20 random bookmarks

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

2026-02-09

103.

Don't Get Distracted

calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.

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.

2025-09-08

82.

Series: Learning GPUI

blog.0xshadow.dev/series/learning-gpui

A work in progress tutorial for GPUI, Zed editor's underlying GUI framework.

2025-05-26

74.

I made a font

blog.chay.dev/i-made-a-font

A quick look into the process of creating a font.

2025-05-09

72.

Can It Run Doom? An Archive of All Known Ports

www.canitrundoom.org

Explore an archive of Doom ports showcasing how the game has been adapted to run on various devices, even those not originally intended for gaming.

2025-04-02

68.

How to Sync Anything

neighbourhood.ie/blog/2025/04/06/how-to-sync-anything

2025-03-22

66.

When you deleted /lib on Linux while still connected via ssh

tinyhack.com/2022/09/16/when-you-deleted-lib-on-linux-while-still-connected-via-ssh

Some clever tricks you can employ to salvage an essentially un-salvageable machine. I learned a lot of new things from this!

2025-03-01

59.

How CouchDB Prevents Data Corruption: fsync

neighbourhood.ie/blog/2025/02/26/how-couchdb-prevents-data-corruption-fsync

Very neat explanation of how databases work hard to keep your data safe. I was surprised to learn about the failure mode of reading from page cache twice and the database convincing itself that the data has been written out even though it really hasn't.

2025-02-15

54.

The hardest working font in Manhattan

aresluna.org/the-hardest-working-font-in-manhattan

A great essay diving into an obscure font that is present all over New York City, and tracing its history all the way back to physical milling presses in the early 1900s. Both the information and its presentation are top notch

2025-01-28

50.

DeepSeek: The Greatest Growth Hack of All Times meets its David in a Chinese Quant

centreforaileadership.org/resources/deepseeks_narrative_attack

Great read on the state of the AI industry post the release of DeepSeek R1, which has shattered the idea of AI training only being available to the biggest players in the field.

2024-12-14

47.

JVM Anatomy Quirks

shipilev.net/jvm/anatomy-quarks

An ongoing mini-series documenting specific, often niche parts of the JVM. They're all pretty short and to the point, and the author encourages to treat them as chapters in a book as they reference each other quite often.

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

2024-10-30

41.

Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone

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

Timezones are insane

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.

2024-07-05

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.

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.

2024-06-24

8.

How TED talks became the Picotop of millennial intellectualism

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

2024-06-10

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