6.1 KiB
+++ title = "Links for 2020-03-04" date = 2020-03-04
[taxonomies] tags = ["links"] +++
Interesting links for 2020-03-04.
Leaked Document Shows How Big Companies Buy Credit Card Data on Millions of Americans
Alright, this is stupid: "We removed the user information and put an unique ID in place" is completely bullshit. I know it, you know it, but it seems it is the general way of selling user information around.
Even if someone removes the unique ID but keep other information, things are still traceable: For example, how many people do you think are white, male, above 40, not married, living in a specific suburb (I won't even claim the street itself) that bought some product? I bet you could pretty much find me with just that, 'cause that description would fit 0.00001% of the city population, anyway.
Maybe we need to rethink this "sell information" thing, since privacy is long gone. We need laws that, if you want to sell collected information, you need to put one single vector per information. That means that, if you want to sell that information, you need to have one dataset for skin color, which says a white person bought some product; another dataset for sex, which says a male bought some product; and so on. No unique IDs.
It's not perfect, but I believe that would get more traction than simply say "don't capture any data", 'cause, seriously, it is not working.
Aerogel from fruit biowaste produces ultracapacitors with high energy density and stability
Hey, that's cool that we are finding ways to recycle stuff like biowaste for something like capacitors, but I have to wonder if that, in our current world, that means people will produce durian and jackfruit just to let it rot to create biowaste for the capacitors, instead of something simple, like feed people.
IBM To Transition Their z/OS, POWER + AIX Compilers To Being LLVM/Clang-Based
I have to wonder if the move is something like this: IBM bought RedHat; RedHat sells Linux solutions; IBM stronghold are the mainframes, which are dying; by changing the base system from their compiler to Clang, they are also saying "hey, people who build stuff for our platforms, you should use Clang now!", which would make transition those codebases to Linux a bit simpler.
But yeah, just wondering if that makes sense.
(Also, Clang Fortran?)
Microservices – Combinatorial Explosion of Versions
I have a strong problem with this post: Basically, the problem it points happens if you keep two different versions of the same microservice running.
That's not how you should build your fleet -- even if it is possible and not that hard.
One point of upgrading a microservice is keeping backwards compatibility with their inputs; if you deploy a new version what receives a complete different input, you can either add both input interfaces in the new service or just add a brand new microservice that just converts the old input to the new one -- which increases the fleet, but it's not that a big point.
One thing to keep in mind with this upgrade policy is that you need to monitor the inputs. Once the old input version is not being send anywhere else, you can remove the input/disable the microservice -- with the second option being less intrusive, as you won't need to redeploy the updated microservice with the old input support.
Stop using Material Design text fields!
Or you could, for instance, to drop Material Design completely.
Yes, I'm not a fan of Material Design. I'm not UX expert, but I feel that it fails in a lot of places -- not only text fields.
The Self-Attribution Fallacy
"Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality."
"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."
I keep saying this around, and one thing that resonates with what I say would be: It's not that the ultra-rich are brutal, brutality is what made them rich.
Void: terminal-based personal organizer
Not sure if it falls into any of my workflows, but HOLY COW, graphs in the console?
Building Rust for Multiple Platforms Using Github Actions
While focused on Rust, because the focus are the Github Actions, one could "easily" port for other languages (for different levels of "easy").
Web crawler in Rust
"How to Draw an Owl", but for Rust crawler. :)
I got most of the stuff, but I guess anyone learning Rust would suddenly see the later listing and think "This is nuts!"
The Cost of Indirection
"How a newbie, a seasoned and a veteran Rust coder solve this problem", but... for Rust.
I'm not that interested in the times, but in the different implementations of the same thing in the same language. May be interesting 'cause some implementations may make more sense than other to some people.
Toss a Coin to Your Bitcher
A disabled person commenting on the way "The Witcher" series deal with disabled people, in this case, Yennefer. Honestly, even when I watched, I couldn't see Yennefer as disabled, 'cause... well, one 'cause although I think about my own disability (glasses), I don't see that much different than any other "normal" person (although I still think Gordon Freeman is the only short-sighted "hero" I ever saw), and I know what happens with Yennefer in the future (thanks for the games).
Still, it's eye-opening to see this kind of post to get a view of how disabled people see disabled characters.