Cool Links Vol. 2: August, 2024

Welcome to the second ever edition of Cool Links!

This was kind of a half-month for me, as I went on vacation on the 18th and didn't really read anything worthwhile after that. Still, I was able to find some cool reads below.

As a reminder, Cool Links contains the best things that I've read during the month, not things that were published in the current month. Some of these articles were actually in my "Read Later" list for a while, actually, and I finally got to them.

So, with no further ado, here they are:

Dev

Engineering for slow internet, by brr

In case you don't know this blog, I highly recommend checking other posts out. "brr" is a blog made by an IT worker that worked for a few months in Antarctica, and regularly blogged about some of the unique situations and challenges faced there. They are back home now, and published a post about the challenges faced due to Antarctica's very limited internet access, and how a lot of stuff we take for granted just wasn't usable there.

Makes us think about how much code we ship on our apps and websites. Surely there are ways to make our websites work with less and require less resources to run? We never know who, how and where our users might be.

Dynamic text color contrast based on background lightness with CSS/SVG filters, by miunau

If you've ever worked with CSS variables on a project, you know one of the main challenges is getting color contrast to work correctly. When the background color changes, the text color (which should have high contrast) might not work as well. Often we handle this by having a --color-contrast variable, but this added complexity builds up quickly.

This article goes into an alternative way that uses CSS and SVG filters to let the browser apply the contrast automatically. The CSS-only alternative has a problem with fringing, but the SVG one seems straightforward enough and gets rid of that issue. That's pretty clever!

I assume the main drawback of that approach is that you don't have full control over the text color, so if having an exact color is crucial to you, then you're still stuck with hardcoding color variables.

GitHub Profile Roaster

Generative AI has a lot of problems, but it's really good at creating some fun stuff. This tool asks for a GitHub profile handle and roasts it, using public data from your profile and your public repos. It's surprisingly good at it... and it might get your feelings hurt.

Here's a bit of what it says about mine:

Your website might be “lightweight,” but it seems like the only thing lighter is the impact of your contributions. If I wanted to stumble upon such “high-quality” work, I’d check out my toddler’s finger painting. Keep swinging that magic wand, maybe one day you'll code something that doesn't make people cringe!

I'm okay, I promise 🥲 ...

Tech

Is this the slow decline of the Apple “cult”?, by Matt Birchler

This great article goes into how Apple went from being kind of an underdog to becoming the biggest company in the world, and how that made its loyal fans from back in the 2000s kinda loathe the company nowadays, with its greedy actions and overall abuse of market power.

I never had access to any Apple products until ~4 years ago, so I never really got caught in the Apple hype train. Still, that's what I mostly use nowadays and while I like their products, it's really hard to have any kind of sympathy for them (which is honestly okay; companies should never be your friends). So, it's nice reading what someone that was in that hype train feels about all the negative Apple news that are all around us all the time.

Mental Health

The Baseline: How to Create Long-Term Happiness, by Jason Lengstorf

This fantastic article talks about how we're often chasing down big goals as a form of reaching happiness, but those big highs often come with big lows right after. What if we aim to make the baseline higher instead of reaching higher highs all the time?

It kinda goes along with what I wrote about longterm goals a few months ago. Not to brag, but I think that article came out really great ;)

Why we should embrace being average, by Matthew Syed

I read the Brazilian Portuguese version of this article, and it kind of goes into the same idea as the last one. It talks about how perfectionism can be harmful to one's self-esteem and how accepting being average allows us to try more things and to live life to the fullest. Perfectionism has nothing to do with achieving success, only with avoiding doing things we're afraid of not being good at.

Wrapping Up

I hope you enjoyed this month's selection of Cool Links. See you next month!