The first month of 2023 is ending - but Weekly Digest is not! In the last issue in January, you can read, among others, about the two types of quality (important when you are creating something), how Google smart speakers could be changed into wiretaps, some bits of advice in regards to daily stand-ups and why almost 50 years old tool still makes sense today!
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1. You Want Modules, Not Microservices
http://blogs.newardassociates.com/blog/2023/you-want-modules-not-microservices.html
Microservices seem to be popular. And seems to be the mainstream way of doing projects - “because XYZ is doing it” (replace XYZ with any FAANG-like company). But it is the right way and the only way? This article tries to dig into what you really want when you say “I want microservices”.
2. Git Commands You Probably Do Not Need
https://myme.no/posts/2023-01/2023-01-22-git-commands-you-do-not-need.html
Git, probably the most popular version control system, has a lot of features. And even more commands. Did you know that you can make an empty commit (without any change but also without any file)? Now you know - and about more interesting commands you can read in the linked article!
3. Why Use Make
https://bost.ocks.org/mike/make/
Make and Makefiles - the first appearance of that software tool was in 1976 (46 years ago!). It is still a viable solution for any problem? Yes - especially when you want to automate some work that can be split into steps. In the article author is downloading a file, extracting it and converting it into JSON - and now he can do this by typing make counties.json!
4. Someone is pretending to be me.
https://connortumbleson.com/2022/09/19/someone-is-pretending-to-be-me/
Do you ever think that someone can be pretending to be you? That situation happen to some software engineer - someone was trying to get a job using the information found on the web. Creepy situation but a very interesting story!
5. The two types of quality
https://zenorocha.com/the-two-types-of-quality
Did you know that in Japanese there are two definitions of quality? The ‘functional’ (like a chair is perfect for you and your spine) and the ’non-functional’ (like a chair will look awesome in your house). Read this article to learn how to apply that knowledge while building products. And look at provided examples!
6. The Galaga no fire cheat mystery
https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/the-galaga-no-fire-cheat-mystery/
Ah, Good Old Times™ of arcade machines! Did you know that Galaga (Space Invaders type of game) has a… bug that makes enemies ‘dumb’? That opens the way to make a lot of points and be at top of the high-score table! But it was an accident or something intensionally added by a developer?
7. Why your daily stand-ups don’t work and how to fix them
https://lucasfcosta.com/2022/08/07/how-to-improve-daily-standups.html
Does your daily stand-ups takes more than 15 minutes? Or if the scrum master or some leader did not show up then stand-up doesn’t happen? Those are signs that your stand up is useless - but it can be fixed. Author proposes 6 actions that can be taken to make them useful again.
8. Turning Google smart speakers into wiretaps for $100k
https://downrightnifty.me/blog/2022/12/26/hacking-google-home.html
Time for a “hunt-for-bug” article - this time a long writeup on how somebody could take over the Google smart speakers while being in the wireless network proximity. A bit scary (if you have a such speaker), but it is fixed now! And the finder gets $100k as a bug bounty!
9. Forking Chrome to render in a terminal
There is a couple of terminal browser apps (links, w3m, lynx). But what about Chrome in the browser? Yep, seems crazy but it works. - check out how it was done! The results look very nice!