Testing non deterministic systems : https://medium.com/@sermineldek/testing-non-deterministic-behaviors-in-ai-systems-challenges-and-innovations-6e1996025504
Emissions fell by 4% in Q1 and 2.6% in Q2, while GDP grew by 0.3% and 1%, respectively, compared to the same quarters in 2023, according to the latest statistics. This demonstrates that climate action and economic growth can go hand in hand : https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20241115-2
“While AI can suggest statistically optimal moves, it cannot explain its reasoning, leading to a form of rote learning that lacks the deep reflection on intention that characterized traditional Go. ” – How AI as changed the game of Go : https://medium.com/digital-architecture-lab/where-did-go-go-a-case-study-of-a-mechanized-mind-e609f3a1139e
Open Source Observatory (OSOR) Fab City OS Suite: Open Source for Circular Economy and Transparency.
Building Blocks for Renewable Energy Systems : https://libre.solar/
Alpine.js : Alpine is a rugged, minimal tool for composing behavior directly in your markup. Think of it like jQuery for the modern web. Plop in a script tag and get going.
Figures from the Global Carbon Budget 2024 : https://robbieandrew.github.io/GCB2024/
C Just In Time : cjit https://dyne.org/cjit/ : fast like hell
State of HTML (and related) https://2024.stateofhtml.com/en-US
Neural Networks : Zero to Hero https://karpathy.ai/zero-to-hero.html
state of swe jobs market https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-eng-market-2024
reinforcement learning explained : https://ai.gopubby.com/how-did-alphago-beat-lee-sedol-1a160d76612b
O(1) lfu : http://dhruvbird.com/lfu.pdf
C11 atomics (atomic_int for ex) are still not supported by C++ when including C code : https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2020/p0943r6.html and https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/p0063r0.html
Round Robin DNS : https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8305
Srinivasa Ramanujan : https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-genius-math-is-still-catching-up-20241021/
What is legacy code ? According to https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/key-points-of-working-effectively-with-legacy-code/ “Legacy Code is code without tests”
[thoughts] we are transitioning from swe tools to product design tools; llms are blending the boundaries between code, UI/UX, and product ideation.
Are LLMs reasoning ? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.05229
Open-Meteo is an open-source weather API https://open-meteo.com/en/docs
Remote work is young and we have not built up methodologies or just even habits or practices : https://intenseminimalism.com/2024/the-myth-of-the-missing-remote-work-culture/
A life spent watching the sky : https://www.majakmikkelsen.com/film
Hard life for rust and linux : a proposal for a rust interface to fs .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=67s
Segment anything : a new AI model from Meta AI that can “cut out” any object, in any image, with a single click https://segment-anything.com/
14 years since Go launched : the good and the bad by Rob Pike https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2024/01/what-we-got-right-what-we-got-wrong.html
Writebook : everything you need to edit and publish your online books
Merchants of complexity : https://world.hey.com/dhh/merchants-of-complexity-4851301b ( on the attraction for complexity read here )
Tired of slack and not owning the data ? https://once.com/campfire#requirements
Something in between a Product Manager and a Software Engineer : Product Engineer i.e. PMs are sometimes not enough technical and SWEs are sometimes not enough product oriented https://refactoring.fm/p/how-to-become-a-product-engineer
myspace reborn https://spacehey.com/
Stephen Wolfram on neural nets : https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/08/whats-really-going-on-in-machine-learning-some-minimal-models/
Some good recommendations https://levelup.gitconnected.com/follow-these-6-patterns-or-i-will-reject-your-pull-request-fc08f908e7fe :
3D Mesh generation with object imageshttps://omages.github.io/
Hetzner de servers auction https://www.hetzner.com/sb
Ransomware victims : https://www.ransomware.live/#/recent
Red and Blue teams in cybersecurity : https://anywhere.epam.com/en/blog/red-team-vs-blue-team
How google is using AI internally https://research.google/blog/ai-in-software-engineering-at-google-progress-and-the-path-ahead/
Protecting artists from gen ai : https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/what-is-glaze.html
configuring core dumps in linux/docker https://ddanilov.me/how-to-configure-core-dump-in-docker-container
dolt, a version controlled database mysql compatible https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
MS/DOS 4.01 is open source https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2024/04/25/open-sourcing-ms-dos-4-0/
Contents shortage for AI :
Meta, for instance, trained its new Llama 3 models with about 10 times more data and 100 times more compute than Llama 2. Amid a chip shortage, it used two 24,000 GPU clusters, with each chip running around the price of a luxury car. It employed so much data in its AI work, it considered buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to find more.
https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/are-llms-about-to-hit-a-wall
Stop doing cloud if not necessary (I’m saying this since years..) https://grski.pl/self-host
Redis forks (after the licence change) :
– redict : https://redict.io/ Drew DeVault + others?
– valkey : https://valkey.io/ backed by AWS, Google, Oracle, Ericsson, and Snap, with the Linux Foundation; more to come imo.
nginx new fork https://freenginx.org/ (others forks are openresty)
Too much hype about Devin : Debunking Devin: “First AI Software Engineer” Upwork lie exposed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmgmwEtoWE
Matt Mullenweg buys Beeper (already owns Texts.com and Element (New Vector)) consolidating his position in Matrix.org based messaging services : https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/09/wordpress-com-owner-automattic-acquires-multi-service-messaging-app-beeper-for-125m/
golang fasthttp (replacement for standard net/http if you need “to handle thousands of small to medium requests per second and needs a consistent low millisecond response time”. “Currently fasthttp is successfully used by VertaMedia in a production serving up to 200K rps from more than 1.5M concurrent keep-alive connections per physical server.” https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp
Back to basics 🙂 Bloom filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter
1 billion row challenge : https://github.com/gunnarmorling/1brc
golang : alternative to cgo ? https://github.com/ebitengine/purego
Command line benchmark tool : https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine
New jpegli, jpeg-xl derived : https://giannirosato.com/blog/post/jpegli/
Edge CDN techniques : Shielding from fastly i.e. use a designated edge cache instead of origin https://docs.fastly.com/en/guides/shielding on a edge cache miss.
Apple car not interesting anymore : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/apple-cancels-work-on-electric-car-shifts-team-to-generative-ai
golang error handling the Uber way : https://github.com/uber-go/guide/blob/master/style.md#errors
nginx forking : Maxim Dounin annouces https://freenginx.org/en/ on the nginx forum https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,299130
Quad 9 free dns 9.9.9.9 : https://www.quad9.net/
UI testing the netflix way : https://netflixtechblog.com/introducing-safetest-a-novel-approach-to-front-end-testing-37f9f88c152d
Check it out : the new super-ide https://zed.dev/
Lex/Yacc today : https://langium.org/
Inside Stripe Engineering Culture, a series a posts : https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/stripe
I find truly interesting the point around promoting a write culture (Execs/Directors in tech blog, SWEs on tech blogs/internal technical documents) : https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/i/140970283/writing-culture
I’m a long-time believer that writing clarifies thinking more than talking and writing persists information, makes it searchable, talking does not. “Verba volant, scripta manent” as the Latins use to say. But this idea shifted into “just enough” documentation (which means it is not necessary) in SW engineering latest methodologies so it is interesting that a multi billion company like stripe is going totally against the tide.
| Protocol | Decentralized | Encryption | Main Use Case | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XMPP | Yes | Optional | Federated messaging | ejabberd, Prosody |
| Matrix | Yes | Yes | Decentralized chat | Element, Synapse |
| Signal | No | Yes | Secure messaging | Signal, WhatsApp |
| SIP | No | Optional | Multimedia communication | Asterisk, Linphone |
| IRC | No | No | Community channels | Libera Chat, EFnet |
| ActivityPub | Yes | Optional | Social networking | Mastodon, Pleroma |
| WebRTC | Peer-to-peer | Optional | Real-time communication | Video calls, games |
| Tox | Yes | Yes | Peer-to-peer messaging | qTox, µTox |
| Slack RTM | No | No | Team collaboration | Slack |
| MTProto | No | Yes | Secure messaging | Telegram |
| Jingle | Yes | Optional | Real-time multimedia (via XMPP) | Conversations, Dino |
Comparison of ActivityPub, AT Protocol, and Matrix Protocol (mainly a reminder for myself) “
| Feature | ActivityPub | AT Protocol | Matrix Protocol |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Use Case | Social networking (microblogging, content sharing) | Social networking with algorithmic control | Real-time communication (chat, VoIP) |
| Commands/Verbs | Create, Update, Delete, Follow, Like, Announce (Repost) | Create, Update, Delete, Follow, Like, Repost, Algorithmic Choice | Send, Receive, Join Room, Invite, Leave |
| Data Model | Activity-Object Model in JSON-LD | JSON with user-defined schemas | JSON (events model for real-time updates) |
| Transport Protocol | HTTPS, with JSON-LD | HTTPS, with JSON | HTTP (REST) and WebSocket, with support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) |
| Identity Management | Tied to server domain (e.g., @user@domain.com), uses WebFinger for discovery | Portable DIDs for decentralized identity | Tied to server domain but portable; user ID format is @user:domain.com |
| Federation | Federated, allowing instances to share content and social connections across domains | Federated with content and algorithm control | Federated, with real-time, synchronized state across servers |
| Interoperability | Widely interoperable with other ActivityPub-compliant platforms in the Fediverse | Designed for custom app experiences, interoperability is in development | Supports interoperability with other Matrix clients; bridges to other protocols (e.g., Slack, IRC) |
| End-to-End Encryption | Not native to protocol but possible with extensions | Not natively specified | Built-in and widely supported, particularly in 1:1 and group chats |
| Moderation | Instance-based moderation policies, customizable filters and blocks | User-level and instance-level moderation, customizable algorithms | Room-level moderation, with granular permissions for room admins |
| Popular Platforms | Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, WriteFreely | Bluesky Social, upcoming decentralized apps | Element (main Matrix client), Synapse (server), bridges for Slack, Discord, Telegram, etc. |
Some people aren’t able to think/design a software algorithm without writing the code that implements it; some other can just think/rethink at an algorithm without even writing a single line of code until it is almost totally clear in their mind, and then they code it. These are two extremes of the different approaches to designing/implementing and algorithm. Of course mixed approaches are what happen normally but let’s try to identify the extreme sides in terms of how they work.
Code-First Approach (Bottom-up or Implementation-Driven Approach):
Design-First Approach (Top-down or Conceptual Approach):
Both approaches have their merits and can be effective depending on the situation, the complexity of the problem, and the individual developer’s style. Many experienced developers can switch between these approaches as needed.
It’s worth noting that in practice, many developers use a combination of both approaches, iterating between design and implementation as they work through a problem. This hybrid approach allows for both conceptual planning and practical experimentation.
Some related concepts and methodologies that incorporate aspects of these approaches include:
Understanding these different approaches can help developers recognize their own problem-solving styles and potentially expand their toolkit by practicing alternative methods when appropriate.