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Episode 460: Evan Weaver on FaunaDB

Evan Weaver of Fauna discusses the Fauna distributed database. Host Felienne spoke with him about its design and properties, as well as the FQL query language, and the different models it supports: document-based as well as relational.




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Episode 487: Davide Bedin on Dapr Distributed Application Runtime

Davide Bedine, a cloud solution architect at Microsoft and professional Dapr enthusiast joined host Jeff Doolittle to discuss his book, Practical Microservices with Dapr and .NET. Dapr, the Distributed Application Runtime, simplifies cloud-native...




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Episode 497: Richard L. Sites on Understanding Software Dynamics

Richard L. Sites discusses his new book Understanding Software Dynamics, which offers expert methods and advanced tools for understanding complex, time-constrained software dynamics in order to improve reliability and performance. Philip Winston spoke with Sites about the five fundamental computing resources CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and Locks, as well as methods for observing and reasoning when investigating performance problems using the open-source utility KUtrace.




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Episode 499: Uma Chingunde on Building a PaaS

Uma Chingunde of Render compares building a PaaS with her previous experience running the Stripe Compute team. Host Jeremy Jung spoke with Chingunde about the role of a PaaS, building on public cloud providers, build vs buy, choosing features, user experience, managing databases, Series A vs later stage startups, and why internal infrastructure teams should run themselves like product teams.




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Episode 500: Sergey Gorbunov on Blockchain Interoperability

Sergey Gorbunov of Axelar discusses blockchain interoperability, a technology that enables decentralized applications to work across multiple blockchain ecosystems. Host Philip Winston spoke with Gorbunov about programmable blockchains, distributed vs. centralized changes, the Ethereum virtual machine, Axelar's Cross-Chain Gateway Protocol and Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, security issues, delegated proof of stake...




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SE Radio 555: On Freund on Upskilling

On Freund, founder of Wilco and former VP of Engineering at WeWork, speaks with SE Radio’s Brijesh Ammanath about “upskilling” – going deeper or increasing the breadth of your skills. On has years of experience in helping developers master the skills needed to advance in their careers. This episode explores the importance of upskilling in a constantly evolving tech landscape. They focus particularly on how and why senior and expert developers should keep learning, upskilling, and reskilling throughout their careers. Freund offers suggestions on how to face some common challenges, especially for remote or distributed workers, and how and why engineering managers can help enable upskilling for their teams.




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SE Radio 564: Paul Hammant on Trunk-Based Development

Paul Hammant, independent consultant, joins host Giovanni Asproni to speak about trunk-based development—a version control management practice in which developers merge small, frequent updates to a core “trunk” or main branch. The episode explores the technique in some detail, including its pros and cons and some examples from real projects, and offers suggestions on how to get started. The conversation touches on a set of related topics, including code reviews, feature flags, continuous integration, and testing.




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SE Radio 573: Varun Singh on Evolution of Internet Protocols

In this episode, Varun Singh, Chief Products and Technology Officer at Daily.co, speaks with host Nikhil Krishna about the 30-year evolution of web protocols. In particular, they explore the impact of protocol ossification, which has supported the Internet’s success but also limits the flexibility of evolving protocol suites such as TCP/IP and UDP by constraining future development. Varun points out how the end-to-end principle emphasizes full flexibility for end hosts, but the TCP implementation in the OS kernel as well as in “middle boxes” such as ISPs contributes to the constraints of ossification by blocking certain types of traffic. Further, the development of new protocols is challenging due to the need for backward compatibility with existing protocols. They discuss Google’s efforts – and the challenges it has faced – in working to move the HTTP protocol forward. The role of standards bodies such as the IETF and collaboration between industry stakeholders is crucial for the evolution of internet protocols, requiring a balance between maintaining backward compatibility and introducing new protocols such as QUIC and HTTP/3 to address existing constraints and improve internet performance and security. indeed, QUIC includes features that seek to actively avoid ossification and encourage evolution.




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SE Radio 579: Arun Gupta on Open Source Strategy and Community

Arun Gupta, Vice President and General Manager of Open Ecosystem Initiatives at Intel Corporation, discusses open-source strategy and community with SE Radio host Kanchan Shringi. They explore the business case and business model for why and how big tech participates in the open-source ecosystem. Arun describes ways to foster a culture of engagement with open source within companies such as Intel, Amazon, and Apple. They then consider how the principles can be applied to closed-source software within a company. Finally, they discuss some of the benefits that Intel has gained from more than 20 years of open source contributions and look at the company’s plan for the year ahead. SE Radio is rought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society.




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SE Radio 580: Josh Doody on Mastering Business Communication for Software Engineers

Josh Doody, author of Mastering Business Email, speaks with host Brijesh Ammanath about how software engineers can master business communication. They begin with an exploration of various communication modes, including Slack, virtual meetings, emails, and presentations. Josh shares several strategies to improve communication skills and cross-cultural communication, but if there's one key take away from this episode, it might be: “use positive language for any medium of communication; be kind and use positive words.” Brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society.




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SE Radio 605: Yingjun Wu on Streaming Databases

Yingjun Wu, founder of RisingWave Labs and previously a software engineer at Amazon Web Services and researcher at IBM Almaden Research Center, speaks with SE Radio host Brijesh Ammanath about streaming databases. After considering the benefits and unique challenges, they delve into the architecture and design patterns of streaming databases, as well as the evolution and security considerations. Yingjun also talks about the future of streaming databases, including the potential impact that Amazon S3 Express One Zone will have on the streaming landscape, and how the unified batch and streaming might evolve in the database world. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.




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SE Radio 638: Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin on Architecture Modernization

Nick Tune and Jean-Georges Perrin join host Giovanni Asproni to talk about their proposed approach to modernizing legacy systems. The episode starts with some high-level perspective to set context for the approach described in their book, Architecture Modernization (Manning, 2024). From there, the discussion turns to important details, including criteria for deciding which aspects to revisit; some of the activities, processes, and tools; and the importance of data engineering in modernization efforts. Nick and Jean-Georges describe how to successfully implement an architecture-modernization effort, and how to fit that work with the teams' other priorities. The episode finishes with some warnings about the typical risks associated with modernizing a legacy system, and suggestions on how to mitigate them.

This episode is sponsored by QA Wolf.




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Tales of the Nobel Prize announcement

-- Delivered by Feed43 service




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Run out

To have none left.




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Turn around

To change direction; Reverse one's course or actions.




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TerraMaster TD2 Thunderbolt 3 2-bay DAS Review

TerraMaster�s TD2 Thunderbolt 3 is a 2-bay DAS (Direct-Attached Storage) drive aimed at professional users and, as the name suggests comes with a pair of Thunderbolt 3 interfaces. TerraMaster�s TD2 Thunderbolt 3 looks just like a 2-bay NAS with the obvious exception that the TD2 comes with a very useful carrying handle. The enclosure is built from ... [PCSTATS]




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Should Feed Readers Count Unread Items?

Brent Simmons, the developer of the NetNewsWire RSS reader, is questioning his decision to put an unread count next to each feed, reasoning that it encourages people to be too obsessive about reading every item:

Instead of a dozen bookmarks, people had a hundred feeds. Or two hundred. Or two thousand.

And there was a tyranny behind keeping track of unread items and showing an unread count. People reacted in different ways, but many people felt like they always had to go through everything.

Including me. To this day.

I did not know this was going to happen. That was not the idea: it was a side effect of reasonable (at the time) choices.

I like seeing these counts on feeds where I need to read all items that are posted, but that's only a small percentage of the 100-120 feeds I follow. It would be nice to turn that off for others I read more casually.

Feedly presents unread counts on each feed and folder of feeds. There's a Mark As Read button to clear a count, but when you click it, the confirmation dialog acts like it's an extremely consequential decision: "Are you sure you want to mark this entire source as read? This operation cannot be undone."

I've posed a question on the RSS-Public mailing list: Do you think feed readers should count unread items?




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Be Unique And Use RSS Guid Like Everybody Else

Winter scenes: Snowflakes by Theodor Horydczak

If you publish an RSS feed, you should do a solid for the developers of RSS readers by including a guid in each item. The guid's job is to be a unique identifier that helps software downloading your feed decide whether it has seen that item before. Here's the guid for an item on the arts and technology blog Laughing Squid:

<guid isPermaLink="false">https://laughingsquid.com/?p=914660</guid>

No other item on Laughing Squid will ever have this guid value. It's a URL that loads a blog post with the title Playful Elephant Pretends to Eat Woman's Hat. If you load the guid's URL https://laughingsquid.com/?p=914660, it redirects to the permanent link of the post. Because the guid is not the permanent link, there's an isPermaLink attribute with a value of false.

Most guid values in RSS feeds are the permanent link of the item, as in this example from the world news site Semafor:

<guid>https://www.semafor.com/article/07/07/2023/us-jobs-data-what-experts-make-of-the-new-numbers</guid>

A drawback of using the permalink is that if any part of the URL changes -- such as the title text or the domain name -- the guid changes and RSS readers will think this is a new item to show the feed's subscribers, when it's actually a repeat.

A guid doesn't have to be a URL. It can be any string that the feed publisher has chosen to be unique. Here's the guid from the RSS Advisory Board's feed for this blog post:

<guid isPermaLink="false">tag:rssboard.org,2006:weblog.217</guid>

Our guid follows the TAG URI scheme, a simple way to assure uniqueness by putting these five components together in this order:

  1. The text "tag"
  2. A domain owned by the feed provider
  3. A year the provider owned that domain
  4. A short name for the feed different from any other feed on the site
  5. The internal ID number of the post

There's different punctuation between each component. The year 2006 was when the board began using the domain rssboard.org. No one else used that domain that year, so any feed reader that stores "tag:rssboard.org,2006:weblog.217" as this item's guid should never encounter that value in any other item on any other feed.

To see how RSS 2.0 feeds are using guid, several thousand feeds were downloaded this evening from an RSS aggregator that publicly shares the OPML subscription lists of its users.

CategoryTotalPercentage
Total number of feeds4,954--
Feed using guid4,77796.4%
Feeds using non-permalinks in guid75215.2%

The term guid means "globally unique identifier," but RSS 2.0 does not require global uniqueness in guids. Because the TAG URI scheme does a good job of serving that purpose, Blogger, Flickr, MetaFilter, SoundCloud and The Register are among the sites using it in their feeds.






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Why Protest Works—Even When It’s Unpopular

High-profile, disruptive protests can lead to increased polarization—but often still yield increased public support for the protest’s goals, even if the tactics are criticized.






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United Auto Workers’ Strike Yields Win for “Just Transition”

In bringing electric vehicle battery plants under its national contract, the UAW took a major step toward transitioning away from fossil fuels in a way that protects workers' rights.





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The Coffee Shops Countering Recidivism

A criminal record keeps many qualified candidates out of work; these coffee companies are helping clear the first hurdle.







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Undoing What Wall Street Did to the Housing Market

Billionaires have long leveraged the housing market for money. But a new report outlines how to regulate the market so people—not hedge funds—can buy homes.





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How Three Young Women of Color Took on Power

Journalist Sonali Kohli’s new book centers the life and work of three young women of color who refused to let powerful elites shape their lives and communities.





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Punjabi Californians Find a Lifeline Through Community Health Workers

Facing a health care system without sufficient translation services and a grueling economic landscape, Punjabi residents in Fresno, California, have created an organization to help meet their community’s unique needs.




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How To Use Gmail Account To Relay Email From a Shell Prompt

handy reference




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Empire and Me: A Newsround Special

Newsround presenter De-Graft Mensah tells the story of his trip to Ghana where he found out more about his family's history and the impact of the British Empire in the West African nation.




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Kids in a cost of living crisis: A Newsround Special

Newsround has been finding out how the cost of living crisis and rising prices have affected children living in the UK.




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No Place to Call Home: A Newsround Special

With record numbers of families living in temporary accommodation, Newsround reporter Shanequa Paris investigates how children are being affected.




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Press Pack: The school solving the crime of stolen lunches

A crimewave has shaken one school to the core...and the culprit? Not exactly who, or WHAT you’d expect.




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Government plans to ban smoking outside schools and playgrounds

The government has announced plans to make it illegal to smoke outside schools and hospitals, and in children's playgrounds in England. They have also said that some outdoor places could become vape-free.




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Australia announces next steps to under-16 social media ban

Politicians in Australia's parliament will vote on the law next week and, if passed, it aims to stop children being allowed social media accounts. But for some kids there will be ways around it.




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Watch: Newsround on the US Election

As adults in the US vote to decide their next president, Nina Blissett visits children living in the state of Pennsylvania to find out who they’re supporting.




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Donald Trump: We're going to help our country heal

Donald Trump has addressed his supporters as he claimed victory in the US presidential election.




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Cyberbullying: A Newsround special

Cyberbullying is a problem we hear more and more about in the news. In this special Newsround, Ricky meets the kids who have been affected by bullying online.




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Anti-Bullying Week: ‘United Against Bullying’

This week is the 19th annual Anti-Bullying Week, an event intended to raise awareness about bullying, and share advice about how children, teachers, parents and schools can all help stop it.




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I'm A Celebrity 2024: Who's going into the jungle?

The new series is nearly here and we now know which ten famous faces will be going into the jungle. Meet all the stars set to star in this year's show - and let us know who you're most looking forward to seeing in action.




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450 million-year-old fossil found in fool's gold

Researchers say the fossil is a distant relative of our modern-day spiders.




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Your Planet: Environmental news from around the world

Nina brings us an animal themed Your Planet this week with stories from South Africa and the United States of America, as we look at what is being done to help endangered animals.




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Watch Newsround - signed and subtitled

A signed version of Newsround is available to watch every weekday for children who use British Sign Language.




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Watch Newsround

Shanequa has your Wednesday Newsround. Check out the children having special lessons outdoors, a school gets a Gladiator visit for Children in Need, you tell us your plans for the big day and we check out Mary Earps' wax figure.