Linklog - ewintr.nl

Articles and videos I found last week that were interesting enough to read and watch until the end.

2025

14 April

Having Fun With a Scamming Crypto Job - nguyenhuythanh.com
Other than the usual reasons to get anxious for a job interview, these days you also have to worry about getting scammed. Note how it was not the malicious code that triggered the alarm, but the conversation that felt "off". Developing an intuition for AI speak is becoming more and more important every day.
Simulated Musk, Zuckerberg voices are speaking from hacked crosswalk buttons - www.theverge.com
This goes to show that every tool can be used for good, voice cloning included.

07 April

Giving up the dylib dream - octet-stream.net
This post accurately explains a discomfort that has been growing over the years. On one hand, I'm mostly in lane 1, letting the Debian community decide which libraries to include. On the other hand, I'm increasingly moving to lane 2, developing in Go and installing more and more apps through AppImage and Flatpak.
The case against conversational interfaces - julian.digital
Voice chat was never going to be the next universal interface, if only for one reason: the inevitable noise and chaos that will ensue when everyone in the room starts using it. This idea of only augmenting existing interfaces where it makes sense sounds better, but I am still not convinced.
The candid naivety of geeks - ploum.net
We are all addicted to shiny things and dopamine. Like doctors who smoke, while they should know better, given enough motivation, you can talk yourself into believing anything.
Is the ZX81 / Timex Sinclair 1000 actually bad? Let's fix these to find out. - www.youtube.com
What I found wonderful about this video is the confident, but stern troubleshooting of chips and the beginning, and the sheer confusion and joy when he got around to actually playing some games. Apparently, games from forty years ago can still be fun.
The Origins of Dwarf Fortress - (Series Episode One) - www.youtube.com
I never got into the game, it was simply too complex and intimidating, and I felt kind of jealous of people who played it regularly. But these videos made me feel like I was part of the heartwarming story too.

31 March

Notes on MCP - taoofmac.com
This resonates with my, admittedly, brief experience with MCP. I always thought that HATEOAS was designed to address the kinds of problems that MCP aims to solve. Not that HATEOAS ever gained real adoption. But still, in this age of autonomous agents, shouldn't we just use that instead?
A USB interface to the "Mother of All Demos" keyset - www.righto.com
The project is cool on its own, but the writeup is even more interesting. As someone who was once mesmerized by the video of Doug Engelbart, clicking and typing in another age, explaining the basics of word processing and shopping lists, I found some interesting tidbits about the demo that I hadn't known before.
Servo vs Ladybird - thelibre.news
A comparison between Servo and Ladybird, our best hopes for a new sorely needed browser engine besides Firefox and Chrome.
Atom vs. RSS - nullprogram.com
All I gathered from the discussions about syndication formats was that Atom is supposedly "better" than RSS. After reading this post that remains the TL;DR answer. But now I know why.
Xee: A Modern XPath and XSLT Engine in Rust - blog.startifact.com
I can't really explain why this gives me a warm feeling. Perhaps the idea that solid technology is not going to waste, even though it went out of fashion.
A very theoretical scenario, DNS edition - jpmens.net
A fun thought experiment about what would be necessary to set up alternative DNS roots in case of emergency. From a technical perspective this doesn't look too complicated. Actually getting people to use it seems impossible to pull off though.
I'm an American software developer and the "broligarchs" don't speak for me - ratfactor.com
Good that someone wrote this down. Now kids, go out and follow Zuckerberg's mantra: move fast and break things.

24 March

No Longer My Favorite Git Commit - mtlynch.io
Saw this linked in multiple places and many of the comments on it start with 'I agree with all of that'. And after reading my first thought was: I agree with all of that. Writing commit messages is an art form, but one like architecture. What you create should be easy to use by others.
How I accepted myself into Canada's largest AI hackathon - fastcall.dev
A quick and simple story, like having a little snack. I should open the Firefox Developer Tools window more often and poke a bit around.
DIY infinity contrast TV - with 100% recycled parts - www.youtube.com
This is the internet how it should be. One guy upcycles an old television and a beamer to a kickass display. Another guy, who wrote software that the first one used, shows up in the comments and is flabbergasted that his work was so useful in an unexpected way.
Digger - digger.org
More nostalgia. When I was young, my father would sometimes take his personal computer home during his vacation. My sister and I would spend hours playing games on it and Digger was a family favorite. I love that this site exists in 2025 and I can confirm the remastered version still works. Spent the whole Sunday afternoon playing.
Why is everything binary? - briefs.video
As a Software Developer, I can confirm. This is 100% how it works.
FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies - thelibre.news
Besides worrying me, this also confuses me. I thought the AI companies already had downloaded the whole internet multiple times before without anyone noticing. Why keep doing it over again and again in such an clunky, expensive way?

17 March

The Future is Niri - ersei.net
Like the author, I am an old man. And a deep sigh escaped my mouth, but I must agree... tiling window managers should be great, except, well, they are not. I don't really use them anymore. The standard tabs and splits of Kitty aren't ideal either, but good enough for terminal apps. Much, much simpler.
Different ways of working with SQL Databases in Go - packagemain.tech
A short overview, but even if you are firmly in the 'just write the damn SQL' camp, there are a few interesting tips here. That sqlc package looks quite handy.
Cyberspace Movies in 1995: Silicon Valley Meets Hollywood - cybercultural.com
A couple of weeks ago I rewatched Wargames from 1983 and it was a wonderful throwback. This post made me realize that I've never seen Johnny Mnemonic or The Net. I'll have to add those the list. And maybe I need to rewatch Hackers too.
Helpful hackers preventing evil hackers from crashing the grid - media.ccc.de
They got my attention with the exploits. I actually know people that own one these devices. The rest of the talk can make you nervous, if you are European and use electricity.
DEF CON 32 - The Darkest Side of Bug Bounty - Jason Haddix - www.youtube.com
My, admittedly, hazy image of bug bounty hunters was a bunch of independent cyber cowboys that were smarter than the rest of us and therefore could afford to live a glamorous independent life of their own. This talk digs into the ugly parts. Everywhere there are people and money, there are some closet skeletons too, I guess.
Without This YouTube Wouldn't Exist - www.youtube.com
More nostalgia. I was around when this appeared on the internet and it is difficult to describe the sensations we all felt back then. Watching a grainy image of a coffee machine slowly appear on your screen and thinking: this is the future. I am living in the future.

10 March

Illuminant - koldfront.dk
"An ActivityPub server with an NNTP interface". This is an awesome idea. Apart from the nostalgia factor, it might very well be that the newsreaders of old have superior interfaces for dealing with an information firehose. Back then the user was in control, not some opaque algorithm.
Git without a forge - www.chiark.greenend.org.uk
A good reminder that git, on its own, is already about as decentralized as an app can get.
My 16-month theanine self-experiment - dynomight.net
I had my phase of experimenting with supplements. Eventually I found that coffee and chocolate are the only stimulants I need, but I know firsthand about the conflict between Science says... and But I really feel something..., and of course about our good friend, the rabble-rouser Mr Placebo. This post shows how to properly solve the dilemma.

03 March

Kokoro Local TTS + Custom Voices - www.youtube.com
Sam Witteveen's tutorials on LLMs are always clear, concise and very easy to follow along. Here he shows how to use Kokoro, the latest hip text to speech model, that runs on your own laptop. There is a link to a Colab notebook in the description.
Other kinds of talks - www.scattered-thoughts.net
A plea to go beyond the simple "I did this" format in talks. "If you haven't done any work then you don't have anything worth sharing." Maybe this applies to blogs too.
Tcl/Tk application binaries through Go - wiki.tcl-lang.org
Tcl/Tk is one of those old technologies that keep eliciting fond memories from Unix greybeards. A supposedly simple and elegant way to create GUI apps. I never got around to giving it a try, but here we learn that one can use it directly from within Go. I guess I'll have no choice.
The Deep Research problem - www.ben-evans.com
Ben lists issues with LLM-style deep research. Essentially the same issues that apply to all LLM use, that you'd think everyone would know by now. But predictably, many people will still fall into these traps. Probably repeatedly.
If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown - p.migdal.pl
The argument has always been true, but it seems to get more pressing every day. You cannot count on the internet to preserve important information for you.
How Core Git Developers Configure Git - blog.gitbutler.com
This motivates me to finally configure some quality of life improvements for git. Really. But I am busy today, so I'll do it tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.