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2020/01/31 #

Today’s links:

  • Mailgun lowers free-tier API from 10k to 625 emails per month - This is pretty bad news for any early stage startups using Mailgun, without a decent free tier, it's impossible to get started because you can't even send out signup/welcome emailsnews.ycombinator.com #

  • Monoliths are the future - I personally quite like the "double monolith", one for the website and one for the api, but I think there are some really large deployments like AWS for instance, where using microservices makes a lot of sense, but it's tricky to pull off operationally because as the organisation changes shape, the code base needs to drastically change too, and probably a lot of teams just can't keep up, monoliths are more rigid but they don't crumble as easilychangelog.com #

  • Pretty epic HN thread on the monoliths article from earlier, some useful notes from people with experience with microservicesnews.ycombinator.com #

2020/01/30 #

Today’s links:

  • Lungs 'magically' heal damage from smoking - That’s good news though I will say that I still notice that my lung capacity isn’t what it used to be, maybe it’s just because of getting older, but I am still glad that I don’t smoke anymore, it’s been a few years now, I found the best way to quit was to stop drinking alcohol too, and stop going to bars, have a hobby to keep you occupied, took about 30 days until I stopped wanting to smoke, I relapsed once for a while but I was much more aware of the effects the smoking was causing, and also more aware of the benefits gained by not smoking (higher energy levels, no smoke smell, easier breathing), so giving up the second time was easierwww.bbc.com #

  • Atari is opening eight video game hotels across the U.S. - I'm noticing that there is a lot of interesting things happening in eSports recently, I just had the thought that it would be cool to be able to post links to your linkblog from within a game, so you could show people something cool just happened in your gamewww.inputmag.com #

  • Show HN - I made a guide with all steps for transition to freelancing in Finland - A lot of people in this thread were thinking exactly what I was thinking, that it would be awesome to have something like this for every countrynews.ycombinator.com #

  • Humans can't read URLs - How can we fix it? - I like Jake's proposed re-designed url bar, it's quite linkblogishwww.youtube.com #

2020/01/29 #

Today’s links:

  • YourStack is for sharing your favorite products with the world - A social network by the makers of ProductHunt, where people talk about products - They stick you in a queue, unless you spam 10 of your twitter followers with an invite, kind of a weird onboarding experience, there are 7000 people ahead of me in the queueyourstack.com #

  • Warren Buffett Throws in the Towel on His Newspaper Empire - It’s pretty crazy that he is selling 30 newspapers, how could one person be running 30 newspapers? It’s almost incomprehensiblewww.bloomberg.com #

  • Europe has a plan to break Google and Amazon's cloud dominance - Called Gaia-X it’s a collaboration between the European Commission, Germany, France, and apparently “some 100 companies and organisations” to build a Euro-AWSwww.wired.co.uk #

2020/01/28 #

Today’s links:

  • IoT security - Your smart devices must have these three features to be secure in the UKwww.zdnet.com #

  • Don't start with React - I’m feeling the message highlighted by the author, it’s a good idea to learn the basics of how the browser works, but be careful because the stark reality is that it takes a lot of time and on the other end 98% of jobs on job boards require React/Vue/Angular, even the backend jobs, oh yeah and now Typescript, and you can guess that this pattern will continue, when you get there, there will be yet another set of minimum requirements - in a lot of cases your resume won’t even reach the employers inboxdev.to #

  • The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10 - This piece by John Gruber is getting quite a lot of attention - Several years ago I had an iPad, I really liked it, it was exactly as he describes, very easy to use, but I never got another so I was unaware of these UI issues in the latest versions - The fact that the iPad is turning into vim where you have to know the exact combination of obscure gestures to get out is kind of scarydaringfireball.net #

  • How new tech can help the UK’s creative industry flourish - Some interesting figures, there are close to 6 million small businesses in the UK, about 1/4 of the population works for a small business - It's going to be important for small businesses to be successful, they create a vibrant and diverse societywww.wired.co.uk #

2020/01/27 #

Today’s links:

  • The Language Agnostic, All-Purpose, Incredible, Makefile - I really like most of this article, the intro is great, the description of how make operates too, there’s a confusing example about scheduling flights, but the web development examples at the end are great including things like database migrations, automatically starting up docker, seeding databases - Currently I mostly use npm scripts for all build tasks but I see the value in using make as a developer orchestration tool, btw it’s also possible to not use tabs which this article doesn’t mention, see some of my previous links on make for detailsblog.mindlessness.life #

  • Here is the article that has details about getting rid of the need to use tabs in makefileslinkblog.io #

  • SpaceX to put 60 more Starlink satellites in orbit today, although weather conditions might mean it is delayed until tomorrowwww.slashgear.com #

  • Time check - Examining the Doomsday Clock’s move to 100 seconds to midnightarstechnica.com #

  • Natalie Novick presenter on the tech.eu podcast is leaving to join Startup Boost as Chief Community Officer - I very much enjoyed Natalie's style of presenting on the podcast, and I quite liked the slight oddness of an american presenting european tech, she very often had great insight and knowledge, I wish her all the best on her new venturetech.eu #

2020/01/25 #

Today’s links:

  • Mirage JS is an API mocking library that le ts you build, test and share a complete working JavaScript application without having to rely on any backend services - This library has an impressive amount of features, it’s not that far off having an entire backend in your frontend, I think there are a lot of cases where it could be usefulmiragejs.com #

  • Check out my latest Fiverr gig - Translate french to english technical writing - If you need any French to English translation services, especially if it's any technical writing, then contact me!www.fiverr.com #

  • Dolly Parton's Meme Exposes Social Media's Masqueradewww.wired.com #

  • Bruce Schneier highlights the fact that it’s not just facial recognition technologies that we should be scrutinising, there are a mirriad of other recognition technologies and it is quickly becoming a systemic issue that is affecting societies as a whole, whether it’s being implemented by governments or private companies via adtechwww.schneier.com #

2020/01/24 #

Today’s links:

  • Bert Belder talk on Deno the javascript runtime that might replace NodeJS - Since it has so many key features built in, It certainly looks like it cuts right through a lot of the complexity that has built up in NodeJS over the past 10 yearsm.youtube.com #

  • Inside node - What happens when we execute a script? - Great article that deep dives into the node execution - It’s relatively easy to understand even though there is some C++, it’s mostly the path the code takes that‘s highlighted, also briefly looks at the node source directory structure, and the location of the C++ - Javascript boundaryblog.s1h.org #

  • Demonstration of llnode and how it could be used with lldb to debug C++ and JS code in node (both postmortem and in live apps) - I’ve been wanting to be able to do this for ages, would be amazing if it were possible to run something similar from right inside an IDE next to or part of the regular debuggerasciinema.org #

  • There’s No Need To Hate Web Components - I’d like to see some decent examples of web components being used with React/Vue/Angular, and to understand why server side rendering is so difficult, will it ever be possible? Web components do seem like a good idea, but it is an entire extra layer which has the potential of introducing a bunch of complexitiesitnext.io #

  • Extensions in Firefox 72 - The first release on the new Mozilla 4 week release cycle, so not as many items as usual but still a few of interest including info about 3rd part network requests, CSP policy for content scripts in extensions, more click meta data, write support for storage.local from devtools, and an onChange listener for browser settingsblog.mozilla.org #

  • dev.to acquires CodeNewbie which runs the CodeLand conference and a handful of dev related podcastsdev.to #

  • Playwright is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers - This looks like the next generation of Puppeteer, it’s by the same development team, the API looks very nice, not sure this makes complete sense but it sort of makes me think of a jquery but for browser testinggithub.com #

2020/01/23 #

Today’s links:

  • Terry Jones - Monty Python stars pay tribute to comedy greatwww.bbc.com #

  • Scientists discover 'why stress turns hair white'www.bbc.com #

  • GitHub now uses AI to recommend open issues in project repositories - AI is eating the worldventurebeat.com #

  • iCloud backups are not fully encrypted because the FBI complained - Would be interesting to know where they got this information from because it goes against Apple’s public stance on privacywww.slashgear.com #

  • Check out my latest Fiverr gig - Translate french to english technical writing - If you need any French to English translation services, especially if it's any technical writing, then contact me!www.fiverr.com #

2020/01/22 #

Today’s links:

  • Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince' - Analysis of his phone showed it was likely hacked by a file sent to him from the crown prince’s WhatsApp accountwww.theguardian.com #

  • PHP in 2020 - I really liked this piece, I’m not a PHP programmer, but it’s nice to read something with a positive vibe that covers a lot of what modern PHP is like, there are a lot of similarities to NodeJS, they might even be implementing an integration with libuv, the library NodeJS uses for asyncstitcher.io #

  • How I write backends - Really great writeup by NodeJS developer Federico Pereiro of his development and deploy environment as well as how he structures his apps - It’s amazing to me how similar this is to my setupgithub.com #

  • Tech.eu Podcast - Interesting roundtable discussion on the podcast this week about AI tech in the european HR sector, the rising importance of independent teams, and how HR workers are anticipating much more rapid change over the next decade than in decades pasttech.eu #

2020/01/21 #

Today’s links:

  • deno (javascript runtime written by Ryan Dahl creator of NodeJS) has quite a lot of built in tools - dependency inspector, code formatter, bundler, runtime type info, test runner, command-line debugger, and a linter - I’m quite liking the idea of these built in tools but also I’m curious to know if it’s possible to use alternatives if you want to for whatever reasondeno.land #

  • Why Google thinks we need to regulate AI - Piece written by Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichaiamp.ft.com #

  • Opera appears to be involved in shady money lending in Africa, I didn’t read the whole article but the main bullet points are quite alarming - I also didn’t know Opera is owned by a chinese companyhindenburgresearch.com #

  • TypeScript's Secret Parallel Universe - TypeScript is weird in some places, also I’ve noticed that around 70-80% of freelance posting on job boards have typescript as a requirement - Do these projects really need typescript? I don’t know, but it looks like we’re all going to be writing in TypeScript in the near future, why not just write everything in C++?dev.to #

  • vocab10k.com - An interesting web tool for learning english used by professionals / in businessvocab10k.com #

2020/01/20 #

Today’s links:

  • Generate a PDF in AWS Lambda with NodeJS and Puppeteerdev.to #

  • Every Time Zone - Time zone converter, compare time zone difference, makes it easy to see how different timezones overlapeverytimezone.com #

  • I’ve added some space between results in the search page because it was looking a bit cramped therelinkblog.io #

  • ‎Techmeme Ride Home - (Bonus) Sports Tech With Will Martin on Apple Podcasts - I enjoyed this episode more than I thought I would, I'm not a massive sports guy, I like watching some football/soccer (mainly international matches), tennis, baseball games occasionally, basketball too and the Olympics are kind of fun, but that's about it, so I was kind of surprised to learn about how much technology there is in sports these days - As a tech guy, I find this pretty cool, but it's also kind of scary - I'm not sure how I feel about cyborgs on planet earthpodcasts.apple.com #

2020/01/19 #

cat << EOF > List of freelance web development websites and marketplaces

When looking for remote web development opportunities there are broadly two categories - freelancing and remote positions.

Here is a list of websites for finding freelancing opportunities:

Also worth checking out is this article that has lots of details about freelance contracts.

For remote positions check out my list of remote friendly web development job board websites. #

cat << EOF > List of remote friendly web development job board websites

When looking for remote web development opportunities there are broadly two categories - freelancing and remote positions.

Here is a list of websites for finding remote position opportunities:

List of remote friendly companies:

Also worth checking out is this list of resources for remote workers.

For freelancing check out my list of freelance web development websites and marketplaces. #

Today’s links:

  • Johnny Marr (Former Smiths guitarist) joins Hans Zimmer to score next James Bond filmwww.theguardian.com #

  • Timeless Web Dev Articles - Looks like some good reads in this bunch, hopefully I’ll get some time at some point to read some of these - Lists are trending for me, I’ve been making lots of lists the past few dayscss-tricks.com #

  • Making A Website - I like the concept of this tutorial series, seems like a good way to learn the basicskevq.uk #

  • In search of a better job scheduler - The author reviews many scheduling tools available on linuxy systems and makes quite a good case for a new front end to systemd that would makes it look a bit more like simple cronbeepb00p.xyz #

2020/01/18 #

Today’s links:

  • What Is an Editorial Board? - Just like open source software development the big newspapers have systems of governance in place to help move things along in a hopefully positive way, so it's interesting to learn a bit about how these systems functionwww.nytimes.com #

  • Joe Biden Says Age Is Just a Number - I actually didn't read this NYT article, I am posting it because of the web design, what struck me was that the page header section is the entire page, and it's responsive so when you resize the page it always remains full screen, I think that it gives it a very newspaperish vibe, but on the webwww.nytimes.com #

2020/01/17 #

cat << EOF > New Linkblog feature: rss, atom and json feeds

The latest linkblog feature is feeds. These are a versions of your linkblog that are easily readable by a computer. This makes it easier for people to read your linkblog but also enables you to do neat things like auto post your links to social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Each time a day finishes where you posted links, the hash link of that day gets added to your feed.

Linkblog rss, atom and json feeds

To access your feed, right click on the icon in the toolbar (it looks a bit like the Wifi symbol rotated by 45 degrees) and select copy link address. This should copy the url of your feed to your computer's clipboard.

If you then paste it into some form of text editor you will see what the feed url looks like. Here are my feeds for my regular linkblog and for my custom domain linkblog:

https://linkblog.io/users/mark/feeds/daily/rss https://links.markjgsmith.com/feeds/daily/rss

The advantge of using your custom domain url is that theorectically if you ever needed to move your linkblog to another provider, then as long as you still own the custom domain, that could be done without the people already using your feed having to update to a new url.

If you try to load these pages in a browser you'll see lots of strange looking text with HTML tags, but you will also notice that your daily posts are within <item> elements. Computers can read these feeds easily. The vaste majority of the time though you never need to read the actual feed, you only really have to copy and paste the urls of the feed.

The most common type of feed is RSS so that's what is used in your navbar. Atom and JSON versions of the feed are also available by replacing 'rss' in the url with 'atom' or 'json'.

A very typical thing people do with feeds is add them to their feed reader, which makes it possible to read many sites from 1 place rather than have to remember to visit all the sites individually. Seen like this, feeds are very similar to the follow feature in many social media sites, they have the advantage of working across many different sites, though they are a bit more complicated.

Feeds also make it possible to do things automatically with your posts, like posting them to sites like Twitter or Facebook. For example I have setup my linkblog so days are posted to my Twitter account @markjgsmith. There are lots of 3rd party online sites that offer rss-to-[insert favorite social media site] type services.

For a more detailed description about feeds check out the You Need Feeds site. Also useful is this list of rss feeds for social media sites which might give you some ideas about what is possible.

If you want to try out running a linkblog then signup for the 14 day free trial, after the trial it's just a few dollars per year. #

cat << EOF > Setting up as a freelance web developer

There are lots of reasons for doing freelance work, whether it's for what people refer to as a side hustle or whether it's more of a full time freelancing goal, but in all cases it's necessary to have a minimal infrastructure setup. You fine tune this over time and adjust according to the direction of the projects. Broadly speaking the essentials are payments, contracts and some form of marketing.

I got some of the details from this article from an audio on soundcloud called Web dev freelancing high level overview basic setup. The author makes some good points and is worth the listen.

Payments

Freelancers need a way to receive payments. There are a lot of online services that specialise in providing services for freelancers. Freshbooks seems to be a favorite for a lot of web developer freelancers. I hear it mentioned a lot on podcasts. Whichever service you choose, you will need to create an account, connect it to Paypal, and connect it to your checking account. It's a good idea to setup a seperate checking account for your freelancing work than your personal banking account. Then it's a good idea to test out the setup by sending a $1 invoice from Freshbooks, pay and ensure that the money reaches your paypal and then bank account.

Another possibility here is to use a partly self hosted solution. You will need some web development skills, but you could use the Freelancer project (One of my projects) to host a payment site that uses Stripe as the backend payment provider. You can host the code on a public Github repo, so customers can inspect the code if they want.

Joan from Toptal contacted me after reading this post to inform me that they have just released a freelance calculator tool that could be useful to easily figure out your hourly rate and yearly income. Thanks Joan!

Contracts

You will need some basic freelancer contracts that will clearly set out the project goals and responsibilities, and a way to send these contracts back and forth securly. Docusign has been recommended a lot, but there are other similar services available online, easily findable via Google search.

As far as the contract google search 'standard exchange of services contract' or 'web development contract' and use one of these as the basis for your contract. Make sure that the contract contains at least the following:

  • State that you will build website, describe the website, pages, api etc
  • State the price for building the website
  • Client will pay 1/3 before, 1/3 midway, 1/3 at the end
  • After contract finishes, will leave project
  • Hourly rate applicable for maintenance after contract finishes, should be arranged as a seperate engagment

Also worth checking out is this article that has lots of details about freelance contracts.

Marketing

Some way to promote your services, this doesn't need to be too envolved initially.

A basic website with a logo, contact details, short description of the services offered. Something you can add to the footer of your emails, it will be useful for referals too, a way for other to point people towards you. You might want to setup a blog at some stage, but initially a basic 1 page website should be enough.

How to deliver

General advice is to deliver a working website using new accounts for hosting and give these to customer as a deliverable. Hosting your customers website is not advised.

Now you have the basic infrastructure to make proposals, draft contracts, and receive payments.

Related posts:

List of freelance web development websites and marketplaces

List of remote friendly web development job board websites #

Today’s links:

  • Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030 - In this piece they outline a very extensive plan that will hopefully result in them being carbon ‘net zero’ by 2050, it’s good to see them lead in this area, it would be even better if other companies around the world followed in their footstepsblogs.microsoft.com #

  • Daily Overview photography of the Australia Bushfires -It looks terrifyingwww.getrevue.co #

  • What happens when words don't translate between languages - Something that is probably quite topical for programmers, naming things is difficult, it’s interesting to see the variations in how other cultures and languages approach this aspect of communicationwww.bbc.com #

  • Throw Me a Lifebuoy - Debugging Node.js in Production with Diagnostic Reports - Useful debugging tools and techniques for issues that fall outside of the space of easily debugable bugsm.youtube.com #

2020/01/16 #

Today’s links:

  • Microsoft launches Chromium Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS - Right on schedule tooventurebeat.com #

  • Twitter’s Jack Dorsey on edit button - “We’ll probably never do it" - Personally I use the edit feature on linkblog.io all the time, mostly because the auto correct on my mobile is constantly screwing up my words when I’m not looking, and also often when I am lookingwww.theverge.com #

  • Mozilla has money issues and announces layoffs, according to other articles I've read it's about 70 people - "We can and must work within the limits of our core finances"blog.mozilla.org #

  • Google sets final timeline for killing and replacing Chrome Apps9to5google.com #

  • Let’s Learn Eleventy! (with Zach Leatherman) - Learn With Jason - Watched this earlier, 11ty sure looks greatwww.youtube.com #

2020/01/15 #

Today’s links:

  • Popular dating apps like Grindr, OkCupid, Tinder, and the period-tracking apps Clue and MyDays are all sharing personal information directly with data brokerswww.consumerreports.org #

  • Trump slams Apple for refusing to unlock iPhones of suspected criminals - This feels off because his reason is that the government helps Apple navigate the trade war, so they should help the government with policing, but it’s the government that is partly responsible for creating the trade war in the first placewww.cnbc.com #

  • Verizon Media launches OneSearch, a privacy-focused search engine - It runs ads next to search results but only based on per query info - “no cookie tracking, no ad personalization, no profiling, no data-storing, and no data-sharing with advertisers”venturebeat.com #

  • Diary Email - Write private diary using good old email! - I like the simplicity of this product, though I’d be a bit worried about the security of the data, how it is transmitted and storeddiaryemail.com #

  • Highlights from Git 2.25 - The sparse checkout and partial clones features looks like they could be quite useful when cloning large monoreposgithub.blog #

2020/01/14 #

Today’s links:

  • Difference between Ionic and Cordova - These are two popular frameworks used for mobile app development using HTML/CSS/Javascript, but they differ in where they are in the stack, Cordova provides access to the mobile device hardware and has many plugins, Ionic is more of a presentation layer, accessing the hardware via Cordovawww.javatpoint.com #

  • 1917’s VFX artists had to totally reinvent how films are madewww.wired.co.uk #

  • It's Easy to Be a Jerk on Twitter And Twitter Wants to Fix That - The thing that I’m mildly fascinated about in this interview, but it’s something I’ve noticed in the past few interviews I’ve read from Twitter folks recently, is how the language to describe Twitter has evolved so much since the beginning - I really feel that they are starting to get into a more consistent flow for describing their product, a lot of times I’m nodding along even though the thing that they are describing is very abstract and new (10 years isn’t that long considering it’s a new medium), it’s starting to feel slightly ‘more real’www.wired.com #

  • Some of my Twitter lingo favourites from the previous Wired interview: Mechanics, Vector, Context, Dimension, Conversations, Fireside chat, Relevancy, Balance of incentives, Account level, Content level, Interestingness, Timelineness, The follow graph, Topic taxonomy, Corpus of contentwww.wired.com #

  • How is computer programming different today than 20 years ago? - Facts lightly sprinkled with humourmedium.com #

2020/01/13 #

Today’s links:

  • #CES2020 - Primordial Soup of Innovation - I really liked this piece by Steven Sinofsky, his ‘primordial soup of innovation’ way of thinking about the show got me much more interested in the event than I usually am - It’s a long read but worth it to get an idea of the big trends in tech and electronicsmedium.learningbyshipping.com #

  • Node.js has a built-in debug log method - Similar to the much used debug module, you can set NODE_DEBUG to get debug info from node core moduleswww.stefanjudis.com #

  • More info about the NODE_DEBUG feature including a list of attributes - timer,http,net,fs,cluster,tls,stream,child_process,modulewww.alxolr.com #

2020/01/12 #

Today’s links:

  • Notes on algorithms - A look at big O notation for search am sorting algorithms with examples in pseudocode, C and javascriptdev.to #

  • Interesting review from Peter Levels of a retweet giveaway promotion experiment he did on Twitterlevels.io #

  • RIchard Stallman - “If we don't want US companies to censor for China, the US should forbid companies that censor for China to do business in the US”stallman.org #

  • How to build an OpenStack alternative - Step 1, the prototype - Interesting to see what shape a bare bones implementation of a hosting provider type system looks likeungleich.ch #

  • Jamie Oliver opens in Bangkok - how will Thais take to his fusion food? - I’ve always liked Jamie Oliver’s approach to life and the work he did with school food in the UK, also his restaurants helping the youth find a place in the work force, it’s pretty cool to see he’s opening restaurants in Asia, he always seems to take on difficult challenges, and very often with great results, I’m interested to see how he approaches this new venturewww.theguardian.com #

  • The Netherlands’ government officially drops ‘Holland’ nickname to avoid confusion with touristsmatadornetwork.com #

  • Goodbye, Clean Code - Some good advice in this story by Dan Abramov about being a programmer within a teamoverreacted.io #

2020/01/11 #

Today’s links:

  • What Is JavaScript Made Of? - I found this piece by Dan Abramov was a nice read, very clear and also practical by saying how things are technically but also how people use the concepts and words in the real worldoverreacted.io #

  • AR Quick Look - To view these AR objects just open the page in Safari on an iOS device, I'm much more impressed than I thought I would be, pretty darn realisticdeveloper.apple.com #

  • How to Start a Podcast - Some good tips, I don't think I personally want to do a podcast, but I'm definitely interested in learning how to edit and manipulate audio recordings, I think if I ever did do a podcast it would have to be pretty weird and experimentaldaverupert.com #

2020/01/10 #

Today’s links:

  • Size of node_modules folder when installing the top 100 packages - Turns out compared to some other languages, the size of node dependencies isn’t actually that badsize-of-npm.netlify.com #

  • Did Albert Einstein Say World War IV Will be Fought ‘With Sticks and Stones’?www.snopes.com #

  • Web-Server Frameworks Team - A place for Node.js framework authors and users to collaborate on the future direction and feature set of the frameworks and related Node.js core APIsgithub.com #

2020/01/09 #

Today’s links:

  • Snowpack - Build web applications with less tooling and 10x faster iteration - Gets rid of bundle tooling during development using ESM moduleswww.snowpack.dev #

  • The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, announced on Instagram that they “intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen” - I think this is great news, exceptionally well timed, an exciting new chapter for both the UK and the US, I wish them all the bestwww.theverge.com #

  • Is Grimes Pregnant and Should We Blog It? - Looks like Claire Boucher (Grimes) and Elon Musk might be pregnantgizmodo.com #

  • The Split Personality Of Brutalist Web Development - Some interesting ideas in this article, an exploration of various website styles with some detours into the worlds of architecture and the arts, I’m wondering now why there aren’t more web developers that specialise in a specific stylewww.smashingmagazine.com #

  • It was looking at bit cramped, so I added a bit of space between linkblog links, hopefully a bit easier to read - Another bug surfaced though, if you use a highlightable message link to a link in a day that has more than a screen full of links then it gets highlighted but it's not focused because it is just off of the page, so you manually have to scroll a bit - For example this link to a post about blogging with Hugo does it on my laptop screen, I don't have a solution for that right nowlinkblog.io #

  • Twitter to introduce ability to stop people replying to tweets - Looks like some quite big changes are happening, will be interesting to see how it affects the flow in the twitterspherewww.theguardian.com #

  • Benchmarking the top-level domain names - Some of the newer TLD nameservers are taking up to 200ms to respond in some casesbunnycdn.com #

  • The Principles of Clean Architecture by Uncle Bob Martin - Some very useful software architecture techniques, not specific to any particular language, presented with a very balanced mix of technical detail, humour and well paced story tellingwww.youtube.com #

  • Using Clean Architecture for Microservice APIs in Node.js with MongoDB and Expresswww.youtube.com #

2020/01/08 #

Today’s links:

  • The Lost Landscapes of San Francisco - A Benefit for the Internet Archive - This fund raising event looks pretty fun, I wish I had more time to explore some of the historical footage on the internet archiveblog.archive.org #

  • Probably a lot of people are not aware of the fact that Node.js is written in the C++stackoverflow.com #

  • ICANN’s founding chairman joins the battle to keep .org out of private handswww.theverge.com #

  • Opera 66 initial release makes it easier to reopen closed tabs and to access extensionsblogs.opera.com #

  • Swissted is a project by Mike Joyce where he redesigned old punk, hardcore, and indie rock show flyers into Swiss modern posters - This is an attempt to bring the Sonic Youth poster to life with animationcodepen.io #

  • Firefox 72 - Mozilla have moved to a 4 week release cycle so expect releases more often but with less features in each release, also the javascript nullish coalescing operator looks useful, and a bunch of css stuff that I do t quite understand but sounds coolhacks.mozilla.org #

  • Notes on Can Tho - Urban life in the Mekong Delta - James Clark shares another great photowalk, this time of Vietnam’s 5th largest city - “Can Tho is a big city that still has a rural heart”www.nomadicnotes.com #

  • The Cornell Note-taking System - Seems like a pretty good notes taking strategy, simple and easy to rememberlsc.cornell.edu #

  • Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming – and save the planet - Cheaper, healthier, better for the environment, better for non-human animals and enough food to feed everyone on earthwww.theguardian.com #

  • The stack I use to run this blog - I'm always impressed by the quality and quantity of the writing from Flavio Copes, so it's interesting to read about his setupflaviocopes.com #

2020/01/07 #

Today’s links:

  • SpaceX launches third batch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites, reviving concerns - I’m worried about the space garbage race, we can’t even do a clean planet yet, what are the chances the skies are going to turn into an orbiting garbage nightmare? How many companies worldwide like Amazon and SpaceX are going to decide to send 1000s of satellites into space?www.geekwire.com #

  • Linksys Wellness Pods track elderly with wi-fi signals - A few years ago I would have thought this was a hoax advert but looks real, creepy products are the new normalwww.slashgear.com #

  • NextMind is building a real-time brain computer interface, unveils Dev Kit - Reminder that one of the best features of soon to be primitive keyboards, when you press one of the keys, you can be pretty certain it was you that pressed it, best feature everventurebeat.com #

  • Impossible Now Makes Pork From Plants - I’d like to taste their products, presumably they are a lot cheaper than actual pork and beef?gizmodo.com #

  • CES Gadget Show 2020 - Surveillance is in - and in a big wayapnews.com #

  • Chinese Skiers Training In Norway Ask Local Library To Remove 'Controversial' Books - It’s worth remembering that either side could be lying (there is also the possibility that both are lying), but none the less the concept of the whole thing is weird because even if you put aside the free speech stuff, essentially it’s forced labour justified because of the possibility of forced labourwww.techdirt.com #

2020/01/06 #

Today’s links:

  • An abbreviated history of JavaScript package managers - Quite technical but worth the time to read if you are working with Nodejs as there are lots of useful detailsmedium.com #

  • AdminBro - a Modern Admin Panel for Node JS - This doesn’t render very well on mobile but I find the idea for the project interesting, being able to quickly spin up an admin UI on a Nodejs based app would be very cool, and I like that it isn’t tied into a specific product, because usually the admin panel is tied to the product like for example Wordpresswww.inkoop.io #

  • Ray Kurzweil on what the future holds next (2018) - The entire interview was fascinating, but what struck me most having listened to it today was how common sense it all sounds, I think if I had listened to such an interview say 5 years ago I either wouldn’t have believed it was real or it would have melted my mind - Also if everything happens at logarithmic rates as he says then these “no way / melted mind” situations are going to start happening a lot more frequently, perhaps even daily, which I imagine might get quite annoying and tedious, maybe just post a link to your linkblog and move on with the rest of the day... [full disclosure in case you didn’t realise, I founded and run linkblog.io, but honestly, posting to my linkblog is one way I deal with overwhelm]www.ted.com #

  • The Cambridge Analytica scandal is making another appearance, apparently there are more documents that reveal global manipulation by a network of shell companies that affect how politics is funded in the US and UKwww.theguardian.com #

  • New Year, New Rights - What to know about California’s new privacy lawblog.mozilla.org #

  • John Gruber from Daring Fireball asks some important questions following the NYT piece about US citizens being tracked - I worry about the recent announcement that the quality of GPS data is about to get a bump of an order of magnitude from meters to centimetres precision, what applications would need such high precision? The matrix I guess... in an attempt to be vaguely positive about this I ask - maybe it will run nodejs?daringfireball.net #

2020/01/05 #

Today’s links:

  • Notes on Technical Writing - Summarises the main points from a variety of sources about technical writing, pretty useful if you have to write documentation, includes references to lots of useful booksmkaz.blog #

  • Folklore.org is a web site devoted to collective historical storytelling (of computing), has a focus on Mac related topics, uses lots of relatively short anecdotes rather than a longer, monolithic narrativewww.folklore.org #

  • JobFunnel - Automated tool for scraping job postings into a .csv filegithub.com #

  • Bruce Perens (OSI co-founder) quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new data-sharing crypto license - The license blurs the lines between software and datawww.theregister.co.uk #

  • Amazon is getting ready for everything you do online to be encrypted - They have implemented an open source replacement for the TLS component of OpenSSH called s2n and it is 6000 lines of code compared with 70000 lines of the old implementationwww.wired.co.uk #

  • Restored complete curl changelog - A nice bit of tidying on a project a lot of us use on a daily basisdaniel.haxx.se #

  • Distributing Software in a Post-Google Safe Browsing World - This appears to me to be quite an important issue, developers need to be able to distribute the software they are makingmedium.com #

2020/01/04 #

Today’s links:

  • Scripting tmux - Using a bash script to configure a tmux session rather than tmuxinatorwww.arp242.net #

  • jrnl - The Command Line Journaljrnl.sh #

  • What Are Those Grids of Glass in the Sidewalk - And Why Are They Purple? - Interesting bit of historywww.kqed.org #

  • Wade Shepard writes about a conference he will be speaking at in the Ukraine, and his 5 prong business strategy as an independent writerwww.vagabondjourney.com #

  • Lessons from Six Years as a Solo Consultant - Some interesting points about value based billing as well as the importance having a strategy to build a brandwww.embeddeduse.com #

2020/01/03 #

Today’s links:

  • How the Digg team was acquihired - Great writeup of the process and difficulties that unfolded during the Digg aquihire some years agolethain.com #

  • Hacker News Rankings - Shows the position of articles over timehnrankings.info #

  • How travel narrative blogging has changed over the last decade, and where to find great travel reads - A great end of decade review from James Clark in the travel blogging space, it's interesting to see how things have changed over the past 10 years, running a blog and having your own domain is still a good path even with all the social mediawww.nomadicnotes.com #

  • Thank You (2019 Edition) - Chris Coyier does a year review of the csstricks website, interesting to see how everything breaks down, and also which areas they will be focusing on next yearcss-tricks.com #

  • Automating the Date On Your Footer - This article made me chuckle because I just had to update this earlier, yep will most likely get it automated at some stage, but there was also something satisfying about manually typing 2020 :)dev.to #

  • Power, precarity and white-hot anger - what I learned in a decade in journalism - The author worked at gawker.com, which had quite a reputation at the time, his article is a rather scathing commentary about what it’s really like to be a journalistwww.theguardian.com #

  • The end of decade Talk Show podcast - Not only was there some great commentary about a lot of the achievements of the last 10 years, but some very interesting angles on products that I usually pay little attention to - Also a great example of why long form podcasting, where people can take it slow, can result in very high quality contentdaringfireball.net #

  • Jimmy Iovine the record executive who moved from record label Interscope to Apple, after selling Beats, a company he founded with Dr Dre, looks back at the decade in the music businesswww.nytimes.com #

2020/01/02 #

Today’s links:

  • The Comprehensive Guide to Speaking at Technology Conferences in 2020www.cfpland.com #

  • ka.llio.pe - An IDE for songwriting - Really liking the concept, the feature set and the website copyka.llio.pe #

2020/01/01 #

Today’s links:

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