Build systems and bundlers (14 minute read)
This article explores the relationship between bundlers and build systems, arguing that bundlers can be viewed as build systems with additional task descriptions. It analyzes various build systems (Make, Excel, Bazel, and Shake) based on their schedulers (topological, restarting, and suspending) and rebuilders (dirty bit, verifying traces, and constructive traces). Bundlers are then examined through this lens, and the approaches in Webpack, Turbopack, Vite, and Rspack are compared. This comparison revealed that many lack features already present in established build systems. A path to having features like minimality, early cutoff, parallelism, and remote caching/execution is presented.
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I am (not) a Failure: Lessons Learned From Six (and a half) Failed Startup Attempts (23 minute read)
This author goes over lessons from his six-and-a-half failed startup attempts and a failed academic career. His initial foray into startups was after the Google IPO, where he was an early employee. These failures spanned various industries, from networking technology to private jet chartering and financial software, with challenges in execution, market dynamics, and securing funding. The author attributes their current happiness not to financial success, but to self-acceptance and the ability to persevere through repeated failures.
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I'll think twice before using GitHub Actions again (5 minute read)
GitHub Actions has limitations when used with a large monorepo and frequent deployments. A major issue is the difficulty of enforcing required checks across multiple independent modules within the monorepo, requiring cumbersome workarounds. This author criticizes the lack of reusability and maintainability in GitHub Actions workflows, leading to complex YAML files and potential errors.
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Will AI Eat The Browser? (8 minute read)
The browser, originally designed for document-centric navigation, is increasingly ill-suited for the emerging AI-driven, immersive web experience. Devices like Apple's Vision Pro show the limitations of traditional browsers, especially when integrated with AR, VR, and generative AI. The future of the browser will likely evolve into a more personalized, AI-centric system.
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Searchlight (GitHub Repo)
Searchlight is a new, open-source macOS PostgreSQL client. It provides a streamlined interface for database management and query execution, focusing on efficiency and quick access to PostgreSQL databases. The application has features such as connection management, database browsing, data manipulation tools, and a query editor with autocomplete and syntax highlighting.
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Repomix (GitHub Repo)
Repomix is a command-line tool and web app that packages entire code repositories into a single file. Optimized for use with LLMs, it supports various output formats (plain text, XML, and Markdown) and offers features like token counting, customizability, and security checks using Secretlint.
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ARIA DevTools (Chrome Extension)
A Chrome extension to easily spot missing ARIA labels, misused ARIA roles, and incomplete keyboard support in your web app. With ARIA DevTools, you see your website the way screen readers present it to the blind users.
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Reverse Engineering My #1 Hacker News Article (8 minute read)
This author's blog post unexpectedly went viral on Hacker News, receiving 100,000 reads and becoming a top-ranked article. The post's success was from several factors, including a genuinely curious and personally engaging topic (a "spot-the-difference" trick), a catchy and simple title ("I've acquired a new superpower"), and an engaging, personal writing style.
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Reverse Engineering Call Of Duty Anti-Cheat (39 minute read)
Someone reverse-engineered the user-mode anti-cheat (TAC) in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. TAC utilizes various protection methods, including Arxan obfuscation, runtime executable decryption, and pointer encryption, to hinder analysis and cheat attempts. This post describes TAC's detection mechanisms, such as API hook detection, debug register checks, and detection of external overlays and cheat logging techniques, along with its process termination methods.
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The success of Interop 2024! (4 minute read)
Interop 2024, an annual collaboration between browser engine teams to improve the interoperability of web technology, achieved a major milestone, with 95% of tests passing across Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. Some of these advancements included full URL interoperability, 99.7% accessibility test pass rates, and the successful implementation of the font-size-adjust property.
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Kronotop (GitHub Repo)
Kronotop is an early-stage, Redis-compatible, distributed, transactional document database built on FoundationDB that offers features like ACID transactions, an MQL-like query language, and horizontal scalability.
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