Interrupt is a weekly newsletter compiled from the most interesting things I have read this week. Sometimes along with my original writing.

Big News and Happenings

With Android privacy sandbox, Google follows suit

After Apple announced tracker blocking in iOS 14.5 last year, Google has followed suit. It will start to phase out Android’s advertising ID tracking in favor of other privacy-protecting options. Expect an even bigger push for Metaverse.

Nvidia is now worth more than Meta

Meta is bleeding billions owing to privacy restrictions on mobile platforms. Meta's shares values has seen a 30% drop past week. That's not small since the company valuation has dropped by more than $250B which makes Nvidia a larger company than the social media giant Meta. Metamates won't be happy about it.

China to build a 5G satellite network to challenge Starlink

According to Chinese state media, they are planning to launch about 1000 satellites within the next three months. This is in their plans to take on Elon Musk's Satlink which China deems a threat to it's national security. Of course, they cannot allow average citizen to have access to open internet without their great firewall.

Uber now let's you peek into details of your average rating

Starting today, all Uber users can access a breakdown of their average rating in the Uber app’s new Privacy Center. Now you can see exactly how many 1-star or 5-stars have you received. Because come on! That's how ratings work.

Chrome OS Flex

Google has announced Chrome OS Flex to support old Windows and mac computers. It's still a Gentoo-based Linux distribution but now can be run on any x86 hardware. The software is designed to support hardware as old as 13 years. You can also install it on a EOL Chromebook but Google won't like it.

First major update and devbuild of Windows 11 is out

Rather sooner, Microsoft has released the first major update for Windows 11 to stable channel with Android app support using Amazon AppStore, some taskbar fixes, new Notepad and Media Player app. The company also pushed a new dev-build with many missing features we users were cribbing about.

What I Found

hue.tools by pabue.co - a toolbox for colors

An open-source color toolbox with an clean, colorful and user-friendly UI. It has a free color mixer, blender, converter info and modifier. Supports all common color formats. It was built by pabue.co with Svelte and Tailwind.

Photino - Build native, cross-platform desktop apps

Photino is a lightweight open-source framework for building native, cross-platform desktop applications with Web UI technology (so an Electron alternative). On Windows it uses the WebView2 control, on macOS it uses WKWebView and on Linux it uses WebKitGTK+ 2.

handwritten.js

handwritten.js helps you to convert typed text to realistic handwriting! You feed it text or a .txt file and you get a PDF with handwritten text. Very straightforward tool.

Worldle

Wordle clone. For geography enthusiasts.

What I read

Undervalued Software Engineering Skills: Writing Well — blog.pragmaticengineer.com

A very good piece on why software engineers should practice writing well. The guy is one of my inspirations why I started writing a blog. (Read...bought a domain for my blog)

How does UTF-8 turn “😂” into “F09F9882”?

Emojis appear like an image on the screen, but they aren't images like a PNG or JPEG. What do emojis look like to computers?

SSH into your private machines from anywhere, for free, using Cloudflare Tunnel | Ben Butterworth

Read exactly how Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal for Activision Blizzard came together - The Verge

Google Search Is Dying | DKB

What I watched

Attack on Titan - Final Season Part 2: A roller coaster ride so far. It's so great that I cannot binge-watch it.

The Unreserved: An hour-long documentary covering stories of Indian people travelling in the unreserved compartments of trains. It goes beyond the romanticism of train journeys to capture the struggles of a section of India which has been largely forgotten.

Space Force S2: After a mediocre first season, it's really found it's footing. The supporting cast are really fleshed out this time which is quintessential for a workplace comedy.

The Peacemaker: A breath of fresh air in the DCEU. They stuck the landing in the first season. I care more about Peacemaker than any other DC hero apart from Batman and his ilk. James Gunn is a master at paying off every set-up which makes it very satisfactory to watch the show.

Interrupt

Interrupt #2 - Nvidia, China's Satellite…