Links for 2020-05-11

iPad Mouse, Organizing Events, Website Privacy Concerns, Careful With Whom You Work For (Like Tim Bray), Deleting Online Accounts Howto, Reducing Rust Binaries, History of systemd, Reopening The Economy.

How Apple reinvented the cursor for iPad

Ignore the pretentious title for a second and check the animations. "Reinvented" may be a bit too much, but you have to give it to Apple for coming with something actually different for cursor.

I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing comes to Linux in a few years.

RustFest - organization was the best. Also rhymes.

I'm sort-of part of the organization of the next PythonBrasil (the Brazilian version of PyCon) and this is one hell of a report about the organization of it. Lots of tips on how to properly organize an event.

How to fix the broken web as a site owner and web developer

I won't lie that the cynical in me reads this and thinks "This is cute".

Sure, explaining how to make a good, GDPR and privacy compliant site is possible, but we can't ignore the problem of "Why?" You put some tracking code and boom, information about the source of searches, where people visiting your website are coming from, how long they stay in the site; and then you put another tracking code and boom, those clicks become money (very little, but hey, it's money, nonetheless); and then you put 30 of those tracking codes and boom, lots of little money coming in.

The only way to remove make people with websites to remove those is to kill the incentives; telling them "that's not nice" won't prevent anything.

We are complicit in our employer's deeds

I disagree with Drew in a lot of points -- specially on things that I like he doesn't, and probably 'cause I talk the same things about the things I don't like -- but I have to agree with this: We are. If we work for a company that does something "morally wrong", even if that's not illegal, then we are complicity with it. It doesn't matter if you take care of some "customer support" group and the company does collect information from a lot of people and, thus, you're not working on this bad thing, so you're good. As Drew puts, you're using the "Nuremberg Defense" (basically, "I'm just following orders).

Bonus points: The post is actually Drew's thoughts on Tim Brays post about him leaving Amazon due the firing of people complaining about the COVID-19 actions of the company. Tim was working on the Tech side of Amazon and was not related to the warehouse control and still he left the company.

Of course, Tim has enough political power to quit the company and write a letter saying "The company I just left was doing something morally wrong" and not suffer any huge consequences -- I bet if I pointed some morally debatable things some of the companies I previously work for I'd be sued out of the pants I'm wearing but I have to ask this: Do we want to live in a world were pointing wrong stuff is punishable?

JustDeleteMe

A directory of tips on how to delete your account on several different websites. If you're unsure about the privacy measures one site takes with your data and you're worried about what they can use to it (and remember, some still collect information about you even if you don't access them directly anymore), and you can't actually figure out how to delete your account (Facebook is notorious about this), here's your chance to remove that account.

Reducing the size of a Rust GStreamer plugin

Languages generating static binaries are all in rage these days and Rust is one of those. But actually, there is a lot that can be done to reduce the binary size without losing all the safety measures the compiler takes when generating said binary.

And while you may not be creating GStreamer plugins, a lot discussed here can be used for any binaries.

systemd, 10 years later: a historical and technical retrospective

Wow, a very long, very explicative discussion about the raise of systemd.

To Safely Reopen, Make the Workweek Shorter. Then Keep It Shorter.

One of those things that seem so obvious that you have to wonder "Why I didn't think about this before?"

We heard about the tales of Microsoft Japan reducing the working days and keeping productivity and now we have this virus floating around that's moving people to work from home and then someone actually made the connection and suggested that we could put both together and just reopen things using this 4 day thingy.

Honestly, it sounds good 'cause I can work from home. How that would affect people that can't is something that needs to be checked.

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