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Today’s mandatory reading is How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%. As someone who’s been fighting the protection/obfuscation cat & mouse game for twenty+ years, let me tell you one thing. The way this guy reverse-engineered parts of the GTA5 codebase and then proceeded to single-handly triage and fix a long-standing (7+ years) performance issue is simply mindblowing. All he had to work with were heavily obfuscated dlls. This also shows how we, the protectors, are always playing a losing game. ...

Last weekend’s reading list also included Taking Back Our Privacy, yet another1 New Yorker piece but this time signed by Anna Wiener. This article is a long-read on Moxie Marlinspike, co-founder and CEO of Signal. Moxie is a childhood nickname. That alone signals (pun intended) an original personality. I mean, how many times have you heard of a CEO going by his childhood nickname? Indeed the personal story of Marlinspike, along with that of the ascent of Signal, is fascinating. I did not know, for example, that in 2013 he met Brian Acton, founder of WhatsApp. Brian expressed interest in adding end-to-end encryption into WhatsApp. Then came Facebook’s acquisition, and, for obvious reasons, Signal Protocol never landed into the messaging service. The story was not over, however: ...

Today, my Sunday long-reading list included New Yorker’s The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. Can nuclear power possibly be a viable solution for climate change? Twenty or even ten years ago, my answer would have been a big fat No. Today? Not so sure anymore. Today, the looming disruptions of climate change have altered the risk calculus around nuclear energy. James Hansen, the NASA scientist credited with first bringing global warming to public attention, in 1988, has long advocated a vast expansion of nuclear power to replace fossil fuels. Even some environmental groups that have reservations about nuclear energy […] have recognized that abruptly closing existing reactors would lead to a spike in emissions. ...

I already mentioned what background music (or sounds) I like when I am coding. In that list, I included classical music. I know classical is not exactly a favorite. Not in my field, at least. I suspect the vast majority of people disregard it in advance, not really knowing what they’re missing out on, just because, well, you know, it’s dinosaurs stuff. If you are among them, you should reconsider and repent your sins. But have no worries, and rejoice, for I am here to save your soul. ...

In March 1970, Dr. John Conway sent the “fatal” (as he later referred to it) letter to Martin Gardner. He was submitting ideas for Gardner’s Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. The New York Times features a good article on the fifty-year parable of The Game of Life. What’s appreciable, they asked some of Life’s most steadfast friends to reflect upon its influence and lessons over half a century. Among them, Brian Eno, who, being Brian Eno, has some smart things to say: ...

Ever had your old, trusty Python virtual environment fail on you? I sure did. Sometimes, when I activate or switch between virtual environments, I get the following error: $ workon eve dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../.Python I never really took the time to look into it. When this happens, because I am in a rush (and because I am a lazy old fart), I shrug it off, recreate the virtual environment on the spot, and get back to work. ...

After six years in the field, Chris has shared his strong opinions on software development practices, languages, and methodologies. I like his attitude. Willingness to continuously put one’s personal views under scrutiny, eventually adapting or even changing them as needed, is not a common trait. Not in our field. While I generally agree with most of his opinions, I feel the urge to comment on a few of them. Typed languages are better when you’re working on a team of people with various experience levels ...

As a non-native English reader, I had to look up the true meaning of “Unbundling” as a neologism. According to Wikipedia Unbundling is a neologism to describe how the ubiquity of mobile devices, Internet connectivity, consumer web technologies, social media and information access in the 21st century is affecting older institutions (education, broadcasting, newspapers, games, shopping, etc.) by “break[ing] up the packages they once offered (possibly even for free), providing particular parts of them at a scale and cost unmatchable by the old order.” Unbundling has been called “the great disruptor.” ...

We’ve seen other articles pointing the finger at unnecessarily bloated websites. Terence Eden’s On the unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML deserves mention, I think, for two reasons. First, the delivery is incredibly effective. Second, it is effective because of the storytelling. By enveloping the message into an original short, touching story, he achieves two goals. First, he captures the reader’s attention; second, he makes the experience memorable. Please, go and read it; I’ll wait here. ...

Bless the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine. With it, we can go back in time and read The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz, an unusually detailed and accurate article published in the April 14, 2000 issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. When he was found dead April 14, Phil Katz was slumped against a nightstand in a south side hotel, cradling an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps. The genius who built a multimillion-dollar software company known worldwide for its pioneering “zip” files had died of acute pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism. He was alone, estranged long ago from his family and a virtual stranger to employees of his own company, PKWare Inc. He was 37. ...