It's a shame that live kernel updates aren't more common on consumer devices.
Auto updates are such a different experience and forcing people to reboot devices (especially smartphones) must slow the adoption of security updates.
miniblog.
On Unix being the default system even today, the value of understanding the incumbent, and the amount of redundant work in a boot process: https://www.sicpers.info/2015/01/and-in-the-end-there-will-be-the-command-line/
Imagine we JIT compiled syscall handlers in the kernel, based on runtime facts about known constants: https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1676
An interesting idea that's little explored since Alexia Massalin's phD. Arguably unikernels have some similarities, but compiler tech is more mature now.
Programming language implementation work seems to be 10% interesting semantic work and 90% error checking against the possible malformed programs you might encounter.
Firefox 70 adds numeric separators to its JS implementation, so you can write 1_000_000. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Lexical_grammar#Numeric_separators
Not only is this feature becoming more common, it's interesting to see different programming language all settle on the _ as the separator.
Arbitrary code execution to convert Super Mario to Flappy Bird, done entirely by hand on a real device!
https://youtu.be/hB6eY73sLV0
The first exploit modifies the UI to show exact sprite co-ordinates (used for the payload), then the new game is 331 bytes written with spin jumps!
'As We May Think' is an article from 1945 that introduced the idea of a 'memex', a personal computer with hyperlinked documents.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/
It treats reading trails as a first class entity that can be commented and shared!
Darklang is exploring an IDE experience where you have values you can inspect as you write code. It does this by tracing recent requests and autorunning pure code.
It's neat! Seeing concrete values is a definite usability win.
https://medium.com/darklang/building-an-office-sign-in-in-dark-c2d980560695
Comparing roguelike game UIs to OO syntax and discoverability: https://simblob.blogspot.com/2019/10/verb-noun-vs-noun-verb.html
Neat Emacs package of the day: frames-only-mode! https://github.com/davidshepherd7/frames-only-mode
If you're using a tiling window manager, this lets you create new windows rather than Emacs splitting its own window: https://techtrickery.com/tearing-out-the-emacs-window-manager.html
Pure software companies remain successful, but companies with major asset requirements are struggling after IPO: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-dot-com-bubble/600232/
I've worked in a range of tech companies, and I think there are some valuable management techniques that people forget at companies of different sizes.
👇
A classic syntactic debate: do you prefer types before or after parameters? Why?
Watching https://youtu.be/15RTC22Z2xI has made me think about what applications blockchains are well suited for. What's the benchmark we should compare against?
The proper way to solve an X-Y problem is to provide a solution for both X and Y.
Y: because there might be a good reason for it and you risk being condescending otherwise.
X: to steer people towards best practices and because it's probably what they wanted.
New version of rustup out, dividing rust into profiles so e.g. CI doesn't need to download docs: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/10/15/Rustup-1.20.0.html
Google exploring multi device ambient computing, mission statements, and making the most of its strengths: https://stratechery.com/2019/google-and-ambient-computing/
Research on ransomware, its scale, who it affects, and how much money it makes: https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/10/16/ransomware/
Yahoo Groups is shutting down: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/SLN31010.html
I used to participate in a few niche Esperanto groups there, a shame to see it go.
I've worked at companies where buying more computers was more affordable than developers, and I've also been at places where it's the opposite.
It's really weird having the different mindsets. Sometimes it even varies between teams and I rarely predict it in advance.
Showing 121-140 of 736 posts