ervin

Web Review, Week 2026-27

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 10:36:56 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-27.

What happened to the fight for the Internet?

Tags: tech, politics, surveillance

Excellent piece, where are the netizens who should be fighting back those bills? Looks like we became very complacent and passivity reigns this time around. Didn’t think it was related to the pervasive centralisation already in place… but indeed that might be a strong contributing factor.

https://dustycloud.org/blog/what-happened-to-the-fight-for-the-internet/

Age verification is just a precursor to attribution of speech

Tags: tech, politics, law, surveillance

Definitely this, we can’t trust this kind of mechanism for what they open the door to.

https://nonogra.ph/age-verification-is-just-a-precursor-to-attribution-of-speech-06-29-2026

my review of uruky

Tags: tech, web, search

Several times I bump into articles praising this one. I’ve been test driving it a bit, the experience is still a bit bare but it’s clearly maturing. Definitely an option to keep an eye on in my opinion.

https://blog.sulimans.space/my-review-of-uruky/

Zuckerberg’s increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers

Tags: tech, social-media, facebook, ethics

There might be a method behind the madness of the thin skinned autocrat heading Meta… Unfortunately it probably works.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand-2/

Chatbots vs. Ozone

Tags: tech, geospatial, ai, machine-learning, gpt, economics, ecology

More reasons why the whole “data centers in space idea” is stupidly dangerous and likely unreachable.

https://blog.dshr.org/2026/05/chatbots-vs-ozone.html?m=1

Claude Code Is Steganographically Marking Requests

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, trust, security, privacy

You sure you can trust those systems? It’s proprietary software and they’re clearly on a slippery slop. For something so security sensitive this is concerning.

https://thereallo.dev/blog/claude-code-prompt-steganography

Prompt Injection as Role Confusion

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, cognition, security, safety

Interesting paper (go to the full one for all the details) which shows that with the current architecture it’s really hard if not impossible to make safe systems with LLMs. This gives interesting insights in the weird form of proto-cognition those models exhibit.

https://role-confusion.github.io/

Text Editor: Data Structures

Tags: tech, text, editor, design

Neat introduction to the right data structures to use when making a text editor.

https://www.averylaird.com/programming/the%20text%20editor/2017/09/30/the-piece-table.html

Engineering High-Performance Parsers with Data-Oriented Design

Tags: tech, data-oriented, architecture, performance, parsing

Interesting article applying data oriented design to parsing tasks. This is really a good approach for performance.

https://www.arshad.fyi/writings/engineering-high-performance-parsers

Data Access Patterns That Makes Your CPU Really Angry

Tags: tech, cpu, memory, hardware, performance

Interesting experiment on how to totally break the performance of memory accesses. This gives good insights on the whole chain works.

https://blog.weineng.me/posts/slowest_add/

The Physics of Memory

Tags: tech, javascript, memory, data-oriented, performance

Unsurprisingly cache locality is a very important factor. What’s interesting here is that it still applies to a language like Javascript where you’d expect to not have enough control on the memory layout to reap any benefits.

https://www.dmurph.com/posts/2026/06/ecs_vs_oop_benchmark/ecs_vs_oop_benchmark.html

High-performance Rust: Understanding and eliminating memory fragmentation

Tags: tech, rust, memory, embedded, performance

Interesting Rust options to limit the amount of heap allocations if you’re constrained by memory or for performance reasons.

https://kerkour.com/rust-high-performance-memory-fragmentation-allocations

Hobby’s algorithm for aesthetic Bézier splines

Tags: tech, graphics, mathematics

Interested in splines? This is a gentle introduction which points to further resources if you want to implement them.

https://www.jakelow.com/blog/hobby-curves#fn-2

What To Learn To Be A Real Time Graphics Programmer

Tags: tech, 3d, shader, mathematics, graphics

Wondering what to learn to get into graphics programming? This is a nice list.

https://blog.demofox.org/2026/07/01/what-to-learn-to-be-a-graphics-programmer/

Announcing Box3D

Tags: tech, physics, simulation, 3d

Exciting! This looks like a neat 3D physics engine.

https://box2d.org/posts/2026/06/announcing-box3d/

The essence of architectural work

Tags: tech, architecture, complexity

This is an ongoing series, but there are good insights about software architecture work in the first few articles. Shows quite well the important tradeoffs and the usual traps.

https://www.ufried.com/blog/essence_of_architecture_1/

Every bottlenose dolphin invents a unique whistle that becomes its name

Tags: biology, nature, cognition

So using personal names is not an inherently human trait, this is confirmed through research now. Before their were signs and suspicions, but now the trail of evidences is strong.

https://spacedaily.com/d-within-the-first-few-months-of-life-every-bottlenose-dolphin-invents-a-unique-whistle-that-becomes-its-name-for-the-rest-of-its-life-and-other-dolphins-learn-that-whistle-remember-it-and/

Notes from a burning Paris

Tags: climate, ecology

This is what things will look like in the coming years. Only probably worse, and for more and more people.

https://sarahwilson.substack.com/p/notes-from-a-burning-paris

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-26

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:18:32 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-26.

Look, just fucking use Mastodon already

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse, bluesky, decentralized

Aren’t the signs clear enough yet? Don’t get misled by Bluesky.

https://giants-club.net/articles/just-use-mastodon/

Tags: tech, social-media, europe, politics

I wish people will stay clear of this newer social media… It already smells really bad in its practice.

https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/

Apertus LLM Family Expansion via Distillation and Quantization

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, foss

Some news from the Apertus project, they released smaller models. Interesting work.

https://apertvs.ai/articles/2026-06-apertus-mini/

Yale researchers propose ‘copyleft’ rules for generative AI

Tags: tech, foss, licensing, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot

This is an interesting proposal, let’s hope it gets picked up and appear in more licenses.

https://news.yale.edu/2026/06/15/yale-researchers-propose-copyleft-rules-generative-ai

Anthropic accuses Chinese rival Alibaba of illicitly extracting AI capabilities

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copyright, politics

Remind me how your built your models in the first place? Yeah right…

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyklykn5dwo

The Shared Feeling of Being Harvested by the Future

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, surveillance, attention-economy, politics, economics

Very sobering opinion piece. For all the talks about a China / USA race, it feels more like two flavors of the same dystopia. The race is just here to justify acting against their own population interest. The result is then the increase in illiberal fixations and nihilistic world views. This can’t end well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opinion/us-china-ai-future.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qlA.4T9r.BLss9eBMrQot

Echoes of the AI Winter

Tags: tech, ai, history

When you ignore history, you’re bound to repeat the same mistakes. There’s clearly a trend of overpromising and then failing to deliver.

https://netzhansa.com/echoes-of-the-ai-winter/

Show your hands honor for the strange power they bring you

Tags: tech, input, performance, design, history, apple

A long but very interesting piece starting all the way from early typing on machines to more modern input systems. It’s very focused on Apple machines towards the end, but there are good design lessons to draw from the long perspective.

https://aresluna.org/show-your-hands-honor/

It’s Only When You Look Back

Tags: tech, history

Interesting look back at how our industry evolved. Quite a few events over the years.

https://www.markround.com/blog/2026/06/17/25-its-only-when-you-look-back/

Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I’m Already Daily Driving

Tags: tech, editor, emacs

Not CE features coming out of the box in the next Emacs release.

https://www.rahuljuliato.com/posts/emacs-31-around-the-corner

RFC 10008: The HTTP QUERY Method

Tags: tech, http, standard

Looks like we’re getting a new HTTP method. This should help remove ambiguous POST calls when really what you want is to query. This is long overdue, let’s hope this new QUERY method sees quick adoption in servers, frameworks and services.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc10008/

What can wonky APIs tell us about the web?

Tags: tech, web, api, maintenance

Designing APIs for the Web platform is hard and error-prone. This is why it carries baggage, here is a good example.

https://alexwlchan.net/2026/wonky-web-apis/

Configuration is a liability, just like code

Tags: tech, system, config, complexity, maintenance

Indeed, we try to limit the amount of code we need to maintain. But configuration can bring its own complexity and maintenance burden as well.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/ConfigurationIsALiability

Improvements to std::format in C++26

Tags: tech, c++

Those improvements are welcome. I wish we’d see more std::format uses.

https://mariusbancila.ro/blog/2026/06/19/improvements-to-stdformat-in-c26/

Rewriting the world in Rust

Tags: tech, rust, architecture

Friendly reminder that the answer is “no”. You don’t want to just rewrite everything, it’s not just a syntactical translation, it’s a long project and at best you tackle critical components.

https://bitfieldconsulting.com/posts/rewrite-in-rust

Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28

Tags: tech, java, type-systems, memory, performance

This is just the beginning in a way, but it’ll be a game changer for Java. The value classes will allow for better memory density.

https://www.jvm-weekly.com/p/project-valhalla-explained-how-a

Stop Naming Your Variables “Flag”: The Art of Boolean Prefixes

Tags: tech, programming, maintenance

Good advice on naming booleans. It’s worth repeating.

https://thatamazingprogrammer.com/posts/stop-naming-your-variables-flag-the-art-of-boolean-prefixes/

How to Write an Effective Software Design Document

Tags: tech, design, architecture, documentation, engineering

This is a good reference on how to write design documents. It’s not as easy as it sounds sometimes, and this guide contains good tips.

https://refactoringenglish.com/excerpts/write-an-effective-design-doc/

How to stand against high temperatures

Tags: life, climate

Obviously good advice and things we need to internalize now. Structural change is needed of course, but when the heat is here, better act properly.

https://www.whateverthewindbrings.com/how-to-stand-against-high-temperatures/

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-25

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 06:15:56 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-25.

Open Source vs the Invisible Hand

Tags: tech, foss, commons, economics

Or why modern economics mostly loose the plot when you try to factor Open Source in there simplistic theories.

https://nesbitt.io/2026/06/18/open-source-vs-the-invisible-hand.html

Recommendations When Using LLM-backed Generative AI Systems for FOSS Contributions

Tags: tech, foss, ethics, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot

A very balanced set of recommendations from the SFC around LLM uses. It’s just the beginning and still lacks a bit in details. It’s very welcome though and I look forward to their updates.

https://sfconservancy.org/llm-gen-ai/llm-backed-generative-ai-recommendations.html

Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other

Tags: tech, web, blog, community

I like this idea. It’d be nice if more websites felt like little town squares.

https://cauenapier.com/blog/townsquare_release/

The world’s first trillionaire is a killer

Tags: tech, business, politics

People excited by accumulating so much wealth (on paper) are clearly showing sociopathic traits…

https://www.theverge.com/tech/949259/the-worlds-first-trillionaire-is-a-killer

Extinction-level capitalism

Tags: tech, politics, ethics, economics, ai, machine-learning, gpt

Long, rich, and sourced piece. Or why the current gold rush aims at accelerating wealth accumulation of a few to the expense of everyone else. If the plans work as intended, the outcome won’t look good.

https://matthewbutterick.com/extinction-level-capitalism.html

Dangerous Technology For Americans Only

Tags: tech, europe, politics, ai, machine-learning, gpt, foss, commons

The latest move by the US government treating LLMs like dangerous weapons tells something about the geopolitical moment. Can we collectively raise to the challenge and build on cooperation instead? It’d be a much better position than assuming governments or big companies will make the right choices for everyone else in isolation.

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/6/13/americans-only/

It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, fake-news, scam, attention-economy

What a surprise… It turns out it’s very easy to manipulate AI “search”. Something which operates of statistical similarity to queries, who knew it could be manipulated. 🙄

https://www.404media.co/it-is-trivially-easy-to-use-reddit-to-manipulate-ai-search-research-suggests/

Report: How Developers React to AI-Scented Blog Posts

Tags: tech, blog, ai, machine-learning, gpt

Badly apparently, looks like it makes for prose people avoid. Now the thing is… with the widespread suspicion, some people might be wrongfully flagged as using LLM to write their posts.

https://writethatblog.substack.com/p/dev-reaction-to-ai-blog-posts

The Future of the Con Is Already Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, scam, security

What happens when targeted scams become cheap to run? This covers it fairly well, and we need to change our heuristics and trust model.

https://manishearth.github.io/blog/2026/06/17/the-future-of-the-con-is-already-here/

xan: The CSV magician

Tags: tech, data, data-visualization, tools, command-line

Looks like a nice command line tool for exploring data.

https://github.com/medialab/xan

.gitignore Isn’t the Only Way To Ignore Files in Git

Tags: tech, tools, version-control, git

Neat little summary on the mechanisms to ignore files in Git.

https://nelson.cloud/.gitignore-isnt-the-only-way-to-ignore-files-in-git/

Boot Naked Linux

Tags: tech, linux, embedded

A good reminder that Linux based systems can be slimmed down quite a bit. Can come in handy for specific devices.

https://nick.zoic.org/art/boot-naked-linux/

Why stdx is not on crates.io

Tags: tech, rust, supply-chain, security

Indeed, skipping the centralized package manager might be better in the long run.

https://kerkour.com/stdx-cratesio

Async Task Locals From Scratch

Tags: tech, asynchronous, memory, rust

Wondering how those are implemented and the challenges behind them? This is a good exploration of the idea.

https://wolfgirl.dev/blog/2026-06-16-async-task-locals-from-scratch/

Learn Rust Concurrency By Building a Thread Pool

Tags: tech, rust, multithreading

This is an excellent exercise to understand a language and its ecosystem better. This time it is about Rust.

https://blog.sheerluck.dev/posts/learn-rust-concurrency-by-building-a-thread-pool/

Rust Prevents Data Races, Not Race Conditions

Tags: tech, rust, multithreading

Sounds obvious to me, but I guess it’s worth repeating. It illustrates well the type of issues you still have to deal with in multi-threaded Rust.

https://corrode.dev/blog/rust-prevents-data-races-not-race-conditions/

How memory safety CVEs differ between Rust and C/C++

Tags: tech, security, memory, rust, c++, c

Interesting take on why CVEs are reported differently for C/C++ and Rust libraries. The responsibility for API misuse is treated differently because the abilities to express contracts is treated differently.

https://kobzol.github.io/rust/2026/06/15/how-memory-safety-cves-differ-between-rust-and-c-cpp.html

Memory Management in C++ by Patrice Roy

Tags: tech, c++, memory, book

Looks like a good book. This review definitely tempts me.

https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2026/06/17/memory-managenent-by-patrice-roy

Parsing JSON at compile time with C++26 static reflection

Tags: tech, c++, type-systems, compiler, reflection

This is really interesting stuff that C++26 brings.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/06/14/parsing-json-at-compile-time-with-c26-static-reflection/

Every Frame Perfect

Tags: tech, ux, graphics, animation, gui

Indeed, the intermediate steps in an animation have to make sense too. Too often we think about the start and end point but miss the quality of the transition.

https://tonsky.me/blog/every-frame-perfect/

Getting Creative with Perlin Noise Fields

Tags: tech, graphics, mathematics

So many possibilities with Perlin noise! There are some really fascinating textures in the lot.

https://sighack.com/post/getting-creative-with-perlin-noise-fields

The case for real collaboration

Tags: tech, pairing

I still wish our craft would practice pair and ensemble programming more. Somehow it’s been years and it doesn’t really take off unfortunately.

https://blog.mikebowler.ca/2026/06/15/collaboration/

Nine Questions I Now Ask in Interviews That I Wish I’d Asked Five Years Ago

Tags: interviews

This is a good list of questions. Never forget you need to assess the company you’re applying at. To often candidates forget to do it.

https://louisedeason.substack.com/p/nine-questions-i-now-ask-in-interviews

When Overwhelmed, Slow Down

Tags: health

This is sound advice. Especially in this era of chasing productivity at all costs, we tend to not listen to ourselves enough.

https://nathanpeterson.net/overwhelmed-slow-down/

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-24

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:30:16 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-24.

Total Reciprocity Public License

Tags: tech, foss, licensing, copyright

More an experiment than something I’d recommend for real. Still it shows there’s a gap we need to close in the licenses available. Let’s hope the OSI and the FSF will do strong moves toward closing this gap.

https://trplfoundation.org/

Forms of Open Source Government

Tags: tech, foss, governance, satire

In part useful, in part satire I think. Still it gives a good idea of various governance models in FOSS communities.

https://nesbitt.io/2026/06/09/forms-of-open-source-government.html

Retro-Tech Parenting

Tags: tech, culture, learning, parenting

There’s a path to get people (children included) to get into technology with enough of the veneer of convenience to make sure it is a learning experience… While keeping it pleasurable.

https://havenweb.org/2026/05/28/retro-tech.html

Tags: tech, game, surveillance, attention-economy, defense

How do you like our particular brand of dystopia? That’s what you get for using proprietary data farming game I guess.

https://dronexl.co/2026/06/09/pokemon-go-scans-niantic-vantor-military-drone-navigation/

The Blight Reaches Microsoft: 73 Repos Disabled in 105 Seconds

Tags: tech, microsoft, github, security, supply-chain, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot

There’s really something nasty at play. Those coding agents are clearly not insulated from the system enough and too easy to manipulate in order to exfiltrate sensitive information.

https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/miasma-reaches-azure

our workplace LLM mass delusion

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, management, trust

This piece asks a very profound question in fact. If you’re in a workplace where senior management allows and pushes everyone to get deluded about the real capabilities of those tools, how do you later move forward and rebuild trust?

https://blog.avas.space/llm-circus/

To my students

Tags: tech, learning, culture, ethics, politics, quality

Very nice piece, timely and needed. Indeed, let’s hope people stick to those principles.

http://ozark.hendrix.edu/~yorgey/forest/00FD/index.xml

How LLMs Actually Work

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, architecture, neural-networks

A good primer on the main architecture traits of transformer models.

https://www.0xkato.xyz/how-llms-actually-work/

Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale

Tags: tech, performance, architecture

It’s definitely easier not having to scale at all. Which is what you get when you design for local first / client side.

https://elijahpotter.dev/articles/local-first-software-is-easier-to-scale

Linux latency measurements and compositor tuning

Tags: tech, graphics, linux, desktop, performance, debugging

Interesting read, this is really tricky to measure such latency. It looks like we might have room for improvements on latency still. Curious to see if the proposed fixes will make it in kwin.

https://farnoy.dev/posts/linux-latency

Test-case Reducers Are Underappreciated Debugging Tools

Tags: tech, tests, debugging

Interesting family of testing and debugging tools indeed. I should definitely reach out to those more.

https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2026/test_case_reducers_are_underappreciated_debugging_tools.html

Why Queues Don’t Fix Overload (And What To Do Instead)

Tags: tech, queuing, architecture, distributed

Queues are not magic. If they’re unbounded you’re in for a world of pain as load increases.

https://pmbanugo.me/blog/why-queues-dont-fix-overload-and-what-to-do-instead

The User Doesn’t Care - But you should

Tags: tech, programming, quality

Indeed, when people say “users don’t care about quality” (tests or otherwise), this is mostly folklore. As soon as something goes wrong they’ll care.

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/260607.html

The un-hateable engineering managers

Tags: tech, engineering, management

Sometimes, you got to deliver the bad news… It’s healthy if you feel uneasy about it though.

https://newsletter.manager.dev/p/the-un-hateable-engineering-managers

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-23

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:39:33 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-23.

“But it happened.”

Tags: tech, google, attention-economy, business

Good point, the booing on Eric Schimidt’s commencement speech is likely not just about him talking about AI at some point. You see, the man has very heavy baggage… He’s one of the architects of the current dystopia but won’t acknowledge it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlQ7EoJDTQY

AI didn’t break the web. The dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume

Tags: tech, copyright, commons, web, ai, machine-learning, gpt, enclosure

Indeed the trend wasn’t new. It’s “just” the icing on the cake from the enclosure point of view.

https://hamishcampbell.com/ai-didnt-break-the-web-the-dotcons-did-ai-just-turned-up-the-volume/

Unlawful by design: Exposing the human rights costs of generative AI

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, ethics, law

When Amnesty International feels like it has to publish a 44 pages briefing pointing out what’s wrong with your approach and business… it’d be nice to pay attention.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol40/0996/2026/en/

About rsync slopocalypse

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, quality

Indeed, if the rsync maintainer can’t handle a coding assistant properly… who can?

https://teh.entar.net/@spacehobo/116659545246426837

When Other Games Chased Polygons, Blade Runner Chased Atmosphere

Tags: tech, game, graphics, 2d, 3d

There was an era of hybrid techniques in video games before it mostly went full real-time 3D. It gave interesting results, here is an example.

https://gardinerbryant.com/when-other-games-chased-polygons/

Avoid using `"<![CDATA[ ... ]]>"` in RSS

Tags: tech, blog, rss

Good point indeed, need to review my own feed next time I get the chance.

https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-05-11/avoid-using-cdata-in-rss

You Don’t Love systemd Timers Enough

Tags: tech, linux, systemd, time

Good primer on systemd timers. Indeed it’s really one of the nice systemd features.

https://blog.tjll.net/you-dont-love-systemd-timers-enough/

5 PostgreSQL locking behaviors that trip people up

Tags: tech, postgresql, databases, distributed

Mind those traps when dealing with such a database. There are locks you don’t necessarily expect.

https://dev.to/shinyakato_/5-postgresql-locking-behaviors-that-trip-people-up-4k7n

You probably don’t need Yocto, and that’s fine

Tags: tech, linux, embedded, yocto, debian

Indeed, teams reach out to Yocto by default a bit too much. It’s good to have an idea on when you really needed and when you can go for simpler options.

https://sigma-star.at/blog/2026/05/you-probably-dont-need-yocto-and-thats-fine/

Nine Ways to Do Inheritance in Rust, a Language Without Inheritance

Tags: tech, rust, type-systems, object-oriented

Some of the examples lean on macro trickery. Still this gives a good example of the flexibility you get with the trait system.

https://medium.com/@carlmkadie/nine-ways-to-do-inheritance-in-rust-a-language-without-inheritance-14825bf1e215

The C++ Standard Library Has Been Walking Itself Back for Fifteen Years, and the Receipts Are Public

Tags: tech, c++, standard, culture

Cold and harsh look at how the C++ standard library evolves. There’s indeed a problem in the fact that nothing gets removed ever.

https://hftuniversity.com/post/the-c-standard-library-has-been-walking-itself-back-for-fifteen-years-and-the-receipts-are-public

You Must Fix Your Asserts

Tags: tech, reliability, failure, debugging

Good point, disabling asserts in production is not the best default position to have.

https://kristoff.it/blog/fix-your-asserts/

What (almost) Everyone Gets Wrong About TDD & BDD

Tags: tech, tdd, atdd, history

Good summary of how the terms evolved. They are more tied to each other than most people think.

https://antonymarcano.substack.com/p/what-almost-everyone-gets-wrong-about-c05

normalize patience

Tags: tech, culture, patience, time, productivity, attention-economy

Things which matter take time. The calls to productivity and technology pushing us toward faster response on everything is killing what makes our humanity.

https://rnotte.art/normalize-patience/

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-22

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:57:07 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-22.

What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat

Tags: business, politics, culture, ethics

Wondering how those very rich people think and perceive the world? Here is an explanation. I felt unease reading through this.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/05/billionaire-consequence-free-reality/686588/?gift=fXb4ymsFcV2ntAzqIpmYvZ5SHmVudSgCCvY8EbJPC2Q

Secure Boot and Microsoft CA Rollover - a heads-up for distributions

Tags: tech, microsoft, linux, security

Microsoft has been deploying new CA certificates late… Now distros have to wake up and prepare new signatures for their shims quickly.

https://blog.einval.com/2026/05/22#secure_boot_ca_rollover

Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia

Tags: tech, wikipedia, community, business, work, ethics

This is very concerning. We don’t need Wikipedia to fall prey to this kind of tactics… On the contrary!

https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943

Google, I Dump Your Ass!

Tags: tech, google, web

I guess it’s time we realise Google doesn’t send much traffic on the open web / small web / indie web (call it as you please) and so there’s no need to let them harvest.

https://jaredwhite.com/20260522/google-i-dump-your-ass

The AI Gold Rush Is Eating Its Own

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, wikipedia, cognition, business

This is clearly the Ouroboros moment in our industry. People pushing for such restructuring and layoffs are drinking the kool-aid and will ultimately be responsible for killing what put them there in the first place.

https://blog.ppb1701.com/the-ai-gold-rush-is-eating-its-own

The Community is the Achievement; the Achievement is the Community

Tags: tech, knowledge, commons, community, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, ethics, diversity

Very interesting take. This gives very valid ground on why tech communities should reject AI based contributions. Not doing so will indeed hinder the commons communities rely on to exist and improve. This is a path to prevent getting better at inclusivity and diversity (which is really needed).

https://linguacelta.com/blog/2026/05/LLMs.html

Affordances for me, but not for thee

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, ethics, politics, accessibility

This is a fact I don’t get… people are going their way to satisfy the need of a LLM but not the ones of fellow humans. I guess it’s the conclusion which is somewhat right, it’s about who has power. This is sad if true… also I doubt it’s the single explanation.

https://werd.io/affordances-for-me-but-not-for-thee/

The price of humans

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, marketing

Interesting point… Didn’t think about it this way. We’ll see I guess. Maybe human made services will actually get a premium rate indeed. Wouldn’t be a bad outcome I guess?

https://blog.umangsurana.com/blog/price_of_humans/

Can we have the day off?

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, work, culture, productivity

I mean, with the announced productivity gains of generative AI… It doesn’t feel like a big ask. 😜

https://mlsu.io/posts/day-off/

BitWarden selling out? Self hosting a password vault?

Tags: tech, self-hosting, security

With Bitwarden sinking, it’s maybe time to look at alternatives? This AliasVault option looks like an interesting contender even though a not young.

https://firesphere.dev/articles/bitwarden-selling-out-self-hosting-a-password-vault

A cheap VPS is a good front

Tags: tech, self-hosting, security, vpn, wireguard

Sounds like a good solution to self host things at home while having some protection.

https://ergaster.org/thoughts/front-server/

The mysterious XF86AudioPlay issue

Tags: tech, audio, hardware

This is an odd and unexpected one! Funny after the facts bit clearly annoying otherwise.

https://michael-prokop.at/blog/2026/05/20/the-mysterious-xf86audioplay-issue/

Serving files over HTTP three ways: synchronous, epoll, and io_uring

Tags: tech, linux, io, asynchronous

Good post to have an idea of the modern IO APIs available.

https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/05/18/serving-files-three-ways.html

Rust Patterns & Engineering How-Tos

Tags: tech, rust

The writing isn’t perfect, but it covers quite a few important topics in Rust. Seems to be a nice resource even though it’s still work in progress.

https://microsoft.github.io/RustTraining/rust-patterns-book/

How Virtual Tables Work in the Itanium C++ ABI | File Descriptor Two

Tags: tech, c++, type-systems, memory

Wondering about the memory layout emitted by the compiler when a virtual table exists for a type? This is a good summary.

https://peter0x44.github.io/posts/vtables-itanium-abi/

The worst job interview I ever had

Tags: hr, interviews

Urgh… indeed this sounds like a very bad experience. Don’t do this to applicants!

https://www.oliverio.dev/blog/the-worst-job-interview-i-had

What is a harmonic? An interactive comic about additive synthesis

Tags: physics

Need a refresher on harmonics? This is a quick and fun way to do so.

https://melatonin.dev/additive-synth-comic/what-is-a-harmonic/

Why Japanese companies do so many different things

Tags: japan, business, culture

Interesting exploration of the Japanese business culture and why it’s so different to most companies found in Western countries.

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-21

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:51:25 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-21.

Make your website or blog fediverse-ready

Tags: tech, fediverse, blog

It’s not complicated, and a good thing to do.

https://stefanbohacek.com/blog/make-your-website-or-blog-fediverse-ready/

Dumb Ways for an Open Source Project to Die

Tags: tech, foss, community

Not sure it warranted the “dumb” mention in the title. Still it’s likely a good idea to have a list of the ways projects can die.

https://nesbitt.io/2026/05/19/dumb-ways-for-an-open-source-project-to-die.html

On Google declaring war on the Web

Tags: tech, google, ai, machine-learning, gpt, attention-economy, knowledge

Ultimately, they just want people to stay on the pages they fully control and not have them visit anything out of their mall.

https://tante.cc/2026/05/20/on-google-declaring-war-on-the-web/

I don’t think AI will make your processes go faster

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, engineering, processes, productivity

Good overview of why we don’t see a speed up in development processes when AI tools are introduced. The bottlenecks don’t magically get destroyed.

https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2026-05-15-i-dont-think-ai-will-make-your-processes-go-faster/

Twelve Ways to Be Wrong About AI-Assisted Coding

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, productivity, research, science

Or why most of the studies we see out there can’t be trusted. They’re full of holes and flaws. We’d really know people who know what they do in humanities to conduct such studies to get a chance at a proper picture.

https://third-bit.com/2026/05/20/twelve-ways-to-be-wrong/

Misconceptions about the UNIX Philosophy

Tags: tech, unix, history, microservices

I agree with this short history tour. It’s the composability which matters.

https://posixcafe.org/blogs/2024/01/05/0/

Shell Tool Testing

Tags: tech, tests, shell

A proof that you don’t need much to write a test suite.

https://zork.net/~st/jottings/shell-tool-testing.html

Spork: A posix_spawn you can use as a fork

Tags: tech, unix, linux, processes, research

fork() doesn’t want to die. But help is coming it seems. Maybe the day it disappears from kernels is “near”.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3713082.3730396

C++26: More function wrappers

Tags: tech, c++

Time to retire std::function in new code.

https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2026/05/20/cpp26-copyable-function

Scaling Rust codebases: Lessons learned organizing large projects and managing errors

Tags: tech, rust, architecture, complexity, pattern

Nice suggestions on how to structure larger Rust code bases. The proposed error handling is particularly neat and tidy. This is doable in other languages but tends to be more verbose.

https://kerkour.com/rust-organize-large-projects-code-error-handling

SIMD-accelerated integer-to-string conversion

Tags: tech, simd, performance

Really smart SIMD trick which packs a punch.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/05/18/simd-accelerated-integer-to-string-conversion/

Dependency cooldowns are unfair; we should use phased rollouts instead

Tags: tech, security, supply-chain

This is a good point. I feel unease at the current trend pushing toward cooldowns. The proposed rollout scheme is much better and fairer.

https://illegalcode.net/rfcs/phased_rollouts.html

Stop Using Pull Requests

Tags: tech, codereview, pairing, mob-programming, trust, productivity

The title is a bit too much of a blanket statement. Still there’s indeed a lovely no between pair programming and merge requests. If possible you should favour the former. Yet it rarely happens in practice, there are reasons for that.

https://a4al6a.substack.com/p/stop-using-pull-requests

organizational knowledge

Tags: tech, organisation, knowledge

Knowledge management is hard. It’s almost never a tool problem despite what people claim.

https://jarche.com/2026/05/organizational-knowledge/

Three Tips for Succeeding as an Accidental Leader

Tags: tech, leadership, management, learning

The responsibilities drop on people before they’re ready for it (I see it first hand regularly at customers). Such tips are thus welcome and helpful during the transition.

https://www.jrothman.com/newsletter/2026/05/three-tips-for-succeeding-as-an-accidental-leader/

Two facilitation methods starting with a single line: Actions|Results & +|Δ

Tags: facilitation, decision-making

Nice little facilitation formats. I’ll try those for sure.

https://improvesomething.today/single-line-facilitation/

Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

Tags: problem-solving

Very good points. Solving problems is not necessarily what happens when they are identified.

https://improvesomething.today/responses-to-problems/

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-20

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:45:21 +0000

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-20.

EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push

Tags: tech, surveillance, vpn, europe, politics

Urgh… That was only a matter of time before they notice I guess. That’ll go straight in the authoritarian playbook if they make a real move on it.

https://cyberinsider.com/eu-calls-vpns-a-loophole-that-needs-closing-in-age-verification-push/

Linux Compromises, Broken Embargoes, and the Shrinking Patch Window

Tags: tech, linux, security

We’ve seen a stream of those security issues lately. It says something about the security practice in the industry right now. Things need to be improved.

https://www.askbaize.com/blog/linux-compromises-broken-embargoes-and-the-shrinking-patch-window

Can Someone Please Explain Whether Cloudflare Blackmailed Canonical?

Tags: tech, cloud, cloudflare

Honestly the whole situation was bizarre… And yes it feels like Cloudflare actions were not exactly transparent here.

https://www.flyingpenguin.com/can-someone-please-explain-whether-cloudflare-blackmailed-canonical/

Why I’m leaving GitHub for Forgejo

Tags: tech, github, trust

The GitHub exodus continues. Looks like Forgejo is really benefiting from it, I wonder how far this will go.

https://jorijn.com/en/blog/leaving-github-for-forgejo/

Use Protocols, Not Services

Tags: tech, protocols, resilience, self-hosting, politics, decentralized

A good reminder of why this is the protocols which matter. People got too accustomed to centralised platforms.

https://notnotp.com/notes/use-protocols-not-services/

The BeBox: BeOS Hardware, Photos, and the Apple Deal That Wasn’t

Tags: tech, hardware, system, history

This was definitely an interesting operating system and the hardware was fun too. Of course it was lacking quite a bit in applications availability. This was likely too radical for its time and not mature enough when it needed to.

https://www.jdhodges.com/blog/bebox-beautifully-overbuilt-computer/

Hey you, start communicating!

Tags: tech, blog, communication, learning

We collectively should reach out more to blog authors indeed. Not for kudos but to feed each other through conversations. That’s how we collectively learn and improve.

https://forkingmad.blog/hey-you-start-communicating/

Easy is Overrated

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, research, quality

As if research wasn’t already having a quality problem in submitted papers… now thanks to people jumping on LLMs to churn out papers faster, this quality is cratering.

https://calnewport.com/easy-is-overrated/

Local AI Needs to be the Norm

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, nlp, ethics, performance, architecture

Which means simpler models: and this is fine for most use! It’s also easier to have more ethical options with the smaller and more specialised models. Let’s not forget they exist even though the big industrial complex would like people to forget.

https://unix.foo/posts/local-ai-needs-to-be-norm/

Pyrefly v1.0 is here!

Tags: tech, python, type-systems

Another type checker for Python gets stabilised. So many options and fragmentation in this space. This is odd.

https://pyrefly.org/blog/v1.0/

Just Fucking Use Go

Tags: tech, backend, go

Kind of a rant but it makes sense for the most part. Back end systems could be much simpler than they tend to be. I think this particular piece is willingly ignoring some of the weaknesses in Go error handling though.

https://blainsmith.com/articles/just-fucking-use-go/

The limits of Rust, or why you should probably not follow Amazon, Cloudflare and Discord

Tags: tech, rust, ecosystem, maintenance

As usual with this author it feels a bit too much like advertising toward the end. Still this is an important post, it shows quite well why you can’t limit yourself at only the language used when picking a stack. You definitely need to look at the standard library and the wider ecosystem as well. Rust is no different there and has its own issues.

https://kerkour.com/the-limits-of-rust

C++26: Standard library hardening

Tags: tech, c++, standard, reliability, memory

It’s about time such a thing gets standardised in C++!

https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2026/05/13/cpp26-library-hardening

Let’s Build a Regex Engine

Tags: tech, regex

Still a work in progress, but it’ll likely turn out into a nice resource on how to implement regex engines.

https://kean.blog/post/lets-build-regex

Floating point from scratch: Hard Mode

Tags: tech, floats, cpu, hardware, mathematics

Nice exploration of floating point arithmetic all the way down to the silicon.

https://essenceia.github.io/projects/floating_dragon/

On Rendering the Sky, Sunsets, and Planets

Tags: tech, graphics, shader, 3d, physics

Everything you wanted to know about atmosphere rendering but didn’t dare ask. Very good piece, makes me want to write a live wallpaper for Plasma. :-)

https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/on-rendering-the-sky-sunsets-and-planets/

I learned something about GPUs today

Tags: tech, gpu, 3d, shader, mathematics

Huh! Indeed I’d have fallen in this trap too. Totally unexpected behavior, and of course not all GPUs interpolate the same, so it can stay hidden until too late.

https://foon.uk/blackshift-sand-bug/

Getting peak TOPS on a Ryzen AI 7 350 NPU

Tags: tech, cpu, npu, hardware

Wondering about NPUs architecture and how they work? This is a good in depth reference article I think.

https://destevez.net/2026/05/getting-peak-tops-on-a-ryzen-ai-7-350-npu/

The Hard Parts.dev

Tags: tech, engineering

Looks like an interesting reference of patterns in software engineering.

https://thehardparts.dev/

Be a Multiplier: Lead by Guiding Others

Tags: tech, engineering, leadership

This is a short one but a good one I think. Helping others to do rather than doing directly is the needed shift to get into technical leadership. It’s not an easy leap though, been helping some people getting there and it’s quite the effort.

https://estherderby.com/tech-leadership-be-a-multiplier/

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-19

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:46:46 +0000

Back from vacations, the reading offline was good… I managed to read some articles too, so let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-19.

Building a cyberdeck is the most punk thing you can do right now

Tags: tech, hacking, culture

It’s indeed a nice endeavour. I don’t have the appetite for it right now, but I wish more people would do this.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/70129/1/building-a-cyberdeck-diy-tech-rebellious-billionaire-broligarchs-computers

Cal Newport’s anti-brain rot rules

Tags: tech, attention-economy, literacy, health

This is good and sane advice to survive the attention economy and take care of your mental health. It’s not too hard to put in place if you’re not already doing it.

https://thetangent.space/2026/brain-rot/

radio is cool, actually

Tags: tech, radio, music, culture

Yep, I like radio as well. Don’t judge me.

https://donthave2sting.bearblog.dev/radio-is-cool-actually/

Endgame for the Open Web

Tags: tech, web, foss, knowledge, enclosure, ai, machine-learning, gpt, business, politics

This piece is maybe a bit too much on the panic side… Which part of the Web are we talking about? The commercial stuff? Overall, the logic makes sense though. We see many examples of power plays in guise of “innovation” which lead to killing openly sharing (and so killing real innovation). It’s urgent to fight back and ensure things stay open.

https://www.anildash.com/2026/03/27/endgame-open-web/

Netizen

Tags: tech, internet, culture, history

The Internet culture definitely changed at the turn of the 21st century. Before this it was a more civilized and hopeful place. I’d like to see the netizen etiquette make a strong come back.

https://sive.rs/netizen

Using the internet like its 1999

Tags: tech, internet, web, social-media, messaging, culture

This could be a piece full of nostalgia. There is a bit of nostalgia of course, but it’s also a path to use what we got in a more valuable and humane way.

https://joshblais.com/blog/using-the-internet-like-its-1999/

The Boring Internet

Tags: tech, internet, web, culture, resilience, protocols, decentralized

This is a good point, unlike what some claims the Internet isn’t dying. The commercial land on top is thinning out and is getting filled with crap indeed. Still, what made the Internet and the Web are still here for people to use.

https://www.terrygodier.com/the-boring-internet

A .well-known Complaint

Tags: tech, web, standard

Indeed, there’s no reason to not use .well-known for newer standard files.

https://www.vzqk50.com/blog/scraps/a-well-known-complaint/

Palantir Workers Are Finally Noticing The Skulls On Their Caps

Tags: tech, surveillance, politics, surveillance, defense, palantir

Better late than never I guess? Let’s just hope this becomes very costly for that evil company.

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/30/palantir-workers-are-finally-noticing-the-skulls-on-their-caps/

The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It’s Affecting the Entire Economy)

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, business, economics, sustainability

This part of the industry is struggling more and more (or more likely silently taking more risks to hide the struggle). It has no path to sustainability and it starts to show.

https://www.404media.co/the-ai-compute-crunch-is-here-and-its-affecting-the-entire-economy/

The Zig project’s rationale for their firm anti-AI contribution policy

Tags: tech, foss, community, ai, machine-learning, copilot

It totally makes sense. If you’re a FOSS project you have to invest in getting more long term contributors, which requires mentoring. The contributions themselves are not something to maximise. I wish more communities would follow that path.

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/30/zig-anti-ai/

All my clients wanted a carousel, now it’s an AI chatbot!

Tags: tech, web, frontend, ai, hype, ux, simplicity

So many requests based on vanity and hype… I like the question “when you go to other websites do you use it?”, we should use it more. Maybe at some point we’ll realise that simplicity matters.

https://adele.pages.casa/md/blog/all-my-clients-wanted-a-carousel-now-it-s-an-ai-chatbot.md

NHS Goes To War Against Open Source

Tags: tech, foss, politics

Weird decisions, this is really backwards…

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

GitHub is sinking

Tags: tech, git, github, foss, self-hosting

This is indeed time to move away from GitHub if you’re still there. There are many viable alternatives.

https://dbushell.com/2026/04/29/github-is-sinking/

in which more paths are charted towards code independence

Tags: tech, git, github, tools, version-control, foss, self-hosting

Good first half of the post, there’s indeed more paths out of GitHub than jumping from a centralised system to another one (even though Codeberg and Forgejo are much saner from a governance standpoint). We’ll see what the future brings.

https://technomancy.us/204

Soft launch of open-source code platform for government

Tags: tech, git, github, foss, self-hosting, europe, politics

Looks like some governments noticed that they can move away from GitHub and are testing the waters. Good idea!

https://www.nldigitalgovernment.nl/news/soft-launch-for-government-open-source-code-platform/

Open Source Does Not Imply Open Community

Tags: tech, foss, community

Indeed, a reminder that the two concepts are not necessarily aligned. It kind of misses the point about corporate Open Source with no open contributions which can be easily captured as well. But indeed for the individual side project you might not need the whole burden of issues and contributions, you get to choose.

https://blog.feld.me/posts/2026/04/open-source-does-not-imply-open-community/

Email is crazy

Tags: tech, email, routing, security

Want a primer on email routing? This is pretty much it.

https://samkhawase.com/blog/email-is-crazy/

A text editor as a user interface

Tags: tech, text, config, editor, shell, scripting

It’s an interesting trick for personal tooling. Keeps things really simple to setup with limited code to maintain.

https://ratfactor.com/cards/text-editor-as-ui

Lua can be a really cool HTML templating engine

Tags: tech, lua, dsl

This is a good illustration of how flexible and expressive Lua can be. Gives ideas to make DSLs.

https://riki.house/lua-html

Podman rootless containers and the Copy Fail exploit

Tags: tech, podman, containers, security

Worthwhile exploration on the impact of CopyFail in the context of Podman. The baseline security posture seems better and you can even improve things using older techniques. Definitely worth switching.

https://garrido.io/notes/podman-rootless-containers-copy-fail/

Your Container Is Not a Sandbox: The State of MicroVM Isolation in 2026

Tags: tech, virtualization, infrastructure, containers

Don’t think this piece really needed to talk about AI but oh well… I guess it’s the obsession of the moment. That said, it’s interesting to see how far the microVM ecosystem matured so far. The pieces are falling in place and that opens the door to interesting architectures.

https://emirb.github.io/blog/microvm-2026/

A breakthrough in C/C++ dependency management

Tags: tech, c++, supply-chain, dependencies, security, satire

C++ too can have its own supply chain disasters with enough effort!

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-breakthrough-in-cc-dependency-management

Bugs Rust Won’t Catch

Tags: tech, rust, failure, security, system, filesystem, memory

Straight from the uutils rewrite. This is interesting both for the class of bugs which made it (very system integration oriented, unsurprisingly) and the ones which didn’t appear at all (anything to do with memory).

https://corrode.dev/blog/bugs-rust-wont-catch/

You can beat the binary search

Tags: tech, simd, performance

A good illustration that you can beat classical algorithms by taking into account how modern CPUs are designed.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/04/27/you-can-beat-the-binary-search/

Why Don’t Lowercase Letters Come Right After Uppercase Letters in ASCII?

Tags: tech, text, codec, memory

When you look at the binary representation of those characters, things become clear. This opens the door to interesting bitwise operations.

https://tylerhillery.com/blog/why-dont-lowercase-chars-come-after-upper/

How Many Frames Per Second Do You Need?

Tags: tech, game, graphics, performance

There is clearly a sweet spot around 60 fps. Beyond this… You quickly end up in cargo cult territory.

https://hooby.blog/posts/how-many-frames-per-second-do-you-need/

Forty Years in Tech

Tags: tech, history, career

It all changed so much! That’s quite a journey for our field. Of course it’s not over yet. At some point we’ll be real engineers I guess. 😉

https://forkingmad.blog/forty-years-in-tech/

Programming Still Sucks

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, team, organisation, engineering, learning, satire

This feels a bit too realistic for my taste… and yet… Well this piece of satire is well crafted I’d say.

https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp

Collective Speed Is Not the Summation of Individual Speed

Tags: tech, team, organisation, productivity

A bit of a stretched metaphor in here, but indeed being individually faster doesn’t automatically make the team faster. Sometimes quite the contrary in fact.

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/collective-speed-isnt-the-sum-of%20individual-speed/

How to See Your Leading, Lagging, and Reliable Estimation Metrics

Tags: tech, project-management, agile, metrics

Indeed I wish we’d see less fixation on burndown and velocity. There are superior alternatives and what matters if the full flow of work.

https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/2026/05/how-to-see-your-leading-lagging-and-reliable-estimation-metrics/

Hire based on the conversation about code, not the code itself

Tags: tech, hiring, interviews

Another post which shows that the right technical job interviews are the ones creating a real conversation. It’s the only way to have a chance to figure out what the candidate is made of.

https://dbarabashh.com/thoughts-and-experience/hire-for-the-conversation-not-the-code

Notes on influencing politics

Tags: politics, decision-making

Especially true for local politics indeed.

https://blog.mattglassman.net/notes-on-influencing-politics/

Bye for now!

Web Review, Week 2026-17

ervin@ipsquad.net (Kevin Ottens) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:16:29 +0000

I’ll be vacationing a bit, so there will be no web review next week. It means the next one might be a double issue though, we’ll see.

Anyway, let’s go for my web review for the week 2026-17.

Inside GitHub’s Fake Star Economy

Tags: tech, social-media, github, scam

People are manipulating vanity metrics to attract VC money? Who would have expected? This is so unsurprising, I don’t even understand why people look at those…

https://awesomeagents.ai/news/github-fake-stars-investigation/

Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Launch Is Built on Misinformation

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, security, hype

More in depth look at the launch white paper and the issues covered in the PR. Not much survives scrutiny… there’s nothing special with this model.

https://www.artificialintelligencemadesimple.com/p/anthropics-claude-mythos-launch-is

AI adoption will accelerate the e-waste crisis

Tags: tech, hardware, ai, machine-learning, gpt, ecology

One of the dark sides of our industry, and this is is accelerating at a worrying pace. Maybe it’s time to look at and fix the whole hardware life cycle?

https://restofworld.org/2026/global-ewaste-crisis/

LLM pricing has never made sense

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, business

Indeed, and it’s going to get even crazier at some point. I guess somewhat soon but who knows…

https://anderegg.ca/2026/04/22/llm-pricing-has-never-made-sense

Highlights from Git 2.54

Tags: tech, git, version-control, tools

Nice quality of life improvements for the history rewrites. That said, I’m particularly looking forward to the changes in hooks handling, it’s always been a pain to deal with in teams, moving them to config should help.

https://github.blog/open-source/git/highlights-from-git-2-54/

Forge

Tags: tech, git, version-control, command-line, tools

A single CLI tool for any Git forge? This sounds appealing.

https://nesbitt.io/2026/03/13/forge.html

How Hard Is It To Open a File?

Tags: tech, unix, posix, filesystem, security, flatpak

A reminder that path based APIs and security don’t go well together to manage files.

https://blog.sebastianwick.net/posts/how-hard-is-it-to-open-a-file/

Game Devs Explain The Tricks Involved With Letting You Pause

Tags: tech, game, time

Pausing a game is not as simple as it sounds. There are many approaches to it.

https://kotaku.com/video-game-devs-explain-how-pausing-works-and-sometimes-it-gets-weird-2000686339

What Async Promised and What it Delivered

Tags: tech, asynchronous, complexity

Interesting piece which gives some perspective on the path which led to async/await. It seems to omit some pieces of the history to me but that’s a minor issue. I like how it points that it indeed led to gradual improvements locally for developers writing their functions, but is overall leading to larger issues in the involved ecosystems.

https://causality.blog/essays/what-async-promised/

Box to save memory

Tags: tech, rust, memory

Indeed, the memory layout of your structs can matter. Be it Rust or not, but in the case of Rust the use of Option might give the wrong feel about the resulting layout.

https://dystroy.org/blog/box-to-save-memory/

Lenses in Rust and My Solution

Tags: tech, rust, memory, type-systems

Finer grained borrowing is still something people need in Rust. Here is a potential solution to get them today.

https://lambdalemon.gay/posts/grist-lens

A Field Guide to Bugs

Tags: tech, debugging, funny, satire

OK, I find it funny. That said, there’s a kernel of truth in this piece: there’s clearly a taxonomy of bugs and you better know on what you just stepped.

https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/field_guide_to_bugs/

“What’s In It For Me” Architecture

Tags: tech, architecture, organisation

Indeed, architecture work is not only technical (what is really?). You definitely need to account for the organisation and the process to actually put the architecture in place. It’s not just about having pretty pictures.

https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2026-04-04-whats-in-it-for-me-architecture/

Good architecture shouldn’t need a carrot or a stick

Tags: tech, architecture, organisation

Architecture work is not only technical, you need processes to put the architecture of a project in place. That said, you can make things easier with standards to smooth the path toward the preferred types of architectures in your organisation.

https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2026-04-17-good-architecture-shouldnt-need-a-carrot-or-a-stick/

In defence of bureaucracy

Tags: tech, engineering, organisation, management, bureaucracy

Clearly, any endeavour which has to scale will need some form of bureaucracy to stay afloat. The art is keeping it to a minimal before it starts to be an end in itself.

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2026/04/20/in-defence-of-bureaucracy/

How to Use One of the Most Valuable Management Tools: Active Listening

Tags: management, organisation, delegation, communication

Interesting insights, or how listening helps finding risk or making sure delegation will go well. It’s indeed also a good illustration that story telling works often betterthan explaining abstract concepts.

https://www.jrothman.com/newsletter/2026/04/how-to-use-one-of-the-most-valuable-management-tools-active-listening/

An asteroid extinguished all the dinosaurs except for birds. Here’s why

Tags: history, biology, science

And this is why… we now have chickens. More seriously it’s a true testament to genetic and behavioral diversity. This is clearly what allowed some species to escape the disaster.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-asteroid-extinguished-all-the-dinosaurs-except-for-birds-heres-why/

How do we deal with the catastrophe of uninsurability?

Tags: ecology, economics, politics

The insurances are starting to crumble under the risks. Looks like it’s time to do something about it.

https://aeon.co/essays/how-do-we-deal-with-the-catastrophe-of-uninsurability

The commodification of travel

Tags: travel, culture, social-media

Yes, I’m definitely bummed by this behavior as well. Best travel is when you take your time and enjoy the place, definitely not running around to take pictures for vanity reasons.

https://herman.bearblog.dev/the-commodification-of-travel/

re: The commodification of travel

Tags: travel, culture, social-media

Another one on the commodification of travel, it exemplifies what real travel is.

https://thatalexguy.dev/re-the-commodification-of-travel

Bye for now! See you in two weeks.

ervin

Web Review, Week 2026-27

What happened to the fight for the Internet?

Age verification is just a precursor to attribution of speech

my review of uruky

Zuckerberg’s increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers

Chatbots vs. Ozone

Claude Code Is Steganographically Marking Requests

Prompt Injection as Role Confusion

Text Editor: Data Structures

Engineering High-Performance Parsers with Data-Oriented Design

Data Access Patterns That Makes Your CPU Really Angry

The Physics of Memory

High-performance Rust: Understanding and eliminating memory fragmentation

Hobby’s algorithm for aesthetic Bézier splines

What To Learn To Be A Real Time Graphics Programmer

Announcing Box3D

The essence of architectural work

Every bottlenose dolphin invents a unique whistle that becomes its name

Notes from a burning Paris

Web Review, Week 2026-26

Look, just fucking use Mastodon already

W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data

Apertus LLM Family Expansion via Distillation and Quantization

Yale researchers propose ‘copyleft’ rules for generative AI

Anthropic accuses Chinese rival Alibaba of illicitly extracting AI capabilities

The Shared Feeling of Being Harvested by the Future

Echoes of the AI Winter

Show your hands honor for the strange power they bring you

It’s Only When You Look Back

Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I’m Already Daily Driving

RFC 10008: The HTTP QUERY Method

What can wonky APIs tell us about the web?

Configuration is a liability, just like code

Improvements to std::format in C++26

Rewriting the world in Rust

Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28

Stop Naming Your Variables “Flag”: The Art of Boolean Prefixes

How to Write an Effective Software Design Document

How to stand against high temperatures

Web Review, Week 2026-25

Open Source vs the Invisible Hand

Recommendations When Using LLM-backed Generative AI Systems for FOSS Contributions

Turn your site into a place people can bump into each other

The world’s first trillionaire is a killer

Extinction-level capitalism

Dangerous Technology For Americans Only

It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests

Report: How Developers React to AI-Scented Blog Posts

The Future of the Con Is Already Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed

xan: The CSV magician

.gitignore Isn’t the Only Way To Ignore Files in Git

Boot Naked Linux

Why stdx is not on crates.io

Async Task Locals From Scratch

Learn Rust Concurrency By Building a Thread Pool

Rust Prevents Data Races, Not Race Conditions

How memory safety CVEs differ between Rust and C/C++

Memory Management in C++ by Patrice Roy

Parsing JSON at compile time with C++26 static reflection

Every Frame Perfect

Getting Creative with Perlin Noise Fields

The case for real collaboration

Nine Questions I Now Ask in Interviews That I Wish I’d Asked Five Years Ago

When Overwhelmed, Slow Down

Web Review, Week 2026-24

Total Reciprocity Public License

Forms of Open Source Government

Retro-Tech Parenting

Pokémon Go Scans Quietly Trained The Navigation Tech Now Headed Into Military Drones

The Blight Reaches Microsoft: 73 Repos Disabled in 105 Seconds

our workplace LLM mass delusion

To my students

How LLMs Actually Work

Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale

Linux latency measurements and compositor tuning

Test-case Reducers Are Underappreciated Debugging Tools

Why Queues Don’t Fix Overload (And What To Do Instead)

The User Doesn’t Care - But you should

The un-hateable engineering managers

Avoid using `"<![CDATA[ ... ]]>"` in RSS