Labnotes

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Weekend Reading — Fibocatti

Emergency Kittens "chubby but mathematically perfect"


Design Objective

Mastering the Power of Nothing How to use whitespace in user interface design.

How to Design a Form Wizard "Wizards are best employed for long and unfamiliar tasks that the user needs to complete once or rarely."

Design for iPhone X New screen size and notch, explained.

The Uncomfortable A collection of deliberately inconvenient everyday objects (thanks, drewish).

Dylan Beattie 🇪🇺 😂

"Yeah - there's already a user legend for that."
"A what?"
"A user legend. It's like a user story, but for stuff we know will never happen."


Tools of the Trade

Sublime Text 3.0 Hundreds of new improvements under the hood, including goto definition, new syntax highlighting engine, new UI, and expanded API.

Comlink Tiny RPC library that works on windows, iframes, WebWorkers and ServiceWorkers.

Understanding & Measuring HTTP Timings with Node.js TL;DR Node.js fires socket events for DNS lookup, TCP connection, and TLS handshake.

fastify A Node.js framework for building fast JSON APIs.

On React and WordPress WordPress is the latest to ditch React due to licensing issue.

iPhone X leaked benchmarks match MacBook speeds and destroy Android phones This pocket device will be faster than a MacBook Pro!

OSTIF Official Adding insult to injury:

Equifax uses open source software that it in no way contributes to, to protect $14B of data.

Equifax blames OSS for hack.

Don't be Equifax

The Coder's Coloring Book 🖍


Web-end

htmlreference.io HTML reference with code samples and live demos. Also check out cssreference.io.

The Ultimate Guide to CSS caniuse for HTML emails.

css-variables User Agent properties and variables #1693 Introduces safe-area-inset-top, safe-area-inset-right and friends, because we need new CSS properties to style around the iPhone X notch. Sigh.

Ben Schwarz 🇦🇺 The next big thing in server-side rendering:

A react plugin that pretenders your site to deliver a screenshot of the site with image map for links

SwiftOnSecurity Related:

When u realize it'd be faster for news websites to just send you a screenshot rather than download 8 megs of JavaScript and render the page


Lingua Scripta

Using ES modules natively in Node.js ES modules coming soon to a Node.js near you.

What's new in Node.js 8.5? ES modules, performance hooks, and file copy.

“Elements kinds” in V8 Avoid sparse arrays, reading beyond end of array, and polymorphism (= shape shifting is slow).


Architectural

Ruthless Prioritization This article is one gem after another. My favorite:

there is always a way to accomplish your goal faster than you currently plan to.

Akeem Adeniji Proud to be a member of this club:

first rule of software development club: don't promise shit. deliver, always deliver but don't promise anything!

Mikeal Rogers What happened to OpenStack also applies to Kubernetes:

Thread: Enterprise adoption w/o downmarket adoption signals a short lifecycle and quick death.

Yes, this is also true for kubernetes.

11 great quotes from The Tao of Programming Words to live by: "Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained."

Eustáquio Rangel Bespoke architectures:

Seems today instead of "make your blog in 15 minutes" the hype is "make your blog in 15 containers". What happened to the simple things?


Devoops

Sysadmin war story: “The network ate my font!” Caching meets "why is this setting not enabled by default?"


Peopleware

Russell Keith-Magee Phrasing:

OH: It's not "hard" skills vs "soft" skills - its "technical" vs "professional" skills.


Locked Doors

Face ID, Touch ID, No ID, PINs and Pragmatic Security Is the best writeup I've seen on Face ID and it's threat model:

Face ID: for 99.x% of people, their "threat actors" are people who steal their phone at a bar. For everyone else, don't use biometrics.

How a fish tank helped hack a casino What? "The hackers attempted to acquire data from a North American casino by using an Internet-connected fish tank."

Ayuda! (Help!) Equifax Has My Data! Remarkable attention to security:

The “list of users” page also featured a clickable button that anyone authenticated with the “admin/admin” username and password could use to add, modify or delete user accounts on the system.

Joseph Menn So true:

"You are already getting a free pen test, you just aren't getting the report," --@k8em0, #InternetSummit


Techtopia

facebook, you needy sonofabitch "They’ve gotten so brazen in their tactics to keep users engaged (ENGAGED!) I think it’s no longer possible to be a casual Facebook user."

Raj Sivaraman "DO NOT HELP GOOGLE FIND SARAH CONNER."


None of the Above

Kengarex "This Mural Was Painted Upside-Down To Reflect Off Of The Water"

Chimamanda Adichie 🙏

May Your CV reach the Right Hands.

That Delta Plane Flying Straight Through Hurricane Irma was NBD Amazing: "In fact, the real daredevil work happened before takeoff—and even before the plane landed in San Juan."

Ryan Teague Beckwith Government, 2017 edition:

Under the Constitution, the House tweets. If the Senate retweets, it goes to the President, who favs it into law.

Chris Chaten How the events of 9/11 led to the development of mobile check deposits.

Equifax’s Maddening Unaccountability This must change:

There are technical factors that explain why cybersecurity is so weak, but the underlying reason is political, and it’s pretty simple: Big corporations have poured large amounts of money into our political system, helping to create a regulatory environment in which consumers shoulder more and more of the risk, and companies less and less.

Channel 4 Confirmed:

BREAKING: The world's problems will not be solved by arguing with strangers on Twitter. We'll update you when we have more on this story.

Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’ It's a tiny category, but the fact that such categories even exist …

Autumn Williamson Always be creating:

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