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Interrupt #5 - Instagram ban, Twitter's Tor service, DirectStorage, Go, Solito, Code Review Pyramid
Interrupt is a weekly newsletter compiled from the most interesting things I have come across this week. Sometimes along with my original writing.
Big News and Happenings
Russia moves to ban Instagram as it designates Meta an ‘extremist organisation’
Meta had recently changed its hate speech policy to allow for posts calling for violence again the Russian military. After repeatedly threatening to ban Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Russia has finally done it. WhatsApp is still working though. Well...how would the propaganda even work then?
Twitter launches Tor service allowing users in Russia to bypass internet blocks — techcrunch.com
Netflix tests charges for sharing passwords between households
Currently in trial phase in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, it's being seen as Netflix finally clamping down on people who share their account with friends and people outside their household.
Everything Apple released at the 'Peek Performance' event
M1 Pro Max Ultra Mega Supreme!
YouTube Vanced App That Offered Premium Features for Free Shuts Down
YouTube Vanced, which offered premium YouTube features like ad-free videos, background playback, and more has now shut down. And people are still not going to buy YT Premium. Google! Do better.
Microsoft releases DirectStorage
This new tech (already present in XSX) allows for fast load times by streaming game assets to the GPU rather than CPU for decompression. In summary, currently data travels from SSD → RAM → CPU decompression → back to RAM → GPU VRAM, while with DirectStorage: SSD → RAM → GPU decompression → GPU VRAM.
Google reportedly selling Stadia technology as “Google Stream” to Bungie, Peloton, and others
Stadia is becoming a white-label service. Google is reportedly shifting its attention away from Stadia as a game streaming service, and wants to repurpose it as a streaming backend to be used by game companies.
CSS-Tricks is joining DigitalOcean!
Whoa! DigitalOcean is on a buying spree. They are acquiring technical content sites left and right. Scotch.io, Alligator.io and now CSS-Tricks.
Clipchamp is Microsoft’s new video editing app for Windows 11
After Microsoft acquired the app last year, Clipchamp has been promoted to be the preinstalled video editor app on new systems. It took them a decade and an acquisition to replace the mighty Windows Movie Maker.
What I Found
Mealie is a self hosted recipe manager and meal planner with a RestAPI backend and a reactive frontend application built in Vue for a pleasant user experience.
Go 1.18 is released with Generics
Generics is the big headliner but this release also brings workspaces and fuzzing support.
A library dedicated to unifying React Native with Next.js, primarily focused on navigation.
Vim Reference Guide is intended as a concise learning resource for beginner to intermediate level Vim users.
Calculate viewshed and panorama for any point on Earth. Pretty interesting I would say.
What I read
The Code Review Pyramid - Gunnar Morling
When it comes to code reviews, it’s a common phenomenon that there is much focus around mundane aspects like code formatting and style, whereas important aspects (does the code change do what it is supposed to do, ... many others) tend to get less attention.
The Four Innovation Phases of Netflix’s Trillions Scale Real-time Data Infrastructure
The blog post will share the four phases of Real-time Data Infrastructure’s iterative journey in Netflix (2015-2021).
A non-standard book list for software developers
I view the field of software development as a big logical system with highly interconnected and complex parts. Understanding such a big system naturally requires having an excellent grasp on the tools used to build them. And the most fundamental one is logic itself.
Diary of a First-Time On-Call Engineer — thenewstack.io
Volunteering for on-call rotation can help the individual and the company. While taking on a new opportunity is exciting, it also comes with nerves.
More laptops and phones should aspire for better battery life, not thinness — www.theverge.com
Recent hardware launches like the Galaxy S22 or XPS 15 are the latest victims of the industry’s drive to make everything thinner and lighter. The time has come for bigger gadgets — again. And Apple is leading the way. Surprisingly.
Introduction to Apple Silicon · AsahiLinux/docs
It's a really interesting attempt to explain the Apple Silicon (i.e. M1 and later) Mac booting ecosystem and how it relates to boot alternative operating systems and have it interoperate with the hardware platform.
Google's survey reveals that employees want better pay
Worker satisfaction with compensation is down, but they remain happy with the company's mission and values.
HN: Is your company considering inflation in this year's comp review cycle?
What I watched
Venom: Let There Be Carnage: It's short. If I try to remember it now, it was like 5 scenes. Only saving grace was the banter and bromance between Eddie and Venom i.e. Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy.
The Adam Project: Fun solid movie to spend 2 hours. Reynolds is great in this. But Time Travel shenanigans? Oh boy! It's just better if you don't think about it.
Magpie Murders: I began this whodunnit on a random suggestion and I am so pleased I did it. It's a mystery story within a story and both never get boring. Really well-done.