July 2020
Welcome to ISSUE #31 of the Overflow! This newsletter is by developers, for developers, written and curated by the Stack Overflow team and Cassidy Williams at Netlify. This week, we're chatting about diversity at Stack Overflow, wondering whether it's wise to use your face as a password, and exploring the origin story of the mysterious hero called CSS.
From the blog
Tales from documentation: Write for your clueless users stackoverflow.blog When you're documenting anything technical, it's easy to forget what it's like being ignorant of how the software works, especially if you built the thing.
Podcast 252: a conversation on diversity and representationstackoverflow.blog We chat with the co-chairs of Stack Overflow’s Black and Brown affinity group about the company’s plans for improving diversity and inclusion.
A Video Series for DevOps teams, by DevOps teams promotion Cloud migration has its benefits. But it’s also loaded with challenges. DevOps teams know this all too well. Hear members of the community get candid about the issues that matter most. Watch #LetsTalkCloud
Interesting questions
Found a good question or answer? Tweet us with the hashtag #StackOverflowKnows or email us at stackoverflowknows@stackoverflow.com. We’ll include our favorites in the future.
Can the original file get corrupted during copying?superuser.com “Yes, but it’s more likely that you get struck by lightning while being bitten by a shark.”
Could you reverse engineer silicon just by looking at it?retrocomputing.stackexchange.com There might be something like this in one of the Terminator movies
What is an efficient way to remove half of the duplicate items in a list?stackoverflow.com Try using the "eenie, meenie, mynie, moe" algorithm.
How can we eliminate passwords given the problems with biometric authentication? security.stackexchange.com Changing your password is easier than changing your face. For now.
Links from around the web
Ask an expert: Why is CSS . . . the way it is?increment.com This is a really interesting look at CSS's humble beginnings and how they led to where the language is today.
You've only added two lines - why did that take two days?mrlacey.com We've all been there. You work for days on a single issue, and your PR is teeny tiny. Here's a good short essay on why lines of code are not necessarily equivalent to effort nor value!
Rethinking web apps in Rustdev.to Everyone is loving Rust nowadays (just look at the State of the Developer survey results!). Here's an interesting article about how to re-think web frameworks and apps with Rust.
We need more inclusive web performance metrics filamentgroup.com Folks want to build amazingly performant applications, but there are accessibility shortcomings that often come with that! In this article, Scott Jehl calls for the creation of new metrics that include performance with assistive technologies in mind.
Mystery over universe's expansion deepens with fresh data nature.com Space pretty much emcompasses the concept of "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know."