32 bookmarks

My personal link log, mostly revolving around tech and its societal impact.

2024-12-01

45.

Kotlin trick: writing shared Enum utility code

whtwnd.com/p-y.wtf/entries/Kotlin trick: writing shared Enum utility code

Some tips from P-Y to write handy utilities for enums like ensuring entries are sorted or that they have unique labels, in a generic fashion.

2024-11-29

44.

Storing times for human events

simonwillison.net/2024/Nov/27/storing-times-for-human-events

Simon Willison draws on his past experience working on event management websites to explain the real world problems that arise when you try to keep time for humans, along with actionable advice to minimize both your own and your users' suffering.

43.

hi, i made some frogs for your desktop

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fxw1DqZaYA

Beautifully written and illustrated video explaining shar's journey of creating a frog pond idler game

2024-11-28

42.

Beyond Bcrypt

soatok.blog/2024/11/27/beyond-bcrypt

Great write up on password hashing techniques and their pros and cons

2024-10-30

41.

Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

ssoready.com/blog/engineering/truths-programmers-timezones

Timezones are insane

2024-10-06

40.

Generating OpenGraph images for Hugo sites at build time

aarol.dev/posts/hugo-og-image

I've wanted to have consistent OpenGraph images for my website for a long time but did not want to involve any expensive-to-run services. The approach outlined here worked perfectly for what I needed.

2024-09-19

32.

Using YouTube to steal your files

lyra.horse/blog/2024/09/using-youtube-to-steal-your-files

Great vulnerability research but the highlight is definitely the hand-crafted interactive mock ups of Google websites

2024-09-10

31.

How to Monetize a blog

modem.io/blog/blog-monetization

Anything I say about it will ruin the delight of experiencing this page for the first time.

30.

You Want My Password or a Dead Patient?

web.archive.org/web/20240910052425/https://cohost.org/mononcqc/post/3647311-paper-you-want-my-p0

A great summary of a paper that analyzed how medical professionals teach themselves to work around security hygiene that prevents them from doing their job. It's a great look into how people working on securing systems often overlook the day to day reality of how these systems are operated.

2024-09-03

29.

Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods

www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distributed-systems-for-young-bloods

A somewhat dated but still quite useful list of things to look out for when diving into building distributed systems

2024-08-30

28.

The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

eieio.games/essays/the-secret-in-one-million-checkboxes

A great read about a bunch of smart hackers who converged around the One Million Checkboxes game and started hiding secret messages inside it, their eventual discovery by the game's creator and everything they accomplished while the game was still up. Honestly made me a tiny bit emotional.

2024-08-15

26.

A font with built-in syntax highlighting

blog.glyphdrawing.club/font-with-built-in-syntax-highlighting

Super interesting stuff, it's wild how capable OpenType is.

2024-08-01

25.

A Story About Jessica

harihareswara.net/posts/2024/a-story-about-jessica-by-swiftonsecurity

SwiftOnSecurity wrote this in 2014, about a fictional teenager named Jessica and how general purpose computing let her down. Must read for everyone in tech.

2024-07-30

24.

Java 21 Virtual Threads - Dude, Where’s My Lock?

netflixtechblog.com/java-21-virtual-threads-dude-wheres-my-lock-3052540e231d

Another great deep dive from the Netflix team on real-world problems they face as a primarily Java-oriented shop.

23.

Upgrading the JioCinema carousel

blog.jiocinema.com/upgrading-carousel-design

Surprisingly bullshit-free breakdown of all the considerations that went into creating a brand new front page carousel component for the JioCinema apps.

2024-07-26

22.

Restic Backups on NixOS

www.arthurkoziel.com/restic-backups-b2-nixos

Super simple and straightforward guide to setting up backups on your NixOS machine via https://restic.net

2024-07-18

20.

Code is run more than read

olano.dev/blog/code-is-run-more-than-read

Great read on understanding the incentives behind software development.

2024-07-10

19.

How Airbnb fails to protect guests from hidden cameras

edition.cnn.com/2024/07/09/business/airbnb-hidden-camera-invs/index.html

Airbnb has always felt sketchy about how they try to avoid responsibility for hosts but the deposition sheds light on just how deep this runs. Turns out not even sexual assault perpetrators are deemed as unsafe enough to be banned from being hosts on Airbnb.

2024-07-06

17.

The history of Git

blog.brachiosoft.com/en/posts/git

Probably the most in-depth history of the events that led to the creation of Git by Linus. Great read!

16.

Properly Testing Concurrent Data Structures

matklad.github.io/2024/07/05/properly-testing-concurrent-data-structures.html

2024-07-05

15.

"Technical" skills

sashalaundy.com/writing/technical-skills

Great read on why the distinction between technical and non-technical folks is simply meant to be exclusionary, and whether the word holds any weight at all.

14.

Kowloon Walled City: An Illustrated Guide

aftermath.site/kowloon-walled-city-cross-section-illustrated

Kinda wild to me that such a city could ever have existed outside the pages of Science Fiction.

2024-07-04

13.

Generative AI, Which Is The Future Of Art, Cannot Draw A Map Of The United States

aftermath.site/generative-ai-map-of-the-united-states

2024-07-02

11.

On Burnout, Mental Health, And Not Being Okay

ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/on-burnout-mental-health-and-not-being-okay

Just beautifully written. I would recommend reading this even if you are in a good place mentally.

2024-07-01

10.

The Shareholder Supremacy

www.wheresyoured.at/tss

Businesses prioritizing shareholder value over everything else seems to have become the norm, but I didn't know how this insane sounding behavior started and this is a great history lesson on it.

2024-06-25

9.

Compose-ur-Pres

github.com/KodeinKoders/CuP

Being able to make slides with Compose sounds fun!

2024-06-24

8.

How TED talks became the Picotop of millennial intellectualism

www.joanwestenberg.com/ted-talks-the-picotop-of-millennial-pop-intellectualism

2024-06-19

5.

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again

ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again

2024-06-17

4.

Are we really engineers (Part 1)

www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers

2024-06-10

3.

So you want to build a browser engine

robert.ocallahan.org/2024/06/browser-engine.html

2024-06-09

2.

Stupid Slow | The perceived speed of computers

www.datagubbe.se/stupidslow

2024-06-08

1.

CodeSandbox's approach to cloning microVMs blazingly fast

codesandbox.io/blog/how-we-scale-our-microvm-infrastructure-using-low-latency-memory-decompression