Gate is exploring transferring program state (like Smalltalk images), but leveraging wasm to execute untrusted code. An exciting model!
https://savo.la/introduction-to-gate.html
Execution of untrusted code still feels like a really underexplored space.
miniblog.
I'm impressed to see that GraalVM supports Smalltalk bytecode and therefore you can run Squeak and even interoperate with other supported languages! https://www.javaadvent.com/2019/12/smalltalk-with-the-graalvm.html
Cute article contrasting AI black boxes with human black boxes: https://behavioralscientist.org/principles-for-the-application-of-human-intelligence/
The challenge of exploring new syntax and language features whilst soliciting feedback from the community:
https://metaredux.com/posts/2019/12/06/ruby-where-do-we-go-now.html
Very readable discussion of different ways of expressing applicative and monads in ocaml. Discusses the necessary operators and new syntactic sugar: https://jobjo.github.io/2019/04/24/ocaml-has-some-new-shiny-syntax.html
I rather like that npm says "installed 123 packages from 45 authors". It gives you a sense of how big the team you're depending on is.
I'd love to see something similar for other parts of the stack: "43 kernel developers have worked on your wifi driver!"
Fun article on refactoring J to be point free, and drawing trees to model its computation: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/handwriting-j/
This is my favourite genre of web design: simultaneously advocating for a style and demonstrating why you should/shouldn't use it!
Smaller, cooler chargers using gallium nitride: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/30/18203879/gan-chargers-anker-powerport-atom-pd-1-ravpower-45w
Rust is doing constant propagation on its internal IR before monomorphisation. This can give faster compiles because LLVM is given less code!
https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2019/12/02/const-prop-on-by-default.html
Purgecss is a really cool tool for removing unused CSS based on an analysis of your HTML. For example, unused classes.
https://www.purgecss.com/
This gives CSS libraries much more scope to add features without hurting bundle size!
Air to ground and satellite connections for in-flight WiFi: https://onezero.medium.com/what-makes-it-possible-to-browse-the-internet-at-35-000-feet-1afaea83eb5
(It's expensive, affects the plane's shape and fuel efficiency, and the fastest is still only 100 Mbps!)
Saw a cute definition of open technology today: "it's well suited for unplanned purposes".
An unsoundness in Rust using only safe code!
Rust provides a bunch of guarantees so it's always interesting to see the rare ways it can be broken. I think this is the first unsoundness since the thread spawn issue after 1.0?
https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/unsoundness-in-pin/11311
FOSS businesses, cloud service models, and who is eating whom: https://www.platformonomics.com/2019/11/dining-preferences-of-the-cloud-and-open-source-who-eats-who/
Optical disks can suffer from a 'rot' where the material degrades over time, rendering the content unreadable: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9pdv/the-hidden-phenomenon-that-could-ruin-your-old-discs
Arbital is a really neat website design intended to help readers learn concepts.
Unlike e.g. Wikipedia, it can present the same content at different levels of complexity and dynamically show you the prerequisites for learning a given topic!
https://arbital.com/learn/Arbital_author_basics
I really like the gather macro, abstracting the idea of accumulating a list of results: https://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/05/fun-with-macros-gathering/
I often use `yield` for this in Python, but it gives both laziness and accumulation, so the reader has to work out which you wanted.
Huawei developing a FOSS operating system and trying to get it off the ground: https://commonsware.com/blog/2019/08/10/harmony-compatibility.html
Looking at performance of a new site I've written, and realised I'm slowly serving over 600 KiB of CSS!
I suppose the first set of profiling data is often surprising.
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