Microsoft Apology Tour, Fowler's Microservices Warning, ripgrep at 10 #617
Description
Microsoft promises to stop hitting you, Fowler explains why you shouldn't distribute objects, and Opera gets nostalgic
Highlights
- Windows 11: Microsoft's 7-point apology tour after 4 years of abuse
- Ripgrep: The 2016 article that launched a thousand terminal workflows
- Microservices: Fowler's 2014 warning aged like fine wine
Microsoft's "Fix" for Windows 11: Flowers After the Beating
92 points • 57 comments
Microsoft spent 4 years stuffing Windows 11 with ads, forced Copilot integrations, and bloatware. Now they announced a 7-point plan to 'fix' it. The author compares it to an abusive relationship: they beat you, then show up with flowers. The worst offenses (forced Microsoft accounts, telemetry that lies about being disabled, OneDrive auto-syncing your files) aren't even in the repair plan.
Take: Microsoft could literally ship malware and call the uninstaller a 'customer experience improvement'. The fact that 'fewer ads' is supposed to impress anyone shows how completely they've lowered the bar.
Opera: Rewind The Web to 1996 (Opera at 30)
51 points • 30 comments
Opera celebrates its 30th anniversary with an interactive web experience letting you explore artifacts from 1995 to 2025. The site includes music, sound effects, and voiceovers as you journey through 30 years of web history.
Take: Nostalgic marketing from a browser that sold its soul to a Chinese company running predatory lending apps. The irony of celebrating web history while being a footnote in it is chef's kiss.
Log File Viewer for the Terminal
145 points • 20 comments
lnav is an advanced log file viewer for the terminal that auto-detects file formats, decompresses files on the fly, and lets you merge, tail, search, filter and query logs. First commit was September 2009.
Take: Fifteen years of development on a log viewer. Meanwhile, most of us are still doing tail -f | grep. The commitment to solving a 'boring' problem well is genuinely admirable.
Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016)
50 points • 23 comments
The 2016 blog post that introduced ripgrep, a Rust-based search tool that combines the usability of The Silver Searcher with the performance of GNU grep. Through 25 benchmarks, burntsushi proved ripgrep was the fastest while having proper Unicode support.
Take: This article single-handedly changed how an entire generation of developers searches code. Burntsushi spent 2.5 years on text search 'in his free time' which is either dedication or insanity. Possibly both.
Microservices and the First Law of Distributed Objects (2014)
22 points • 16 comments
Fowler explains why his 'First Law of Distributed Objects' (don't distribute your objects) doesn't contradict microservices. But he warns: distribution is a complexity booster, and pushing complexity into interconnections makes it harder to debug. His default is still to prefer monoliths.
Take: Written in 2014 and still the most sensible take on microservices. Everyone read the first half ('microservices are okay') and ignored the second half ('but seriously, consider a monolith first'). Ten years of distributed system debugging later, we're finally listening.