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2019/10/31 #

Today’s links:

  • Twitter to stop taking political and issue advertising on their platform worldwidetwitter.com #

  • Microsoft's GitHub blocks Catalan protest appwww.bbc.com #

  • The Whole Earth Web Archive - "proof-of-concept to explore ways to improve access to the archived websites of underrepresented nations around the world"blog.archive.org #

  • Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban - Pretty interesting situation where the two biggest social networks have opposite policies, I wonder how things will look in 1 year from nowthehill.com #

2019/10/30 #

Today’s links:

  • Chris Coyier takes you on a tour of his local WordPress development to production setup, if MTV had a show about developers this would be what it would look likewww.youtube.com #

2019/10/29 #

Today’s links:

  • Spotify releases quarterly results, is doing quite well, podcasting is being picked up by about 14% of users, but faces lots of competition from Apple and Amazonqz.com #

  • Top Linux developer on Intel chip security problems - 'They're not going away'www.zdnet.com #

  • The two-value syntax of the CSS Display property - Only available in latest Firefox 70 currently but worth knowing about it for when the other browsers implement ithacks.mozilla.org #

2019/10/26 #

Today’s links:

  • Microsoft snags hotly contested $10 billion defense contract, beating out Amazonwww.cnbc.com #

  • One of the people behind Krita which is an open source painting application (I think it's similar to Photoshop) has a writeup of the Blender conference - Lots of interesting figures about Linux and open source software development in the world of visual effectsvaldyas.org #

  • Why We Don’t See Many Public GraphQL APIsmedium.com #

  • Create an Eleventy (11ty) theme based on a free HTML template - Very practical set of tutorials that show how to take a site and convert it into a static generator based sitebryanlrobinson.com #

  • How BoJack Horseman broke animation's tedious bro culture - I haven't watched many episodes of BoJack, with this perspective it might be enjoyable to watch - A recent female character that I quite like is Sam Fox in Better Things, I haven't really analysed it much but I like her stylewww.wired.co.uk #

  • Facebook introduces a News tab for US users, they have an "editorially independent" curation team and there is a focus on local news, publishers need to be in their News Page Indexnewsroom.fb.com #

  • Jim Henson Co. and Disney team for new Earth to Ned puppet alien show - Cool idea for a showwww.slashgear.com #

2019/10/25 #

Today’s links:

  • How ssh port became 22 - I love how straight forward things were back in the day, what a different world we live in nowwww.ssh.com #

  • www. is not deprecated - I'm amazed that I failed to see that www is just another subdomain that essentially makes it clear that at the end of the url is a web server, and I make good use of subdomains - I think it stems from the fact that I learnt not to use www several years before I learnt what subdomains were, so I never thought about it again - As the article rightly points out, there are many other types of servers that can run on the internet and can and do use other subdomains for example email often uses mx. - Anyway subdomains are very cool :)www.yes-www.org #

  • Zuck Testified Before the House Financial Services Committee and It Did Not Go Well for Himpxlnv.com #

  • The real quantum supremacy race is between China and the US - I’d like to see 1 single application of quantum computing that would make the world a better place, so far what I’ve seen is that a cat gif would have more positive impact on planet earth than all this fancy quantum computing stuffwww.wired.co.uk #

  • Embed Neovim in your browser - turn any website textarea into a vim by connecting to headless neovim installed on your computer, so you can for example edit your github comments using vimgithub.com #

  • Pretty cool looking site for an analogue synthesizer, kind of surprised it's just plain javascript and jquery/jquery-ui under the hoodplaysuperlative.com #

2019/10/24 #

Today’s links:

  • Google researches have carried out a “Quantum Supremacy” experiment and been able to run a calculation in 200 seconds that would normally take 10000 years on today’s supercomputers - IMHO it would be more impressive with a slightly less stupid experiment name - Ordinarily I would be wondering if it ran NodeJs but I guess NodeJs is probably roughly equivalent to caveman pictures now, my enthusiasm for quantum is pretty lowai.googleblog.com #

  • Joe Rogan Experience #1368 - Edward Snowden - I didn’t make it through all of this, wow he sure talks a lot, a lot of what he says is very interesting, but he’s like some sort of speaking championm.youtube.com #

2019/10/23 #

Today’s links:

  • Firefox 70 arrives with social tracking blocked by default, privacy report, and performance gains on macOS - The tracking reports feature is pretty cool, I'd love if they expanded this to show which web apis sites were using, also lots of new stuff for developers in this releaseventurebeat.com #

  • SpaceX aims to provide internet coverage with Starlink constellation as soon as mid-2020www.theverge.com #

  • Netlify have released some features around build tools, adding a way to create pluginscss-tricks.com #

  • The Illusion of choice and the need for default privacy protection - A look at why in the world of websites, consent is not the right way to handle privacyblog.mozilla.org #

  • Bulletproof node.js project architecture - I feel like this piece is a bit scattered but there are quite a lot of good ideas in it, it's interesting to see async and classes being useful in nodejssoftwareontheroad.com #

  • The Internet and the Third Estate - Well written piece, if a bit long, that looks at the history of the concept of society being made up of "estates" and then an analysis of the current situation and how the internet, and specifically Facebook, is changing the landscapestratechery.com #

  • Facebook Pledges $1 Billion to Ease Housing Crisis Inflamed by Big Techwww.nytimes.com #

  • U.S. senators want social media users to be able to take their data with themwww.reuters.com #

2019/10/22 #

Today’s links:

  • Microsoft announces Secured-core PCs to counter firmware attacksventurebeat.com #

  • SpaceX submits paperwork for 30,000 more Starlink satellites, if all planned satellites get launched they will be responsible for about a fivefold increase in the number of spacecraft launched by humanityspacenews.com #

  • NASA Needs New Strategies to Protect the Solar System From Earthly Contaminationgizmodo.com #

  • Web platform podcast - Off the Main Thread - this edition of the podcast discusses web workers, lots of interesting new possibilities and architectures, I hadn’t realised how much of a different model of client applications it enables, pretty exciting stuff - I worry though about all the bad things it could enable too, what will it mean for privacy surveillance and lock-in, will it be possible for to turn off web workers if necessary, will we all individually have enough permission to do that, will the applications still work without them when the ai apocalypse happens?thewebplatformpodcast.com #

  • Assange in Court - I didn’t get through all the legal details of this article but it would seem that Assange is visibly in very ill health, big loss of body weight and struggling to answer basic questions, and might be being badly treated in custody (in the UK), his trial is being rail-roaded and there are questions as to how the court is handling the situationwww.craigmurray.org.uk #

2019/10/21 #

Today’s links:

  • Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos - oh well that’s good isn’t itwww.reuters.com #

2019/10/20 #

Today’s links:

  • What can software authors do to help Linux distributions and BSDs package their software? - I did not know there was a big dislike of npm by Linux package maintainerslobste.rs #

  • If a tweet declares war, is it illegal to take it down? - Would have been nice to have something uplifting after the previous happy link, but this is what is in my feed today, and it is quite interesting but I didn’t make it through the whole article, too much of a downer, hopefully this is one of those things that nobody will feel the need to testabe-winter.github.io #

2019/10/19 #

Today’s links:

  • free-for.dev - This is a list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) and other offerings that have free tiers for developersfree-for.dev #

  • Coffee Is Hard - A short peice about coding old school computer games, life and death, and the start of the HN comment thread is really nice toonews.ycombinator.com #

  • Working out before breakfast has ‘profound’ effects on overall healthwww.slashgear.com #

  • Catalonia has created a new kind of online activism - New activist groups are using technology to organize protests anonymously, it's kind of complicated because on the one hand people need to be able to protest because society and life changes and the state needs to be able to adapt, but also you don't want to destabilise everything whenever there is some problems, I hope the different sides don't get to entrenched with these issues and technologieswww.wired.co.uk #

  • The new Firefox WebSocket inspector that is already in FF developer edition will be released in devtools for Firefox 71hacks.mozilla.org #

2019/10/18 #

Today’s links:

  • Facebook chief rules out banning political advertswww.bbc.com #

  • JAMstack Tools and The Spectrum of Classification - Really good overview of all things JAMstack, posts like these are really needed in this space which can seem quite scattered, but when you have the classifications it's actually very structuredcss-tricks.com #

  • The Wayback Machine - Fighting Digital Extinction in New Ways - Improved Save Page Now, and also the addition of Collections, Changes and Show All Captures - The new features sound great, I tried the new Save Page Now, but the screenshot it took appears as "This page is not available on the web" and the saved page looks like it was from yesterday which is sort of confusing, probably worth checking again in a few days, perhaps there are some rollout issues - The old Save Now feature doesn't appear to be working, it's returning an error since yesterdayblog.archive.org #

  • My favourite Git commit - Quite a good illustration that sometimes long git commit messages can be very useful, I mostly agree with the author, but the commit message he presents is really quite longfatbusinessman.com #

  • The power of JSON.stringify replacer parameter - Really useful for sanitizing objects before printing them for example to logspawelgrzybek.com #

  • Should We Rebrand JavaScript? - For pretty much the entire article I personally was thinking "actually I quite like javascript" but then right at the end the author suggests WebJS and ServerJS which I actually quite likekieranpotts.com #

2019/10/16 #

Today’s links:

  • Twitter explains when it will remove abusive tweets by world leaderswww.cnbc.com #

  • Firefox’s New WebSocket Inspector - This feature looks cool but it appears to only be in FF developer edition, which I installed a few years ago and it really messed up my OS install, I hope they add this feature to regular Firefoxhacks.mozilla.org #

  • How to Build a Low-tech Internet - This article kind of blew my mind, the story from Kerala India where a 750 kbps internet connection is shared by 3,000 people is so different to the reality of fast internet, also it occurred to me that linkblogs actually work quite well in sneakernet / store and forward type situations, maybe even for reading and publishing, I'd love to know how the networks are setup, even with a 24 hour latency that's sort of how linkblogs are meant to be consumedsolar.lowtechmagazine.com #

2019/10/15 #

Today’s links:

  • Here's Apple's statement on Safari Fraudulent Website Warning and Tencentwww.imore.com #

  • How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunchwww.vox.com #

  • A Controversial Plan to Encrypt More of the Internet - "end-to-end encryption or encryption at rest cuts everyone out except the data's owners, while DNS encryption only shifts trust"www.wired.com #

  • Sudo Flaw Lets Linux Users Run Commands As Root Even When They're Restrictedthehackernews.com #

  • Setting net.tls.mode: requireSSL results in "unsupported value for tlsMode requireSSL"jira.mongodb.org #

  • I saw a flock of perroquets fly by yesterday just before sunsetwww.google.com #

2019/10/14 #

Today’s links:

  • Apple Safari browser sends some user IP addresses to Chinese conglomerate Tencent by defaultreclaimthenet.org #

  • Computer Files Are Going Extinct - A really nicely written ode to the data format known as the fileonezero.medium.com #

2019/10/13 #

Today’s links:

  • Ask HN - What do you self-host? - Pretty interesting thread if you are into self hosting stuff at home, interesting to hear about different people’s setupsnews.ycombinator.com #

  • PewDiePie goes on the record - Wanted to read this but it’s behind the NYT paywall, kind of amuzing side note - my brain always parses his name as PewPewDie no matter how many times I read it, it’s like there is a weird brain electro magnet somewhere that won’t let me read the name correctlyboingboing.net #

  • Emergency Vim Commands - This article will equip you with the necessary skills to become a vim first responderdev.to #

2019/10/12 #

Today’s links:

  • Planting Tiny Spy Chips in Hardware Can Cost as Little as $200 (Also it's relatively straight forward to do)www.wired.com #

  • Mastodon 3.0 - A lot of new features including anti-harassment tools, moving accounts, better search, custom emojis categories, OStatus deprecation, auto-suggestions for hashtags, trending hashtags, new and improved audio player and UI Slow modeblog.joinmastodon.org #

  • How to sync your fork with the parent repository - I was looking for an article that describes exactly this just the other day, this one is pretty good, though I found I had to also do a git fetch —all or I got a weird errordev.to #

2019/10/11 #

Today’s links:

  • Formally modeling database migrations - Article that uses the Allow model checking software to model a database migration to ensure consistency between schemas, I'm hoping to get back to this at some stage when I have more timewww.hillelwayne.com #

  • The tale of three dots in Javascriptdev.to #

2019/10/10 #

Today’s links:

  • A thoughtful article that questions the prevailing notion that technology developments are a form of inevitable evolutionwww.vox.com #

  • Interview with a Pornhub Web Developer - Interesting that they have moved away from JQuery to mostly Vanilla JS, also that they use a lot of web APIs like Websockets, WebXR, WebRTC, and Intersection Observer, and that they are big supporters of the open webdavidwalsh.name #

  • Why older people should be allowed to change their legal ageaeon.co #

2019/10/09 #

Today’s links:

  • The China Cultural Clash - A lot of US - China clashes recently over free speech and tradestratechery.com #

  • macOS 10.15 Vista - Some of the user reports from the Catalina upgrade aren't all that goodtyler.io #

  • Meats in Space - ISS experiment produces the first lab-grown meat in space - It's strange to imagine that quite probably the kids of the future will look back at us saying "can you believe they actually used to eat the animals?"www.slashgear.com #

  • Guix Reduces Bootstrap Seed by 50% - Super nerdy but quite interesting work, seems like it would be a good idea to know more about the build process for these compiled bits of software that everything else runs onguix.gnu.org #

2019/10/08 #

Today’s links:

  • Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if their websites are not accessiblewww.latimes.com #

  • macOS Catalina breaks compatibility with DJ apps that use iTunes libraries - They have "permanently removed" the export feature9to5mac.com #

  • Spread the word: the Iraqis translating the internet into Arabic - I don't speak any arabic, but to me the language sounds like music, it seems to do things that aren't possible in other languages, needless to say I like this arabic translation youth movement project a lotwww.theguardian.com #

  • Some more details on the issues DJs are facing with XML file export being removed from the latest macOS Catalinawww.theverge.com #

  • MacOS Catalina is a transition period for Apple - This is something I was vaguely aware of since reading some of the writeups from the lastest WWDC but it's only today after reading the Catalina reviews that it's now clear that it's quite a big change that is in motion, and it could effect a lot of things including web developmentwww.theverge.com #

2019/10/07 #

Today’s links:

  • Interesting discussion between Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress, Automattic) and David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails, Basecamp) discuss Wordpress market share, monopolies and power in OSS - I think Wordpress is phenomenal software, I would love to build websites using Wordpress, but it’s written in PHP and I’m a NodeJS guy, I think it would be pretty rad if Automattic built a Wordpress entirely in Ruby and also of course one in NodeJS - forget or perhaps de-focus market dominance and help build out the entire web ecosystem - How can some of us non-PHP developers benefit from all the knowledge they have accumulated building Wordpress?wptavern.com #

  • Governments around the world seems to be targeting encryption - I am no expert but what it appears to boil down to is whether keeping secrets in our societies is OK, and if so who is allowed to keep secretswww.eff.org #

  • The Off-the-Radar Baseball League That’s Trying to Reboot the Game - Pretty interesting article, some baseball leagues are experimenting with rule changes with the aim of changing the pace and quality of the game, similar things have happened recently in football (what they call soccer in america), the stealing first base rule is kinda wild, some of the other rules do make sense, but I feel a parallel with web development, like the pitcher who played through the minor leagues for 10 years only to make it into the majors and have a rule change potentially end his career, kind of like GDPR and other bullshit regulations that are crushing the internet, but for baseballgen.medium.com #

2019/10/06 #

Today’s links:

  • I had no idea it was the anniversary of Steve Jobs' death yesterday, here is a tribute thread started by current Apple CEO Tim Cooktwitter.com #

  • Auth error when restoring to mongodb 4.2 that does not have auth enabledjira.mongodb.org #

  • The Netherlands Surpasses Wildest Predictions For Tesla Model 3 Salescleantechnica.com #

  • s3st - A command line utility that allows you to stream data from multiple S3 objects directly into your terminal, could be useful for processing log files stored in s3, for example running a grep on themwww.npmjs.com #

  • Enterprise Software Is Dead - I hadn't read an 'X is dead' article for a while now, and this one actually makes a few good points, is it dead, not too sure about that, but it's definitely true that the enterprise software environment is vastly different than it was 10 years agocapiche.com #

2019/10/04 #

Today’s links:

  • China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains - The trains would cover a distance of 2200 km in about 2 hours running at speeds from 600-1000 km/h - That is a fast trainwww.asiatimes.com #

  • Vaping lung injury toll tops 1,000 - Quite scary, it appears vaping is dangerous and could actually cause deathwww.theverge.com #

  • I’m a Safari Truther Now - The title of this article made me smile, I guess for some the reaction might be an eye roll, but anyhow it’s quite a nicely written ode by a user that enjoys his Safari browseronezero.medium.com #

2019/10/03 #

Today’s links:

  • Scientists Uncover New Organic Molecules Coming Off Saturn's Moon Enceladusgizmodo.com #

  • iPhone 11’s Deep Fusion camera is available now in iOS 13 public beta - I really want to see this triple camera thing, it’s kind of weird but might be kind of coolwww.theverge.com #

  • Logs were our lifeblood - Now they're our liability - I think this idea that logs are a hazardous waste product is a pretty interesting way to look at itvicki.substack.com #

  • I would say that broadly speaking I am a fan of both Steve Jobs and Richard Stallman, I had a odd thought today, sort of a thought experiment/fan fiction, what if Jobs had had all the values that Stallman has vis-a-vis free software, what would the story have been, what part would he have played in the development of the cause? It's kind of difficult to imageen.wikipedia.org #

2019/10/02 #

Today’s links:

  • Purism starts shipping its Librem 5 open/free phone - if I’m honest something about the company name Purism/pureOS sort of weirds me out a bit but I very much like the product concept, it would be really awesome to have a mobile device running entirely free softwareboingboing.net #

  • Why big ISPs aren’t happy about Google’s plans for encrypted DNS - Though the article does cover interesting details it misses the worry that moving dns settings from the OS to the application could cause a lot of issuesarstechnica.com #

  • Jet fuel from thin air - Aviation's hope or hype? - I'm surprised this hadn't occurred to me before, but even more surprised that I haven't read about it anywhere: is creating fuel from air and water, the two things that humans rely on on for survival a good idea?www.bbc.com #

  • The mysterious bug that was causing macs across Hollywood to become unbootable was caused by a Google Chrome update, some installations of OS X 10.8 or earlier are effectedgizmodo.com #

  • PureOS Librem 5 overall software architecture stack diagram - It's based on Debiandeveloper.puri.sm #

  • Highlight, then fade highlight, for list items dynamically added to a liststackoverflow.com #

  • It's now possible to link directly to a message in a linkblog, when the page loads the message is momentarily highlighted, also works for messages in the archives - I haven't figured out exactly how to integrate it into the UI yet but here is an examplelinkblog.io #

  • This is the same link but on the archives month pagelinkblog.io #

  • And finally the same link again on the day archives pagelinkblog.io #

2019/10/01 #

Today’s links:

  • How to calculate number of months between two dates using javascript - This answer is almost correct /getDate/getTime/g to get the right answerwww.sitepoint.com #

  • Git over an ssh tunnel (like through a firewall or VPN)randyfay.com #

  • Tesla has a new feature where the car can drive autonomously and pick you up nightrider-style, sounds cool but there have been some reports of issues, this article has some user submitted video that make the feature look rather sketchyjalopnik.com #

  • Bosch Hopes Triggering Explosions Will Actually Make Electric Cars Safer When They Crashgizmodo.com #

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