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What's up nerds? I'm

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Jared and this is Change Log

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News for the week of Monday,

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February 19th, 2024. Our

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much anticipated Ship It reboot has

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launched its first episode and early

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reviews are positive to say the

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least. Very

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good start on Ship It 2.0, posted Lars. Thomas

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writes, Justin and Autumn are a

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fantastic pair. And

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Conrad says, quite cool first episode

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and happy to see Ship It continue. Give

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it a listen for yourself at shipit.show.

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Okay let's get into the news. In

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a piece titled Quantum Computing's

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Hard, Cold Reality Check, IEEE

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Spectrum lays out the bear

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case for near-term quantum computing

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applications, some of which

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has been hype-driven. Surprised? Quote,

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some of the more ambitious timelines

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proposed by quantum computing companies have

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suggested these machines could be impacting

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real-world problems in just a handful

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of years, but there's

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growing pushback against what many

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see as unrealistic expectations for

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the technology. End quote. While

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being overall pessimistic, the article

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also quotes folks who are

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more optimistic about it, I

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guess we can add quantum

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computing to the list alongside

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cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles, genitive AI,

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and more, of computing

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endeavors with smart people on

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either side debating their validity,

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timeliness, and long-term effects on

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the human race. Me? I'm

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not holding my breath. Or my qubits. On

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a post to the Nginx mailing

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list, Maxime Downer. announced

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a fork of the massively popular

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web server that lives at free

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nginx.org. Maxim is one of the

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earliest and still most active nginx

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contributors who worked for f5 after

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they acquired nginx inc in 2019.

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there's a lot of history

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here which ours Technica covers

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quite well link in the

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newsletter here's what Maxim says

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about the fork quote unfortunately

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some new non-technical management at

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f5 recently decided that they know

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better how to run open source projects

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in particular they decided to

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interfere with security policy nginx uses

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for years ignoring both the policy

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and developers position as such starting

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from today I will no longer

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participate in nginx development as run

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by f5 instead

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I'm starting an alternative project which

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is going to be run by

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developers and not corporate entities end

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quote the free in

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free nginx for Maxim isn't free as

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in libre neither is it free as

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in beer it is free

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as in free from arbitrary corporate

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actions Nadia previously

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Ekbal now asparahova goes deep

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on AI and the effective

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acceleration is a movement which

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is abbreviated E slash ACC

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and pronounced EAC which I

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learned from Nadia's piece which

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also says quote artificial intelligence

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is a rare domain where

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technologists themselves are being proactively

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cautious about their own power

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before any demonstrable harm has

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been done the moral panic

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now comes from within a

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stark deviation from how technological

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revolutions historically influenced society end

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quote I've been reading Nadia's

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writing for a long time and I find

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it to be deep easily consumed and thought-provoking

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regardless of her subject here's another quote which

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will hopefully intrigue you enough to read it

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for yourself it was the tech backlash of

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the 2010s that tore a hole through

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text image as it previously saw itself

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A burgeoning industry composed of startups and

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their financiers whose members would grind away

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writing code on their Macbooks and attending

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white combinators' demo days whose hardest decision

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every year was whether to go to

4:11

Burning Man. Though a founder's

4:13

life was filled with highs and lows, the

4:15

cycle of tech seemed stable and predictable. Most

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importantly, tech was beloved by the

4:21

outside world who gleefully consumed stories

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of young founders and their mythical

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overnight successes. What went wrong?

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more time, neo4j.com/developer.

5:27

Angie Byron, a long-time member of the

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Drupal community and a lovely person, who

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we've had the pleasure of knowing a

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little bit around here, writes up some

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advice on how to get started in

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open source. This is a great primer

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for anybody on the subject matter. Here's

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her high-level bullet points you can click

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through for the details. Link in

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the newsletter. Start with

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your interests. Find a

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welcoming project. Community

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before code. And 4. Start

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with the docs. On that

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last point, Angie says this, which is

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so true. somebody should put it on

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a billboard or a t-shirt or something. Quote,

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you might not know it yet, but as a

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newcomer to an open source project, you have this

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amazing superpower. You are oftentimes

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the only one in that whole

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project capable of reading the documentation

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through new eyes. Because I

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can guarantee the people who wrote that

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documentation are not new. Miroslav

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Nikolov knows the cost of

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a refactoring gone wrong. So

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he took some time to lay out

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the risks and how you can effectively

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address them and give some solid advice

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on whether or not you should refactor.

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Here's four pieces of advice with caveats.

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One, refactor if things are getting

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too complicated, but stop if you

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can't prove it works. Two,

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accompany new features with refactoring for areas you

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foresee to be subject to a change, but

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copy-pasting is okay until patterns

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arise. Three, be proactive

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in finding new ways to ensure

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refactoring predictability, but be conservative

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about the assumption QA will find all the

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bugs. Four, move

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business logic out of busy components, but

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be brave enough to keep the legacy

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code intact if the only

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argument is this code looks wrong. That

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is the news for now. Have a great week.

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Tell your friends about changelog news if you dig

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it, and I'll talk to you again real soon.

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Thank you.