Interesting Things #52 — Long crisis
Hi,
This is Beng Tan and welcome to Interesting Things, a curation of interesting stories and links from tech, work, biz, science and society.
Happy reading!
#tech
Agile and the Long Crisis of Software — What is Agile? And where does it come from? (hn)
Spreadsheets Are Hot—and Cranking Out Complex Code — The venerable (and super dull) piece of officeware is getting reinvented as a tool for non-coders to automate and simplify their lives. (hn)
We’ve Upgraded Your Toilet to a Subscription-Based Model — Congratulations, we’ve successfully installed your new toilet. You need to activate your subscription. (hn)
Reversing Sound Blaster X7 Control for fun and Linux support — Controlled by either a mobile device over Bluetooth or from a Windows machine over USB, I reverse engineer it to work for linux too. (hn)
How to detect IMSI catchers — Defending against the most effective mobile attacks. (hn)
End-to-End Encryption and Messaging Interoperability — If connecting service A and service B requires some kind of bridge that decrypts and reencrypts messages, then this has a negative impact on security. (hn)
For Pete’s Sake, Don’t Touch HTML Inputs — Front-end frameworks try to make HTML inputs better by using boatloads of CSS and JavaScript. This practice is utter garbage in my opinion. (hn)
It’s 2022, so why is USB-C still so damn complicated? — While USB-C has made life easier by making one type of port available on devices, it’s hard to pick a right cable for it. (hn)
Stop Using JSON Web Tokens For Authentication (The wrong way). — Yup, you’re probably using them incorrectly. (hn)
Maybe Passwords are the Future — Would it not be better to stick with passwords but improve the underlying protocol to provide better security? (hn)
Someone managed to fit an entire Raspberry Pi computer inside the body of a cassette — Designed to show how far we’ve come in a span of 4 decades, this cassette has a Raspberry Pi computer running a ZX Spectrum emulator. (hn)
How to investigate memory usage of your rust program — Occasionally measuring your application is indispensable to get valuable insights. (hn)
#work
The Most Demanded Frontend Frameworks in 2022 — We analyze ~250k frontend job offers to discover which is the most demanded and highest paying frontend framework in 2022. (hn)
Working with Integrity (Jan 2022) — A person has got to have a code of behaviour. (hn)
#business
Becoming a Full-Time Creator as a Software Engineer: Controversial Advice — I’m a full-time creator. With remote work becoming more common in tech, I get more messages from people asking: how can they do what I do? (hn)
He reinvented himself in Silicon Valley. Ex-associates say he’s running from his past (Feb 2022) — The payments startup Fast has raised tens of millions of dollars, but critics of its CEO Domm Holland say his past is being overlooked. (hn)
#science
Science Confirms That Life Flashes Before the Eyes Upon Death — When an 87-year-old patient unexpectedly passed away, his brain seemed to replay memories in the 30 seconds before and after his death. (hn)
Rejuvenation of woman’s skin could tackle diseases of ageing — Researchers have rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman’s skin cells so they are the equivalent of a 23-year-old’s. (hn)
Your brain expands and shrinks over time — these charts show how — A neuroscientest has amassed more than 120,000 brain scans to create the first comprehensive growth charts for brain development. (hn)
Shock result in particle experiment could spark physics revolution — Scientists have found that the mass of a sub-atomic particle is not what it should be. (hn)
#society
Tenacity and life lessons through the 33% rule — For X number of people, 33% will support you, 33% don’t care, and 33% will dislike you. 1% of the opinions may change you. (hn)
Keep your waist to less than half your height, guidance says — People should measure their waist to check they don’t have too much dangerous fat around their middle, updated guidelines say. (hn)
The Future of Digital Cash Is Not on the Blockchain — If you want the privacy of paper money, you need something that leaves no paper trail. (hn)
Police Records Show Women Are Being Stalked With Apple AirTags Across the Country — As predicted when the product launched, this technology has been used as a tool to stalk and harass women. (hn)
It’s official! According to science, reading fiction makes you nicer. — Apparently fiction reveals truths about human interactions and interiority, which readers internalize and apply to their lives. (hn)
#end
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Enjoy your reading and have a good day, Beng
