Labnotes - Weekend Reading — Sorry, nevermind

Two weeks ago, I tried to upgrade this blog to the latest version, and messed it up. Everything broke, and the only way out of that jam was to set up a new instance, and restore from backup. Unfortunately, backup didn't have the last post, or any of the images. These are all gone :(

But the spirit is still alive, the updated blog is nicer and faster, so let's enjoy that!

Tech Stuff

Reader Mode A Chrome reading extension and web app that removes clutter, ads and distractions, that also includes dyslexia support, read-it-later, highlighter, annotation, text-to-speech, citation generator and many other features.

Why I Won't Use Next.js and Why I'm Using Next.js.

In the bad old days we had Punchcards. How did people deal with that? ”In the fall of 1976 I started as a Freshman at SUNY Stony Brook intending to major in Math and Computer Science.  I took Honors Calculus I a…”

Top 100 Most Popular Programming Languages Python → TypeScript → JavaScript → everything else.

jbranchaud/til 📝 Today I Learned — A collection of concise write-ups on small things I learn day to day across a variety of languages and technologies.

2023: 0 of the Global Top 100 Websites Use Valid HTML The latest analysis of HTML and CSS conformance of the most popular websites. The situation is only going to get better once we set higher expectations for the code we ship.

Monaspace An innovative superfamily of fonts for code

10 hard-to-swallow truths they won't tell you about software engineer job

Last weekend I had a chance to talk with some students who just got their degree. They are pursuing their first software engineer job. In conversation with them, I learned that they have a pretty wrong perception of this job. This is because the reality for these new kids is so skewed.

cypnk This fun short video of “the future as envisioned in 1967”

Jason Lefkowitz

Don't let anyone tell you AWS is complicated. For instance, if you want to get a basic debug log of mail sent through your AWS Simple Email Service (SES) account, all you have to do is blindly run a CloudFormation script that will create half a dozen new resources attached to your account and then use those new resources to manually wire five different AWS services together

thebasicappleguy “The Humane Ai Pin got nothing on Apple's version.”

Eye for Design

Dieter Rams pointing at things he doesn't like Quite a short video, I think from the much longer retrospective movie.

NanoRaptor “I couldn't find this Syd Mead one elsewhere online with a quick look, so here - stitched back together and cleaned up a little.”

stux⚡ “I don’t.. uh.. ya.”

Peoples

vanessacopps me when i randomly start to disassociate in the middle of a conversation

Random Geek Use your own history as a cautionary tale:

Stray thought.

I'm starting to understand more clearly that part of a senior dev's moral and ethical obligation is to speak up about overcomplications, dangerous assumptions, narrow thinking, and overwork. Basically to use our own history as a cautionary tale.

Our role in this very excitable industry is encouraging our teammates to stop and breathe for a sec. Nothing to do with knowing the code. It's about knowing the pain points and the hazards.

Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better The discovery that the brain has different systems for representing small and large numbers provokes new questions about memory, attention, and mathematics.

ihidefrommykids

85% of adulting is trying to remember what you were about to do and the other 15% is

Jason Gorman

I'm experimenting with different ways of looking at developer "productivity". Here are some interesting stats relating financial performance to the number of developers working in some well-known tech companies. Worth bearing in mind when folks bang on about, e.g., "the Spotify modelI’

Business Side

Financial Times on LinkedIn: BlackRock study finds gender-balanced companies outperform peers

The higher return held true across countries and sectors, and was especially marked for companies where gender parity was greatest in revenue-producing and… | 26 comments on LinkedIn

4 misconceptions about VCs This mirrors my experience running a few VC-funded companies. There are rare exceptions to every rule, but VCs generally don’t come for your job, give you a loan that forces you to raise more money, etc.

Mike Sheward

“Do you expect me to talk?”

“No, Mr Bond. I expect you to set yourself four objectives and key results and send them to me by the end of the day.”

“Could I just talk?”

Assaf

Everything Else

Spain lives in flats Why we have built our cities vertically.

MonotoneofBill The most British thing ever:

In England, "booster shot" is spelled "borchestershire shot.”

johndpoconnell “So, this actually happened …”

davidgrosstv

“Cover one eye and read the smallest line of letters you can see, Megatron.”-- Optometrist Prime

Neighborle Fine little game: can you list the neighboring countries?

Social Media Broke Up With News. So Did Readers. Big Tech’s relationship with journalism is much more complicated than it appears.

After the 2016 election, news became a bug rather than a feature, a burdensome responsibility of truth arbitration that no executive particularly wanted to deal with.

ipedro “Forget everything you've seen in the movies. I've never been so invested in a real life police chase. 🤯”

Did the Carpal Tunnel Epidemic Ever Really End? A national plague of workplace injuries was once a media obsession. Now it’s all but forgotten.

Israel-Gaza war explainer: a visual analysis A visual guide to the Palestinian territory of Gaza and the war between Israel and Hamas, following the deadly October 7 attack.

rejectness “minecraft bedroom”