miniblog.

An update on the upcoming Linux Mint release, with candid discussion of team morale:

Jails using video call products! https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/more-jails-replace-in-person-visits-with-awful-video-chat-products/ An odd mix of a new technology trend and a new opportunity for revenue.

Today I learnt that Emacs keyboard macros can just be strings in a keymap! (global-set-key (kbd "C-c h") "hello") Types the keys h, e, l, l, o in the current buffer, which might insert or do something else depending on the mode.

5G is going to be pretty different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G#Overview It's using higher frequency radio waves, which are absorbed by the air. You'll need an antenna every block (not every few km). On the plus side, it has a really low latency so is more broadly useful.

Kill The Newsletter: https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ A cute project that gives you an email address to sign up to a newsletter, then converts any newsletters received into posts on an RSS feed.

93% of Paint Splatters are Valid Perl Programs: https://colinm.org/sigbovik/ Another entertaining paper from the SIGBOVIK conference!

If you have a Fire TV stick, there's an app that lets you control it from your phone! I suppose it's helpful if you lose the remote. Does this mean that remote controls will be another consumer electronic device that is supplanted by smartphones?

On assigning programming tasks perform in class, enabling students to ask fundamental questions that help them understand the abstractions:

Kernels, bootloaders, and a really impressive patch of ACPI boot with more RAM than the motherboard supports: https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2019/04/adventures-of-putting-16-gb-of-ram-in-a-motherboard-that-doesnt-support-it/

Superb post by @steveklabnik on open source projects, and how the openness of the project often matters more than how the license legally dictates distribution: https://words.steveklabnik.com/what-comes-after-open-source Perhaps we need a 'Joel Test' for FOSS management approaches?

Stack Overflow is looking for a new CEO: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/03/28/the-next-ceo-of-stack-overflow/ Includes a short but interesting discussion of what it was like in the beginning -- "does anyone use Stack Overflow?"

On adoption of blockchain technology and finding compelling use cases: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/blockchains-occam-problem

Many use cases for blockchains don't seem to require proof-of-work. For example, a land registry. If I could verify that a house purchase has been written to a replicated transaction log, then I'd be satisfied. I suppose this is giving up decentralisation, which seems OK here.

The challenges of being a FOSS maintainer: https://feaneron.com/2019/03/28/on-being-a-free-software-maintainer/ I can relate. Working on projects with a small userbase that target other devs definitely helps. I'd be reluctant to maintain a popular consumer app.

Metamorphic Testing, a neat technique for transforming test data to generate more inputs to test your software: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/metamorphic-testing/