Table of Contents
Links
Friends
These are people I consider my friends who also happen to have personal sites with stuff on them. Consider checking them out:
General Life
How To Argue Effectively And Productively: 31 Rules of Argument - Solve yourself a lot of pain and headache by learning how to argue the right way.
A cheatsheet on Discourse - A nice cheatsheet on having good discourse.
Internet and Hacker Culture
Hacker Laws - “Laws, Theories, Principles and Patterns that developers will find useful.”
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way - A document by Eric S. Raymond about how to ask questions on the Internet. An essential read for everyone seeking help of strangers on the Internet.
How to ask good questions - An article by Julia Evans about asking good questions. This deals more with asking questions of people you know rather than of strangers on the Internet and it is also more friendly in its tone (although I do like and respect the “kick-in-the-pants” tone of Eric S. Raymond’s essay).
How to Become a Hacker - A valuable read for anyone wanting to become a programmer, wanting to contribute to free/open source projects, or anyone who is a self-proclaimed “hacker”.
Use plaintext email - A website detailing the reasons why you should use plaintext email instead of HTML email. Also talks about email etiquette which makes this a must-read if you are thinking of contributing to software projects which do most of their communication over email (e.g. Debian, the Linux kernel).
Email Etiquette - Bits of email etiquette which remain relevant to this day.
Thoughts on the subject of ethical licenses - An email Drew DeVault sent to license-discuss (an OSI mailing list) about his feelings on Ethical Software licenses. His words pretty closely echo my own feelings about Ethical Software licenses.
How I do my computing - An interesting article written by Richard Stallman on how he uses his computers.
Tech’s Masturbatory Historiography - A criticism of the way we look at the history of technology when, in reality, we are so far off the mark of what the creator’s originally envisioned.
unixgraybeard.com - What is a greybeard anyways?
The ASCII Ribbon Campaign - One of the first movements shunning HTML email.
Conduct unbecoming of a hacker - Stop bikeshedding and flaming, start solving problems with patches.
HTTP/2.0 — The IETF is Phoning It In - Why HTTP/2.0 is not a good successor to HTTP/1.1.
Permacomputing - “A collection of random thoughts regarding the application of permacultural ideas to the computer world.”
Writing
- George Orwell’s Essay: Politics and the English Language - A very compelling essay on how writers and speakers use the English language to say very little and what we should try to do in our writing to not succumb to these anti-patterns. Although this was written in 1946, it easily sounds like it could have been written in 2020.
The Workplace
- The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks - A valuable read for anyone managing a technical group of people.
Business
Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - More evidence of the unsustainable, ridiculous business models behind food delivery startups.
Killed by Google - A list of things (apps, services, etc.) created/owned then killed by Google.
Killed by Mozilla - A list of things (apps, services, etc.) created/owned then killed by Mozilla.
Videos and Lectures
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education - A great resource on the things that are really helpful as a programmer and computer scientist but which school glosses over and expects you to figure out on your own. Things like making effective use of the terminal, using tools like vim, and version control.
FOSDEM 2020 - The Selfish Contributor Explained - A talk about what motivates open source contributors and what can happen when people feel like they’re being taken advantage of.
“I accept scientific consensus — and you prob should too” - A short video on the value of trusting the scientific consensus despite the fact that we get things wrong sometimes. Read the top pinned comment for additional information.
What is Right to Repair? An introduction for curious people. - A simple, clear explanation of what Right to Repair is from respected repair technician and business owner Louis Rossmann.
Words and Buttons Online - A growing collection of interactive tutorials, guides and quizzes about things generally considered boring.
Free software, free society: Richard Stallman at TEDxGeneva 2014 - A talk by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement, on how free software leads to a free society.
Clean Coders Hate What Happens to Your Code When You Use These Enterprise Programming Tricks - Kevlin Henney talks about programming anti-patterns and cargo cult programming.
Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization - Discussing the very real risk of knowledge loss in the software industry with historical context and a look at the direction the industry is heading.
Programming
Bjarne Stroustrup: “I Did It For You All…” - A complete transcript of an interview with C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup from 1998. A very interesting look into the creation of C++.
systemd, 10 years later: a historical and technical retrospective - A retrospective and critique of systemd.
Don’t apologize, analyze - Reduce the blame-game for bugs and stop making people feel shameful for introducing them.
All software sucks - Several examples of how complexity in software is the ultimate bane of computing.
Software Disenchantment - A good read about the current state of software development.
Where Did Software Go Wrong? - What happened to take software from what it was intended to be to what it is now?
My favourite Git commit - A short story about a really good git commit.
General-purpose OS, special-purpose OS, and now: vendor-purpose OS - We used to have OSes that would allow users to solve problems. Now we’re seeing a rise in OSes designed around what vendors will allow users to do.
The code I’m still ashamed of - A good lesson on thinking about the consequences of the code you right and why ethics are so important in programming.
Built to Last - When overwhelmed unemployment insurance systems malfunctioned during the pandemic, governments blamed the sixty-year-old programming language COBOL. But what really failed?
Vim
Vim anti-patterns - A writeup of some of the traps people can fall into when using vim and how to get out of them (I know I’m guilty of a few).
vimways.org - A collection of some good tips and tricks for using vim more efficiently/effectively.
vimcasts.org - A collection of useful tutorials and webcasts on using vim.
Web Design
CO2 emissions on the web - A fantastic article about the hidden impact of our websites and Internet traffic. Every byte counts.
Website Carbon Calculator - See the estimated impact your website is having on the environment.
The Website Obestiy Crisis - A detailed overview of the current crisis regarding the size of modern websites and the issues arising from this “obesity crisis”.
How to fix the broken web as a site owner and web developer - Tips on how to make the experience of browsing your website more privacy and user friendly.
Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design - Describing the brutalist web design philosophy.
Page Weight Matters - The story of how a YouTube developer was able to make YouTube accessible to far more people by slimming down the codebase.
Obese websites and planet-sized metronomes - Building a web-based metronome in under 1KB of code to prove the point that websites need not be 8 times the size of Jupiter.
Blogroll
Below are a bunch of feeds (blogs/podcasts/YouTube channels) which I follow, listed in alphabetical order. The content of any site below does not necessarily represent my views or opinions.
Click here for an OPML file of all of the feeds I follow.
- BSD Now (feed)
- Christine Dodrill’s Blog (feed)
- Claws Mail new releases (feed)
- Craig Maloney (feed)
- Daemonic Dispatches (feed)
- Debian Security (feed)
- Derek Sivers (feed)
- DistroWatch.com: News (feed)
- Drew DeVault’s blog (feed)
- Dusty Phillips Codes (feed)
- FediBlock: All tags (feed)
- Freddy’s Ramblings (feed)
- In a stream of Random Thoughts .. (feed)
- Isi-fluff (feed)
- Kev Quirk (feed)
- Knights of the Lambda Calculus (feed)
- Mastering the Web - Roman Zolotarev (feed)
- OpenBSD Errata (feed)
- OpenBSD Journal (feed)
- Pierre Neidhardt’s homepage (feed)
- Pleroma News (feed)
- Posts on Secluded.Site (feed)
- Posts on fribbledom’s Journal (feed)
- Roundcube Webmail Project News (feed)
- Signs of Triviality (feed)
- Solene’s percent % (feed)
- Toast (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Back to Reality (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Ben Eater (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Gamer’s Nexus (feed)
- YOUTUBE: James Hoffmann (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Mark Furneaux (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Nile Red (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Sebastian Lague (feed)
- YOUTUBE: SmarterEveryDay (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Tech Tangents (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Technology Connections (feed)
- YOUTUBE: Tom Scott (feed)
- YOUTUBE: WriterlyWitterings (feed)
- captainepoch’s log (feed)
- flak (feed)
- icyphox’s blog (feed)
- paritybit.ca - What’s New (feed)
- tonsky.me (feed)