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SNOWFLAKEOS

SnowflakeOS is a NixOS-based Linux distribution focused on beginner friendliness and ease of use.

JUST DISCONNECT THE INTERNET

While it is appealing to disconnect computer systems from the internet for security or reliability, it is impractical for most systems and can lead to many technical difficulties due to the current software landscape being designed with internet connectivity in mind.

GOOGLE'S SECRET TO PAINLESS CODE REVIEWS

Google's internal code review tool Critique is highly rated among software engineers. This article looks at what makes Critique so good and explains how it pairs with Google's process of code review. It covers Google's guidelines for efficient code review, internal statistics on Google code reviews, and how Google uses AI effectively to speed up code reviews. Critique will never be open-sourced, but Google maintains a similar open-source code review tool called Gerrit.

DATA FETCHING IN USEEFFECT VS REMIX LOADER

While using useEffect for data fetching is common, it can lead to several issues, including race conditions, out-of-order responses, and inconsistent UI states. Remix's loader function, which provides built-in request cancellation, race condition prevention, and a smooth user experience, handles data fetching seamlessly. It also allows for custom loading states and provides flexibility and control over the user interface. Remix also has pre-rendering capabilities that deliver pre-rendered HTML with data included.

GARBAGE COLLECTION AND CLOSURES

JavaScript garbage collection doesn't always release memory when a function is no longer callable, especially if the function's scope contains references to global variables, leading to memory leaks.

SCOPE? HMM

In software development, "thoroughness" is a more accurate and productive concept than "scope" when discussing project timelines. Thoroughness encompasses the depth of problem exploration, experimentation, and the longevity of the solution. Rather than pressuring teams to "go faster" by sacrificing quality, it's more effective to have conversations about the desired level of thoroughness and its impact on delivery time.

FUNCTIONAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES SHOULD BE SO MUCH BETTER AT MUTATION THAN THEY ARE

Functional programming languages should embrace mutation more effectively, as current approaches have significant drawbacks. This author critiques existing options, including allowing unrestricted mutation, limiting mutation to specific regions, and using linearity. A fundamentally new approach that addresses the shortcomings of current methods and integrates well with existing state management solutions is needed.

ON QUICK AND DIRTY CACHES

Quick and dirty caches, while imperfect, can be valuable tools for quickly improving software performance, especially in constrained environments, as long as developers are aware of their limitations and trade-offs.

RENDLEY

Rendley is a video editing SDK that enables JavaScript video editing in the browser. All processing is done client-side.

MASKA

Maska is a lightweight, zero-dependency input mask library that supports multiple frameworks and offers features like custom masks, number formatting, and dynamic input handling.

SSOREADY

SSOReady can be used to add SAML support to your product for free.

CALCULATING THE COST OF A GOOGLE DEEPMIND PAPER

FROM META CTO TO CLIMATE TECH INVESTOR: MIKE SCHROEPFER ON HIS BIG PIVOT

Mike Schroepfer, former CTO of Meta, left his role in 2021 to focus on combating climate change through both philanthropic and for-profit initiatives, including founding Gigascale Capital and launching Carbon to Sea. He wants to use technology to provide scalable solutions, such as enhanced ocean alkalinity, solar geoengineering, and glacier stabilization. Schroepfer aims to build proof-of-concept models to demonstrate viable climate solutions.

WHY DOESN'T ADVICE WORK?

People often ignore good advice, even when it seems obvious and beneficial. This might be for a few reasons, for example, the advice might be incomplete without lived experience, people might not understand the advice, or they might not believe it will work. Additionally, people might only be seeking reassurance or a way to start a conversation, and may only consider advice to be a "guardrail" to prevent catastrophic choices.

OFFICIAL TYPE UNIONS PROPOSAL BY THE C# LANGUAGE DESIGN TEAM

The C# language design team has proposed official type unions in a document detailing how they will be implemented and used.

WHITE HOUSE SAYS NO NEED TO RESTRICT 'OPEN-SOURCE' ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE — AT LEAST FOR NOW

The White House has determined that there is no need to restrict open-source artificial intelligence at this time, citing the potential benefits of open models while acknowledging ongoing concerns about AI safety.

ORCA

A WebAssembly-based stack for cross-platform apps.

PORFFOR

A from-scratch experimental ahead-of-time JS engine.

CROWDSTRIKE'S IMPACT ON AVIATION

CrowdStrike's software update on July 19th caused a massive IT outage that impacted air traffic, particularly for major airlines like Delta, United, and American, which experienced widespread cancellations. While Southwest remained largely unaffected, Delta faced the most severe consequences due to its reliance on Windows systems and a lack of effective disaster recovery plans. Despite widespread disruptions, the impact of the outage was systematically analyzed using ADS-B Exchange data to compare takeoff rates before, during, and after the update, providing insights into the scale and duration of the disruption.

THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF DNS LOC RECORDS

A rarely used DNS record type called LOC specifies a physical location. While most DNS records handle basic website information, LOC records are used to store geographical coordinates. A bug in Cloudflare's DNS server (RRDNS) prevented it from serving LOC records correctly. This post goes through it can be fixed.

HOW TO BUILD HIGHLY-DEBUGGABLE C++ BINARIES

This article is a comprehensive guide on making C++ binaries highly debuggable, particularly for interactive debugging using tools like gdb. It focuses on configuring the C++ toolchain to produce binaries that are both efficient and easy to understand in the debugger. C++'s ahead-of-time compilation model requires a deliberate choice between debuggability and speed. The article presents various techniques, including enabling sanitizers, debug modes, and frame pointers to enhance the debugging experience.

HOW TO REVIEW CODE EFFECTIVELY: A GITHUB STAFF ENGINEER'S PHILOSOPHY

Effective code review comes from clear communication, specific feedback, and thoughtful questioning during reviews. Comments should not be vague. People should also do a self-review before sending in pull requests.

WHY UNKNOWN TYPES ARE USEFUL

When data originates from outside your program, its type cannot be guaranteed, so assuming its type can lead to runtime errors. By assigning "unknown" to unverified data, you force yourself to explicitly validate its characteristics before using it, preventing potential errors and improving code safety. While "any" can be tempting to use, it disables type checking, which defeats the purpose of using a type system.

FASTHTML

Build HTML web applications with Python.

TEA-TASTING

Tea-tasting is a Python package for A/B testing analysis with a suite of statistical methods like t-tests, bootstrapping, and CUPED for variance reduction. It supports data backends including BigQuery, ClickHouse, and Pandas.

BURROW

Burrow is a serverless and globally-distributed HTTP proxy for Go built on AWS Lambda. It is designed to be completely compatible with the standard Go *http.Client, which means it can be added to many existing applications.

RUNNING ONE-MAN SAAS, 9 YEARS IN

Healthchecks.io is a one-man SaaS business founded in 2015. Despite a steady increase in monthly recurring revenue, the owner prioritizes enjoyment and work-life balance over maximizing profit. The service remains free and open-source, and there are no plans to expand its feature set or target enterprise customers.

HOW TO SAVE $13.27 ON YOUR SAAS BILL

This author was frustrated by Vercel's analytics pricing and decided to build their own analytics solution using SQLite, Bun, and Hono. They found that SQLite could handle a significant amount of data with reasonable performance, even under load testing. The author built a basic analytics dashboard using HTML tables and a custom chart component.

SIMULATING WORLDS ON THE GPU

This article describes a procedural earth simulation implemented entirely in GLSL fragment shaders that visualizes the complete history of an earth-like planet in just four minutes. Starting from a protoplanet, the simulation models the formation of craters, tectonic plates, and mountains, as well as hydraulic erosion and river basins. It also includes a simplified climate model, generating realistic wind circulation patterns and precipitation, and finally simulates the evolution of life on the planet.

9 SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE PATTERNS FOR DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

A list of common architectural patterns, like Peer-to-Peer, API Gateway, Pub-Sub, Request-Response, Event Sourcing, ETL, Batching, Streaming Processing, and Orchestration.

GG

gg is a light software architecture simulator for documentation and presentation purposes.

LESSONS FROM ANCIENT FILE SYSTEMS

This blog post examines the design choices and limitations of various Atari 8-bit file systems.

ARTIFACTS MMO

Artifacts is a Sandbox MMORPG where you can use any programming language to control your characters.

WINDOWS SECURITY BEST PRACTICES FOR INTEGRATING AND MANAGING SECURITY TOOLS

This blog post discusses the recent CrowdStrike outage, which was caused by a memory safety error in the CSagent driver, and provides technical insights into the root cause. Windows usually has safeguards for the quality of third-party security products. Microsoft discourages the use of kernel drivers by security solutions, but it is forced to allow them due to regulation, which is one of the reasons why the CrowdStrike outage happened.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST RENDERING STRATEGY FOR YOUR APP

This article offers a detailed explanation of various rendering strategies. It explores the ideal use cases, advantages, and considerations for each strategy - Static Site Generation (SSG), Server-Side Rendering (SSR), Client-Side Rendering (CSR), and Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR). SSG is good for static content, ISR is great for periodically changing content, and SSR and CSR are the best for real-time data.

A GENTLE INTRODUCTION TO SAML

SAML is a standard for exchanging security-related messages between different entities, most commonly used for single sign-on (SSO). In SSO, users authenticate with a centralized identity provider (IDP) and then access multiple applications without having to log in to each one individually. The service provider (SP) and IDP communicate via the user's browser, exchanging SAML requests and responses. SAML responses contain assertions about the user's identity, which are digitally signed by the IDP to ensure authenticity and integrity.

JUNIOR (IC3) TO STAFF (IC6) VIA JOB HOPPING

Zach Wilson rapidly climbed the engineering ladder from Junior to Staff in five years through strategic job hopping from Meta to Netflix to Airbnb. He would build a strong internal brand by building trust and would communicate his impact well to get promoted quickly.

PERFECTIONISM - ONE OF THE BIGGEST PRODUCTIVITY KILLERS IN THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY

Perfectionism leads to wasted time, unnecessary stress, and ultimately, hindered progress. Developers should shift their mindset towards "good enough" and making progress. This post highlights the importance of getting feedback early and shipping the smallest unit of value.

DON'T BLINDLY PREFER `EMPLACE_BACK` TO `PUSH_BACK`

It is a common misconception that `emplace_back` in C++ automatically enables move semantics. `emplace_back` is not magic and does not implicitly move objects. Using `std::move` is necessary to explicitly request a move operation. While both `push_back` and `emplace_back` can achieve the same result with `std::move`, `push_back` should be used by default for better compile-time performance, as `emplace_back` involves more complex template instantiation.

KY

Ky is a lightweight HTTP client built on the Fetch API. It offers simplified requests, automatic error handling, and JSON support. Ky provides features like timeouts, retries, URL prefixes, and hooks for advanced customization. It is compatible with modern browsers and Node.js.

REACT-NATIVE-FILAMENT

react-native-filament is a 3D rendering library for React Native apps. It utilizes Filament for high-quality graphics and Bullet3 for physics simulation. react-native-filament offers a declarative API, GPU acceleration, and multithreading for efficient rendering.

OPSLANE

Opslane is a tool that helps make the on-call experience less stressful. It reduces alert fatigue by classifying alerts as actionable or noisy and providing contextual information for handling alerts.

TWO THREADS, ONE CORE: HOW SIMULTANEOUS MULTITHREADING WORKS UNDER THE HOOD

This article explains how Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) works in modern CPUs. SMT enables a processor to handle instructions from two different threads simultaneously by duplicating certain resources and sharing others. This can improve resource utilization and system throughput, but also introduces potential performance issues due to resource competition and security vulnerabilities.

HOW DID FACEBOOK INTERCEPT ITS COMPETITOR'S ENCRYPTED MOBILE APP TRAFFIC?

A technical investigation revealed that a decade ago, Facebook, through its Onavo Protect app, intercepted encrypted mobile traffic from users' devices. This was achieved by exploiting a vulnerability in Android's security controls, which allowed Facebook to install a custom certificate authority (CA) certificate on users' devices, enabling it to decrypt HTTPS traffic. This practice, dubbed "SSL bump," was used to target competitor analytics domains like Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon, granting Facebook insights into their in-app actions.

MY FAVORITE TOOLS + TECHNIQUES FOR PROCEDURAL GAMEDEV

This author goes over their procedural game development tools and techniques, such as triplanar mapping, hex tiling, depth pre-passes, and AI-powered texture synthesis. Each offers unique benefits for enhancing visual quality and performance in 3D scenes. The author also discusses his work on procedural mesh processing and manipulation, a pipeline for creating realistic deformations, and modifications to game assets in real-time. Looking ahead, the author intends to explore constructive solid geometry, a method for applying Boolean operations to 3D space.

LANGUAGE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS

Python consumes 76 times more energy and is 72 times slower than C.

SVG TRIANGLE OF COMPROMISE

There are trade-offs between different methods for displaying SVGs on the web - this post goes through the advantages and disadvantages of using img, svg, iframe, and other techniques.

PROVIDING TYPE DEFINITIONS FOR CSS WITH @PROPERTY

The @property at-rule in CSS allows defining custom properties with specific types, inheritance, and initial values, improving custom property reliability by preventing unexpected behavior caused by invalid values.