Weeknotes 2024.02
This week focused again on the continued refactor of this website, adding new features along the way. Two experiments were attempted and abandoned. Niklaus Wirth has passed. Notable links from AI, business, crypto(-scams), programming, security and workplace culture.
Shortly after I published the last Weeknotes, I was made aware that Niklaus Wirth had only died a day before. If you don’t know him, Pascal is probably the thing he’s best known for, but he influenced software engineering in many more ways. The following obituaries will probably show you how:
- Niklaus Wirth 15.2.1934 - 1.1.2024, Oberon mailing list
- Niklaus Wirth: 1934-2024 by Kent Beck
- RIP: Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth, The Register
Changelog
- Website: finished the major left-overs of the big refactor
- Website: Generated social covers using Satori. I’m not happy with the outcome. Satori has some limitations that are blockers for me. So headless browser it is, I guess.
- Website: Fixed the missing
font-feature-settingsfor Inter.
I also switched from an automatic trigger that published the website whenever something made the main branch, to a much more convenient trigger from the command line. Sometimes less automation is more.
An attempt to create a PostCSS plugin with the help of CoPilot ended up in an endless prompt loop. It wanted me to change back and forth between solutions that resulted in an error. Not diving too deep into PostCSS plugin creation in the first place was the motivation for trying it, so I abandoned it.
Linklog
AI
- GPT in 500 lines of SQL (via Simon Willison). The savage opener is pure gold on so many levels 😂.
Business
- Here we go again. Apple rejects the HEY calendar submission to their App Store. At this point I believe that the review team simply isn’t trained well enough.
- InVision is shutting down this year. Apparently this is old news. Interesting that one Adobe challenger was taken out by another Adobe challenger, yet Adobe is going strong. There is so much to learn from this.
Crypto
- When crypto and AI collide, we enter the age of deepfake crypto scams. This is why we can’t have nice things, reason number 3.000.459 😞
- But old school forged identities is also what they are good at.
I don’t think that is the kind of zero trust the crypto community had in mind.
Programming
- Cosmopolitan is the libc and toolchain behind llamafile. It’s nothing short of utter brilliance. It emits a “fat” binary that runs on 7 systems on two architectures and still manages to stay rather compact and fast. 🤯
- Convert a container to WASM. Not sure this is a good idea, but it’s amazing that this is possible. Since I’m in the camp that thinks WASM is the logical next step in virtualisation this might open up a migration path.
- “Everything” package disrupts NPM. It was a prank, but apparently this wasn’t the first time such a package appeared on NPM. Supply chains are the attack vector du jour.
Security
- Ouch. Now you can’t even trust links to known domains anymore. This time due to a (since fixed) bug in SAP.
- 🤦 Orange Spain had a “ridiculous weak” password on a critical service. At least it wasn’t “12345”.
Workplace Culture
- Already posted the HBR article on psychological safety at the workplace. But it’s too important not to link again.
- Financial health of employees is important. Go figure. This is often overlooked by companies and probably causes more productivity losses than either work-from-home or return-to-office.
- So much for free speech from the self-proclaimed free speech advocate. Also another example how psychological safety gets weaponised to make leadership not accountable for their actions.