miniblog.

Fascinating article on Google's control on Android and how difficult it is to develop and manufacture a device using only the open source parts: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

Today I learnt about the redisplay function in Emacs lisp! This function allows Emacs to redraw the GUI. It's really useful when you're doing computation in a loop, and essential if you're using spinner.el.

Thoughtful article on the industries that Amazon hasn't gained a foothold in: https://www.wired.com/story/the-false-tale-of-amazons-industry-conquering-juggernaut/ (It misses AWS though, and the fact that some competitors run their services on Amazon hardware!)

There seems to be a trend towards value-oriented programming languages. Even established statement-oriented languages are moving: Hack added ==> for values with anonymous functions, JS has fat arrows and now do syntax too.

PhpStorm shows annotations on method calls so you can see argument names. https://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2017/03/new-in-phpstorm-2017-1-parameter-hints/ The heuristic is really interesting: it only shows hints for literals and null! Presumably other values are considered to be more obvious.

Interesting short article arguing that software cannot (or should not) iterate on features faster than users can adapt:

Cute example of configuring Emacs to avoid GC when the minibuffer is open (so completion is quick):

Applying evolutionary algorithms to antenna design!

seL4, the verified microkernel, jas been ported to RISC-V!

How much do users read on web pages, and how does it scale with word count? https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/ (It's only around 20%, and you're better off keeping your content short!)

Cute idea (in a rather dramatic blog post): randomly generate strings for PL keywords, and apply the same transformation to your source code. This prevents code injection: https://blog.polyverse.io/introducing-polyscripting-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-code-injection-fe0c99d6f199 (I suppose you could brute force, and they don't say if it breaks eval.)

Fun post on team structure, mental models, shared learning and the transformative impact of software tools: https://the-composition.com/the-origins-of-opera-and-the-future-of-programming-bcdaf8fbe960

"Over the years Alice and Bob have tried to defraud insurance companies, played poker for high stakes by mail, and exchanged secret messages over tapped telephones. ... This may be the first time a definitive biography of Alice and Bob has been given."

Shipping a generic NES emulator inside a GameCube game!

I've added a neat little feature to deadgrep: when you navigate to a line, the matched part of the line is highlighted! See the bottom half of my screenshot. This was inspired by the excellent roadmap in helm-rg!