out of anything and everything (eg: “wearing socks”), and I’m having a hard time arguing back because they’re usually right. — @Nickiquote@mstdn.social

Software

• The Curse of Knowing How, or; Fixing Everything (notashelf.dev)

  raf about the skill of knowing to fix broken software, and the burden that comes with it.

AI

• I'd rather read the prompt (claytonwramsey.com)

  Clayton Ramsey asks you to no let a computer write for you, and explains why.

• AI of dead Arizona road rage victim addresses killer in court (theguardian.com)

  Cy Neff writes about a murder victim that addresses his killer in court, three years after, using AI.

Cutting Room Floor

• The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing (oxfordamerican.org)

  Emily McCrary about the landline of the Foy Information desk in the Melton Studen Center at Auburn University, where everyone can call and ask questions, or chat. Thanks, Eric!

• The history of album art (matthewstrom.com)

  Matthew Ström dives into the origins of album art as we know it today.

• Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds (chrbutler.com)

  Christopher Butler about the burden of digital life.

Projects of Friends

Friendzone works as your second brain for relationships, helping you nurture your connections through timely reminders and organized conversation tracking.

I already showed you Friendzone, the app my friend Jan is building, in issue #180. I’ve been using it since the early TestFlight releases and it’s helped me keep in touch with friends and family members that I otherwise wouldn’t have. It’s an incredible app that you can download today in the Apple App Store!

Here are five codes that’ll get you three additional free months after the trial (first come, first served): 4PM637XF84J4EFPEN6, KWKJYE4MMK7PPW7WMR, LEF46PR68KFEK6MRXF, LWAMH7RPXYM3TYTRNR, NKNER7LN787XHEFWLJ

Software

• I use Zip Bombs to Protect my Server (idiallo.com)

  Ibrahim Diallo serves zip bombs to malicious bots.

• The One-Person Framework in practice (bramjetten.dev)

  Bram Jetten writes an inspiring post, explaining how he was the solo developer for 14 years, building a €1M+ ARR company, all using Ruby on Rails.

• I just want to code (zachbellay.com)

  Zach Bellay about the angel and the devil sitting on his shoulders, the former telling him to code for fun and the latter telling him to "be his own boss" and make money.

• Elixir is not owned by Big Tech (underjord.io)

  This blog post elaborates on the Elixir ecosystem and its supporters.

• Life Altering Postgresql Patterns (mccue.dev)

  Ethan McCue lists patterns for working with Postgres that make your life easier in the long run.

Cutting Room Floor

• Oxide’s Compensation Model: How is it Going? (oxide.computer)

  Bryan Cantrill takes resume on the Oxide compensation model, where everyone gets the same salary: $207,264.

• Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all (theregister.com)

  Thomas Claburn writes about a recent working paper by Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard, who found the labor and wage impact of AI to be minimal.

Toot of the Week

✨ I only eat locally sourced, free range, organic microplastics ✨ — @LilahTovMoon@tech.lgbt

UI

• Our interfaces have lost their senses (wattenberger.com)

  Anna Wattenberger argues that we need to bring our senses back into UI.

Cutting Room Floor

• Staring into the abyss as a core life skill (benkuhn.net)

  Ben explains how too few people stare into the abyss, a.k.a. thinking about things that are "uncomfortable to contemplate, like arguments against your religious belief, or in favor of breaking up with your partner.

• ultimate employee: the one that is truly proactive (auren.substack.com)

  Auren Hoffman argues proactive employees are the "very best people", and provides a simple test to see if you are one.

• Hyperwood (hyperwood.org)

  This project is a (small but hopefully growing) collection of open-source furniture that you can build at home with minimal tools.

Toot of the Week

Array indices start at 0 in C, but start at 32 in F. — jfbastien@mastodon.social

Work

• Advice for time management as a manager (benkuhn.net)

  Ben Kuhn gives advice for time management as a manager, including prioritization and delegation.

AI

• The Post-Developer Era (joshwcomeau.com)

  Josh W. Comeau takes another look at how LLMs are impacting the software developer job market today.

• Everything Wrong with MCP (blog.sshh.io)

  Shrivu Shankar shares common problems when working with MCPs.

• Your CEO Just Said ‘Use AI or Else.’ Here’s What to Do Next. (every.to)

  Alex Duffy gives practical advice on what to do if your boss tells you to integrate AI into your daily work.

Cutting Room Floor

• "Knowingness" and the Politics of Ignorance (forkingpaths.co)

  Brian Klaas about culture wars and the danger of people who don't want to learn.

• K2-18b and detection of biosignature dimethyl sulfide (skyatnightmagazine.com)

  Iain Todd reports on a team led by the University of Cambridge detected a possible biosignature—the potential fingerprint of life.

• Honest and Elitist Thoughts on Why Computers Were More Fun Before (datagubbe.se)

  Carl Svensson argues that one of the reasons coputers were more fun in the past was that they weren't for everyone.

Skeet of the Week

men will literally impose tariffs on islands entirely inhabited by penguins instead of going to therapy — @annabower.bsky.social

Software

• The Best Programmers I Know (endler.dev)

  Matthias Endler lists traits they see in great engineers.

• The Insanity of Being a Software Engineer (0x1.pt)

  Vitor M. de Sousa Pereira about the rise of full stack engineers and generalists.

AI

• Introducing MonkeysPaw - a prompt-driven web framework in Ruby (worksonmymachine.substack.com)

  Scott Werner embraces LLM's "hallucinations" and created a web framework build purely with prompts.

• A Field Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products (hamel.dev)

  Hamel Husain shares advice for building AI products, with a focus on analysis.

Cutting Room Floor

• Your elusive creative genius (ted.com)

  Elizabeth Gilbert gives a TED talk about creative genius and provides a way to cope with creative success or failure.

• But what if I really want a faster horse? (rakhim.exotext.com)

  Rakhim looks back at early Netflix and Spotify and the Cascinisation of software to become TikTok-shaped. Thanks, Eric!

• Sleep is essential — researchers are trying to work out why (nature.com)

  Tammy Worth about Dragana Rogulja, a neurobiologist who found out that 90 % sleep-deprived animals die after 10 days, and theories why sleep is essential for survival.

• Your Strengths Are Your Weaknesses (terriblesoftware.org)

  Matheus Lima explains how strengths and weaknesses are heavily connected and often context decides which it is.

• Jacob Collier Improvises the National Symphony Orchestra (youtube.com)

  Fascinating performance by both Jacob Collier and the orchestra.

Toot of the Week

mom can you pick me up wikipedia is calling a mathematical argument "intuitive" again — @hipsterelectron@circumstances.run

Culture

• Eject disk. (brilliantcrank.com)

  Brilliantcrank gives advice to stop over-functioning and start returning to your true self.

• How To Convince Others That You Are Qualified and Ready To Lead (You Know You Are!) (news.yuezhao.coach)

  Yue Zhao gives advice to people struggling to get a leadership role.

Software

• The April Fools joke that might have got me fired (oldvcr.blogspot.com)

  A great story about an April fools joke that went a bit too far.

• I'm an American software developer and the "broligarchs" don't speak for me (ratfactor.com)

  Dave Gauer about geek culture and the vultures that are the big tech billionaires.

Cutting Room Floor

• Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride (science.org)

  Derek Lowe never wants to work with Dioxygen Difluoride and explains why.

• What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)

  Kōdō Simone explains why we should talk about making advertising illegal.

Toot of the Week

“We are currently clean on OPSEC” accidentally sent to a journalist is an all time classic. — @chrislhayes.bsky.social‬

Favorites

• High Agency (highagency.com)

  George Mack writes an incredible essay on what it means to have high agency, and how to get there.

Tech

• Vulgar Display of Power (tante.cc)

  tante writes about the new OpenAI feature to generate pictures in the style of Studio Ghibli, and why it’s problematic.

• SKÅPA, a parametric 3D printing app like an IKEA manual (nmattia.com)

  Nicolas Mattia shares the build process of their client-side web-app for creating 3D models for IKEA pegboards.

• Apple Needs a Snow Sequoia (reviews.ofb.biz)

  Timothy R. Butler argues that Apple's operating systems need a spring cleaning.

Cutting Room Floor

• Keep coming back (rojospinks.substack.com)

  Rosie Spinds about the value of community and regular events, and how to get started.

• Leadership Over Measureship. (invencion.com)

  Paul describes the rise in measureship since the end of ZIRP-era economics and puts it against proper leadership.

Toot of the Week

ME: The building is on fire! REPLY GUY: This is nothing new. Buildings burn every day. [continues to sit there, burns to death] — @inthehands@hachyderm.io

Leadership

• The Hidden Ways Leaders Unintentionally Punish Their Top Performers (newsletter.canopy.is)

  Claire Lew shares 5 ways top-performers are unintentionally driven away.

AI

• "Vibe Coding" vs Reality (cendyne.dev)

  Cendyne about practical shortcomings in vibe coding with current LLMs.

• Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face (drewdevault.com)

  Drew DeVault shares their frustrations of companies, lately AI, abusing SourceHut.

• Is it okay? (robinsloan.com)

  Robin Sloan explores the ethical question behind modern LLMs.

• The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem (theatlantic.com)

  Alex Reisner about Meta torrenting a pirated books collection called LibGen with more than 7.5M books to train their AI models.

Cutting Room Floor

• Garbage (craigmod.com)

  Craig Mod about the human urgen to get rid of garbage as quickly as possible.

• Stamina is a Quiet Advantage (kupajo.com)

  Kupajo about the benefits of persistence in life.

Toot of the Week

I love the phrase "bear with me" because it either means "be patient" or "the zoo heist was a success" — @DocAtCDI@mastodon.social

Software

• Were multiple return values Go's biggest mistake? (herecomesthemoon.net)

  Mond argues that Go's multiple return values should be a tuple, something you can pass around and work with.

• Why "Normal" Engineers Are the Key to Great Teams (spectrum.ieee.org)

  Charity Majors argues against the myth of the 10x engineer.

AI

• Let’s talk about AI and end-to-end encryption (blog.cryptographyengineering.com)

  Matthew Green about what end-to-end encryption really guarantees and how that conflicts with new AI use-cases.

• Here’s how I use LLMs to help me write code (simonwillison.net)

  Simon Willison explains the tricks they apply to be productive with LLMs.

Politics

• The 'Threat to Democracy' Is Over - by Michael Harriot (contrabandcamp.com)

  Michael Harriot explains why the feared fascism in the USA is already here.

• Trump is a traitor, and Europe is now alone (robertreich.substack.com)

  Claude Malhuret with a French perspective on Trump, and which actions Europe needs to take.

• Boycott Tesla (currentaffairs.org)

  Nathan J. Robinson about the effects of a Tesla boycott.

Cutting Room Floor

• Kill your Feeds - Stop letting algorithms dictate how you think (usher.dev)

  Tom Usher wants you to take back the power to shape what you see on the internet.

Toot of the Week

please stop right-clicking on the national strategic NFT reserve, we don't know how to turn that off — @starchy@infosec.exchange

Digital ownership

• Five years of home-cooked apps (robinsloan.com)

  Robin Sloan takes a look back on the home-cooked app they've written and how the concept holds up.

• Why and How I use "Org Mode" for my writing and more (evalapply.org)

  Aditya Athalye gives an introduction to Org Mode and how to get started if you want to try it.

• The Digital Packrat Manifesto (404media.co)

  Janus Rose about DRM, streaming services and nobody owning anything digitally nowadays.

Cutting Room Floor

• Bayleaf Wireless Keyboard Build (graz.io)

  Sebastian Graz shows how their own wireless low-profile keyboard from scratch.

• Troubleshooting: The Skill That Never Goes Obsolete (autodidacts.io)

  This article is about the skill of troubleshooting, and shares some steps to remember. I especially recommend reading the linked examples at the very end!

Work

• Creating a Sense of Stability (newsletter.canopy.is)

  Claire Lew gives advice how to shepherd your team through a reorg, downsizing or strategic shift.

Software

• How Core Git Developers Configure Git (blog.gitbutler.com)

  Scott Chacon shares very useful config settings for Git, some of which should arguably be the default.

Cutting Room Floor

• iMac G4(K) (jcs.org)

  Joshua Stein upgraded an old iMac G4 to internally use a Mac mini.

• It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds (berthub.eu)

  Bert Hubert explains why using the US cloud is no longer a good idea.

• The Second Trump Administration’s New Forms of Distraction (newyorker.com)

  Kyle Chayka about the impact of doom scrolling news.

Toot of the Week

Everyone’s having a hard time dealing with all the everything— @donni@mastodon.social

Software

• My Washing Machine Refreshed My Thinking on Software Effort Estimation (cosive.com)

  Chris Horsley installs a new washing machine and compares the process to unknown unknowns in software development.

• Death of a thousand nits (bitfieldconsulting.com)

  John Arundel gives advice on writing code reviews.

Cutting Room Floor

• The midwit home (dynomight.net)

  Incredible article about the midwit smart home: Using low-tech devices like timers and sensors that work without a phone or a hub.

• What is USB Club? (usb.club)

  Yatú Espinosa and Norm O'Hagan explain their USB memory network.

• Can I ethically use LLMs? (ntietz.com)

  Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya explores the ethics of using an LLM.

• It Never Gets Easier (shripriya.com)

  Shripriya explains how business never gets easier, but the challenge and the perspective changes.

• Goodbye Surveillance Capitalism, Hello Surveillance Fascism (maxmurphy.xyz)

  Max Murphy explores the idea of surveillance fascism, and how we can resist.

Toot of the Week

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if he really set his mind to it? — Max Leibman

Work

• AI or Die (rkg.blog)

  Ravi Gupta argues you need to completely restructure your company to be ready for super intelligent AI. Worth reading even if you don't agree (I don't).

• Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills (gizmodo.com)

  AJ Dellinger about a new study which shows how knowledge workers' critical thinking skills decrease the more they rely on AI.

Software

• 100 Most Watched Software Engineering Talks Of 2024 (techtalksweekly.io)

  Tech Talks Weekly has collated a list of the top 100 most-watched software engineering talks of 2024.

Cutting Room Floor

• The hardest working font in Manhattan (aresluna.org)

  Marcin Wichary shares the history of a font called Gorton, which is used in many places, but has an unconventional origin.

• You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism (404media.co)

  Janus Rose explains how reacting to the right-wing lies and absurdities can actually help them—and what to do instead.

• Doing Nothing With Your Favorite People Is Really, Really Good for You (self.com)

  Lauren Mazzo about the healing power of just hanging out.

Projects of Friends: Friendzone

Do you struggle to remember people’s birthdays? Do you have a huge note on your phone with gift ideas? Do you sometimes forget something a friend or relative told you a while ago?

My friend Jan built an app called Friendzone, that helps you manage and elevate your relationships. You can set a regular catch-up interval to get reminded to reach out, you get birthday reminders and you can write gift ideas and notes for your friends and family.

This is one of the apps that stay true to what Steve Jobs called “bicycle for the mind”: Friendzone stays out of your way but supports you in your daily life.

Join the waitlist today and get early access!

Software

• We are destroying software (antirez.com)

  antirez lists various ways how we engineers are destroying software.

• Everyone knows your location (timsh.org)

  Tim tracked himself down through ad networks and shows the vast information, including geolocation, that is shared without consent.

Cutting Room Floor

• Meishi: a tiny productivity system (arun.is)

  Arun created an on-the-go productivity system for the Apple Wallet. Thanks, Jan!

• Paid to Cycle, Forced to Biodiversify, and Banned from Smoking (urbanismnow.substack.com)

  Ray Berger and Maria Paula Moreno Vivas wrote their third issue of Urbanism Now, a new weekly newsletter with curated links to urban ideas. I'm a happy subscriber!

• The Protesters' Guide to Smartphone Security (privacyguides.org)

  You shouldn't bring your smartphone to a protest, but if you do: This guide explains how.

• Don’t believe him (insidestory.org.au)

  Ezra Klein about Trump's strategy in these first weeks of office and what muzzle velocity means.

Skeet of the Week

Commit the sin of empathy. — @evandorkin.bsky.social

Work

• Once You're Laid Off, You'll Never Be the Same Again (mertbulan.com)

  Mert Bulan talks about the impact of layoffs on work ethic, how to see the signs and how to be ready.

• The Stories in Our Heads (Fact vs. Meaning) (andysparks.co)

  Andy Sparks explains how everyone of us makes up stories, a.k.a. lives in meaning land, and how to avoid falling into that trap.

Tech

• 3 Tools for 2025 (yosemitesam.ch)

  Samuel Hierholzer advocates for three tools to reach traction in 2025: Oils, Radicle and Simplex Chat.

• Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog (henrikkarlsson.xyz)

  Henrik Karlsson shares 19 pieces of advice for people who want to start a blog.

• The PC is Dead: It’s Time to Make Computing Personal Again (vintagecomputing.com)

  Benj Edwards about the ideas of the first personal computers, and today‘s "Rot Economy".

Cutting Room Floor

• How 9 Popular YouTubers Helped Trump Win a Second Term (bloomberg.com)

  Seven Bloomberg journalists analyzed YouTube videos and podcast episodes of Joe Rogan, Logan Paul, and others to show their influence on the US election.

• Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral (404media.co)

  Jason Koebler shares some excerpts of a book that went viral, called "Simple Sabotage Field Manual".

• Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand? | Technology | The Guardian (theguardian.com)

  Christine Rosen about the side effects of loosing the skill of handwriting.

Toot of the Week

Butane floats on water because it's a lighter fluid. — @catsalad@infosec.exchange

Work

• Explore vs Execute (longform.asmartbear.com)

  Jason Cohen about the important cultural shift that has to happen when a company hits product market fit.

• Dear Software Engineer: It's Time to Reclaim Your Role (annievella.com)

  Annie Vella argues we should reclaim the software engineer role to include what product engineers do, to stay safe from growing AI influence.

Software

• What's involved in getting a "modern" terminal setup? (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans talks about important parts of having a modern terminal (24-bit colors, clipboard sync, etc.)

• Great things about Rust that aren't just performance (ntietz.com)

  Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya lists 7 reasons to use Rust, apart from performance.

• The future of htmx (htmx.org)

  Carson Gross and Alex Petros explain why htmx is the new jQuery.

Cutting Room Floor

• Amund's note on home server security (raniseth.com)

  Amund Raniseth got malware after exposing a Postgres container to the internet.

• They squandered the holy grail (xeiaso.net)

  Xe Iaso about the failure of Apple Intelligence, even though the foundation of it is nearly invincible.

Toot of the Week

tiny gender-affirming things you do are micro trans actions 🏳️‍⚧️ — @Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt

Software

• Fish 4.0: The Fish Of Theseus (fishshell.com)

  A report on the Fish Rust rewrite.

• Axum-style Magic Handler Functions in Go, Part 1 (kubuzetto.github.io)

  Devrim Şahin explores building Axum-like handlers in Go.

• How Do You Like What You’ve Built? (morrisbrodersen.de)

  Morris Brodersen shares a technique to encourage quality by asking engineers how they like what they built.

• Glue work considered harmful (seangoedecke.com)

  Sean Goedecke explains why glue work, which improves team efficiency, is often not rewarded.

• Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you here (rachelbythebay.com)

  Rachel Kroll lists annoying patterns websites employ, which you won't see on their website.

Cutting Room Floor

• Scientists may have discovered how to fight drug-resistant bacteria (bgr.com)

  Joshua Hawkins about new research, exploiting a weakness in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

• Most people don’t care about quality (shkspr.mobi)

  Terence Eden explains why mediocre is good enough for the hoi polloi.

Quote of the Week

“The thing about being wrong is that before you know you’re wrong, it feels exactly like being right.” —Roman Mars

Work

• About 40 hours (thesquareplanet.com)

  Jon Gjengset about the pitfalls of working too much, and what to do instead. Thanks, Marcus!

Design

• Context Chips in Survey Design: “Okay, but how does it feel?” (lea.verou.me)

  Lea Verou takes you through the process of designing a better survey experience.

Software

• Ghostty: Reflecting on Reaching 1.0 (mitchellh.com)

  Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty's path to 1.0; what worked well and what didn't.

• That's not an abstraction, that's just a layer of indirection (fhur.me)

  Fernando Hurtado Cardenas explains why you should use abstractions in software wisely.

Cutting Room Floor

• 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024 (theatlantic.com)

  The Atlantic has collected 77 facts that blew their minds in 2024.

Skeet of the Week

kinda weird that after all the republicans calling shit woke they’re the one with two daddies. 👀 — imlunahey.com

Software

• Tools for Go modules (cirw.in)

  Conrad Irwin explains the new Go modules tool directive.

• Go's Weird Little Iterators (mcyoung.xyz)

  Miguel Young de la Sota compares different implementations of iterations and dives deep into how Go implemented them.

• My favourite colour is Chuck Norris red (htmhell.dev)

  Declan Chidlow about HTML Color parsing and the forgiveness of web browsers.

• How do you do, fellow web developers? A growing disconnect. (rakhim.exotext.com)

  Rakhim about the disconnect between frontend web developers, and everyone else.

Cutting Room Floor

• Here's What the Fight For Your Attention Really Looks Like (posting-nexus.ghost.io)

  Julia Alexander about the real fight for attention: Quantifying everthing.

Skeet of the Week

ACAB includes the linter ✊ — searyanc.dev

Work

• An introduction to thinking about risk (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss starts their series "Thinking About Risk" with this introduction. Make sure to check out Part 2 about Mitigation.

• Networking For People Who Don't Network (blog.staysaasy.com)

  This article gives a minimum-effort guide to networking, and what pattern to avoid.

• How to plan? (kellanem.com)

  Kellan Elliott-McCrea shares twelve ways to make (yearly) planning suck less.

• Context NOT Control (antmurphy.me)

  Ant Murphy shares four actions to improve clarity in teams, and why that's important.

• Parkinson's Law: It's Real, So Use It (theengineeringmanager.substack.com)

  James Stanier about the power of deadlines, even if self-imposed.

• How To Anticipate and Come Out Ahead In Reorgs (news.yuezhao.coach)

  Yue Zhao explains strategies to be in the right place at the right time when a reorg happens.

Software

• A high-velocity style of software development (mihaiolteanu.me)

  Mihai Olteanu shares different techniques that help them develop software.

Cutting Room Floor

• What the Murder of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. Means to America (newyorker.com)

  Jia Tolentino about the murder of Brian Thompson, and the unprecedented public reaction.

Toot of the Week

They should put HTML in the browser— @davatron5000.bsky.social

Work

• Facebook's Little Red Book (map.cv)

  Matthew A. Parkhurst got hold of a Facebook-internal indentity-preserving book from 2012 and scanned it for you.

• How to Grow Professional Relationships (tej.as)

  Tejas Kumar shares a model for professional relationships and advice how to navigate them.

Software

• I don't know how to build software and you don't either (seangoedecke.com)

  Sean Goedecke argues that when we‘re making technical decisions, we need to keep in mind that opinions are often anecdotal.

• Egoless Engineering (egoless.engineering)

  Dan McKinley about ego in engineering jobs and how to build efficient teams by giving ownership and collaborating.

• Storing times for human events (simonwillison.net)

  Simon Willison gives advice on how to store times for events created by humans.

Cutting Room Floor

• The Art of Long-Term Thinking in a Short-Sighted World (joanwestenberg.com)

  Joan Westenberg about the human bias to choose short-term over long-term gains and why we should think more in centuries.

Skeet of the Week

LIFE HACK: Answer your phone "Hello you're on the air" and 99% of the time people will just hang up. — @mistymadonna.bsky.social

Working

• Care work (everythingchanges.us)

  Mandy Brown about people who do the unrewarded but important care work in teams.

Tech

• How NAT traversal works (tailscale.com)

  David Anderson writes an extensive but fascinating article about different ways to connect peers through NATs.

• If Not React, Then What? (infrequently.org)

  Alex Russell about React not being modern, and why you should reach for an SPA in most projects.

Cutting Room Floor

• The Anti-Woke Culture Police Have Some Weird New Obsessions. (lauriepenny.substack.com)

  Penny Red about the "redpilled keyboard beserkers" and how winning an election means you no longer get to be the counterculture.

• The Art of Not Sharing (joanwestenberg.com)

  Joan Westenberg argues that we both consume and share too much personal information, and what to do instead.

• I refuse to be a slave to The Algorithm (codingwithjesse.com)

  Jesse Skinner about the power of the algorithm in social networks.

Skeet of the Week

Tired: Die Hard is a Christmas movie Wired: Ratatouille is a mecha anime — @mortalwombat.info‬

Tech

• Apple study exposes deep cracks in LLMs’ “reasoning” capabilities (arstechnica.com)

  Kyle Orland about a recent paper from six apple Engineers testing the "reasoning" capabilities of LLMs with catastrophic results.

• How decentralized is Bluesky really? (dustycloud.org)

  Christine Lemmer-Webber about the technical implementation of ATProto, the backbone of Bluesky, why it's not really decentralized and if it matters.

• SemVer Is Not About You (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov explains how SemVer ist most useful for dependency conflict resolution.

Cutting Room Floor

• against the dark forest (wrecka.ge)

  Erin Kissane introduces the die of the Dark Internet Forest, where predators force you to hide in a safe space.

• Your friends shape your microbiome — and so do their friends (nature.com)

  Saima Sidik about recent studies, which indicate that you share around 10 % of your microbiome with friends you see regularly and what that means for conditions with links to the microbiome, such as hypertension and depression.

Tech

• MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia (jan.miksovsky.com)

  Jan Mikdosky built a device to improve the everyday life of their mom, who's living with amnesia.

• The TTY demystified (linusakesson.net)

  Linus Åkesson explains the origins of the TTY and does a deep-dive into how it works today.

• Maybe Bluesky has “won” (anderegg.ca)

  Gavin Anderegg shares their perspective on the problems of Bluesky and what it gets right.

• What I Wish Someone Told Me About Postgres (challahscript.com)

  Hazel Bachrach lists common foot guns with Postgres.

Cutting Room Floor

• Work doesn't love us (sarahesterman.com)

  Sarah Esterman explains why your job doesn't and will never love you back.

• Everyone is numbing out (catherineshannon.substack.com)

  Catherine Shannon argues everything has lost its meaning and we need to get it back.

• Broken Bones: America’s Violent Indifference toward Women (katemanne.substack.com)

  Kate Manner about what the US election means for women.

• The Lost Art of Memory (thebasecamp.substack.com)

  Adam Robbert explains how the modern focus on novelty conflicts with memory.

• Progress and cosy nostalgia (tante.cc)

  tante about a common narrative of progress, like colonizing Mars, and how it doesn't survive the contact with reality.

• This scientist treated her own cancer with viruses she grew in the lab (nature.com)

  Zoe Corbyn about virologist Besta Halassy, who successfully treated her own breast cancer with the help of lab-grown viruses.

Software

• On Good Software Engineers (candost.blog)

  Candost explains what makes a good and great software engineer.

• Your CSS reset should be layered (mayank.co)

  Mayank explains how CSS layers helps with reset instructions.

Cutting Room Floor

• Silicon Valley got what it wanted (bloodinthemachine.com)

  Brian Merchant explains how Silicon Valley influenced and profits from the election. "The digital casino is open, there are no house rules apart from ‘don't insult the boss’, and there are certainly no guarantees."

• Every Transaction Matters (world.hey.com)

  Joan Westenberg explains how every action in life is a transaction.

• Part I: What finesse looks like when reading people and situations (newsletter.weskao.com)

  Wes Kao shares seven examples of finesse when reading people and situations.

Toot of the Week

"green transition". you bike to work while the destroyer class evaporates the oceans to run chatbots. — @hugo@assemblag.es

Working

• How Not to Disagree (boz.com)

  Andrew Bosworth about the right and wrong ways to disagree with leadership as a team lead.

• What is the point of an online conference? (scattered-thoughts.net)

  Jamie Brandon explains why online conferences are useful, even though they are different than in-person conferences.

• Latewood (everythingchanges.us)

  Mandy Brown about rapid growth and the time of focus, and why both have their time.

Software

• Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend. (programmingisterrible.com)

  tef gives advice how to build software that can change over time, and why that approach is preferrable.

Cutting Room Floor

• If Adam Picked the Apple (thenorthmeridianreview.org)

  Two poems by Danielle Coffyn, published by Wesley R. Bishop.

• What Can You Learn from Photographing Your Life? (newyorker.com)

  Joshua Rothman about the value in realism and taking pictures of the mundane.

• Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula (theatlantic.com)

  Zoë Schlanger explains the dangers of flame-retardants in plastic, and why they are a lot higher in black plastic items.

• The cultural power of the anti-woke tech bro (vox.com)

  Rebecca Jennings takes you through the history of techno-libertarians.

• If fossil fuel dependency is a global addiction, climate activists are prophets trying to save us from our stupor (theguardian.com)

  Tim Winton about our addiction on fossil fuels and why climate activists can be compared to prophets.

Toot of the Week

Grand Theft Autocomplete is my new favourite term for LLMs — @ben@m.benui.ca

Software

• The Lowest Common Denominator: www (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen about the difference in control of native apps vs. the web.

• Using static websites for tiny archives (alexwlchan.net)

  Alex Chan hand-writes static websites to organize their media and bookmarks, and explains why and how.

• Smarter than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content (alfy.blog)

  Ahmad Alfy explains the Text fragments standard, a way to link to a text selection directly.

• Zig is everything I want C to be (mrcat.au)

  Max lists some great features of Zig. Did you know it had arbitrary-width integers?

Cutting Room Floor

• the quiet art of attention (billwear.github.io)

  Stormrider writes a beautiful post about simplicity and intention.

• Appreciate everything endlessly (video) (youtube.com)

  Cabel Sasser tells the story of Wes Cook, who he found from a McDonalds mural and encourages you to appreciate art around you and share appreciation with the artists. He even made a website highlighting Wez' art.

• When Leica met Apple (arun.is)

  Arun about the Lica M (Typ 240), designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson and what made it special. Thanks, Jan!

• The Case Against Travel (newyorker.com)

  Agnes Callard argues that travel is often imbued "with a vast significance, an aura of virtue", and falsely so.

Toot of the Week

someone keeps undoing the dishes — @zens@merveilles.town

Internet

• POSSE: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world (citationneeded.news)

  Molly White explains the benefits of POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).

• A peasant woodland (aworkinglibrary.com)

  Mandy Brown explains why they decided to syndicate across social networks.

Software

• Cognitive load is what matters (minds.md)

  Artem Zakirullin about cognitive load in software projects. This is a must-read if you write software!

• Inside How Stripe Crafts Quality Products (creatoreconomy.so)

  Peter Yang interviews Katie Dill, the Head of Design at Stripe on product quality. Thanks, Jan!

• Creating Accessible Figures and Tables (dis.acm.org)

  A guide to accessible figures (including charts) and tables, by ACM DIS (Designing Interactive Systems).

Cutting Room Floor

• ‘I love the whole atmosphere and can spend hours browsing’: how did bookshops suddenly become cool? (theguardian.com)

  Sarah Manavis explains why book shops have seen a rise in visits by Gen Z.

• Standing desks do not reduce risk of stroke and heart failure, study suggests (theguardian.com)

  Andrew Gregory writes about a study, which uncovers that standing desk are not as healthy as you thought. Thanks, Eric!

• Systems and change (anniemueller.com)

  Annie writes about systems built to serve us turning into us serving the system and how to make a difference.

• How humans evolved a starch-digesting superpower long before farming (science.org)

  Michael Price summarizes the findings of two papers, which show how early the salivary amylase gene AMY1 could be found in humans. Thanks, Astrid!

Toot of the Week

When Elon Musk launched SpaceX, he had nothing but a $200 million fortune and government subsidies. He didn’t let that hold him back. If this story didn’t make you cry you don’t have a heart. If it didn’t inspire you you don’t have AMBITION. — @Daojoan@mastodon.social

Internet

• The Disappearance of an Internet Domain (every.to)

  Gareth Edwards explains the history of domains disappearing and why .io will be next. Thanks, Dom!

• The Static Site Paradox (kristoff.it)

  Loris Cro about the paradox that most non-engineers have complicated, resource-hungry, expensive websites and cannot ”afford“ a simple, maintainable and cheap option.

Software

• Terminal colours are tricky (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans goes through problems and solutions of terminal color problems.

• This Post Is Not About Python (jerf.org)

  Jeremy Bowers writes a post about choosing the right programming language (I can't say more without spoiling it).

• My team is too senior. How am I supposed to be promoted? (amyunger.com)

  Amy Unger talks about her experience applying at staff engineer roles.

Cutting Room Floor

• Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing (syllabusproject.org)

  Rena Tom explains different categories of fake objects.

• Why trolls, extremists, and others spread conspiracy theories they don’t believe (arstechnica.com)

  H. Colleen Sinclair shares 5 archetypes of people sharing conspiracy theories they don't even believe in.

• I am tired of AI (ontestautomation.com)

  Bas Dijkstra is tired of AI and explains why.

Internet

• 15 rules for blogging, and my current streak (interconnected.org)

  Matt Webb shares 15 rules that help them write more blog posts.

• Raw dog the open web! (fromjason.xyz)

  Jason encourages readers to fight back against the monoculture.

Software

• Rust needs a web framework for lazy developers (ntietz.com)

  Nicole is making the case for a Django (or Rails) in Rust.

• Rust needs an extended standard library (kerkour.com)

  Sylvain Kerkour argues we need a Rust standard library, following Go, Deno & Zig.

• Building a robust frontend using progressive enhancement (gov.uk)

  This guideline for UK government websites strongly suggests building with HTML and progressively enhance your website.

• CRDTs go brrr (2021) (josephg.com)

  Seph Gentle got angry about a paper portraying an algorithm of his as slow and takes you into a rabbit hole of CRDT performance optimizations.

• Modalz Modalz Modalz (modalzmodalzmodalz.com)

  This website explains why websites and apps overuse modals, and shows some alternatives.

• The Go libraries that never failed us: 22 libraries you need to know (threedots.tech)

  Robert Laszczak shares Go libraries that are battle-tested in production systems—a great list to keep for reference.

• We need more zero config tools (arne.me)

  I wrote an ode to zero (or minimal) config tools.

Cutting Room Floor

• Do not buy an AI smartphone (newstatesman.com)

  Will Dunn argues that you should not buy am AI smartphone as it's a global social experiment comparable to social media.

• Aftermath… (qrper.com)

  Thomas Witherspoon's neighbourhood has been hit hard by Hurricane Helene—he shares a general update and how Ham Radio is the only way to communicate locally right now.

• The Problem With Building Good Habits (stephanjoppich.com)

  Stephan Joppich has enough of building habits, explains their issues and now takes one day at the time.

Software

• Tagged Union Subsets with Comptime in Zig (mitchellh.com)

  Mitchell Hashimoto walks you through creating a subset of a union in Zig.

• How to cope with technology FOMO (avdi.codes)

  Avdi Grimm presents a list of tactics to deal with (new) technology FOMO.

Cutting Room Floor

• Coming home (aworkinglibrary.com)

  Mandy Brown thinks about social networks, community, and what a better future could look like.

• Exactly Why Are Friendship Breakups So Brutal? (thecut.com)

  Melissa Dahl explains that friendship breakups have a similar impact as relationship breakups, and explains how they usually happen.

• How I Designed a Dieter Rams inspired iPhone Dock (arslan.io)

  Fatih Arslan creates an iPhone dock, inspired by Scott Yu-Juan's and Overwerk's design, which in turn was inspired by the Braun DN 40.

• Millions of Vehicles Could Be Hacked and Tracked Thanks to a Simple Website Bug (wired.com)

  Andy Greenberg about a hacking group, which exploited the Kia web application to allow honking, unlocking and starting the ignition of millions of cars with just the license plate.

Quote of the Week

“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.” —Alan Perlis

Working

• How not to be boring (posthog.com)

  James Hawkins explains why it's worth investing into a brand that stands out.

Software

• Ratchets in software development (qntm.org)

  qntm shares an interesting method to discourage the use of a specific function or code snippet.

• The Modern CLI Renaissance (gabevenberg.com)

  Gabe Venberg about modern CLI tools and the value of a good out-of-the-box experience. Thanks, Igor!

• A Signal run a day keeps the un-link away (michael.stapelberg.ch)

  Michael Stapelberg explains how he automatically starts Signal on his computers once a day to keep it linked.

• Why Haskell? (gtf.io)

  Gideon Farrell writes an essay about the strengths of Haskell that makes me want to pick it up again.

Cutting Room Floor

• The iPhone 16 Pro Review: Finally, a little pocket computer that fills the gaping void in my soul (gkeenan.co)

  Keenan writes a hyperbolic (or not?) review of the new iPhone 16 Pro.

• The Lego Great Ball Contraption (kottke.org)

  Jason Kottke shares a mesmerizing video showing a Lego machine, which transports small balls from one place to another.

• After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own (nytimes.com)

  Tripp Mickle visited Jony Ive and writes about what he was up to in the last five years. Thanks, Jan!

Culture

• The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman (irenezhang.net)

  Irene Y. Zhang lists 5 moral fallacies that women in tech have to deal with.

• In the Trenches: What it Means to be an Engineering Manager (blog.digital-horror.com)

  Juxhin Eugene shares different aspects of their experience as an engineering manager.

Software

• Try to Fix It One Level Deeper (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov explains why most bugs have another level that not only fixes the bug but also improves the codebase around it.

• WebP: The WebPage compression format (purplesyringa.moe)

  Alisa Sireneva shares an incredible workaround for GitHub not supporting Brotli compression.

• Something went wrong (molily.de)

  Mat​hia⁠s S​chäf⁠er explains the current state of the JavaScript crisis, and ways we could solve it.

• The Neverending Story (garrettdimon.com)

  Garret Dimon compares the web, which moves with ”glacial speeds“, to new and shiny, but short-lived technologies.

• Reasons I still love the fish shell (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans explains situations and features where fish shines.

• Conditionally Disabling Code with Comptime in Zig (mitchellh.com)

  Mitchell Hashimoto shares real-world use-cases for Zig compile and why it's more powerful than that of other languages.

• Good forms (daverupert.com)

  Dave Rupert lists traits of good (web) forms.

Cutting Room Floor

• Why aren't smart people happier? (experimental-history.com)

  Adam Mastroianni writes an essay about happiness, and how it correlates with intelligence (or does it?).

• ‘Instantly a very different vibe’: the glory and controversy of Linkin Park’s explosive comeback (theguardian.com)

  Dave Simpson wraps up what happened last week after the Linkin Park comeback.

Toot of the Week

quicksort haderach— @touk@smores.town

Software

• Why is Browser Observability Hard (hazelweakly.me)

  Hazel Weakly explains why it's so hard to instrument single page applications.

• A Better Merge Workflow with Jujutsu (ofcr.se)

  Benjamin Tan explains how to do common merge and rebase operations using Jujutsu.

GenAI

• Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art (newyorker.com)

  Ted Chiang explains why AI can't create art: Art is made by making many choices, more than what can be made in a few words.

• Is AI a Silver Bullet? (ian-cooper.writeas.com)

  Ian Cooper about essential accidental complexity, and why LLMs can only help with the latter.

Cutting Room Floor

• 7 Management Myths That Need To Be Busted (shkspr.mobi)

  Terence Eden busts 7 management myths that are still teached.

• Notes on font licensing (robinrendle.com)

  Robin Rendle doesn't like trial fonts and explains why.

• The world's largest wind-powered cargo ship just made its first delivery across the Atlantic (fastcompany.com)

  Adele Peters about the French startup TOWT (TransPceanic Wind Transport), which builds sailing cargo ships.

Software

• Bypassing airport security via SQL injection (ian.sh)

  Ian Carroll and Sam Curry found a security issue with a system that airline staff to skip security and were able to add arbitrary people to the allowlist.

• The Cult of the Complex (alistapart.com)

  Jeffrey Zeldman about the growing dependency on frameworks in the web industry and how it can be harmful.

GenAI

• Shitposting Our Way Through the Singularity (joanwestenberg.com)

  Joan Westenberg explains why we need to embrace the human weirdness to distinguish ourselves from the bland content generated by LLMs.

• Chatbots Are Primed to Warp Reality (theatlantic.com)

  Matteo Wong explains how genAI chatbots can implant memories and why that's dangerous.

Cutting Room Floor

• You Are NOT Dumb, You Just Lack the Prerequisites (lelouch.dev)

  Lelouch explains the important difference in being smart vs missing pre-requisite knowledge.

• Web Design Museum (webdesignmuseum.org)

  The web design museum is an archive of screenshots of old websites, app and software.

• This bird came back from extinction - now scientists in an aircraft are teaching it to migrate (theguardian.com)

  Phoebe Weston tells this amazing story of humans teaching Waldrapp, a species that was extinct outside of zoos, a migration route.

• Confiscate Their Money (hamiltonnolan.com)

  Hamilton Nolan explains why billionaires should not exist.

Toot of the Week

My biggest millennial trait is that I loved Calvin and Hobbes as a kid, and didn't notice that I turned into Calvin's dad — @geekysteven@beige.party

Working

• Demanding and Supportive (rkg.blog)

  Ravi Gupta shares an anecdote to explain how leaders can be both demanding and supportive.

• I've Built My First Successful Side Project, and I Hate It (switowski.com)

  Sebastian explains the reasons they almost burnt out from their side project.

Software

• Why Use Emacs? (ismailefe.org)

  İsmail Efe Top explains the limitations and benefits of using Emacs.

• Making a Chess Engine in Zig (johns.codes)

  John Murray wrote a basic chess engine in Zig and shares their experience.

• Micro-libraries need to die already (bvisness.me)

  Ben Visness makes a case against tiny libraries like is-number.

• Toasts are Bad UX (maxschmitt.me)

  Max Schmitt says the only thing worse than a toast is no feedback at all.

• Stripe's monorepo developer environment (blog.nelhage.com)

  Nelson Elhage describes how Stripe improved developer productivity by using a monorepo, custom tooling, and devboxes.

AI

• We're Being Erased From History (justine.lol)

  Justine Tunney explains why AI stripping (human) author information is a bad thing.

• I've got the genAI blues (computerworld.com)

  Steven Vaughan-Nichols thinks we might already be at peak AI and explains why.

• The AI photo editing era is here, and it’s every person for themselves (theverge.com)

  Allison Johnson about the new AI photo editing features in the Pixel 9, and why imperfection can feel more personal.

Cutting Room Floor

• Personal Identity (lmnt.me)

  Louie Mantia about the most important accessibility feature: accepting everyone's identities.

• How the Harris Campaign Beat Trump at Being Online (newyorker.com)

  Kyle Chayka about the social media strategy of the Harris campaign.

Quote of the Week

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” —Cyril Connolly

Software

• Basic MetaProgramming in Zig (openmymind.net)

  Karl Seguin writes an introduction to using comptime in Zig.

• Against Names (steveklabnik.com)

  Steve makes a convincing case against one of the hardest things in computer science: naming things.

• Reckoning: Part 3 — Caprock (infrequently.org)

  Alex Russell about inaccessible government websites and why most sites shouldn't be a single-page-app.

• Practices of Reliable Software Design (two-wrongs.com)

  kqr shares eight practices they accumulated with experience, in the context of building an in-memory cache.

• A Flexible Minimalist Neovim for 2024 (wickstrom.tech)

  Oskar Wickström shares their minimalist Neovim config.

• How I program in 2024 (akkartik.name)

  Kartik Agaram rewrote some of their software and shares findings on how their way of programming evolved over the years.

Cutting Room Floor

• Process Zero: The Anti-Intelligent Camera (lux.camera)

  Ben Sandofsky about the new process in the Halide iOS app, which skips AI and computational photography, and why they did it.

• Things I’m Working On (anhvn.com)

  anh shares five incomplete projects they're (more or less) working on.

• Cleaning up the aging brain: Scientists restore brain's trash disposal system (sciencedaily.com)

  Douglas Kelley et al. found a way to restore the brain's storage disposal in elder mice, a potential treatment for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

• I Put a Toaster in the Dishwasher (jdstillwater.blogspot.com)

  JD Stillwater put a toaster in the dishwasher and shares a lesson on conventional wisdom vs conventional ignorance.

• How to avoid losing items? Holding pens. (blog.alexwendland.com)

  Alex Wendland shares a solution to prevent loosing items at home.

Toot of the Week

Move slow and improve things.— @mwop@phpc.social

Work

• Consenting to decisions (everythingchanges.us)

  Mandy Brown explains the benefits of consensus decision making and how to make it work.

• Struggle and process (robinrendle.com)

  Robin Rendle about design process: ”Good design is improv!“.

• Hybrid Teams are the Worst (drakerossman.com)

  Drake Rossman explains why hybrid teams (some people at home, some in the office) is worse than full RTO.

Software

• Is It Time To Version Observability? (Signs Point To Yes) (charity.wtf)

  Charity Majors makes a distinction between Observability 1.0 (metrics, logs and traces) and Observability 2.0 (wide events) and argues we need to move to the latter.

• Hacking a Virtual Power Plant (rya.nc)

  Ryan Castellucci explains how they cracked a 512-bit RSA key to sign any JWT tokens for a solar panels and battery storage system.

Cutting Room Floor

• All Hail the Cloud (cosmographia.substack.com)

  M. E. Rothwell about the new *Dyēus of our civilisation.

• The Bait-and-Switch Crisis: A Dangerous Disconnect Between Headlines and Content (joanwestenberg.com)

  Joan Westenberg about the dangers of clickbait headlines and how they affect echo chambers.

Toot of the Week

Http needs a status code for grudging acceptance. We have 202 Accepted. We need 222 Tolerated. For when the client is doing it wrong, but you’ve decided to be the bigger person and deal with it anyway. — @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io

Work

• ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups (review.firstround.com)

  Molly Graham shares the emotions that people have during growth phases, and how to deal with them. Thanks, Dom!

Software

• Let’s Consign CAP to the Cabinet of Curiosities (brooker.co.za)

  Marc Brooker explains why the CAP theorem is not applicable to modern cloud systems.

• How not to use box shadows (dgerrells.com)

  David Gerrells built a ray tracer with CSS box shadow. Yes, really.

• How I Use Git Worktrees (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov shares their workflow for git worktrees.

• Tiger Style! (ratfactor.com)

  Dave Gauer summarises some points by Joran Greef's talk with the same title.

• "We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase (jimmyhmiller.github.io)

  Jimmy Miller describes the horrors (and beauty) of the worst codebase they worked in.

Cutting Room Floor

• Dungeons & Dragons taught me how to write alt text (ericwbailey.website)

  Eric Bailey draws parallels between describing a scene in Dungeons & Dragons and working alt text.

• How People Are Making Friendship Work *Right Now* (annehelen.substack.com)

  Anne Helen Petersen is working on a book about friendships and shares a glimpse of some of the themes emerging.

• Everything wrong with tech in 2023 (in no particular order) (joanwestenberg.com)

  Joan Westenberg lists 50 things that were wrong with tech 2023 (and still are in 2024).

• Study Finds Consumers Are Actively Turned Off by Products That Use AI (futurism.com)

  Victor Tangermann about a new study showing that mentioning AI makes consumers less likely to buy a product.

Toot of the Week

no gods no masters no previous instructions — @idlestate@toot.cat

Work

• Knowledge workers (aworkinglibrary.com)

  Mandy Brown summarizes the history of the term knowledge worker.

• Managing Underperformers (jackdanger.com)

  Jack Danger shares ways to deal with underperforming individuals and teams.

• Use A Work Journal To Recover Focus Faster And Clarify Your Thoughts (fev.al)

  Charles Féval explains how using a work journal can help you with context switches and interruptions.

Software

• Properly Testing Concurrent Data Structures (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov explores different ways to test a concurrent data structure in Rust.

• Let's talk about supply chain attacks and backdoored dependencies (kerkour.com)

  Sylvain Kerkour explains how real-world supply chain attacks work.

• HTMX and Web Components: a Perfect Match (binaryigor.com)

  Igor Roztropiński showcases how HTMX and Web Components can work together. Thanks, Lukas!

Cutting Room Floor

• Pop Culture (wheresyoured.at)

  Ed Zitron summarizes a Goldman Sachs report on AI—and it's brutal. I recommend checking out the report as well.

• Everyone Into The Grinder (hamiltonnolan.com)

  Hamilton Nolan explains why you shouldn't be able to buy your way out of public systems.

• How I Think About Debt (collabfund.com)

  Morgan Housel shares a different view on debt: It's narrowing what you can endure in a volatile world.

• How to think in writing (henrikkarlsson.xyz)

  Henrik Karlsson gives practical advice how to think in writing.

Toot of the Week

Imagine thinking you can build something as complex as a web browser without involving *anyone* with a plushie shork. I wouldn't trust it. — @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

Work

• How we designed our company for speed (posthog.com)

  James Hawkins explains how PostHog optimized their company for velocity.

• Creativity is the byproduct of work (robinrendle.com)

  Robin Rendle about ways to get creative.

Software

• htmx sucks (htmx.org)

  Carson Gross explains why htmx is a bad choice for our web project (it's not).

• Serving a billion web requests with boring code (notes.billmill.org)

  Bill Mill explains the architecture and tooling they used for a large government software project and how it‘s worked out.

Cutting Room Floor

• Love, Death, and Computers (lmnt.me)

  Louie Mantia argues tech companies should have teams dedicated to dealing with death.

• Free idea: design token ugly mode (ericwbailey.website)

  Eric Bailey shares an idea to quickly see the implementation of design tokens: ugly mode.

• Against the Burden of Knowledge (theseedsofscience.pub)

  Maxwell Tabarrok argues the "burden of knowledge" is the wrong explanation why ideas are getting harder to find.

Toot of the Week

Hypothesis: once a company reaches a certain size, to a first approximation, all of its technical problems are actually socio-technical ones. — @norootcause@hachyderm.io

Culture

• Do not try to be the smartest in the room; try to be the kindest (jorgegalindo.me)

  Jorge Galindo about tactics to improve meeting culture. Thanks, Jan!

• How to evolve a product (granola.so)

  Jim Fisher argues we should build products using concepts from evolution.

• The Heirloom Tomato Org Chart (Video) (youtube.com)

  Nan Yu about Convay's Law and how to structure your org chart. Thanks, Jan!

Software

• llama.ttf (fuglede.github.io)

  Søren Fuglede Jørgensen shares an unconventional project: Llama LLM in a font.

• Start all of your commands with a comma (rhodesmill.org)

  Brandon Rhodes shares a cool tip for naming your own scripts: prepend a comma.

• Local, first, forever (tonsky.me)

  Nikita Prokopov explores how a local-first platform-agnostic file provider could work. Thanks, Jan!

• The plan-execute pattern (mmapped.blog)

  Roman Kashitsyn about the benefits of the plan-execute pattern in complex software.

Cutting Room Floor

• Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World (mcsweeneys.net)

  Jonathan Zeller about the urban myth that your phone is listening to your conversations.

• The true losers of this presidential debate were the American people (theguardian.com)

  Rebecca Solnit about the shortcomings of this week's presidential debate.

This newsletter relies on word of mouth—if you’re enjoying it, your friends and colleagues might enjoy it too! You can share today’s issue with others by using this link: arne.me/weekly/151. 🙏🏻

Toot of the Week

"But what if they don't deserve that money?" is somehow only a question raised about poor people. — @MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social

Living

• Seek the good (enough) things (therealadam.com)

  Adam Keys about the problem when having a deep knowledge on a topic leads to enjoying it less.

• Balance (shaanpuri.com)

  Shaan Puri about life balance, and why life integration is superior.

Climate Crisis

• Climate Zones (pudding.cool)

  Derek Taylor built an interactive page where you can see how climate zones change and how cities migrate to warmer zones until 2070.

• World's Largest Electric Vehicle Will Generate More Electricity Than It Uses (treehugger.com)

  Derek Markham explains how using an electric truck that goes downhill with a load and uphill empty can lead to a 10 % surplus of energy.

Tech

• Tao of React - Software Design, Architecture & Best Practices (alexkondov.com)

  Alex Kondov writes a style guide for React—how you write and organize components.

• AI and the Beauty of Human Flaws (ia.net)

  Oliver Reichenstein about the blandness of AI-generated images and text, and the charm of human imperfection.

Cutting Room Floor

• Working from Home, as Imagined by My In-Office Boss (mcsweeneys.net)

  Lila Ruppe describes a day in the life of her working from home—from the perspective of her in-office boss.

• The sad, stupid rise of the sigma male: how toxic masculinity took over social media (theguardian.com)

  Steve Rose about the concept of "sigma males", where it comes from and why it's mostly used ironically nowadays.

Work

• Ship something every day (maxleiter.com)

  Max Leiter explains why committing everyday at work is beneficial.

• Silicon Valley’s Best Kept Secret: Founder Liquidity (stefantheard.com)

  Stefan Theard about the concept of founders going all-in and how taking liquidity changes the game.

Tech

• I Know What the Apple Vision Pro Is For (nymag.com)

  Andrew Leland explains the impact the AVP has for disabled people, sharing the story of Maxine Collard and others, who found a device that helps them have the same experience that most mainstream users accept as a given.

• I banned my daughter from using the iPhone she bought. It made her a better person (theguardian.com)

  Em Rio shares how the iPhone of her daughter, and especially social media, affected her mental and physical health.

Cutting Room Floor

• Teenage Engineering designed a museum exhibit (arun.is)

  Arun Venkatesan shares their experience, including photos, of the Art of Noise exhibition by Teenage Engineering. Thanks, Jan!

• Designing a Lego orrery (marian42.de)

  Marian Kleineberg built a Lego orrery, modelling the sun, the earth, and the moon using LEGO Technic.

Work

• How (some) good corporate engineering blogs are written (danluu.com)

  Dan Luu dissects what make a good corporate engineering blog.

• Managing My Motivation, as a Solo Dev (mbuffett.com)

  Marcus Buffet explains some tactics to stay motivated as a solo dev.

Software

• Eradicating N+1s: The Two-phase Data Load and Render Pattern in Go (brandur.org)

  Brandur explains the N+1 problem with data loading and shows an elegant approach to fix it.

• Zig Interfaces (openmymind.net)

  Karl Seguin explains how Zig interfaces work, and why tagged enums should actually be your first option.

• Opinions after a decade of professional software engineering (blog.thea.codes)

  Stargirl Flowers shares opinions that changed, are new, or stayed the same after ten years of writing software.

Cutting Room Floor

• RFS: A Call for Software Handyman (trevoragilbert.com)

  Trevor Gilbert argues there should be an equivalent to a handyman for software.

• Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it (gothamist.com)

  Veronica de Souza got their phone stolen and shares the thief's attempts to unlock it.

• Smartphones May Affect Sleep—but Not Because of Blue Light (wired.com)

  Simon Hill explains why the blue light in our smartphones is actually not as bad as often portrayed.

Quote of the Week

“Stop asking people if they believe in climate change. Ask them if they understand it. It’s science, not Santa Clause” —Valorie Clark

Software

• Your API Shouldn't Redirect HTTP to HTTPS (jviide.iki.fi)

  @jviide argues your API should reject unencrypted requests instead of forwarding.

• Reclaiming CPU for free with Go's Profile Guided Optimization (blog.cloudflare.com)

  Colin Douch explains how the Cloudflare team applied profile guided optimization at their production service.

• Async Rust Isn't Bad: You Are (n8s.site)

  Nate is angry about Tokio infecting a large part of Rust crates and "framework developers" thinking async is always better.

Tech

• Things you wish you didn't need to know about S3 (blog.plerion.com)

  Daniel Grzelak lists 10 quirks of Amazon Simple Storage Service.

• tmux is worse is better (hiandrewquinn.github.io)

  Andrew Quinn about the benefits and drawbacks of using a terminal multiplexer.

• Orion – From idea to launch in 45 days (lux.camera)

  Sebastiaan de With shares a fascinating behind-the-scenes of the iPad monitor app, Orion.

Cutting Room Floor

• Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does (anildash.com)

  Anil Dash explains how a system is never broken—it works as intended and supporting it might not be the thing you want to do.

• To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (news.mit.edu)

  Anne Trafton summarizes a new study which discovers that reading code activates the multiple demand network.

• A Gram-negative-selective antibiotic that spares the gut microbiome (nature.com)

  This article describes a new kind of antibiotics which doesn't destroy your gut-biome.

• How it feels to get an AI email from a friend (mrgan.com)

  Neven Mrgan describes their feelings of getting an LLM-generated email from a friend.

• Communication Structures (kevinyien.com)

  Kevin Yien about the importance of free communications in a company.

• Watch out for Jury Duty scams (threadreaderapp.com)

  Joey Rosati explains how they almost fell for an elaborate jury duty scam, which apparently is still active in the USA (title by me).

• Kintsugi (fellerts.no)

  Fredrik Flornes Ellertsen shares their experience and mistakes of fixing a mug using the traditional Japanese technique "Kintsugi".

Toot of the Week

why are we working on AI alignment if we can't even get CSS alignment right — @mia@void.rehab

This Week on arne.me

• Thoughts on Zig (arne.me)

  I share my initial thoughts on Zig after three nights of using it.

• Writing an SDK in Zig (arne.me)

  In this post I continue my Zig journey by starting to write an SDK.

• Emacs Config From Scratch, Part 3: LSP & Tree-sitter (arne.me)

  Finally got around to writing the third part describing my Emacs configuration.

Software

• Writing a task scheduler in Zig (openmymind.net)

  Karl Seguin shows how they wrote a task scheduler in Zig using threads and cond vars.

• You Need More Constraints (borretti.me)

  Fernando Borretti describes different constraints you can implement on relational databases.

• Timeouts and cancellation for humans (vorpus.org)

  Nathaniel J. Smith explains different cancellation techniques.

Cutting Room Floor

• Slop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content (simonwillison.net)

  Simon Willison came up with a great name for AI-generated content: Slop.

• I want it all but, it is impossible (ohhelloana.blog)

  Ana Rodrigues about the frustration of not having enough time to e.g. read all newsletters or listen to that audiobook.

Toot of the Week

“do you know ascii code 7?” “yea, that rings a bell.” — @aiju@chaos.social

Culture

• Seek First to Understand (dannorth.net)

  Daniel North recommends not trying to fix everything when joining a new project, and instead fix the "next one".

Software

• Software Friction (hillelwayne.com)

  Hillel Wayne about friction in software development and how to reduce it.

• Motorcycles, Cars, Websites, and Seams (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen about the fading options to inspect/repair.

Internet

• Heat Death of the Internet (takahe.org.nz)

  Gregory Bennett tells a fictional, but relatable, story about what the internet has become.

• We can have a different web (citationneeded.news)

  Molly White takes a look at the early web and how it changed, argues we can have it back if we want.

Cutting Room Floor

• 7622 (rknight.me)

  Robb tells the story of how they came to their second "b" (and even changed his legal name).

• Carl Sagan, nuking the moon, and not nuking the moon (eukaryotewritesblog.com)

  Eukaryote writes about a period of time during the world war, where both the USSR and the US considered nuking the moon.

Toot of the Week

(trying to seduce a mathematician) “i don’t think this problem has a clothed-form solution” — @aiju@chaos.social

Tech

• Passkeys: A Shattered Dream (fy.blackhats.net.au)

  William Brown tells the story of Passkeys (or webauthn) and explains how this is another example of corporate interests ruling over good user experience.

• Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges (fabiensanglard.net)

  Fabien Sanglard explains which chips you can find in Super Nintendo cartridges, and what they do.

Cutting Room Floor

• Learn one thing at a time (blog.lawrencejones.dev)

  Lawrence Jones explains why learning multiple things at the same time is a recipe for failure.

• I Kinda Hate The Internet Now (trend-mill.com)

  Stephen Moore explains how Web 2.0 and AI has taken away the joy of the internet.

• You Are What You Read, Even If You Don’t Always Remember It (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen explains how, even if you don't remember the contents, books and articles you read influence you.

• Looking for AI use-cases (ben-evans.com)

  Benedict Evans takes a look at how companies use LLMs and why it might be more like the new SQL, not the "new HAL9000".

Toot of the Week

Retiring to spend more time with my emails. — @maxleibman@mastodon.social

Culture

• We've stopped making things anyone wants (coryd.dev)

  Cory Dransfeldt about the current state of company values.

• Stop Acting Like You're Famous (ajkprojects.com)

  Ash gives some important advice for hobby projects.

Software

• Who killed the network switch? (cliffle.com)

  Cliff L. Biffle tells a debugging story with shared memory on embedded systems.

• Some useful types for database-using Rust web apps (boinkor.net)

  Andreas Fuchs shares useful Rust type patterns for working with databases.

• Hardest Problem in Computer Science: Centering Things (tonsky.me)

  Nik about the reason text and icons are often not properly centred, and how to avoid these problems.

Cutting Room Floor

• Blogging anonymously… (gurupanguji.com)

  gurupanguji about the benefits of blogging anonymously.

• 101 Additional Advices (kk.org)

  Kevin Kelly shares another batch of unsolicited advice for his 73th birthday.

• Two lifeforms merge in once-in-a-billion-years evolutionary event (newatlas.com)

  Michael Irving about an observed primary endosymbiosis event—a crucial element in evolution.

• Why the world cannot afford the rich (nature.com)

  Richard G. Wilkinson & Kate E. Pickett explain why more economic equality would benefit everyone.

Culture

• How to Drive Meaningful Change - Handling objections to your proposal (jgefroh.substack.com)

  Joseph Gefroh writes part four of their series, this time with a framework explaining how to handle objections.

• Advice That I Can't Get Out of My Head (blog.staysaasy.com)

  Stay SaaSy shares three pieces of advice that are stuck in their head and explain why.

Software

• A formula for responsive font-size (jameshfisher.com)

  Jim shares their formula for responsive font sizes without breakpoints.

• Jujutsu: a new, Git-compatible version control system (lwn.net)

  Daroc Alden introduces Jujutsu, a new version control system which aims to be simpler and easier to grok than Git.

• Do you have any programming "white whales"? (lobste.rs)

  edwardloveall asks people on Lobsters what projects they can't seem to finish, but keep coming back to.

• Bashing Bevy To Bait Internet Strangers Into Improving My Code (oneirical.github.io)

  Julien Robert shares their experience with Bevy, a game engine written in Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

• Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing (mikemcquaid.com)

  Mike McQuaid explains how to avoid burnout as an OSS developer.

Toot of the Week

If you use homebrew (on a mac or linux), please run brew update; brew upgrade; immediately. This will downgrade the xz package and the lzma library to remove malicious code that has been introduced in the current versions. — @mrtnsnp@mastodon.social

Software

• Zig, Rust, and other languages (notes.eatonphil.com)

  Phil Eaton compares Zig, Rust and Go on terms of their standard library and way of allocation.

• Basic Things (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov has a list of "basics things" to get right when developing software.

Observability

• Redefining Observability (hazelweakly.me)

  Hazel Weakly introduces her own definition of Observability and explains why she thinks it's the best.

• A Commentary on Defining Observability (ferd.ca)

  Fred Hebert replies on Hazels post in a yes, and… way, going further into socio-economic topics.

• Re-Redefining Observability (aparker.io)

  Austin Parker writes about observability 2.0, also replying to Hazel and Fred.

xz backdoor

• Everything I know about the XZ backdoor (boehs.org)

  Evan Boehs has summary blogpost about what happened with xz. Thanks, Eric!

• A Microcosm of the interactions in Open Source projects (robmensching.com)

  Rob Mensching summarizes the first interaction of the xz attacker and maintainer, and why this common pattern needs to change.

• FAQ on the xz-utils backdoor (gist.github.com)

  Sam James wrote a very technical summary of the xz backdoor.

Cutting Room Floor

• The Dumber Side of Smart People (collabfund.com)

  Morgan Housel explains why people, who became known for being smart in a specific area, are having a hard time moving on.

• The Most Hackable Handheld Ham Radio Yet (spectrum.ieee.org)

  Stephen Cass explains their love for a affordable, hackable, handheld ham radio.

Quote of the Week

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” —Brian W. Kernighan

Working

• Doing weeknotes (doingweeknotes.com)

  Giles Turnbull has a guide on writing weeknotes, with real-world examples!

• Making Films and Making Websites (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen compares filmmaking to software development and argues "too much care and craft can be sunk into the artifacts of our own craft while forgetting the whole they serve".

• So you've been reorg'd... (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss gives advice on what to do when reorganization happens at work.

Software

• "No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens (xeiaso.net)

  Xe Iaso about helpless C programmers.

• Hackintosh is (almost) dead (aplus.rs)

  Aleksandar Vacić about the hopeless state of Hackintosh.

Cutting Room Floor

• Fail Forward With Kindness (marcel.io)

  Marcel Wichmann explains why being kind to yourself when failing is the best recipe for growth.

• Don’t Be the Best. Be the Only. (kottke.org)

  Jason Kottke digs into a quote by Kevin Kelly.

• Take it from a former banker: the budget is for ordinary people. The mega-rich look on and laugh (theguardian.com)

  Gary Stevenson tells the story of their work as a trader and why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

• Shields up: New ideas might make active shielding viable (arstechnica.com)

  Jacek Krywko explains the current state of active shielding (from radiation in space) and why we might have them in a few years.

Software

• Streaming HTML out of order without JavaScript (lamplightdev.com)

  Chris explains how you can stream HTML out of order using shadowdom.

• The "10x engineer:" 50 years ago and now (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)

  Gergely Orosz takes a look at the "10x engineer" described in "The Mythical Man-Month" from how it was proposed 50 years ago vs what it looks like today.

• 40 years of programming (liw.fi)

  Lars Wirzenius gives programming advice after 40 years in the industry.

• My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (lisyarus.github.io)

  Nikita Lisitsa explains an animation algorithm which keeps the code simple while still achieving smooth animations.

• Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio 📻 (blinry.org)

  blinry set a challenge for themselves to explore the world of software-defined radio in 50 ways.

Cutting Room Floor

• Why Are (Most) Sofas So Bad? (dwell.com)

  Dan Nosowitz explains why and how modern sofas are built cheaply and optimized for Instagram ads.

Toot of the Week

All engineering is reverse engineering if you document things poorly enough. — @ids1024@fosstodon.org

Culture

• Great management and leadership books for the technical track (ntietz.com)

  Nicole has a shortlist of books for both the management as well as the technical track of software engineering.

Software

• How I use git worktrees (notes.billmill.org)

  Bill Mill explains their git worktree workflow and its upsides.

• Java is becoming more like Rust, and I am here for it! (joshaustin.tech)

  Josh Austin shows two features of modern Java that might or might not be inspired by Rust.

• My Reusable GitHub Actions Workflows (stefanzweifel.dev)

  Stefan Zweifel shares their reusable GitHub Actions workflows.

Cutting Room Floor

• Towards a quieter, friendlier web (coryd.dev)

  Cory Dransfeldt writes about principles they're following on the internet.

• Design Spells (designspells.com)

  Chester, Duncan & Rick built a website to collect what they call "design details that feel like magic".

• Great Products Have Great Premises (workingtheorys.com)

  Anu and Bharat Kilaru think all great products have a premise—and provide examples.

Quote of the Week

“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” —Steve Jobs

Tools

• StreetPass for Mastodon (streetpass.social)

  This browser extension helps you find people on Mastodon by surfacing the linked accounts on websites you browse.

Culture

• More Files Please (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen wants more apps which operate on files. Me too.

• The internet turned into a crowded mall. Now you need a corner shop. (pithandpip.com)

  Matthew Guay describes that the future of the internet isn't all-purpose socials, it's focussed groups with a topic of interest.

• UI=f(org): UI is a Function of Your Organization (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen explains why building a UI can have impact on how your organization is structured.

Working

• Seconds to Strategy: How Your Relationship with Time Shapes Your Career (auren.substack.com)

  Auren Hoffman says, there are five types of time, and explains how to choose a career that fits your timeframe.

• Working with Purpose, Forever (hakaimagazine.com)

  Maureen O’Hagan about the little-known business structure Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT), which ensures a company stays true to its values, even after the owner leaves.

Cutting Room Floor

• Airfoil (ciechanow.ski)

  Bartosz Ciechanowski writes another interactive article, this time about airfoil, the streamlined body that can generate more lift than drag.

• How We Make Sense of Time (scientificamerican.com)

  Kensy Cooperrider & Rafael Núñez explain how different cultures have a different spatial understanding of time.

• The man who tricked Nazi Germany: lessons from the past on how to beat disinformation (theguardian.com)

  Peter Pomerantsev tells the story of Delmer, who worked against Nazi propaganda in the Second World War, and how some of his tactics should be used today.

• How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find Its Targets—and Vladimir Putin (wired.com)

  Byron Tau tells the story of how the US Government found AdTech data for sale and is using it to track and identify individual people.

Toot of the Week

it's called a man page because it won't shut up about stuff you already know and doesn't actually have the answer to your question — @fasterthanlime@hachyderm.io

Culture

• Casual programming (dubroy.com)

  Patrick Dubroy about programming to make your everyday easier. Thanks, Jan!

• JavaScript Bloat in 2024 (tonsky.me)

  Niki looks at how much JavaScript is downloaded for a collection of websites. Thanks, Jan!

Software

• I wish Go had a retry block (xeiaso.net)

  Xe Iaso proposes a retry block in Go.

• Popular git config options (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans collected people's favourite git config options. This is a goldmine!

• Useful Uses of cat (two-wrongs.com)

  kqr argues that there are situations where a useless use of cat is appropriate.

Cutting Room Floor

• 100 things you can do on your personal website (jamesg.blog)

  James has a list with 83 ideas you can do on your personal website. Robb has some additional ideas.

• This message does not exist (kmjn.org)

  Mark J. Nelson takes an Outlook error message on a philosophical level.

• Thanks FedEx, This is Why we Keep Getting Phished (troyhunt.com)

  Troy Hunt about a sus FedEx text that is indistinguishable from phishing.

Toot of the Week

Some days you just want to yeet all computers into the sun — @http_error_418@hachyderm.io

Culture

• Why We Can't Have Nice Software (andrewkelley.me)

  Andrew Kelley explains his explanation of the software getting worse.

• “Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement (anildash.com)

  Anil Dash writes an ode to the open web and podcasting.

Software

• SI Units for Request Rate (two-wrongs.com)

  Chris suggests two units for request rate: hertz (Hz) or becquerel (Bq).

• Compiling Rust is testing (kobzol.github.io)

  Jakub Beránek argues, that in statically compiled languages, the compiler step is already a series of tiny unit tests, and even more so in Rust.

• When "letting it crash" is not enough (flawless.dev)

  Bernard about the failure recovery in Erlang and a system that takes it a step further.

• In Loving Memory of Square Checkbox (tonsky.me)

  Niki about the life and death of the square checkbox.

Cutting Room Floor

• Stripping the web of its humanity (werd.io)

  Ben Werdmuller about the effect Arc Search has on how you browse the web. Thanks, Eric!

• Treating the Symptoms (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen explains why Arc Search only treats the symptoms of a broken web instead of providing a cure.

• How to Comment on Social Media (lithub.com)

  Rebecca Solnit wrote a great guide how (not) to behave on social media.

• File over app (stephango.com)

  Steph Ango about the importance of owning your data.

Toot of the Week

The first release of Internet Explorer (1976) is closer in time to the Big Bang than to the year of Linux on the Desktop. — @jbzfn@mastodon.social

Culture

• How To Fix Broken Teams (blog.staysaasy.com)

  This article describes how to fix a dysfuncitonal team which owns a critical part of the company.

• Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude. (scarletink.com)

  Dave Anderson explains why soft skills care at least as, if not more, important than functional skills when hiring.

• Manage like an engineer (ben.balter.com)

  Ben Balter explains how you can use the same tools for management that engineers use to develop software.

Software

• Only 90s Web Developers Remember This (zachholman.com)

  Zach Holman writes an ode to 6 90's web developer technologies.

• Adaptive _time compression — A database hacker story (axiom.co)

  Tomás Senart tells the story of optimising the _time column of a time-oriented database over Christmas.

• Lossy CSS compression for fun and loss (or profit) (blog.danieljanus.pl)

  Daniel Janus wrote a lossy CSS compiler.

• Switching to the meow modal editing system from evil (esrh.me)

  Eshan Ramesh about an alternative to Vim keybindings (on Emacs) which both makes more sense and is more flexible.

Cutting Room Floor

• Please, don’t force me to log in (hamatti.org)

  Juha-Matti Santala rants about the trend of everything requiring an account.

Toot of the Week

I save a ton of money on bills by not opening my mail.— @nayele18maybe@mstdn.social

Peopleware

• Highly Profitable Engineering Teams (avivbenyosef.com)

  Aviv Ben-Yosef explains strategies to achieve highly profitability in engineering teams.

Software

• Level up your tech career (levelupsoftwareengineering.substack.com)

  Caleb Mellas and Anemari Fiser collected different ways you can level up as an senior engineer.

• Why, how much, and when you should be taking time off as an engineer (careercutler.substack.com)

  Jordan Cutler gives advice on taking time off.

• The bane of my existence: Supporting both async and sync code in Rust (nullderef.com)

  Mario Ortiz Manero explores different options to support both async and sync code in Rust.

• Making my website faster (cliffle.com)

  Cliff L. Biffle explains different techniques they used to optimize their website.

Cutting Room Floor

• Japan's Comfort Food: The Onigiri (one-from-nippon.ghost.io)

  This article explains the origins and technological journey of onigiri.

• What's that touchscreen in my room? (laplab.me)

  Nikita Lapkov explain how they reverse-engineered their energy monitor display.

• manifesto.neue (blog.webb.page)

  This manifest explains why we won't get our old internet back, and how we can instead build it ourselves.

• How scientists proved that bees can perceive time (greenrosechemistry.com)

  It looks like bees and other insects have a higher intelligence than what assumed; bees can perceive time and act on a 24h schedule. Thanks, Eric!

• On Quality (darrinhenein.com)

  Darrin Henein introduces four pillars to judge design quality. Thanks, Jan!

Toot of the Week

Piracy websites should adopt Midjourney's arguments on copyright: "Look bro, it's just too hard to figure out what license governs each and every file and who its author is." — @siguza@infosec.exchange

Software

• A Love Letter to Tinkerable Software (trevoragilbert.com)

  Trevor explains the benefits of tinkerable, or at least tinker-neutral software.

• Why I'm skeptical of low-code (nick.scialli.me)

  Nick Scialli lists four reasons why they're skeptical of low-code software.

• How my link blog works (justinmiller.io)

  Justin Miller explains their link blog setup.

IndieWeb

• 2024: The Year of the Personal Website (matthiasott.com)

  Matthias Ott summarises personal websites 2023.

• Where have all the websites gone? (fromjason.xyz)

  Jason compares the early-2000's curated web to todays algorithm-driven web.

Cutting Room Floor

• MacOS ricing (igorbedesqui.com)

  Igor Bedesqui explains how he customized his macOS setup.

• Attack of the week: Airdrop tracing (blog.cryptographyengineering.com)

  Matthew Green explains the Chinese AirDrop attack and the political impact of fixing it.

• Why Would I Buy This Useless, Evil Thing? (aftermath.site)

  Chris Person, who resents the idea of LLMs, about the rabbit r1 keynote.

• What If Money Expired? (noemamag.com)

  Jacob Baynham about the history of money and the rational idea of Silvio Gesell.

Toot of the Week

It's so cold out, I just saw a landlord put their hands into their OWN pockets. — @ErikUden@mastodon.de

Peopleware

• An Unreasonable Investment (randsinrepose.com)

  Michael Lopp about the value in investing in other people.

• How to make your team read your mind (zaidesanton.substack.com)

  Anton Zaides about the value of making a Manager ReadMe, including his real document.

Software

• We invested 10% to pay back tech debt; Here's what happened (blog.alexewerlof.com)

  Alex Ewerlöf about the effect of implementing Tech Debt Fridays.

• SIEVE is simpler than LRU (cachemon.github.io)

  Yazhuo Zhang introduces a new caching algorithm, which is supposed to outperform the most popular ones.

• What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong (commandcenter.blogspot.com)

  Rob Pike held the closing talk for GopherCon 2023, speaking about what they think Go did right or wrong—this is the blog post version.

Cutting Room Floor

• 10 actually good things that happened in 2023 (vox.com)

  Izzie Ramirez, Oshan Jarow, and Kenny Torrella collected ten positive news stories of 2023.

• What’s in My Bag, 2023 (ma.tt)

  Matthew Mullenweg shares what's in their bag at the beginning of 2024. I love these kind of posts!

• Do you dislike small talk? (thequietlife.net)

  Susan Cain about tactics to skip the small talk no one likes.

• Amazon's Silent Sacking (justingarrison.com)

  Justin Garrison talks about the tactics Amazon uses to let go of employees without severance of mass layoffs.

Toot of the Week

Stop making fun of older kids who still believe in Santa Claus, there are grown men who still believe in trickle down housing and that market can solve the housing crisis. — @brucelawson@vivaldi.net

Software

• Challenging projects every programmer should try (austinhenley.com)

  Austin Z. Henley has a list of 6 projects for programmers that want to expand their horizon.

• You don't need analytics on your blog (blog.yossarian.net)

  William Woodruff argues that server-side analytics are sufficient and having analytics at all can negatively influence your motivation.

• Is software getting worse? (stackoverflow.blog)

  Isaac Lyman writes about what incentives programmers have to make a fast, reliable app with a small bundle size and without exploiting people.

• Costs of running a macOS app studio business (notes.alinpanaitiu.com)

  Alin Panaitiu lets you see behind the curtain of building macOS apps, including a revenue/cost listing.

• Cold-blooded software (dubroy.com)

  Patrick Dubroy explains "cold-blooded software"; projects that still work when you pick them up after a year or two.

• CSS is fun again (pdx.su)

  Jeff Sandberg lists CSS features since CSS2 which made CSS usable without the need for preprocessors or hacks.

Cutting Room Floor

• My Favorite Articles of 2023 (arne.me)

  I have put together a list of my favorite articles from this very newsletter.

• Climate scientists hail 2023 as ‘beginning of the end’ for fossil fuel era (theguardian.com)

  Jillian Ambrose about 2023 as the year where the emissions peak, before they go down for good.

• Injection of “smart insulin” regulates blood glucose levels for one week (arstechnica.com)

  Ivan Paul explains a new study, in which a "smart insulin" is tested (on animals).

• A Game-Changing Vaccine Could Lower 'Bad' Cholesterol by 30% (sciencealert.com)

  David Nield about a new development of a "vaccine" that triggers an immune system response, which in turn kills cells that hinder the body from keeping Cholesterol at a safe level.

Toot of the Week

genie: please no js dev: more frameworks — @DavidDarnes@mastodon.design

Peopleware

• Bricks of Love: create purpose and engagement with weekly updates (world.hey.com)

  João Alves about purpose, motivation and the magic of weekly updates.

Software

• Emacs From Scratch, Part 1: Foundations (arne.me)

  I started a blog series where I configure Emacs from scratch. This post is the first and sets some foundations we can build upon.

• Rust is growing (flawless.dev)

  Bernard explains how Rust is growing faster than any other language and the effects of that.

• How I Have Fun With Rust (thoughtbot.com)

  Matheus Richard gives great advice for Rust beginners.

• Advice for new software devs who've read all those other advice essays (buttondown.email)

  Hillel Wayne has 13 points of advice for programmers starting out.

Cutting Room Floor

• Holiday Detour (hexeditreality.com)

  Marty Schoch talks about various things he's spending his holiday time one, from local ML to search, magazines and a lot more.

• Just 2023 Things (rknight.me)

  Robb Knight wrote a summary of everything they did this year.

• Reclaiming the Web with a Personal Reader (olano.dev)

  Facundo Olano built their own indie web reader to recover from burnout.

• How To Learn Chess As An Adult (or, how I went from 300 to 1500 ELO in 9 months) (alexcrompton.com)

  Alex Crompton explains that you need tactics more than strategy on lower ELO games and how to learn them.

Toot of the Week

Going to sit on the doorstep of ICANN and meow until they give us .uwu — @julia@snug.moe

Peopleware

• Ask Questions, Repeat The Hard Parts, and Listen (randsinrepose.com)

  Michael Lopp shares their framework of decision making.

Software

• Hitchhiker's Guide To Moving From Relational Data To Events (event-driven.io)

  Oskar Dudycz gives advice how to move from a relational model to events.

• The await event horizon in JavaScript (frontside.com)

  Charles Lowell about the lifetime and cancellation of async functions in JavaScript.

• Extreme dogfooding (archiloque.net)

  Julien Kirch about extreme dogfooding, when you not only use the software you write, but you use it to write itself.

• The hidden depths of the input element (htmhell.dev)

  Phil Nash explains everything you can do with an HTML input element.

Large Language Models

• The birth & death of search engine optimization (xeiaso.net)

  Xe Iaso about the impact of AI on search engines and the internet in general.

• The AI trust crisis (simonwillison.net)

  Simon Willison about the opaque methods of training large language models with (customer) data and why many people don't trust hosted solutions.

Cutting Room Floor

• “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing” (pluralistic.net)

  Cory Doctorow about the issue of DRM and buying something you don't truly own.

• walk and talk (sive.rs)

  Derek Sivers explains a format where 10 people walk together for 7 days and discuss interesting topics.

• Sudden loss of domain (b.tuxes.uk)

  The author of this post lost their domain with a seven day notice.

Doomsday prepping, except instead of doing it by yourself you do it with your neighbors, and instead of building a bunker you build a just, compassionate, and sustainable community. — @tjdungeonmaster@dice.camp

Culture

• How Often Should We Sharpen Our Tools? (tratt.net)

  Laurence Tratt talks about sharpening our software engineering tools, giving an example where he migrated from NEdit to Vim to NeoVim.

• Practical Ways To Increase Product Velocity (blog.staysaasy.com)

  This blog post explains why your team velocity is down and how to improve it!

• How to ship fast (wraptext.equals.com)

  Ben McRedmond lists eight things you can do to ship fast.

Software

• All my favorite tracing tools: eBPF, QEMU, Perfetto, new ones I built and more (thume.ca)

  Tristan Hume lists a ton of tracing tools and technologies.

• Writing a file system from scratch in Rust (blog.carlosgaldino.com)

  Carlos Galdino wrote a file system in Rust and explains how they typically work in the process.

• Correctly Configure (Pre) Connections (csswizardry.com)

  Harry Roberts explains how to best configure preload tags on websites.

Cutting Room Floor

• The Soil We Eat (lostsupper.substack.com)

  Taras Grescoe explains how modern technology leads to less fertile soil and how we might only have 60 harvests left in the world.

Toot of the Week

Pro tip: Never, ever have any problems — @rstevens@mastodon.social

Culture

• RFC processes are a poor fit for most organizations - Jacob Kaplan-Moss (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss explains why RFCs typically don't work for corporations.

• Redefining Developer Experience (begin.com)

  Cole Peters about modern web DX and why we need to move from Swiss Army Knifes to dedicated tools.

Software

• You don't need JavaScript for that (htmhell.dev)

  Kilian Valkhof lists ways to build common web dev components using only HTML and CSS.

• My Toddler Loves Planes, So I Built Her A Radar (jacobbartlett.substack.com)

  Jacob Bartlett talks about the process of creating a radar app for his daughter.

• 10 Weird HTML Hacks That Shaped The Internet (tedium.co)

  Ernie Smith shows 10 HTML hacks, from conditional HTML comments to using tables for layouts.

• Examples of Great URL Design (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

  Jim Nielsen shows some examples of great URL design and explains why they like them.

• Code is run more than read (olano.dev)

  Facundo Olano about different factors in software development and how changing the priorities affects the software quality.

Cutting Room Floor

• Waluigi creator reveals scrapped ‘Bad Peach’ designs — behold Wapeach (polygon.com)

  Michael McWhertor about published sketches of an evil princess peach, "Wapeach".

• Why We're Dropping Basecamp (blogs.library.duke.edu)

  Will Sexton explains why the Duke University Libraries is moving away from Basecamp by 37signals.

Quote of the Week

“Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.” —Kernighan and Plauger

Peopleware

• Performance Is Contextual (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss about different factors that influence a person's performance.

Software

• attribution armored code (joeyh.name)

  Joey Hess explains a potential technique to guard your code from being used by LLMs.

• Answers to common (web) accessibility questions (hidde.blog)

  Hidde de Vries answers common accessibility questions in their blog post.

• Why I Tend Not To Use Content Negotiation (htmx.org)

  Carson Gross explains why they don't use content negotiation to distinguish between hypermedia and JSON APIs.

• Writing Async Runtime Generic Library (sea-ql.org)

  Chris Tsang explains different strategies to write libraries that work with multiple async runtimes in Rust.

• An Interactive Guide to CSS Grid (joshwcomeau.com)

  Josh Comeau built a useful page to explore CSS Grid interactively.

Cutting Room Floor

• Spreadsheets and Small Software (blog.nilenso.com)

  Prabhanshu Gupta about the wonders and dangers of spreadsheets and why they're writing their own implementation.

• Cut the Intro (robinrendle.com)

  Robin Rendle argues we all should cut to the chase quicker when writing blog posts. Thanks, Jan!

Toot of the Week

Don't forget tonight, weather permitting, the Moon will be visible from Earth. The last time this happened was last night. — @dgar@aus.social

Articles I've written

• 30 Bits of Advice for 30 Years (arne.me)

  This article contains some advice I've collected in my life so far.

• We Need to Bring Back Webrings (arne.me)

  I built a webring for personal websites called Fire Chicken Webring and explain why.

• Archive Your Old Projects (arne.me)

  In this post I describe how I wish I had archived all my old projects and my approach going forward.

Software

• Some notes on nix flakes (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans shares their experience with Nix flakes.

• Rust without crates.io (thomask.sdf.org)

  Thomas Karpiniec explores using Debian packages instead of crates.io for Rust.

• Signals vs. Servers (blog.adamchalmers.com)

  Adam Chalmers about the problems of reloading a program with SIGHUP and the benefits of using HTTP instead.

• Push Ifs Up And Fors Down (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov shares two programming rule of thumbs for better readability and better performance.

Cutting Room Floor

• We don’t do DST at this company (blog.backslasher.net)

  Nitzan tells the story where a company had to update all the clocks on every switch to DST to keep the old time.

• How to Build Trust (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss shares advice for managers to build trust (and what to avoid).

• How do I know if I'm doing it right? (katydecorah.com)

  Katy DeCorah about steps that can help you verify your direction when learning a new skill.

Toot of the Week

who called it "legend of zelda speedrunning" and not "link-time optimization" — @mimir@meow.social

Software

• You don't need to work on hard problems (benkuhn.net)

  Ben Kuhn explains how people come out of college with knowledge to solve hard problems, even though the same problem-solving skills could be applied in a better way.

• Things I Learned the Hard Way (speakerdeck.com)

  Bryan Cantrill held a talk to the engineering team at Rokt about things they learned the hard way when building software, these are the slides.

• Cursorless is alien magic from the future (xeiaso.net)

  Xe Iaso about a VS Code plugin which allows you to program efficiently using your voice.

• Nix: my workflow (bmcgee.ie)

  Brian McGee shares their Nix (flake) workflow.

• Go Modules and Domain Expiry (utcc.utoronto.ca)

  Chris Siebenmann about the domain expiry problem with Go packages and possible alternatives.

Cutting Room Floor

• Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash (stephango.com)

  Steph Ango compares indie software to jam from a farmer's market and argues you should be willing to pay for the quality.

• A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox (henrikkarlsson.xyz)

  Henrik Karlsson talks about niches on the internet and how to find people that share your interests.

• That time I wrote malware and got caught (ntietz.com)

  Nicole tells the story of writing (pretty harmless) malware in high school and having other students and teachers run it.

Toot of the Week

Maybe the real treasure is the microplastics we ingested along the way... — @catsalad@infosec.exchange

Favourites

• This is the most powerful word in the world. (anthonyvicino.com)

  Anthony Vicino explains why the way you think about yourself affects your future.

• My rude-ass car (neverbeclever.org)

  The author hilariously demonstrates the sometimes annoying features of a 2023 car.

Software

• Why You Should Write Your Own Static Site Generator (arne.me)

  I wrote my own static site generator and describe why and how.

• How Bear does analytics with CSS (herman.bearblog.dev)

  Herman Martinus explains their no-JavaScript approach to analytics.

• A day with Zig (pierrebeaucamp.com)

  Pierre Beaucamp shares their experience going from Go to Zig.

• I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars (ludic.mataroa.blog)

  Ludicity saved their company half a million dollars by clicking a button that should've had been clicked years ago.

Cutting Room Floor

• Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts (vox.com)

  David Zipper explains how EV adoption hindered more environmentally friendly technologies like bikes and public transport.

• Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster (brettscott.substack.com)

  Brett Scott explains how new technology like cars a few decades ago and now LLMs don't make our lifes easier, even if that's how they're sold.

• The Other Side of Money: On the Stories We Tell about Wealth, Poverty, and Inequality (lithub.com)

  Bette Adriaanse tells an inspiring story, going from poor to becoming a landlord and about the importance of community.

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

Software

• Random Thoughts 15 years into Software Engineering (roughlywritten.substack.com)

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

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

Cutting Room Floor

• You’re not lacking creativity, you’re overwhelmed (newsletter.thejorgemedina.com)

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

• University of Chicago researchers seek to “poison” AI art generators with Nightshade (arstechnica.com)

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

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!) (tonsky.me)

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

• Scrollbars are becoming a problem (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 (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 (fastcompany.com)

  Don Norman about design shortcomings for elderly people.

• Reverse-engineering the mechanical Bendix Central Air Data Computer (righto.com)

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

• Notes on “Taste” (are.na)

  Brie Wolfson explains taste and how to acquire it.

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 (kellanem.com)

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

• How we manage 200+ open-source repos (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 (github.blog)

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

Cutting Room Floor

• Creativity faucet: Increase your creativity (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 (arun.is)

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

• We're all lurkers now (embedded.substack.com)

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

Toot of the Week

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

Peopleware

• Nobody Cares (a16z.com)

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

• Micromanagement: The Unpopular Truth You Need to Hear (shamun.dev)

  Ido Shamun argues that sometimes micromanagement is a necessary evil.

• How (not) to apply for a software job (benhoyt.com)

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

Tech

• Choose Postgres queue technology (adriano.fyi)

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

• The invisible problem (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 (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.

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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (zhangluyao.com)

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

• Kind Engineering: How To Engineer Kindness (kind.engineering)

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

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 (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 (sheknows.com)

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

Software

• A Senior Engineer's CheckList (littleblah.com)

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

• 7 simple habits of the top 1% of engineers (engineercodex.substack.com)

  A list with seven useful engineering habits.

• Using Zig in our incremental Turborepo migration from Go to Rust (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 (blog.separateconcerns.com)

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

• Aging Code (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. (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? (shkspr.mobi)

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

• An Opinionated Personal Folder Structure (stefanzweifel.dev)

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

Peopleware

• Beware the Metagame (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 (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 (bitbashing.io)

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

Cutting Room Floor

• Style is consistent constraint (stephango.com)

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

• So You Want To Abolish Time Zones (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 (scandinavianmind.com)

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

• It’s Official: Cars Are Terrible at Privacy and Security (foundation.mozilla.org)

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

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 (interviewing.io)

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

Software

• The four types of software in the future (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 (loige.co)

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

• Why Tailwind CSS Won (matt-rickard.com)

  Matt Rickard lists four reasons why Tailwind is so popular.

• No one actually wants simplicity (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 (jeanhsu.substack.com)

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

• We’re All Just Temporarily Abled (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 (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 (rmkit.dev)

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

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 (calnewport.com)

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

Software

• What makes a website cool? (buttondown.email)

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

• Lies we tell ourselves to keep using Golang (fasterthanli.me)

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

• Why Static Languages Suffer From Complexity (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 (utcc.utoronto.ca)

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

• Getting my library cards onto my phone the hard way (iliana.fyi)

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

Writing

• Some tactics for writing in public (jvns.ca)

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

• How I make annotated presentations (simonwillison.net)

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

• Using ChatGPT for Songwriting (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 (bbc.com)

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

• Not Using Zoom (the.webm.ink)

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

Toot of the Week

maximum wage — @christen@fireplace.cafe

Peopleware

• Stopping at 90% (austinhenley.com)

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

• Retrospective Prompts (two-wrongs.com)

  Chris has a list of prompts for development retrospectives.

Software

• Relay-style GraphQL (alan.norbauer.com)

  Alan Norbauer about the benefits of Relay-style GraphQL.

• I’m betting on HTML (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 (simonwillison.net)

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

• Invisible Details of Interaction Design (rauno.me)

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

• Just normal web things. (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 (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 (npr.org)

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

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 (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 (pboyd.io)

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

• In Defense of Strategy (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 (themer.dev)

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

• Why the “Null” Lifetime Does Not Exist (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 (allthingsdistributed.com)

  Werner Vogel about the origins of Amazon S3.

Cutting Room Floor

• Why Doctors Hate Their Computers (newyorker.com)

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

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 (blog.nateliason.com)

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

• Alignment > Autonomy (buildrightside.com)

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

• What makes developers productive? (jeremymikkola.com)

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

Software

• This will be easy (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 (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 (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 (postgresml.org)

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

• Stop Overengineering (blog.matt-rickard.com)

  Matt Rickard lists 10 negative effects of overengineering.

• Why Rust is a great fit for embedded software - 2023 update (tweedegolf.nl)

  Henk talks about the state of embedded Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

• When Work Didn't Follow You Home (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 (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.

Toot of the Week

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

Working

• Compounding Optimism (collabfund.com)

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

• Fast (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’ (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’ (theguardian.com)

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

• Lena (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 (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 (jogblog.substack.com)

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

• Stop Trying to Make Social Networks Succeed (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 (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!

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 (xeiaso.net)

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

• XML is the future (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 (opensource.googleblog.com)

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

• JavaScript Gom Jabbar (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 (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? (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. (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 (mikebeauchamp.com)

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

• Delete Friction (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 (vox.com)

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

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 (hbr.org)

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

• Humans Need Play (allenpike.com)

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

• On Being Useful (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 (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 (peppe.rs)

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

• HDR QR Code (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' (totaltypescript.com)

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

• Exclusive: OpenAI Lobbied E.U. to Water Down AI Regulation (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 (herman.bearblog.dev)

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

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 (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 (careercutler.substack.com)

  Jordan Cutler shares some advice for performance reviews.

• Killing Community (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 (erikbern.com)

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

• The five types of people who produce inaccessible code (ericwbailey.website)

  Eric lists five personas of people who write inaccessible code.

• Finish your projects (github.com)

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

• Ikea-Oriented Development (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 (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 (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 (pbs.org)

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

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* (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 (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 (xeiaso.net)

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

• Animated Pride Flags (joshwcomeau.com)

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

• WebKit Features in Safari 17 beta (webkit.org)

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

• Understanding GPT tokenizers (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) (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 (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 (oliverburkeman.com)

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

Work

• Fire And Motion (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! (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 (joshwcomeau.com)

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

• Phase Locked State Machines (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 (honeycomb.io)

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

• CSS wishlist 2023 (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 (simone.org)

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

• VogelRIP (German) (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 (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 (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 (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.

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 (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? (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 (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 (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

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

• You don't need a modal window (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 (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 (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 (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 (theverge.com)

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

• Generative AI: What You Need To Know (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 (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 (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 (andreasfragner.com)

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

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 (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 (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 (blog.orhun.dev)

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

• Face Generator Updates (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 (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

• User Driven UI (garden.bradwoods.io)

  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 (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 (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 (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 (github.com)

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

• Numbers every LLM developer should know (github.com)

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

• Uncensored Models (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 (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 (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 (newyorker.com)

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

• Guide to Computing (docubyte.com)

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

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 (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? (blog.sulami.xyz)

  Robin Schroer explains the benefits of type-level programming.

• How To Design Software Architecture For Startups (appventuretime.blog)

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

• Go with PHP (gowithphp.com)

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

• Modern iOS Navigation Patterns (frankrausch.com)

  Frank Rausch gives an overview of modern iOS navigation patterns.

• Where Is the Spring Framework for Go? (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. (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 (subtls.pages.dev)

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

Design

• Stop Using Hamburger Menus (bt.ht)

  Brad Taunt provides an alternative to hamburger menus.

• Every blend mode explained (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 (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" (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 (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. (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 (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 (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 (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!

Projects of Friends

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!

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 (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 (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? (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? (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 (shuttle.rs)

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

• Uptime Guarantees (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) (oneusefulthing.org)

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

• Here Come the Robots (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 (mcsweeneys.net)

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

• Prompt Engineering vs. Blind Prompting (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 (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 (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 (sixcolors.com)

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

• Insufficient forgetting (swellandcut.com)

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

• The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise (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.

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 (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? (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? (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 (rachsmith.com)

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

• It's time to learn oklch color (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 (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 (kmaasrud.com)

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

• Load Balancing (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 (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 (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? (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 (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 (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 (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? (annehelen.substack.com)

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

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 (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 (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 (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 (perell.com)

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

Software

• Two types of software engineers (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 (stackoverflow.blog)

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

• My Emacs eye candy (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (scientificamerican.com)

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

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 (census.dev)

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

• How To Do Hard Things (every.to)

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

• Give People Something To Look At (staysaasy.com)

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

• Re-thinking Presentations. (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 (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 (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 (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? (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 (reddit.com)

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

• Brace Yourself for a Tidal Wave of ChatGPT Email Scams (wired.com)

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

• Stable Diffusion with Brain Activity (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 (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. (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 (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 (alex.miller.garden)

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

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 (rkg.blog)

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

• He who submits a resume has already lost (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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) (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 (oliverburkeman.com)

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

• Your reading should be messy (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (surfingcomplexity.blog)

  Lorin Hochstein showcases and explains their presentation style.

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 (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) (jvt.me)

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

Software

• Betraying vim for the IDEs of March (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 (typst.app)

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

• Defer blocks and async drop (ncameron.org)

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

AI

• The End of Front-End Development (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. (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 (theguardian.com)

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

• They will lose your data (seths.blog)

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

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 (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 (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 (hbr.org)

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

Culture

• Don’t use stale bots (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (matthewstrom.com)

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

• ChatGPT as muse, not oracle (geoffreylitt.com)

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

Cutting Room Floor

• When our persona becomes our prison (vanschneider.com)

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

• How to craft a harmonious life (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 (curbed.com)

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

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 (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 (robinrendle.com)

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

• Things DBs Don't Do - But Should (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. (cloak.software)

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

• When Zig is safer and faster than Rust (zackoverflow.dev)

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

• Living with Rust Long-Term (video) (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) (youtu.be)

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

AI

• The Waluigi Effect (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 (rachsmith.com)

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

• Large language models are having their Stable Diffusion moment (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) (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 (newyorker.com)

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

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).

Toot of the Week

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

Favourites

• Taco Bell Programming (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. (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 (jessitron.com)

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

• Note to future self: Beware of fake urgency (oded.substack.com)

  Oded Blayer about the fallacy of fake urgency.

• Maybe people do care about performance and reliability (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 (bmoxb.io)

  Max explains how integer overflow is handled in Rust.

• Tauri vs Iced vs egui: Rust GUI framework performance comparison (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 (blog.axo.dev)

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

• Rust's Ugly Syntax (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 (surma.dev)

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

• When Rust hurts (mmapped.blog)

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

• [Watch] A Rust-Based, modular Unikernel for MicroVMs (fosdem.org)

  Stefan Lankes introduces RustyHeemit, a unikernel written in Rust.

• Rust vs. Haskell (serokell.io)

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

Tech

• Why Go and not Rust? (kristoff.it)

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

• Adding Webmentions to Your Site (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 (matuzo.at)

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

• Using HTML as a compile target (blog.yoshuawuyts.com)

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

Design

• Senior IC Reading List (valhead.com)

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

• Visual design rules you can safely follow every time (anthonyhobday.com)

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

• You kinda want an orange favicon. (chriscoyier.net)

  Chris Coyier about the best color for favicons.

• Teenage Skeuomorphic Desktop Designs (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 (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 (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 (boffosocko.com)

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

• Living Room: Declutter (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 (kumazen.com)

  kuma explains how to live in a van in Japan.

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) (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 (bluelander.bearblog.dev)

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

• Reverse engineering the MacBook clamshell mode (alinpanaitiu.com)

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

• Vim Weekly Tips #18: Ctags (lazybear.io)

  Hyde shows how to make symbol lookup work in Vim.

• Our Surprisingly Simple Navigation Hover Effect (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 (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 (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 (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) (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 (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 (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 (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.

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 (world.hey.com)

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

• How to use ADRs (Thread) (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 (simplethread.com)

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

• Use the Wrong Tool for the Job (buttondown.email)

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

• Examples of problems with integers (jvns.ca)

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

• Fallible - The Lost Sibling of Result and Option (datavirke.dk)

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

• Rust concepts I wish I learned earlier (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 (mkaic.substack.com)

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

• The Quest for a Dumber Phone (every.to)

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

• Inside Elon’s “extremely hardcore” Twitter (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 (kentnerburn.com)

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

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 (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 (abdulapopoola.com)

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

• Management Debt (staysaasy.com)

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

Tech

• The yaml document from hell (ruudvanasseldonk.com)

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

• Just use a monorepo (buttondown.email)

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

• Your tech stack is not the product (hoho.com)

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

• Guide to Web Authentication (webauthn.guide)

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

• Easy, alternative soft deletion: `deleted_record_insert` (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 (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 (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. (npr.org)

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

Toot of the Week

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

Favourites

• "I'm On It" (mikefisher.substack.com)

  Mike Fisher about their favourite response when given a task.

• The science of why you have great ideas in the shower (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 (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 (goretro.ai)

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

• The Diving Save (randsinrepose.com)

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

• To Be Productive, Be Prepared (martinrue.com)

  Martin Rue explains why preparation is a requirement for motivation.

• Success & Velocity (breakingpoint.substack.com)

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

• Finding Fulfillment (longform.asmartbear.com)

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

Tech

• How to Test (matklad.github.io)

  Alex Kladov has some great advice for testing software.

• Things You Should Never Do, Part I (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 (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 (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 (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 (humantransit.org)

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

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 (henry.codes)

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

• Recommended File Formats for Digital Preservation (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 (community.twistedfields.com)

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

• Lesser Known Techniques for Attacking AWS Environments (tldrsec.com)

  Scott Piper explains four less known attacks on AWS resources.

• Rust 2023 (by Yosh) (blog.yoshuawuyts.com)

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

• Faster Go code by being mindful of memory (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 (pudding.cool)

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

• Sound (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 (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 (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 (wired.com)

  Dhruv Mehrotra explains their experience with the Flipper Zero.

Toot of the Week

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

Culture

• Staff archetypes (staffeng.com)

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

Tech

• A simple stack for today's web hacks (neugierig.org)

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

• Using Zig for Advent of Code (huy.rocks)

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

• Just Use Postgres for Everything (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? (blog.meain.io)

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

Rust

• Rust in 2023 (ncameron.org)

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

• Working with Rust in (neo)vim (ntietz.com)

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

• Native Reflection in Rust (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 (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 (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 (blog.fogus.me)

  Fogus summarises their favourite things of 2023.

• How to Improve Your Creative Thinking (every.to)

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

• The secret lives of MI6’s top female spies (ft.com)

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

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 (salman.io)

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

• Challenging the status quo at work? (workweek.com)

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

• The Riddle of Rest (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 (shopify.engineering)

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

• Self-referential types for fun and profit (morestina.net)

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

• Lenses and Prisms (rust-unofficial.github.io)

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

• My negative views on Rust (chrisdone.com)

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

Tech

• Reinventing How We Use Computers (ploum.net)

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

• Washing Machine Cycle Notifications (malachisoord.com)

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

• Sneaky hackers reverse defense mitigations when detected (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 (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans collected some tips on Mastodon for analyzing logs.

• Goodbye to the C++ Implementation of Zig (ziglang.org)

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

• New in Go 1.20: wrapping multiple errors (lukas.zapletalovi.com)

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

Cutting Room Floor

• Ideas That Changed My Life (collabfund.com)

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

• Germans Have Seen the Future, and It’s a Heat Pump (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 (telegraph.co.uk)

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

• How to become a truly excellent gift giver (vox.com)

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

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 (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? (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 (ecostack.dev)

  Sebastian Scheibe benchmarks different languages compiled to WebAssembly.

• Threads and messages with Rust and WebAssembly (tweag.io)

  Joe Neeman about Threads in WASM and communication performance.

• Measuring the overhead of HashMaps in Rust (ntietz.com)

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

Tech

• Git Notes: git's coolest, most unloved­ feature (tylercipriani.com)

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

• OKLCH in CSS: why we moved from RGB and HSL (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) (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 (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 (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 (jwz.org)

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

• Warning: do not use Hive Social (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 (wsj.com)

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

• why Japan's internet is weirdly designed (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 (ithoughtaboutthatalot.com)

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

• Photography for geeks (lcamtuf.coredump.cx)

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

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 (baldurbjarnason.com)

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

• Holding two opposing ideas in my mind (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 (chreke.com)

  chreke about the advantages of "little languages".

• What is a Capability? (blog.sunfishcode.online)

  Dan Gohman explains WASM capabilities.

• Flux: Refinement Types for Rust (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 (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 (fhur.me)

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

• An Interactive Guide to Flexbox (joshwcomeau.com)

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

• Dialogs, modality and popovers seem similar. How are they different? (hidde.blog)

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

Cutting Room Floor

• Mirror (bastianallgeier.com)

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

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 (verica.io)

  Casey Rosenthal about the problems of RCA and healthy alternatives.

• Long live personal websites, Let's make the web personal again! (blog.nymhq.com)

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

Tech

• The Tao of Go (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 (ananthakumaran.in)

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

• From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server (ctrl.blog)

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

• How to start embedded coding (jhaand.nl)

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

• Stealing passwords from infosec Mastodon - without bypassing CSP (portswigger.net)

  Gareth Heyes explains how he found a vulnerability in Mastodon.

• Making a Go program 42% faster with a one character change (hmarr.com)

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

• Bringing revsets to Git (blog.waleedkhan.name)

  Waleed Khan showcases the git branchless suite.

• Let's write a tiny chess engine in Go (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 (matthealy.com)

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

• Passkeys.directory (passkeys.directory)

  1Password built a directory of websites that support passkeys.

• Solar (bastianallgeier.com)

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

• That fediverse feeling (adactio.com)

  Jeremy summarises the vibes they get when using Mastodon.

• How to choose the right Mastodon server without being a huge nerd (marcel.io)

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

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.

Culture

• Things your manager might not know (jvns.ca)

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

• Ideal open source (nedbatchelder.com)

  Ned Batchelder about open source motivation and an ideal situation.

• How to lead strategically every day (lenareinhard.com)

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

Tech

• The Perfect Commit (simonwillison.net)

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

• Generic associated types to be stable in Rust 1.65 (blog.rust-lang.org)

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

• RC Week 7: Four habits to improve as a programmer (ntietz.com)

  Nicolas has four habits for programmers.

• In defense of linked lists (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 (theatlantic.com)

  Conor Friedersdorf about QR codes and digital menus.

• Dynamic documents as personal software (inkandswitch.com)

  Geoffrey Litt, Max Schoening, Paul Shen

Culture

• What "Work" Looks Like (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 (hpdailyrant.medium.com)

  Hà Phan has seven qualities of healthy teams.

• Conway's Law (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 (karlsutt.com)

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

Tech

• user-defined iteration using range over func values (github.com)

  Russ Cox proposed an iterator in Go.

• Do we need a "Rust Standard"? (blog.m-ou.se)

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

• Shell Script Best Practices (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 (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? (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. (sidbala.com)

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

• Passkeys as a tool for user retention (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 (theconversation.com)

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

• Elon Musk’s planned Twitter layoffs are imminent (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 (theverge.com)

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

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

Culture

• Just for Fun. No, Really. (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 (robinrendle.com)

  Robin Rendle about the importance of regular breaks from work.

• Know your carrying capacity (macchaffee.com)

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

• Avoiding Featurism (tdarb.org)

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

• Writing for Engineers (heinrichhartmann.com)

  Heinrich Hartmann has a great guide for writing.

Tech

• Zig-style generics are not well-suited for most languages (typesanitizer.com)

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

• A Database Without Dynamic Memory Allocation (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 (github.com)

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

• A Real World React -> htmx Port (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 (wix-ux.com)

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

• Optimizing the hell out of my website (kmaasrud.com)

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

• The HTTP crash course nobody asked for (fasterthanli.me)

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

Rust

• How (and why) nextest uses tokio, part 1 (sunshowers.io)

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

• Static streams for faster async proxies (blog.adamchalmers.com)

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

• Multithreading in Rust (kerkour.com)

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

• Rewriting a high performance vector database in Rust (pinecone.io)

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

• Why Rust? (rerun.io)

  Emil Ernerfeldt explains why they use Rust for Rerun.

• Magical handler functions in Rust (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 (muezza.ca)

  Connor Oliver about his Macintosh Classic II.

• Writing With Copilot (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss about using GitHub copilot for writing.

• The Right Kind of Attention (robinrendle.com)

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

• What If We Just Stopped Being So Available? (theatlantic.com)

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

• A historical view on the Metropolitan Apple Watch face (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 (arslan.io)

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

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

Favourites

• Electric Bike, Stupid Love of My Life (craigmod.com)

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

• An end to doomerism (bigthink.com)

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

• How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end? (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 (learningfromincidents.io)

  An article about learning from surprises instead of incidents.

• Aging programmer (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 (cnbc.com)

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

Tech

• Go runtime: 4 years later (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 (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 (foonathan.net)

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

• Turns are Better than Radians (computerenhance.com)

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

Rust

• Why Async Rust (blog.yoshuawuyts.com)

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

• My first time using Rust "for real" (blog.vivekpanyam.com)

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

• Hard Mode Rust (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 (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’ (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 (protos.com)

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

Tweet of the Week

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

Culture

• What You Miss By Only Checking GitHub (harihareswara.net)

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

• What I've Learned from Users (paulgraham.com)

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

Rust

• Async destructors, async genericity and completion futures (sabrinajewson.org)

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

• Futures Concurrency IV: Join Ergonomics (blog.yoshuawuyts.com)

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

• Ten challenges for Rust (ncameron.org)

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

• Rust 2024...the year of everywhere? (smallcultfollowing.com)

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

Tech

• The five-minute feedback fix (github.com)

  Hillel Wayne about formal verification methods and their advantages.

• How I’m a Productive Programmer With a Memory of a Fruit Fly (hynek.me)

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

• OAuth2 explained with cute shapes (engineering.backmarket.com)

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

• Passkeys (imperialviolet.org)

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

• Want cleaner code? Use the rule of six (davidamos.dev)

  David Amos about principles for cleaner code.

Cutting Room Floor

• Apple’s Killing the Password. Here’s Everything You Need to Know (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 (theatlantic.com)

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

Culture

• Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs (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 (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 (codewithstyle.info)

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

• ZeroBanana – Senior Engineers are Living in the Future (zerobanana.com)

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

Tech

• Why David Yach Loves Go (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 (yakshav.es)

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

• QR codes (typefully.com)

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

• Prompt injection attacks against GPT-3 (simonwillison.net)

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

• Shortest URLs on the Internet (jameswillia.ms)

  James Williams about top-level domain name resolution.

• A pair of Rust kernel modules (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” (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 (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 (devonzuegel.com)

  Devon Zuegel about the similarities of startups and pirates.

• iPhone 14 Pro Camera Review: Scotland (austinmann.com)

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

• Most People Won't (bryce.vc)

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

Tweet of the Week

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

Favourites

• 'You can't say that!': how to argue, better (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 (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 (theatlantic.com)

  Derek Thompson has 5 points of career advice for you.

• Habits and Principles for Peak Performance and Geniune Excellence (twitter.com)

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

• Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven (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 (margin.re)

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

• Vulnerability Management for Go (go.dev)

  Julie Qiu introduces the Go vulnerability database.

• FLAC - Format overview (xiph.org)

  An overview of the FLAC audio file format.

• Attacking Firecracker: AWS' microVM Monitor Written in Rust (graplsecurity.com)

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

• Learning Rust: Async Combinators (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 (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! (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 (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? (seths.blog)

  Seth Godin about alleged smartness in computers.

• Ethanol-Mediated Novel Survival Strategy against Drought Stress in Plants (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!

Culture

• Why are you so busy? (tomlingham.com)

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

• Do we need an office? (zhuk.fi)

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

• What distinguishes great software engineers? (pdf) (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 (paepper.com)

  Marc Päpper explains how stable diffusion works.

• 1 week of Stable Diffusion (multimodal.art)

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

• DIY out of band management: remote console server (michael.stapelberg.ch)

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

• Learning Rust: Combinators (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. (blog.torproject.org)

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

• Rewriting my blog in Rust for fun and profit (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 (scribe.rip)

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

Tweet of the Week

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

Culture

• First Focus. Then Simplify (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 (maruz.medium.com)

  Mario Caropreso about the importance of quality in software development.

Tech

• Inside the Pinecone (pinecone.io)

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

• How to deal with money in software (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 (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 (endtimes.dev)

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

• Coping with Copilot (sigarch.org)

  Emery Berger about GitHub Copilot in education.

Cutting Room Floor

• "We Kill People Based on Metadata" and Other Metadata Things (darknetlive.com)

  A blogpost with software recommendations for dealing with metadata.

• A Shape of Things to Come (robinsloan.com)

  Robin Sloan about a weird discovery on Spotify.

• Good conversations have lots of doorknobs (experimentalhistory.substack.com)

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

• Using GPT-3 to augment human intelligence (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.

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

Culture

• Death to Dependencies (youtu.be)

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

• Why Developers Are Building So Many Side Projects (future.com)

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

• Being-Doing Balance over Work-Life Balance (jeanhsu.substack.com)

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

• Rituals for Engineering Teams (charity.wtf)

  charity about fun rituals in engineering teams.

• Taking notes in interviews (jacobian.org)

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

• We need young programmers; we need old programmers (blog.ploeh.dk)

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

Tech

• What is Backoff For? (brooker.co.za)

  Marc Brooker about different backoff strategies.

• Removing HTTP/2 Server Push from Chrome (developer.chrome.com)

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

• Programming breakthroughs we need (yoyo-code.com)

  Matyáš Racek about their vision for future programming breakthroughs.

• What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad (tanishqkancharla.dev)

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

• iOS Privacy: Announcing InAppBrowser.com (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 (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? (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 (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 (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 (lucytalksdata.com)

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

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](https://twitter.com/cra), and I don't think I've ever seen anything more true posted. — @axboe

Culture

• Breaking apart the monolith (github.com)

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

Tech

• Using unwrap() in Rust is Okay (blog.burntsushi.net)

  Andrew Gallant about panicking in Rust.

• ARCHITECTURE.md (matklad.github.io)

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

• Why macOS Ventura Share menu is bad (lapcatsoftware.com)

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

• Go wishlist (brandur.org)

  Brandur has four wishes for Go 1.20.

• From Oscilloscope to Wireshark - A UDP Story (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 (preslav.me)

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

• How I Hacked my Car (programmingwithstyle.com)

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

• The State Of Rust In 2022 (deprogrammaticaipsum.com)

  Adrian Kosmaczewski about the state of Rust.

Cutting Room Floor

• Why thinking hard makes us feel tired (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 (krausefx.com)

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

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

Culture

• João Alves on Twitter (twitter.com)

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

Tech

• Wi-Fine (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 (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 (the.scapegoat.dev)

  mnl explains why they still love PHP and legacy codebases.

• Lattice-based Cryptography 🧮 (unzip.dev)

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

• Use One Big Server (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 (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 (goingwithgo.com)

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

• Cut the cutesy errors (alexwlchan.net)

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

• Cramming 'Papers, Please' Onto Phones (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 (theguardian.com)

  Hamilton Nolan des describes how the oil industry won’t go away by itself,

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

Culture

• The practical application of "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand" (longform.asmartbear.com)

  Jason Cohen about a strategy to plan software projects.

• Spell. It. Out. (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 (danielsieger.com)

  Daniel Sieger lists 5 strategies for good code.

• You should take more screenshots (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 (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans wrote a toy login server and explains the basic technology.

• Library Writing Realizations (cbloomrants.blogspot.com)

  cbloom has 10 points of advice for writing libraries.

• Does Rust need proc-macros 2.0? (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 (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 (nytimes.com)

  Ezra Klein in an opinion piece about having kids in a world of crisis.

• Don't Panic (randsinrepose.com)

  Michael Lopp about the FromSoftware "Souls" games and what they teach you.

• The Best iPhone (notes.ghed.in)

  Rodrigo Ghedin explains why they think the iPhone SE is the best iPhone.

not-wanting-people-to-get-mad-at-me-driven development — @mycoliza on Twitter

Culture

• The Habits of Sustainable Excellence (bstulberg.medium.com)

  Brad Stulberg lists 19 habits for sustainable excellence.

• The Structure and Process Fallacy (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? (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans about terminal history, escape codes and the quirks of a 40-year old standard.

• Some Thoughts on Zig  (v5.chriskrycho.com)

  Chris Krycho lists reasons people like Zig even with the lack of memory safety.

• Building a Rust Mentality (slightknack.dev)

  Isaac Clayton about designing software with Rust's strengths in mind.

• SOC2: The Screenshots Will Continue Until Security Improves (fly.io)

  Thomas Ptacek tells the story of implementing SOC2 at Fly.io.

• Soft Deletion Probably Isn't Worth It (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 (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 (dorianlistens.com)

  Dorian Scheidt about a recent change he contributed to rust-analyzer.

• How Did REST Come To Mean The Opposite of REST? (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 (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 (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 (theguardian.com)

  Oliver Burkeman has eight secrets to a fulfilled life.

• Analyzing iOS 16 Lockdown Mode: Browser Features and Performance (sevarg.net)

  Russell Graves goes into detail on the new lockdown mode coming in iOS 16. TL;DR: you should enable it.

Tweet of the Week

real rust programmers just wrap everything in an Arc<Mutex<T>> and use async everywhere so they can pretend they are nodejs programmers — @dildog

Culture

• As a Leader, You Own Your Communications Bubble (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 (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 (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 (unzip.dev)

  Agam More writes about property-based testing, including recommendations for different software stacks.

• How I went about learning Rust (eli.thegreenplace.net)

  Eli Bendersky has a list of resources that helped him learn Rust.

• A Guide to the Go Garbage Collector (go.dev)

  There now is an official guide to the Go garbage collector including an optimization guide.

• A Previous Sibling Selector (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 (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 (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 (webbtelescope.org)

  Very hard to miss if you've been on the internet this week.

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

Culture

• Panel interviews don't work (jacobian.org)

  Jacob Kaplan-Moss on the wrong way to interview candidates: panel interviews.

• The skill/experience vs. outcome curve (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 (ntietz.com)

  Nicholas Tietz-Sokolsky has some great tips on how to run a book club at work.

Tech

• Monitoring tiny web services (jvns.ca)

  Julia Evans about monitoring non-production services as simple as possible.

• Rust Editors to Replace TextMate 2 - The Agony of Despair (fuzzyblog.io)

  Scott Johnson compares lots of editors written in Rust, this is a great overview.

• How to animate multiplayer cursors (liveblocks.io)

  Chris Nicholas wrote a great interactive blogpost about different ways to implement remote cursor movement.

• What’s new in Go 1.19? (blog.carlmjohnson.net)

  Carl Johnson summarises the features of the upcoming Go 1.19 release.

• A Pleasing Symmetry in Rust  (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 (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.

Tweet of the Week

All humans implicitly understand the value of "a good stick" from a young age — @no_goblins

Culture

• The 8 Jobs of Management (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 (departmentofproduct.com)

  Jade Rubick explains different ways to build a solid structure that will reduce the usual growth pains.

• The Death Spiral Of Bullshit (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 (twitter.com)

  Job has 20 great tips for managers of remote teams.