1. macOS command-line tools you might not know about
Total comment counts : 88
Summary
The article lists a variety of useful command-line utilities for macOS. These include caffeinate for preventing sleep, textutil for converting file formats, mdfind for performing Spotlight searches, and various other tools for tasks such as taking screenshots, copying output to the clipboard, managing power settings, and getting information about available software updates. Each command is described along with examples of how to use them.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains how to generate a complete .icns file for an app from a single 1024 by 1024 PNG using sips and iconutil commands without the need for third-party software. The process involves creating an iconset with various sizes of the image using sips and then using iconutil to convert the iconset to a .icns file. The article also provides a bonus command to generate a .ico file using ffmpeg. The author wonders if it is better to downscale the image in fewer steps, as done in the article, or in smaller steps.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article explains why they love using the pbcopy and pbpaste commands. They find it helpful when dealing with minified JSON and switching to iTerm, as they can use the command pbpaste | json_pp | pbcopy to get a clean output.
2. Build your own Docker with Linux namespaces, cgroups, and chroot
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
The article is a practical implementation guide for building a basic container environment from scratch using Linux namespaces, cgroups, and chroot. The purpose of the guide is to gain a deeper understanding of the foundational technologies that form the core of Docker. The guide explains how to create an isolated environment, set up a new namespace, create a new cgroup for controlling resource allocation, and create a file system for the container. The article ends with an example of installing and running Nginx web server within the container environment. The article also briefly touches on the power of Linux control groups and namespaces and how they can be used for efficient resource management and security.
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The author questions why full-blown OS filesystems are still required in containers if their purpose is to run a single binary. While dependencies and dynamic libraries provide a decent reason, the author suggests it would make more sense to start with an empty filesystem and progressively add the files necessary for the binary to work, rather than starting from a complete OS filesystem and removing unnecessary items.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The popularity of container based architectures owes as much to the ease of extension of the container image format as it does to the clever use of namespaces, cgroups and chroot for isolation, resource management, and security. Docker is less interesting without the image format and attempts to replicate Docker isolation using Linux kernel level features often miss this critical part of the Docker ecosystem.
3. Outlook now ignores Windows’ Default Browser and opens links in Edge by default
Total comment counts : 85
Summary
Microsoft has announced that users with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription will soon be able to use the classic Outlook app on Windows and the Microsoft Edge web browser together. Browser links from the Outlook app will open in Microsoft Edge by default, in the Edge sidebar pane, alongside the email they were sent with. The feature can be turned off or adjusted in both Outlook and Edge settings. In the future, links from Microsoft Teams messages will also open in Microsoft Edge by default. The feature is currently only available for Windows 10 and 11 users with a work or school account or a Microsoft account, but Microsoft is working on providing the feature for third-party email providers.
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The author of the article highlights several issues he has noticed in the tech world, such as Safari hijacking Google searches and Microsoft Edge reminding users to use its browser when attempting to download Chrome or Firefox. However, the author notes that Linux seems to be a more respectful operating system.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author feels that Windows is becoming more hostile towards users with anti-user patterns. They had considered building a gaming rig using Windows, but reminders of Bill Gates’ past actions as an anti-trust monster in the 90s make them hesitant.
4. FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History with Used Vans
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
FedEx is being sued for allegedly replacing odometers with new ones that read zero miles before selling used delivery vans. The lawsuit claims that the company continued to use the vehicles for a short period of time before auctioning them, leaving buyers under the impression that the vans had very low mileage and were in good condition. However, businesses that subsequently bought the vans found that their actual mileage could be four times higher, causing mechanical issues and leading to financial losses. The case, which is a class-action lawsuit, claims the mileage rollbacks are the largest fraud of this sort in history.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article encourages readers to be skeptical about accusations made against FedEx in a recent class action lawsuit claiming that the company knowingly overcharged customers for years. They urge readers to not blindly trust class action lawsuits and to question the narrative that executives are prone to lying, cheating, and stealing. They suggest that the fraud, if true, could have been committed at a non-executive level or by a smaller leasing company. The author believes that cases like VW’s emissions scandal are exceptions rather than the rule when it comes to executive-level involvement in fraud.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article reports that some used car dealers are selling delivery trucks at auction with an odometer readout of 100,000 miles, even though the real mileage can be as much as four times that. The trucks have an average lifespan of 1 million miles but are typically used as delivery vehicles, which cuts their lifespan down to around 480,000 miles. This means that the vehicles will require costly engine and transmission rebuilds in less than 80,000 miles, which the article considers to be shady business practice.
5. The Password Game
Total comment counts : 97
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article is stuck on a chess notation puzzle that requires including today’s phase of the moon as an emoji. The author also mentions a difficult task of manually constructing an Autogram, which involves composing a sentence containing a specific count of every letter of the alphabet, along with other symbols such as commas, hyphens, etc.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article reached rule 16 in a game where they were given an egg named Paul to look after. They were required to keep Paul safe, but a fire of emojis broke out in their password on rule 18, killing Paul and causing the game to end. The article serves as a warning to future players to be careful and keep Paul safe.
6. The best place to drink is the emptiest bar in the city
Total comment counts : 24
Summary
The article is requesting the reader to enable JavaScript and disable any ad blocker in order to properly view the content of the webpage. It does not provide any additional information to summarize.
Top 1 Comment Summary
I’m sorry but the link provided is not accessible. Please provide a valid and accessible link for me to summarize.
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The author notes the differences in bar culture between their home country of Ireland and the Netherlands, where bars are considered quiet places and not generally seen as a social space. The author missed the social aspect of bars and was pleasantly surprised to find that they could strike up conversations with strangers again when they visited home. The author concludes that the best bar in town is culture-dependent and varies depending on what one is looking for.
7. Monitoring Is a Pain
Total comment counts : 37
Summary
The article discusses the complexities and challenges of monitoring and observability tools for large-scale applications. The author argues that monitoring is not an easy problem, and the tools require constant maintenance. Logs and metrics, which are traditionally used for monitoring, often become too complex, and logging infrastructure becomes a mission-critical part of the system. The article suggests that metrics might be a better option than logs, but even they have their challenges when attempting to scale. The article concludes that monitoring and observability tools require significant engineering resources or cloud services to be effective.
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The article discusses the three mistakes that often happen when selecting tools for observability in product, tech, and business departments. These mistakes include assuming that it is a technical task that one person can handle, adding preferred tools by each stakeholder leading to complexity, and assuming that selecting a tool means the job is done. The article suggests selecting one tool, engineering the system to be observable, and having a plan. Additionally, the article questions the value delivered when there are many tools, complexity, and data.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article gives a set of guidelines for monitoring and measuring the performance of web-based services. It recommends against relying on logs for monitoring, and instead suggests using metrics. The author recommends against Cloudwatch metrics, stressing the importance of performance monitoring and detecting slow responses with metrics. The article suggests using Xray from AWS for performance monitoring, but only for lambdas. The author advises that everything should have a minimum set of graphs for basic health monitoring, CPU, Memory, connections, upstream service response times, hits per second, and query time. It then recommends that these metrics be aggregated into a “service health” gauge, with red indicating the service is not performing within specifications, yellow indicating it is close to being out of specification, and green indicating it is inside specification.
8. Modern TLS/SSL on 16-bit Windows
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
The author of this article describes their attempt to modify a TLS library to compile and work on a Gateway 4DX2-66 running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. They explain that most retro computer programs that connect to the internet require a proxy running on a modern computer to handle the SSL/TLS connection, but they wanted to change this. They chose to use WolfSSL as it had explicit 16-bit compiler support, and Microsoft’s TCP/IP implementation, TCP/IP-32, for testing purposes. They also explain the challenge of building and using DLLs on Windows 3.x and describe how memory segmentation affects pointers in 16-bit Windows programming. The author also notes that they made some tradeoffs and did not create a fully secure implementation.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author is confident that 64k of code and 64k of data can be enough for a client to implement TLS 1.2+1.3 with enough ciphersuites to access 99% of all websites. Each connection will need at least a 16k input record buffer along with the cipher states for both directions. It’s possible to use a smaller input buffer if you’re willing to sacrifice some security.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article raises a question about how Internet Explorer 3 can use wolfSSL since the browser was created before the library existed.
9. Tinc, a GPLv2 mesh routing VPN
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article has been using tinc for 20 years and believes it does everything that Wireguard does. They appreciate its ability to handle UDP, encryption, mesh, proxy ARP, and offer a network status report. The author praises tinc as the best VPN and declares it as the most underrated open-source software.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article has been using Tinc for over 6 years without any issues. However, due to the low throughput and high CPU usage of Tinc compared to wireguard, the author is looking for a replacement or an alternative that combines the security of Tinc with wireguard’s transport. The author is willing to pay for such a solution but has not yet found one they trust.
10. 4D Toys Update 8: Rotating the 3D Slice, 2D Faces Projections, Marble Scenes
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
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The article discusses the author’s fascination with a game called Miegakure, which has been in development since 2009 and takes place in a four-dimensional world. The author expresses interest in whether it is possible to get an intuitive sense of this world and notes that simply doing the math would not be true to the game’s emphasis on thinking in four dimensions.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article praises the Miegakure project as an innovative game design that goes beyond the typical gaming experience. It describes Miegakure as an exploration of “what-if” scenarios that are far beyond our daily 3D experience. The process of modeling it has been compared to fundamental research.