Interesting Things #12 — YAGNI/PAGNI

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#tech

YAGNI exceptions — There are some things which really are easier to do earlier than later, and where YAGNI might neglect them.

PAGNIs: Probably Are Gonna Need Its — When you know from experience that an initial investment will pay off many times over.

Behind the scenes, AWS Lambda — What’s better than containerization, written in Rust, open source and the power behind AWS Lambda functions? (hn)

Sometimes we choose inefficiency — Sometimes the most technically efficient solution is not what is needed.

Explaining blockchains to developers — What is a blockchain? In simple words, it’s a slow, distributed database. (hn)

RISC-V Bytes: Passing on the Stack — What happens when we pass too much data than can be stored in our registers? (hn)

How We Made Our Maps 10x Faster — Defining and measuring technical metrics. Profiling before optimizing. Protecting against regressions.

Using CSS to Enforce Accessibility — ARIA brings a lot to the table that HTML does not, such as state information that HTML does not have natively. (hn)

De-Googling: Migrating from Google Photos to Nextcloud — Learn how I moved from Google Photos to open-source, self-hosted content platform Nextcloud.

Functools - The Power of Higher-Order Functions in Python — Let’s take a tour of it and see all the things it has to offer. (hn)

Why interruptions are frustrating to developers (May 2021) — Developers keep a lot of context in their heads and it starts to decay immediately when interrupted.

Tackling Technical Debt, big and small, in Wikidata and Wikibase — Anecdotes on how to track, tackle, and prioritize technical debt. (hn)

Don’t help others (immediately) — Rushing to help on every message is not good not only for you, but also for the devs you want to help.

The Right Way to Ship Software — A former Facebook and VMware engineering executive on how startups can best structure their release processes. (hn)

An Architect’s Guide to GPS and GPS Data Formats — A fundamental understanding of GPS is an important skill for today’s enterprise architects.

Your Database is Your Prison — Here’s How Expensify Broke Free — There are advantages in over-investing in early database design. (hn)

Transactional Outbox: What is it and why you need it? — Receiving a request, persisting it, and finally publishing a message can be trickier than expected.

How do Chrome extensions impact browser performance? — Popular extensions can have a significant negative impact. Ad blockers and privacy tools can greatly improve performance. (hn)

Getting To Know Logical Clocks By Implementing Them — Capture causality and achieve consensus on the ordering of events, and how to implement them.

Dynamic linking best practices — Hopefully set the record straight and help improve the quality of open source libraries.

We Increased our Lighthouse Score by 17 Points by Making Our Images Larger — Improving on a metric that has become a game. (hn)

Thousands Of Unauthenticated Databases Exposed On The Internet — The specifics and analysis of internet-wide research on the security posture of databases exposed on the internet.

Hardware Memory Models — Computers with more and more processors created significant problems for language designers, compiler writers and programmers.

#business

The Deep Tech Deficit: Why more people aren’t starting technically ambitious companies right now (Jan 2021) — A working hypothesis. (hn)

So You Want to Compete with Roblox — You shouldn’t try, but if you insist, here’s how to maybe not fail. (hn)

Leadership Stories from Slack by Michael Lopp — Stories about the darkest day of Slack, lessons about telling the truth and growing into an executive role. (hn)

Stripe Atlas: the first five years and 20,000 startups — We surveyed over 1,000 Atlas founders. Here’s what we found.

The ABCs of DAOs — How decentralized autonomous organizations are automating the corporation. (hn)

#science

Mind-controlling parasite makes hyena cubs more reckless around lions — This parasite doesn’t just affect domestic cats and their mouse prey. (hn)

Here be humans — We keep discovering how much less of humanity is… us.

What Made Early Humans Smart — Walking upright made our ancestors easy prey. It also made them get smart.

Scientists Discover ‘Time Cells’ In the Brain That Enable ‘Mental Time Travel’ — A new experiment probed how the human brain encodes and processes the flow of time.

SOCOM To Test Anti-Aging Pill Next Year — To improve performance characteristics that typically decline with age.

A Never-Before-Seen Type of Signal Has Been Detected in The Human Brain — Traditionally, the XOR operation has been thought to require a network solution.

Mixed up membrane desalinates water with 99.99 percent efficiency — After 30 days, the membrane still filtered out 99.99 percent of the salt.

‘Social’ Mitochondria, Whispering Between Cells, Influence Health — Mitochondria appear to communicate and cooperate with one another, both within and between cells. (hn)

UK pupils use orange juice to fake ‘positive’ Covid test results — Teacher claims students say ‘it’s a great way to get two weeks off’. (hn)

#life

The Problem With Rockstar Culture In Tech — Some of the common problems that I’ve observed, and heard from friends. (hn)

Our Brain Typically Overlooks This Brilliant Problem-Solving Strategy — People often limit their creativity by continually adding rather than removing.

Casualties of Perfection — Time spent wandering around a park or aimlessly lounging on a couch might be your most valuable hours. (hn)

Some gripes about groupthink (June 2021) — Disagreement is valuable but agreement feels so much more comfortable.

Smart technology is not making us dumber: study — There are plenty of negatives associated with smart technology but there is also a positive. (hn)

Why I left my tech job to build a meditation app while traveling the world — The joy of solving problems, without having to seek the permission of someone else, propelled me forward. (hn)

The Most Precious Resource is Agency — Gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you.

10 Time Management Tips That I Genuinely Use Everyday — Luckily over the years, I found a few techniques that help me organise my time. (hn)

Why Are Gamers So Much Better Than Scientists at Catching Fraud? — The scientific community has long looked the other way when fraud allegations fly.

The Endless Conundrum of creating a secure PinePhone — What started as a small threat modeling session to improve security a bit is now acting in extreme absolutes. (hn)

Your Pay Scale Has No Obligation to Grow With Your Skillset — Position yourself in roles that make an impact in the organization. (hn)

#random

The Bizarre Mysteries Of Gobekli Tepe, The Oldest Temple In The World — It predated writing, metal tools, and even pottery. (hn)

#end

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