This week, I’m sharing links, quotes, images & videos that I came across while Internet binge-watching/reading. Keywords for this week: Younger generations have it harder; Software/Web Development is going to shit; how to start in Cybersecurity/Information security; and the use of memories and history in the current Israel/Gaza conflict.
An interesting video to watch: Scott Galloway’s “How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future”
The speaker may use American statistics, but we can easily relate it to our Canadian experience. Capitalism is making it so hard for young generations to success in life, and the rising cost of education, housing and food makes it hard for us to acquire wealth. The promised transfer of wealth from older generations to younger ain’t happening, and corporations are getting insanely richer while workers’ salaries is stagnating. “We’re economically attacking the youngs…but I know, let’s attack their emotional and mental well-being” Things need to change…
“JavaScript bloat in 2024”
Up until very recently, my full-time job was as a Web Developer. And boy did my day-to-day job changed A LOT in the last 5 years. Everything became JavaScript frameworks: everything became React, VueJS, Angular, etc. And while it does simplify “sometimes” the job of a developer in quickly creating websites and tools, it has unfortunately helped participate in the enshittification of the Internet. This article shows how websites across the globe relies too much on JavaScript frameworks, making the websites bigger and bigger to download and process on folks’ browsers and devices. This quote resumes what I think about it: “It’s not just about download sizes. I welcome high-speed internet as much as the next guy. But code — JavaScript — is something that your browser has to parse, keep in memory, execute. It’s not free. And these people talk about performance and battery life… Call me old-fashioned, but I firmly believe content should outweigh code size. If you are writing a blog post for 10K characters, you don’t need 1000× more JavaScript to render it.”. Websites should be just that: HTML, CSS and some backend languages like Python or PHP, with a little sprinkle of JavaScript here and there. NOT the entire website coded in JavaScript!“React, Electron, and LLMs have a common purpose: the labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity“
Which brings me to another subject in the Web Development sphere: the rise of frameworks over languages expertise in my field of work is bad for software/web developers everywhere! This quote from the article resumes it well: “If you work as a software developer, it means employers will continue to emphasise frameworks over functionality because that makes you easier to replace. They will sacrifice software security to make your job easier to outsource. They will let their own businesses suffer by shipping substandard software because they believe they can recoup those losses at your expense.” It suddenly puts into perspective all the tech layoffs for 2023-2024! Frameworks make workers interchangeable, and experts workers are finding it harder to perform well in this type of environment, as they are forced to get into one coding mindset over a multitude of skillsets/expertises. The entire article is quotable, as I think it pinpoints why the software/web development field has gotten shittier in the last 5 years… Let’s bring back unions!“In the shadows of the Holocaust“
The article give a good overview of how politicians can weaponize the Holocaust history to their own political agenda, amplifying the antisemitism we are seeing across the world. “How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.” A powerful article to read on the subject.- Quote: “Everything gets old. Life is full of diminishing returns. At some point, more money, fame, prestige, travel, or sex won’t make you any happier. Learn to recognize when you have “enough.”” Source
“Getting into Information Security“
As someone involved in the cybersecurity scene, we get asked a lot about how to start in that field: where to start studying, what to study/read/watch, where to look up for work, etc… This article is a good base for how to start into, and give good tips and advices on how to do it.
