I recently upgrade to Debian 12 (bookworm), which was a really smooth upgrade overall. But when I tried to use my OpenVPN client I couldn’t connect to the server, which uses a fairly outdated version.
(more…)Notes
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Using OpenVPN with deprecated CF-CBC ciphers on Debian 12
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No hay antes, no hay creador
No se puede llegar a un tiempo anterior al Big Bang porque antes del Big Bang el tiempo no existía. Finalmente hemos encontrado algo que no tiene una causa, porque no existía tiempo alguno en que pudiera haber una causa. Para mí eso significa que no hay posibilidad de un creador, porque no existía un tiempo en el que pudiera existir un creador.
Stephen Hawking – Breves respuestas a las grandes preguntas -
MySQL for developers (video tutorial)
Aaron Francis from PlanetScale created an excellent video tutorial about MySQL for developers. It’s kind of a “mid-level” course, meaning you should have a basic foundation, but it covers all of the stuff you need more often: schema, indexes and queries, plus a chapter with examples — pretty much all of it also applies to MariaDB.
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The expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Maggie Appleton writes about “proving you’re a human on a web flooded with generative AI content” on The expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI — an interesting article on what special human tricks we might do to assert our humanity.
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Front-end principles for designers
Jon Yablonski writes the excellent Front-end principles for designers, a superb summary of how to understand the design of web interfaces as its own medium, such as “let go of control” (nod to the dao of web design), “keep performance in mind” and “maintain consistency”.
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How to communicate effectively as a developer
Karl Sutt writes about How to communicate effectively as a developer, an often ignored part of creating software. Describing the problem, what you’ve already tried to solve it and what kind of help you’re expecting are basic for getting valuable feedback.
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GitHub Copilot investigation
GitHub Copilot investigation · Joseph Saveri Law Firm & Matthew Butterick — “What we know about Copilot raises legal questions relating to both the training of the system and the use of the system”… which seem like interesting questions for any AI.
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Cómo utilizar useSelect y useDispatch en Gutenberg
Ignacio Cruz escribe sobre Cómo utilizar useSelect y useDispatch en Gutenberg — cada día es necesario aprender algo nuevo en WordPress y la documentación de Gutenberg tiene mucho trabajo por delante; este post es muuuy útil para poder comprender estos conceptos que a veces parecen un tanto… elusivos(?)
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The architecture of MediaWiki
The Architecture of Open Source Applications: MediaWiki it’s a very interesting read about the software that powers one of the busiest sites in the world, specially since it was specifically for Wikipedia. It’s not terribly up-to-date, but it’s a good introduction to understand how MediaWiki works in general, nevertheless.
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Storing Block Patterns in HTML Files for Nicer Code
Storing Block Patterns in HTML Files for Nicer Code — an interesting technique for cleaner and composable block pattern registration.
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Server-Sent Events: the alternative to WebSockets you should be using
Server-Sent Events: the alternative to WebSockets you should be using — yes, they’re quite likely exactly what you’re thinking: a method to push data from the server to the client, without WebSockets, just open web standards 😍 … It’s fascinating all the cool things you can build nowadays with standardized APIs, really.
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A complete guide to watchers in Vue.js
How to Watch Deep Data Structures in Vue (Arrays and Objects) it’s the complete guide to everything you wanted to know about watchers (like how to watch deep data structures) in a more concise, and more concrete style… plus GIFs!
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Todo se hunde
[…] todo se hunde, todo se lo traga el tiempo, pero a los primeros que se traga es a los chilenos.
Roberto Bolaño – Nocturno de Chile -
How to help a student get unstuck
As programmers we construct an abstract mental model of the program we’re writing. Bugs are discrepancies between our mental model of the program and the program itself. The program is doing something we don’t expect. The program isn’t wrong. The program can’t be wrong. It’s doing what it’s been told to do. What’s incorrect is our mental model. Once we understand the current state of the program, we can adjust it.
The art of debugging is systematically and creatively synchronizing the mental model with the actual program.
How to help a student get unstuck -
Extending WordPress SEO schema
Perhaps the best starting point for diving into the schema feature of Yoast SEO it’s this example use-case, which it’s pretty clear using just 2 code snippets 🙂
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Lessons from ElasticPress
Valuable Lessons Learned in ElasticPress — an interesting read to learn new tricks for searching with ElasticSearch.
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Design principles for the web
When I first read the title “Design principles for the web” I thought this was going to be yet another post about web design trends… fortunately I was completely wrong.
On this article (there’s also a video) Jeremy Keith takes us from detecting bias in analytics to design methodologies to a discussion of the conceptual foundations of the web and the deep contrasts with today’s over-engineering trends of trying to bend and control the user experience even at the expense of universality/ubiquity — in the words of Eric Meyer, “the web does not value consistency. The web values ubiquity”.
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Designers: design less, think more
Over time, it becomes apparent that design it’s less about “drawing” or creating a graphic solution and more about understanding the problem and weighting the solutions — “Once you get to Figma, most of the hard work should already be done”
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Digital manors and warlords
On Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor, Cory Doctorow compares Apple, Microsoft, Google to warlords willing to defend your digital security… unless they’re compelled to turn on you by a government power, which, it turns out, happens quite a lot. A good reminder that all that sensitive information that they’re collecting on you, can and will be used against you, just as that seemingly well-intentioned control over your device will be abused.
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Creativity and change
It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change
Miles Davis — Birth of the Cool -
New template for fcovera.info
My good friend Francisco Vera recently released a new version of his personal site where he’s continuously sharing his work and insights on the craft of experience and service design. You can also check the source code for his template on GitHub.
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Performant front-end architecture
This performant front-end archicture article it’s an excellent high-level technical overview of the entire process for showing a web page, from downloading resources to rendering and prefetching.
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Front-end testing tools
On Twelve Days of Front End Testing, Amy Kapernick shows twelve testing tools that cover several aspects of front end testing, such as visual regressions, accesibility, performance, etc.
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React lifecycle diagrams
React lifecycle diagrams – pretty useful to understand the sequence in which every method is invoked when a React component is created or updated. Check the official docs on React.Component for more details.
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Goodbye controllers, hello request handlers
Request handlers are a different, simpler way to structure a PHP app leveraging the
__invoke()magic method to create truly single-responsibility classes. -
Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes – BBC News
A beautiful example about how design choices can have a tangible impact on people’s lives: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes – BBC News
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Does javascript guarantee object property order?
Does Javascript guarantee object property order? No. Or… actually, not always
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It’s time to head back to RSS?
Wired posts about the resurfacing of RSS as an option to social and algorithmic feeds and the unlikely yet hopeful persistence of an emblem of the open web – It’s time to head back to RSS?
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Why some apps use fake progress bars
Why some apps use fake progress bars — a brilliant example of how psychological factors influence design, trading efficiency and speed for trust.
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Is there a limit to scientific understanding?
A brief piece on the limits of science, the inadequacy of understanding science as a simple "building": "phenomena with different levels of complexity must be understood in terms of different, irreducible concepts"
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Goodbye Uncanny Valley
An exploration into what happens when you are able to create visual stories that are indistinguishable from reality: post-truth, post-cinema, theoretical photorrealism.
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How Hans Zimmer and Radiohead transformed “Bloom” for Blue Planet II
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The financial market is an algorithm gone rogue
Financial markets are the first rogue AI […] Somebody planted the idea that shareholder value was the right algorithm, the right thing to be optimizing for. But this wasn’t the way companies acted before. We can plant a different idea.
Tim O’Reilly – Algorithms have already gone rogue
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The Open Web, Fuck Yeah! | hueniverse
Is your new thing so fucking amazing that people are going to install your app and give it a chance? Statistically speaking, unless you are best friend with a famous celebrity or Apple decides to feature your app in one of their top categories or search results, you are pretty much fucked
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The app boom is over – Recode
The mobile app boom kicked off in July 2008, when Apple introduced the App Store. Now it is over.
Even the very biggest app publishers are seeing their growth slow down or stop altogether. Most people have all the apps they want and/or need. They’re not looking for new ones.
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The challenges of formatting currency data
Localization and internationalization of an app or site it’s a challenge that’s not specially hard on the technical side, but that it can ceirtanly become difficult for social and behavioral aspects, such as our own etnocentrism, lack of standardized standards, or even standards that conflict with actual use or user expectations.
The development team at Etsy identified three attributes that affected currency formatting: the currency, user location and user language. Their post on How Etsy Formats Currency shows how to correctly format currency and some of the practical decisions that are involved in the process.
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Using OAuth2 to make authenticated calls to WP REST API
This will probably come in handy on a few weeks, so I better save this for later…
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Sigmund Freud’s couch
99% invisible tells the story of how Sigmund Freud’s couch came to be the symbol of psychoanalysis… even if it ceased to be as widely used as one might think based on movies and cartoons.
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It’s time to dispel the myths about nuclear power
It’s time to dispel the myths about nuclear power lists some of the actual facts on the incidents on Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear plants. Something to really consider if you’re really interested in diminishing the participation of fossil fuels on electric energy production.
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What happens when shit happens
There’s a very entertaining and educational thread going on Hacker News about data loss and disaster recovery that came about an actual, ongoing, massive system outage at Gliffy… I’m sure everyone has a similar story to share.
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How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain
How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain tells the story of how every time the cartoon it’s about to enter the public domain, corporate lobbying it’s able to bend existing legislation to protect private interests.
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A Practical Guide to SVGs on the web
A Practical Guide to SVGs on the web — might as well be called “everything you need to know for a modern use of SVGs on your website”, from preparing, implementing to manipulating and animating…
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Will there ever be an HTML Email Standard?
Elliot Ross asks himself if Will there ever be an HTML Email Standard? by examining the history of web standards and the current market share of e-mail clients.
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UX Myths
UX Myths collects the most frequent user experience misconceptions (such as “people don’t scroll”, “mobile users are distracted” or “accesible sites are ugly”) and explains why they don’t hold true, with research findings and articles.
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Patronizing Passwords
Password Security Guide it’s an alternative interaction pattern for password meters that not only helps your users choose a better password but also explains and educates.
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What Open-Access Publishing Actually Costs
The Chronicle of Higher Education hace una revisión sobre los costos reales de las publicaciones de acceso abierto y algunas de las alternativas para lograr una publicación gratis para los usuarios pero que sin embargo se debe hacer cargo de costos en recursos humanos y técnicos.
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TPP has provision banning requirements to transfer of or access to source code of software
El texto del TPP contiene disposiciones que prohíben la transferencia o acceso al código fuente del software, lo que podría constituir una seria amenaza a la validez de licencias de código abierto con copyleft, en particular la GPL.