miniblog.

Often the best FOSS projects to send patches to are tools that are crucial to the maintainers' workflow. They're highly motivated.

Lessons from the Use of Personal Knowledge Questions at Google https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/03/14/secrets-lies-and-account-recovery-lessons-from-the-use-of-personal-knowledge-questions-at-google/ (ineffective and surprisingly hard to remember)

Exciting to see Docker support multiple architectures! Particularly helpful for the many testing platforms that are Docker based. https://twitter.com/estesp/status/907857746900463616

Before C++, I never thought about the cost of values carrying their type. C++ gives you the choice with optional Run-Time Type Information.

Excellent article on the tradeoffs static typing https://blog.merovius.de/2017/09/12/diminishing-returns-of-static-typing.html (nuances that are sometimes lost in the blogosphere)

A nice example of the remarkable modularity in the npm ecosystem: Yarn just split out its lockfile parser https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/4114

This is nifty: yarn will resolve conflicts in lockfiles automatically! https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/3544 (novel? I haven't seen other tools do this)

Coverage is a useful tool, but total number of test cases is a better predictor of test effectiveness! https://blog.acolyer.org/2014/10/21/coverage-is-not-strongly-correlated-with-test-suite-effectiveness/

Coming from Twitter, a major difference with the Tooterati¹ is that your server matters. You're more easily discovered by users on the same instance. It's an interesting, different group dynamic. There's more scope for self-organisation and group identities. ¹ This should totally be a word. People use Twitterati with a straight face.

I've seen both #foo and !foo used on Mastodon. How do they differ?

@DenubisX @vascorsd That's not an Android app, correct? Just to clarify.

"So the #1 best rule [for going viral] is: Have overwhelmingly awesome content. So good that people intrinsically want to spread the word." https://blog.asmartbear.com/darwinian-explanation-and-advice-for-going-viral.html From: Darwinian explanation and advice for “Going Viral”

Mastodon is rapidly maturing as a microblog platform! "Mastodon and the W3C – Hacker Noon" https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-and-the-w3c-f75f376f422 Especially impressive because evolving distributed protocols is difficult!

Mastodon is rapidly maturing as a microblog platform! https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-and-the-w3c-f75f376f422 (impressive because evolving distributed systems​ is hard!)

Using chatbots against voicespam: analyzing Lenny’s effectiveness https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/08/28/using-chatbots-against-voicespam-analyzing-lennys-effectiveness/ (&what makes a convincing human from a recording!)