20 random bookmarks

@msfjarvis@androiddev.social's personal link log, mostly revolving around tech and tech-adjacent culture.

2025-10-29

90.

Debugging Stories

github.com/danluu/debugging-stories

Miscellaneous collection of blogposts from people who had to debug some really strange computers.

2025-09-10

84.

Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States. Office of Strategic Services

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

A historical publication written during the early 1940s amid World War II, "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" serves as a unique historical artifact that illustrates grassroots resistance efforts and the belief in the collective power of ordinary people during wartime.

2025-09-09

83.

The Gentrification of Video Game History

felipepepe.medium.com/the-gentrification-of-video-game-history-dfe11f1e08ae

Very well written post explaining the reality of gaming in the Global South and how the US-based media knowingly and unknowingly participates in its erasure.

2025-08-28

81.

Blocky Planet — Making Minecraft Spherical

www.bowerbyte.com/posts/blocky-planet

Discover the unique design challenges of creating a spherical planet out of Minecraft-like blocks.

2025-08-27

79.

Forklifts Require Training

www.zacsweers.dev/forklifts-require-training

Great post explaining how the software engineering industry has been walking into a potential labor collapse by alienating junior engineers.

2025-06-01

75.

How I like to install NixOS (declaratively)

michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2025-06-01-nixos-installation-declarative

For one of my network storage PC builds, I was looking for an alternative to Flatcar Container Linux and tried out NixOS again (after an almost 10 year break). There are many ways to install NixOS, and in this article I will outline how I like to install NixOS on physical hardware or virtual machines: over the network and fully declaratively.

2025-05-01

71.

Escape (de)Velocity - Artisanal Debugging of Tasks

www.liutikas.net/2025/05/01/Escape-Velocity.html

Debugging Gradle tasks can be challenging, especially when you have no access to tools like Develocity or need to work offline. This post shares a couple of strategies to help you gain more insight into your Gradle build.

2025-03-04

60.

Avoid the nightmare bicycle

www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/03/03/the-nightmare-bicycle

Short and to the point post about designing things with a little trust in your users to intuit a relatively easy model rather than papering over the slightest complexity with things that erase the mental model of the underlying concepts.

2025-02-20

58.

The origins of Firefox

vmst.io/@jalefkowit/114037556786892479

Today I learned that Firefox started as an act of protest from Mozilla engineers who hated the bloated product they were being forced to create

2025-02-19

56.

Someone has to save the Film and TV that Studios won't

aftermath.site/ricky-jay-defector-archive-preservation

A great interview with Chris Person of Aftermath, who has over the course of the past 2 years has become something of a VHS decoding savant

2025-02-16

55.

"A calculator app? Anyone could make that."

chadnauseam.com/coding/random/calculator-app

Super interesting deep dive into why the Android calculator app is so much better than iOS', and the incredible amount of work Hans Boehm put into making it so. I have never been more interested in calculators than reading this post!

2024-12-31

48.

Raymond Chen's 2024 linklog

devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20241231-01?p=110698

A great round up of interesting stuff, mostly centered around C++

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.

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

2024-08-15

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.

2024-07-18

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.

2024-07-05

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.

2024-07-02

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.