Posts

A simple solution to Netflix's subscriber loss: stop cancelling TV shows

If I had a dollar for every time my wife and I discovered a great show on Netflix only to discover it was cancelled after one or two seasons, we would be stupidly rich. Netflix recently revealed they’re losing subscribers. You probably already knew this because you’ve either cancelled your Netflix account, considered cancelling it or seen the numerous news stories about their untimely demise. What some people don’t realise is Netflix, like other companies, pulled out of the Russian market over its unwarranted invasion of Ukraine and lost 700,000 paid subscribers. Between April and July, Netflix lost one million subscribers.

Fixing the color-adjust shorthand is currently deprecated warning in Autoprefixer

As much as I love front-end development, the ecosystem can sometimes inflict unnecessary pain. Given the front-end ecosystem relies on very few packages for a lot of modern development, when something changes and packages that rely on those don’t update: it’s a disaster. One such issue is Autoprefixer. You most likely arrived here searching Google for the error message: autoprefixer: Replace color-adjust to print-color-adjust. The color-adjust shorthand is currently deprecated.

How to change the theme directory on a WordPress installation

The beauty in WordPress is not only its ecosystem. It’s the ability to customise almost every facet of it using a filter or hook. I had a scenario recently where I wanted to put a web application theme in a less painful directory to access. I wanted a folder called themes in my root directory. Instead of wp-content/themes/my-app-theme I wanted themes/my-app-theme instead. The structure resembles something like this: themes my-app-theme wp-content wp-includes index.php wp-config.php

Thoughts on Bun

Say what you will, but since its introduction in 2009, Node.js has been the undisputed king of server-side Javascript. Created by Ryan Dahl, Node.js had virtually no competition for years. Until recently, the only person to truly challenge Node.js was Ryan Dahl with his runtime Deno that improved upon some of the flaws that Ryan saw in Node.js which that were systematic and difficult to fix. Well, there is a new competitor NOT written by Ryan this time called Bun. Who said 2022 had no surprises left?

Fixing mysqldump unknown table COLUMN_STATISTICS

I am by no means a database guy. I am barely even a server guy. But, recently, I was tasked with exporting a sizeable database from Amazon RDS for use with local development servers. After running the following mysqldump command: mysqldump --host hostname -u username -p dbname > dbdump.sql I am asked for the database password and then proceed to get an error complaining about an unknown table called COLUMN_STATISTICS. Unknown indeed, I had no idea what this table was even for or why mysqldump was trying to query it.

The metaverse is a scam

There’s been a lot of talk about the metaverse over the last year. According to its advocates, it will be a revolutionary new platform that will let us interact with each other in ways we never could before. But is the metaverse all it’s cracked up to be? I’m not so sure. Admittedly, I don’t really know what the metaverse is supposed to be. Is it a virtual world, or is it a social network for VR headsets? Is it a term to describe a bunch of different futuristic concepts? There doesn’t seem to be a clear definition as to what it is even supposed to be. But, everyone is excited nonetheless.

Is your LinkedIn feed predicting a recession?

In my LinkedIn feed of late, I see a lot of layoffs. Most of those layoffs are talent acquisition roles, some development and design, but largely talent acquisition. If you’re not familiar with the role of talent acquisition, it’s a fancy way to describe an internal recruiter, someone who seeks out candidates for a company. Well, Twitter just laid off 30% of its talent acquisition team. While the exact number isn’t known, 30% is quite a sizeable percentage of people to layoff as Twitter is amidst a hiring freeze and cutting back on new hires.

Do Developers Rely Too Much on Frameworks and Libraries?

In recent years, there has been an explosion of front-end development frameworks and libraries. While this has made development more manageable and efficient, it has also led developers to become increasingly reliant on these tools. As a result, when something goes wrong with the library or framework, it can be difficult to determine the source of the problem and fix it. You can cross your fingers and hope someone in a comment on a GitHub issue has a workaround or there is a pull request with a fix. But, I’ve seen how fragile the front-end ecosystem can be when a single library lags behind the updates of other packages it depends on and things can quickly fall apart.

Is Bitcoin prepared for the next financial crisis?

Bitcoin was created as a way to bypass the traditional banking system. But can it survive a financial crisis? Cryptocurrencies are still relatively new and haven’t been tested in a significant financial crisis. If a global recession arose and banks started to fail, would people still trust Bitcoin? Would Bitcoin prove its independence from fiat? Bitcoin is not backed by any government or central bank, which means it is not subject to the same regulations as traditional currencies. This also makes it vulnerable to wild fluctuations in value. In 2013, the price of a Bitcoin went from $13 to over $1,000 in just a few months. And then, just as quickly, the price crashed to $200.

The RBA Pushes Australia One Step Closer to the Edge of Recession With 0.5% Rate Hike

As everyone predicted and expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) just announced a July 2022 rate hike of 0.5%. Taking the official cash rate to 1.3%. In the official statement, Philip Lowe details the decision and an insight into what the RBA believes is causing Australia’s inflation. I’ve bolded some important parts of the announcement we’ll explore. At its meeting today, the Board decided to increase the cash rate target by 50 basis points to 1.35 per cent. It also increased the interest rate on Exchange Settlement balances by 50 basis points to 1.25 per cent.