What I've been reading

Authors deserve a shoutout, so from now on I'll do my best to include the author's name alongside the link.

• Web Components Are Not the Future — They’re the Present, Cory LaViska
• On leaving my last job, Varun Gandhi
• We need more zero config tools, Arne Bahlo. I heartily agree with this. I am less interested in tinkering with some config than just getting on with stuff which is why I largely use things like bash, vim and tig.
• Age of Empires II at 25: the strategy game that inspired a generation of historians, Holly Nielsen
• Working in the open – digital government in the U.K. in 2024, Martha Lane Fox
• Post-Quantum Cryptography Basics, Matt Duggan
• Slow Deployment Causes Meetings, Kent Beck
• Week 21: Progressive enhancement, Frankie Roberto
• Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’, Emma Roth
• wrestling the web from corporate control requires making it boring again, washbear.neocities.org
• Barbara Kingsolver Guardian Interview, Rachel Cooke. Led me down a rabbit hole reading about the Arizona Copper Mine Strike. The wikipedia article felt quite anti-union which contrasts with On the Great Arizona Copper Strike, 1983-1986 and Miners stand up to Gov. “Scabbit.”
• Trusting clients is probably a security flaw, lauren n. liberda
• This Post Is Not About Python, Jeremy Bowers
• Why GOV.UK’s Exit this Page component doesn’t use the Escape key, beeps
• Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information, Chris Person
• Passion, power and never giving up: Nadal’s enduring qualities are a lesson for everyone, Tumaini Carayol
• How mayors can help improve public services, Sam Freedman
• Beware of the Team Doughnut, Steve Garrett
• The women who hate feminism, Sarah Manavis
• LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem, Gary Marcus
• How ‘shoe doping’ changed marathon times forever – in ways we still don’t fully understand, Liam Tharme (paywalled)
• Python 3.13's best new features, Trey Hunner
• Katie Archibald Guardian Interview, Donald McRae
• Cabel Sasser's talk from XOXO 2024. A delight of a talk.
• Two neat tutorials introducing HTML and basic web stuff (HTML For People, Interneting Is Hard). Embrace the homespun web!
• The Inevitability of Mixing Open Source and Money, Armin Ronacher
• Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr, Gordon Brander
• Should you use uv’s managed Python in production?, Itamar Turner-Trauring
• A blob-chart way of dissecting Britain’s prosperity failure, Giles Wilkes
• I’ve Been Doing Blockquotes Wrong, Michelle Barker
• Apple Passwords’ Generated Strong Password Format, Richy Mondello
• Assessing the Assessors, Lawrence Freedman
• What Is A Single-page Application?, Heydon Pickering
• I've been writing software for the last 25 years. Here some things I learned so far, Rodrigo Panachi
• You can use text-wrap: balance; on icons, Terence Eden
• What we mean when we say “Be Bold”, Tom Loosemore
• 28 takes later: the reaction to Thomas Tuchel’s England appointment, David Squires cartoon
• The LLM Reasoning Debate Heats Up, Melanie Mitchell. Slightly more detailed exploration of papers about LLM reasoning that follows on nicely from Gary Marcus's post above.
• Innovation, Competition, and Pitfalls of the Sector method, Giles Wilkes