Welcome to ISSUE #56 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 say farewell to Winterbash 2020, look for evidence that a program is being emulated, and create a chess AI that matches the skill of a player instead of just beating them.
From the blog
Ciao Winter Bash 2020! stackoverflow.blog Winter Bash 2020 has come to an end. While we’re packing the hats away for next year, let’s take a look at some of the community contributors that brought a smile to our faces.
Open source has a funding problem stackoverflow.blog Relying on volunteers to maintain every open source project isn’t long term sustainable. We explore some ideas for funding development to keep these projects moving.
Podcast 302: Programming in PowerPoint can teach you a few things stackoverflow.blog Is frontend the domain of artists, while backend becomes increasingly commoditized? Not so fast, says the API.
Webinar: A Guide to Cloud-Native Continuous Delivery promotion Join expert presenters from the DevOps Institute and AWS to learn how to navigate through the challenges of adopting cloud-native Continuous Delivery. You’ll take away best practices for streamlining the delivery of container-based applications.
Interesting questions
How to detect a real Commodore 64, THEC64, or VICE emulator in software? retrocomputing.stackexchange.com What if [dramatic pause] we are all just living in an emulator?
Is there a theoretical possibility of having a full computer on a silicon wafer instead of a motherboard? electronics.stackexchange.com There’s a reason that you don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
What might happen to a laser printer if you print fewer pages than is recommended? superuser.com You’ll save money on buying toner cartridges, for one.
Why is email often used as the ultimate verification? security.stackexchange.com “Email is used for the same reasons Social Security Numbers get reused as account identifiers in the US: Ubiquity.”
Links from around the web
How to run VS Code as a container for remote development dev.to Getting up and running with containers is an essential skill to understand as remote work becomes more and more of the norm. Here’s how to run one right from your editor.
An engineering argument for basic income scottsantens.com This is a passionate, interesting perspective on universal basic income from an engineer’s perspective.
The human side of AI for chess www.microsoft.com It’s no secret that artificial intelligence researchers have “beaten” games like chess and go with bots that learn against themselves. Here’s a great write up for a different angle: setting up AI players to match its skill to its human opponent.
Super optimized static sites jacobdoescode.com Jekyll is a whopping 12 years old now and still works well, but does show its age in some places. Here’s a fun project showing its templating being re-implemented in React.
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