Labnotes

Published

Weekend Reading – The Great American Bug

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

From BUG: Government occasionally shuts down


Design Objective

§ Hand-Sketching: Things You Didn’t Know Your Doodles Could Accomplish.

§ Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Give Real-time
Analytics
:

Real-time web analytics is a seductive concept. It appeals to our desire for instant gratification. But the truth is that there are very few product decisions that can be made in real time, if there are any at all. Analysis is difficult enough already, without attempting to do it at speed.


Lines of Code

§ Peter Binkley:

Be the pull request you want to see.

§ Defer loading of javascript: loading scripts after the onload event fires, so it doesn't count as part of the page load metric that Google uses to rank your site. No idea what affect it has on the user experience.

§ Origins of 10X – How Valid is the Underlying Research?

The fact that no studies have produced findings that contradict the 10x claim provides even more confidence in the 10x claim. When I consider the number of studies that have been done, in aggregate I find the research to be not only suggestive, but conclusive--which is rare in software engineering research.

§ node-toobusy: polls the Node.js event loop to determine when the server is too busy, so you can show a proper 503.

§ BackgroundCheck lets you switch between light and darker version of an element based on the brightness of the image behind it.

§ So NodeOS is basically Node.js runtime on top of a Linux kernel, "no bash here". Why? Lightweight deployments, like Docker and low-power devices.

§ Front-end Series: JavaScript debugging tips and tricks:

  1. Understand what is happening in your code
  2. Set and use Breakpoints
  3. Use the Console api
  4. De-minify
  5. Modify scripts locally
  6. Use a Unit-Testing framework

§ grunt-pagespeed: Grunt
plugin to run Google PageSpeed Insights as part of CI. I run this on every deploy.

§ UserApp: user management as a service. Handles authentication, permissions, payments, SSO, etc.


None Of The Above

§ Because it needs to be said. Brave post about tech and sexual assault.

§ Drive your friends crazy with this Infinite Text-in-Progress Prank for iOS 7.

§ So how secure is the password "neighbourofthebeast667"? Not as much as you'd hope: How the Bible and YouTube are fueling the next frontier of password cracking.

§ Avi Flombaum:

I like that programming reminds you that it doesn't matter how many times you fail as long as it's one less than the times you try.

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