What I found interesting this time

by: Artur Dziedziczak

January 28, 2024

This week I got a huge cold so not much to share

“Ditching GitHub,” n.d. https://tomscii.sig7.se/2024/01/Ditching-GitHub

Another successful programmer is leaving github due to its greedy copilot policy.
I totally agree with his arguments.

“Inform Is a Programming Language for Creating Interactive Fiction, Using Natural Language Syntax.,” n.d. https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/index.html

Some time ago, I read a book that was like an RPG game. I was not aware that such books could be built with some metalanguages.  
I need to try this!

“Deep Time Photography,” n.d. https://tumamoc.arizona.edu/arts-and-science

Interesting idea of a camera with the time of ezposure set to 1000 years.
It will be set up as an art project in Tucson, Arizona.

“Faircamp,” n.d. https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/

Static Site generator for music producers.

“Smoother Sailing: Studying Audio Imperfections in Steamboat Willie,” n.d. https://www.windytan.com/2024/01/smoother-sailing-steamboat-willie-flutter.html?m=1

Someone Did analysis on sound distortion of Steamboat Willie soundtrack. Really interesting idea. You can learn a bit about smoothing signals and FFT. Really cool stuff!

“Lighting and Photographing a Maquette,” n.d. http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2024/01/lighting-and-photographing-maquette.html?m=1

The authors suggest that if you want to know how light reflects on an object that you paint, sometimes it’s good to make a maquette and put real light on it.  
I would say to model it in 3D and put light on it with Blender. This will save you a crazy amount of time, and you will be able to test the light with different colours.  
Still, if you don’t know Blender and can sculpt quickly, do your thing. I’m not your mother to tell you what to do. Just don’t forget to have fun with it!

“Making Rust Binaries Smaller by Default,” n.d. https://kobzol.github.io/rust/cargo/2024/01/23/making-rust-binaries-smaller-by-default.html

Apparently Rust packages had debugging symbols enabled by default while doing releases.  
This person decided to commit and remove them from Cargo.  
It’s a really interesting post on how sometimes OpenSource does not work properly, even when everyone agrees that something should be fixed. No one is taking responsibility to do it till this one person comes, and after 7 years, it finally merged with master.

“The Possibility of Making $138,000 from Shredded Banknote Pieces Using Computer Vision,” n.d. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2401/2401.06133.pdf

Interesting paper about reconstruction of shredded banknotes with machine learning. It’s actually quite simple to do.  
Sadly, China’s monetary authority breaks the law and puts stones inside cylinders with shredded money XDD  
No, but for real. It’s not possible due to a serial number mismatch. The probability of having one banknote with a valid serial number is probably extremely low. If not, people would just sit and connect shredded banknotes.

“Code Auditing and Profiling Tool Based on Gcc for C Programs,” n.d. https://github.com/ANG13T/astroguard

I have not tried it but it looksblike these C restrictions are used by NASA.

“How Platform Teams Get Stuff Done,” n.d. https://martinfowler.com/articles/platform-teams-stuff-done.html

Amazing blog posts about different phases of platform adoption. I really like how well-written this article is.
The first author defines the difference between Platform Delivery team and Product Delivery teams. The main one is that Product delivery team builds products for end users of a company, while the platform team builds products for other teams inside the company.  
Later, he explains the different phases of platorm engineering.  Migration, consumption, and evolution.   
What I got from this article the most is the OpenSource paradigm from inside the company. I think this makes huge sense if you want to not only build quality tools but also create an internal community of good developers.

“The Open Source Sustainability Crisis,” n.d.

Interesting post about various long-term issues facing open source developers. It touches on funding issues as well as burnout among developers. There is also a part of the unfair treatment of big companies that use libraries without paying a single dolar.
I think this is a very interesting problem that actually has a good solution.
Use licences proper to your expectations. If you don’t want companies to leech on you, Use licenses that restrict money gained by them or amount of people that use tools based on your libs.
If you are a hardcore GNU person, Use GNU licences and make use of "no warranty of work." If you feel like you are not paid, change some things in the code to add a huge banner: "PAY ME MONEY IF YOU USE IT COMMERCIALY."
There are many cases where developers did this and got backlashed by companies or single developers who do not understand that OpenSource maintainers have the right to do whatever they want. And I think this is actually the beauty of OpenSource.