20 random bookmarks

2025-06-18

121.

You can use `fzf` to review git commits

jvns.ca/til/fzf-preview-git-commits

I just learned that
you can use it to review a git commit like this and I thought that was really
cool.

120.

zb beta released

www.zombiezen.com/blog/2025/06/zb-beta-release

zb is a tool for reproducibly building software, similar to Bazel.
(See the comparison page if you’re curious to know the differences.)
When a software build process is reproducible,
it will produce the exact same output
when given the same inputs.
Reproducibility is a desirable property for a software build process to have:
it simplifies debugging,
it enables build speed-ups,
and it is essential for digital supply chain security.
However, reproducibility is a difficult goal to achieve.

2025-06-12

116.

Always do Extra

www.bennorthrop.com/Essays/2021/always-do-extra.php

Extra is different than More. Extra is finishing those two screens, but then researching a new library for form validation that might reduce the boilerplate code. Or it's learning ways to protect against common security vulnerabilities from data entry. These little off-ramps from the main highway of Normal Work could be dead-ends and not have any practical value to the project. But they might also be important contributions. And that's the thing with Extra. While the tangible value to the project is uncertain (it could be nothing this time or it could be something), the value to you is real.

2025-05-30

115.

The PGP Problem

www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem

Why do people keep telling me to use PGP? The answer is that they shouldn’t be telling you that, because PGP is bad and needs to go away.

2024-12-17

92.

Building GBA Games in Rust

shanesnover.com/2024/02/07/intro-to-rust-on-gba.html
91.

Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

sailor.li/aocnds.html

Solving AoC on the DS with Rust.

90.

Using Nix to Try Tools

entropicthoughts.com/using-nix-to-try-tools

2024-11-04

86.

Writing secure Go code

jarosz.dev/article/writing-secure-go-code

Security testing starts with understanding vulnerabilities. The CVE website lists known software flaws. The OWASP Top Ten highlights common weaknesses. With this knowledge, we can improve our Go development. This article shows how to put in place robust practices. They are to: fuzz inputs, verify dependencies, and use static analysis tools (SAST).

2024-10-24

85.

Rust Prism

registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/rust-prism

2024-09-30

79.

On Leaving Apple

typesanitizer.com/blog/leaving-apple.html

2024-08-15

66.

Planning Weekly Workouts in 100 lines of Haskell

alt-romes.github.io/posts/2024-08-14-planning-a-workout-week-with-100-lines-of-haskell.html

A lightning post on logic programming in Haskell to construct a workout weekly schedule given the set of exercises, days and constraints.

2024-08-09

64.

Store Code Discussions in Git using Git Notes

wouterj.nl/2024/08/git-notes

Code discussions contain relevant information. Isn’t it a shame that we
keep these in the centralized GitHub/GitLab servers, far away from our
decentralized Git code? As soon as we move provider, we’ll lose all old
discussions! And how do you ever find the pull requests back from 5
years ago? Symfony has implemented a lightweight solution to this problem
years ago using a less-known feature of Git: Git Notes.

2024-07-03

59.

Announcing wcurl: a curl wrapper to download files

samueloph.dev/blog/announcing-wcurl-a-curl-wrapper-to-download-files

2024-06-24

52.

Counting Immutable Beans: Reference Counting Optimized for Purely Functional Programming

arxiv.org/abs/1908.05647

Most functional languages rely on some garbage collection for automatic memory management. They usually eschew reference counting in favor of a tracing garbage collector, which has less bookkeeping overhead at runtime. On the other hand, having an exact reference count of each value can enable optimizations, such as destructive updates. We explore these optimization opportunities in the context of an eager, purely functional programming language. We propose a new mechanism for efficiently reclaiming memory used by nonshared values, reducing stress on the global memory allocator. We describe an approach for minimizing the number of reference counts updates using borrowed references and a heuristic for automatically inferring borrow annotations. We implemented all these techniques in a new compiler for an eager and purely functional programming language with support for multi-threading. Our preliminary experimental results demonstrate our approach is competitive and often outperforms state-of-the-art compilers.

2024-06-13

24.

Category Theory in Context

math.jhu.edu/~eriehl/context.pdf
16.

Avoid Linux locking up in low memory situations using earlyoom

dataswamp.org/~solene/2022-09-28-earlyoom.html

This article presents the program earlyoom to prevent a Linux system to lock up in low memory situations.

2024-06-11

11.

Optimizing Font Files for the Modern Web

documentation.platformos.com/best-practices/performance/optimizing-font-files
10.

Self-serve dashboards

briefer.cloud/blog/posts/self-serve-bi-myth

Sales pitches are the only place where “self-serve dashboards" work. In the real world, it's a different story.

Why "business" people don't use metabase/power-bi.

2024-06-10

5.

Modern IRC Client Protocol

modern.ircdocs.horse

Living specification of the IRC protocol. Does not include brand new behavior, just existing behavior present in IRC software and/or networks (new extensions are IRCv3's area).

4.

soju IRC bouncer

soju.im

soju is a user-friendly IRC bouncer. soju connects to upstream IRC servers on behalf of the user to provide extra functionality. soju supports many features such as multiple users, numerous IRCv3 extensions, chat history playback and detached channels. It is well-suited for both small and large deployments.