Books

• Absolute OpenBSD. Unix for the PracticalParanoid (Michael W. Lucas) - an extensive guide to OpenBSD. It covers the basics of the system as well as some more advanced topics for sysadmins in general. It’s very lightly written and it reads just like a fiction book. Even though this edition was published almost 9 years ago, the differences with the current state of the system are easily coverable with manual pages. This is great evidence of how mature and stable OpenBSD is.

Articles

• Google Search is Dying - thoughts on the declining quality of search results served by Google, with some indications of the reasons. The most important point is the fact that the content authors try to game the Google mechanism to position their sites as high as possible for better monetization. As a result, the valuable results sunk in the sea of AI-generated and SEO-optimized texts.
• Reddit can’t build a better search engine - a response to the previous article. This text counters the claim, that Reddit should build a better alternative to Google. According to the author, every attempt to build yet another search site will fail. The failure would be caused by the very same reason Google search is declining: the need to monetize the service and generate revenue.
• Comfort of Bloated Web - the author shares the feedback regarding the comment form on his blog. Some users complained that the comment form did not work properly because… the comment was registered too fast. The site is statically generated and the comment input just saves the message in the file on the server for the author to review. This makes it operate extremely quickly. Apparently, this confused some of the readers who are accustomed to “modern”, slow web pages which take seconds to load and respond.
• The Tao of Acme - this article presents the main concepts that lie behind the design of Acme, the main editor for the Plan9 operating system. In general, I do not agree with the main concepts of this editor, like extensive use of mouse and ditching the monospace fonts. However, the overall simplicity and the way it integrates with the surrounding operating system is what appeals to me and is something that I will probably seek in the editor I use on the daily basis. You may expect some updates on this matter on the blog sometime in the future, as I have already taken some steps.
• How I program without syntax highlighting - the author shares his thoughts on the syntax highligthing in the editor. The text emphasizes that the feature is in fact covering deficiencies of the codebase we write. When a programmer reads non-highlighted code, they put more effort into understanding the code itself. Also, “the ugly parts” are sometimes hidden and not as visible. Finally, disabling the highlighter covers all languages, even those that are not yet created, while the highlighting needs the instructions to be provided.