Newsletter - January 26th 2025

My newsletters are a handful of articles I’ve read that I think are interesting enough to share. Enjoy!

Doctrine

Against the dark forest - Erin Kissane

https://www.wrecka.ge/against-the-dark-forest/

Erin Kissane looks at how the big social networks have become hostile to human interaction and what we can do going forward.

Interview with Marianne Bellotti - No Starch Press

https://nostarch.com/blog/womens-history-month-spotlight-deal-3

Marianne Bellotti, the author of Kill It With Fire, a book I recommend to anyone, talks about her career.

Data and Reality, 2nd Edition - Hillel Wayne

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/data-and-reality-2nd-edition/

A hard to find digital edition appears in the wild.

Code

Hacking yourself a satellite - recovering BEESAT-1 - PistonMiner

https://cfp.cccv.de/38c3/talk/DSQ9FN/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdTcd94pVlY

One of the coolest projects I’ve seen in a while. A great walkthrough from PistonMiner at 38C3.

JavaScript dos and donts - Mu-An Chiou

https://muan.co/posts/javascript

Lessons learned from building frontends at GitHub.

Open Source

Ghostty

https://ghostty.org/

Mitchell Hashimoto has launched Ghostty after years in beta. It’s the snappiest terminal I’ve used. You can really feel the difference. It’s also super easy to configure, to the point I have it exactly how I want it with three lines of config (theme, tmux init, and fullscreen).

bpytop

https://github.com/aristocratos/bpytop

A drop-in replacement for top/htop. I’ve been running this for a few weeks now and it’s a welcome upgrade to htop.

Fediverse

RIP botsin.space

https://muffinlabs.com/posts/2024/10/29/10-29-rip-botsin-space/

botsin.space has been shut down by it’s admin. It raises important questions about how the Fediverse needs to be financed if it’s to be sustainable and avoid the encroachment of buyouts and VC cash.

ActivityPub Academy

https://activitypub.academy/

A protocol playground for ActivityPub. Great for kicking the tyres.

Best Of The Web

European Night Train Map

https://back-on-track.eu/night-train-map/

I’m a sucker for a good visualisation and I’ve used this network a couple of times and it’s the best way to travel. You board at Paris at 9pm, hang out in the restaurant car for a couple of hours and then wake up in Barcelona ready to go.

LaTex Coffee Stains

https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/latex-coffee-stains/qsjjwwsrmwnc

For when you need that authentic academic look for your work.

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