The Daily Index — Tuesday, June 4, 2024

ARTICLES & TUTORIALS

TLDR Web Dev

THE ARCHITECTURE OF GRAB'S DATA LAKE

Grab manages its data using a data lake, using different storage formats for high and low throughput data. For high-throughput data, which is frequently updated, it uses Apache Avro with a Merge on Read (MOR) strategy, appending new data to log files for efficient writes and periodically compacting them for manageable reads. For low-throughput data with infrequent updates, it uses Parquet with Copy on Write (CoW), creating new file versions for each write.

blog.quastor.org · 6 min

TLDR Web Dev

PARSING JSON IS A MINEFIELD

Parsing JSON, despite its seemingly simple format, is actually quite challenging because there are so many specifications that can be interpreted in different ways. This has led to inconsistencies in how different JSON parsers handle edge cases, extreme values, and maliciously crafted payloads, resulting in potential bugs, crashes, and denial-of-service vulnerabilities. This article goes into detail about this issue with examples of different types of objects (arrays, objects, numbers, and strings) combined with different types of parsers (C Parsers, Regex, and more).

seriot.ch · 33 min

TLDR Web Dev

PLEASE SUPPORT “SKIP TO MAIN CONTENT” ON YOUR DOCS SITE

The "Skip to main content" link in website accessibility for keyboard-based navigation is really useful for a lot of users. Adding it to documentation sites should be standard.

technicalwriting.dev · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

SCIENTISTS SHOULD USE AI AS A TOOL, NOT AN ORACLE

Summary unavailable

aisnakeoil.com · 8 min

TLDR Web Dev

NEW TO THE WEB PLATFORM IN MAY

Several new features were added to web browsers in May 2024, including CSS anchor positioning and stepped value functions in Chrome 125, the Screen Wake Lock API in Firefox 126, and the Compute Pressure API in Chrome 125.

web.dev · 4 min

TLDR Web Dev

RADIAL MENUS IN VIDEO GAMES

Radial menus, also known as pie menus, are circular context menus used in video games to provide a smooth way for players to select options through directional input. They originated in console RPGs like "Secret of Mana" to streamline actions during battles, but have since evolved to be used in various ways, such as for quick actions in games or for selecting dialogue options in conversations.

champicky.com · 8 min

TLDR Web Dev

PYTHON'S MANY COMMAND-LINE UTILITIES

Python modules can be run as command-line tools using the "-m" argument, providing functionality like starting web servers, opening URLs, formatting JSON data, and managing Python environments. This article goes through a bunch of examples, such as using libraries to read email, unzip files, and more.

pythonmorsels.com · 15 min

TLDR Web Dev

WINDOWS AI FEATURE THAT SCREENSHOTS EVERYTHING LABELED A SECURITY ‘DISASTER'

Microsoft's new AI-powered Recall feature, which screenshots everything on a user's PC, has been criticized by cybersecurity experts due to potential security flaws in its data storage. It could potentially be exploited by malware or attackers.

theverge.com · 5 min

TLDR Web Dev

DO NEW DEVS RELY ON AI TOO MUCH? (REDDIT THREAD)

Developers have been copy-pasting code from various sources even before AI existed, so it's up to new developers who want to be good at their job to use AI productively while still understanding the code being produced.

links.tldrnewsletter.com

TLDR Web Dev

“JUST” ONE LINE

The phrase "it's just one line of code" is misleading because it often hides the actual cost of the code, which can be massive in terms of complexity and performance impact on the end user.

blog.jim-nielsen.com · 2 min

TLDR Web Dev

I'M FORKING LADYBIRD AND STEPPING DOWN AS SERENITYOS BDFL

Andreas Kling, creator of SerenityOS, is forking Ladybird (a web browser project) from SerenityOS and stepping back a bit from SerenityOS to allow both projects to focus on their main interests.

awesomekling.substack.com · 5 min

TLDR Web Dev

CROSS-BROWSER LOCAL LLM INFERENCE USING WEBASSEMBLY

This article covers a cross-browser local LLM inference engine that uses a new quantization technique and WebAssembly to deliver fast LLM inference.

picovoice.ai · 3 min