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In 2024, a compilation of the top 100 most-watched Software Engineering talks from various global conferences was curated. Expect your watchlist to increase with these popular talks, including discussions on Large Language Models, OpenTelemetry, and Data Crunching. Controversial topics such as “Your website does not need JavaScript” by Amy Kapernick are featured, while surprising content […]
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Professor Donald Shoup was a quirky, bike-riding academic whose groundbreaking work on parking revolutionized the way we approach urban planning. His book, The High Cost of Free Parking, argued that parking is nearly always too cheap, leading to congestion and wasted time. Inspired by his ideas, cities like San Francisco and Hartford have adopted demand-based […]
The Hacker News comment by GuB-42 delves into encoding an unlimited amount of data in a single emoji using ZWJ sequences or other Unicode characters. The concept involves converting bytes into variation selectors and concatenating them to encode data. Surprisingly, the hidden data remains invisible once rendered but can be decoded back. This can potentially […]
PgAssistant is a PostgreSQL assistant that helps developers understand and optimize database performance. It offers insights into database behavior, schema optimization, query library management, SQL code linting, and more. Unique features include integration with OpenAI and local LLM engines, along with DDL retrieval and PGTune integration. The tool requires the pg_stat_statements PostgreSQL module to run, […]
The author discovered some concerning issues regarding YouTube’s handling of blocked users and Google Pixel Recorder’s leak of Gaia IDs. By blocking a user and examining the blocked list on Google’s website, the author found the obfuscated Gaia ID, which can lead to identifying the Google account. Additionally, the Pixel Recorder allowed leaking obfuscated Gaia […]
Noel Dempsey has been rescuing heavy-duty industrial equipment from the bones of old vocational education programs that have shut down across the nation for decades. The decline in vocational education since the 1980s has led to a lack of young people learning trades. Dempsey’s efforts highlight the importance of vocational education in maintaining industrial strength […]
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Katamari Damacy, the postmortem from the December 2004 issue of Game Developer has been shared in full for the first time in 2024. In this quirky game, players control a tiny Prince who must roll up objects to recreate the night sky after his father, the King of All […]
WebAssembly offers a write-once-run-anywhere experience, positioning it as a potential replacement for containers in the future. Despite the promising nature of WebAssembly, challenges like the lack of system interfaces hinder its wider adoption. The shift towards statically compiled binaries away from Java Virtual Machine (JVM) reflects a trend favoring WebAssembly. With the rise of microservices, […]
The author explored rethinking climate controls in cars by focusing on making passengers comfortable with minimal interactions. They created an automated system controlled by a temperature dial that adjusts fan speed and seat heating based on cabin temperature. Experimenting with haptic feedback led to the creation of guidelines for designing haptic interfaces with rotary inputs. […]
Clayton Ramsey recently switched his personal blog from hand-written HTML to Zola due to the tedious process of manually writing posts in HTML. He faced challenges with formatting math equations and code, leading him to create scripts and utilize tools to streamline the process. Despite the complexity of porting over his posts to Markdown using […]