The world might be attempting to get back to normal under the “new normal” label, but supply chains are still absolutely busted. As we head towards Christmas 2021, things show no sign of going back to normal in the world of logistics and supply chains. Postal service providers like USPS and Australia post are struggling to deal with the large volumes of mail. USPS temporarily suspended postage to 21 countries, including Australia.
If you thought the CD Projekt Red leak of Cyberpunk 2077 and other source code was bad, get a load of this latest leak. Twitch just got hacked entirely, and the entirety of its source code, internal repositories, financial payout information and absolutely everything you can think of has been taken and put online in a 128GB torrent over on 4chan. The anonymous individual or group says, “we have completely pwned them,” and let’s be honest, they’ve well and truly pwned Twitch here. What a massive leak. Some heads are going to roll over in the IT department over this. I am curious how this even happened.
Some of you already know my stance on remote work vs the office. As the pandemic rages on, the world is trying to return to a sense of normality. Name a company that went out of business because its employees had to work remotely. Productivity of employees can be measured in output, not bums in seats in an office. As you’ll soon learn, remote work is no longer a Silicon Valley startup perk to attract talent. It’s now expected by many.
A few short years ago, Quora was the darling of the tech world. A place where you could ask questions and get answers from people at the top in their chosen field. CEO’s, leaders, heavy hitters. The fun part of Quora was how accessible skilled experts were, who would otherwise not be easy to reach. You could ask pilots questions about flying. You could ask police officers about their job. I mean, even astronauts were answering questions on Quora.
Despite having had my Switch since 2017, I am still in love with the console. After a busy life and kids made my Playstation 4 obsolete because it was constantly downloading some massive patch, the instant-on nature of the Nintendo Switch appealed to me. Sure, the Switch is a little rough around the edges, and the screen isn’t the prettiest thing to look at, but it still looks good and performs well.
The ever-changing landscape of web development can be both cruel and kind. In May 2009, Ryan Dahl introduced Node.js to the world, and it didn’t take long before developers flocked to it like ants on a large pile of sugar. Ryan left the Node project in 2012. Node continued to increase in popularity and, front-end tooling started to build on Node.js, further propelling the popularity even further. To this day, most front-end tooling is built on Node, and Npm underpins the package ecosystem for both browser-based packages and Node.js packages.
When people think of big names in gaming, they will often cite companies like Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony, followed by a select handful of gaming studios like Electronic Arts or CD Projekt Red. Do you want to know who one of the biggest names in gaming is that you rarely hear of? Valve. If anything, I would argue, given just how much of the gaming market Valve controls through Steam alone, it’s one of the biggest gaming companies around, probably second to only Nintendo.
Ask anyone that knows me who my favourite band is, and they’ll tell you Thrice. The song my wife and I danced to at our wedding was a Dustin Kensrue song (not a Thrice song, but still). This band has significant meaning in the lives of my wife and me. My closet is a Thrice shrine (minus the candles and creepy statues). I have bought every single release they’ve put out throughout the years, even the expensive, limited vinyl releases, merch. For the hard to get items, I have even paid way above what they were at retail to complete my collection. I own one of the only copies I am aware of, The Artist In The Ambulance (instrumental).
The popularity of React is undeniable. When bright-eyed developers think about creating a new app, React is usually the first thing that crosses their minds. React has all become the defacto front-end library of choice. React is comfortable. React is familiar. React is used by almost everyone. React is the library you learn if you want to make yourself an employable front-end developer. The truth is, front-end developers have painted themselves into a corner with React. To understand why React became so popular, we have to go back to 2013, when React first made its grand debut. AngularJS was the dominant and most popular option for web applications at the time, and boy did AngularJS suck.
It’s no surprise that Electron is a slow, poor performing memory hog. However, the value proposition here is that it allows you to distribute Web-based applications as native desktop apps without writing programming code or anything else non-web. For some reason, all of these work chat/productivity apps decided to use Electron. Perhaps the most notable is Slack which continues to be a steaming pile of garbage in itself. When Electron first arrived, it was actually a game-changer for desktop app development. Despite its flaws, companies including Microsoft flocked to it. However, over the years, it has started to show its age. This is why it is not surprising that Microsoft Teams is ditching Electron for Edge Webview2 in its 2.0 release due out soon.