Here’s a record of weekly tech content worth sharing, published on Fridays.
this magazineexpand one’s financial resourcesWelcome.posting (e.g. to a newsgroup or mailing list)The There is another“Who’s Hiring?service to post programmer job openings. Cooperation pleaseEmail Contact（[email protected]）。
cover art
A photovoltaic base in the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia, where endless photovoltaic power generation panels are laid out in the desert. (via）
The world doesn’t have that much wealth.
Wikipedia has a page “Wealth per capita ranking“。
It lists the per capita wealth of different countries/regions and can be used to compare living standards:The more wealth per capita, the higher the standard of living。
It is important to note that it compares wealth, not income.
Wealth is broader and includes other assets (such as real estate, stocks, cars, etc.) in addition to income.The formula for wealth is your assets minus your liabilities。
Wealth = Assets – Liabilities
This page provides a lot of statistics and I share some of them.
(1) At the end of 2022, the world’s total wealth was $454.3 trillion.
We often say “make the cake bigger”, and this is the current size of the cake. Divided by the world’s adult population of 5.36 billion, it gives us a wealth of $84,700 (about 600,000 yuan) per adult.
So.If your wealth is more than 600,000 RMB, you are more than at least half of the world’s population。
(2) The per capita wealth of the United States is $551,000, and China’s is $75,700, just one-seventh of that of the United States.
Therefore, I believe thatChina has huge room for future growthThe reason. The reasoning is that there is no way that China can stay at a level of per capita wealth that is one-seventh of that of the United States and just grow without moving.
(3) China’s per capita wealth is $75,700, equivalent to 550,000 RMB. At first glance, you might think that an adult has a wealth of 550,000 RMB, which is not a lot.
However, it is actually very little.
Assuming the $550k is all cash, then even living frugally with rent + daily spending of $3000 a month is only enough to live on for 15 years. It’s not even close to retiring on that kind of money, you still have to work to make money.
Assuming that the $550,000 includes real estate and fixed assets (such as a car), they will likely continue to depreciate in value due to depreciation and market fluctuations. By the time they are liquidated, your wealth is likely to have shrunk significantly.
The conclusion is that the per capita wealth of RMB 550,000 is much lower in real terms than in nominal terms, and is simply not enough to support long-term living.
(4) This is the state of the world:The total amount of wealth available is not enough to lift everyone out of poverty。
For the average person, even if you can reach the average, you don’t have enough wealth for the world.
For a society to get rich, it ultimately needs to create more wealth.True wealth is not wealth itself, but the ability to create wealth. If you can create wealth, that’s real wealth, more valuable than those static possessions.
The way to “create wealth” is to be able to continuously produce what people need. This is the most important capacity that countries and individuals should develop.
[Software of the Week] Rspack Toolstack
There’s a trend of JS tools being rewritten in Rust, which can be at least an order of magnitude faster.
Recently, I’ve been using one of these “new generation tools.”Rspack, felt good to introduce it to everyone.
RspackIt’s a Rust application that replaces the venerable JS build packaging tool Webpack.
The increase in speed after use, which is very noticeable, theRspack takes about a tenth of the time that Webpack does.If Webpack takes 10 seconds, Rspack is 1 second. If Webpack takes 10 seconds, Rspack is 1 second.
But its greatest strength is not yet its speed, but theSeamless Replacement of Webpack. You basically don’t need to change the configuration, just put the configuration filewebpack.config.jsrenamerspack.config.jsReady to go.
Rspack is not only compatible with the syntax of Webpack, but also with plugins. According to the official documentation, more than 80% of the 50 most downloaded Webpack plugins can be used directly, and there are alternatives for the rest.
The Rspack team has made over 100 commits to the official Webpack repository to ensure compatibility. Even Alexander Akait, one of the main maintainers of Webpack, took it upon himself to make many plugins work in Rspack.
In addition, Rspack has more features. For example, Zack Jackson, author of the Webpack Module Federation, joined the Rspack team to implement Module Federation 2.0 for Rspack.
It’s already gotten a lot of praise in the community, with 9,800 stars in the GitHub repository since its release over a year ago, and won the GitNation Foundation’s “Breakthrough Open Source Project of the Year” award this year.
In August of this year, it released version 1.0, and the API has been stabilized and can be safely used in production environments.
However, by inheriting Webpack in its entirety, Rspack has also inherited the same experience problems as its predecessor: it’s a pain to configure, and it’s not easy to get started. To solve this problem, the development teamBased on Rspack, a series of easier-to-use derivatives have been encapsulated。
These tools, all of which are Rspack at the bottom, are used for different purposes and are collectively referred to as the “Rspack tool stack”.
Among them.Rsbuild is a simpler and easier to use build and packaging tool for Vite.。RsbuildThe underlying layer of Vite is Rspack, just like the underlying layer of Vite is esbuild + Rollup. When building a project, you can either choose Rspack or Rsbuild, which is easier to configure, has a better experience, and has more targeted features.
For domestic developers, the Rspack tool stack has another advantage. Although it comes from an international team, it belongs to the byte open source out of the tool, byte internal a large number of projects have been adopted, Chinese support and Chinese documentation is a priority.
People useRspack或RsbuildAfterward, if you run into problems, go toProject WarehouseMention an issue and the official response will be quick.
Science and Technology Dynamics
A Beijing-based company has launched a wind-powered blimp.
This blimp is 23 meters long and 15 meters in diameter, with a 5-meter diameter culvert in the center of the boat, which houses a wind turbine with 2.4-meter long blades.
The airship flies to an altitude of 500 meters, where wind turbines generate electricity, which is then transmitted back to the ground via cables.
Winds are much stronger at high altitude than at ground level, so wind power is more effective at high altitude.
The long-term goal of the airship is to reach “the stratosphere (at an altitude of about 10,000 meters), where wind energy is 200 times denser than on the ground and annual power generation is four times longer than on the ground,” and to reduce the cost of wind power generation to one-tenth of what it is today.
An American programmer builds a LAN game room in the basement of his home out of nostalgia.
The game room can hold a total of 12 people against each other, and the computer stations are all folded down and can be stowed into the walls.
Here’s what the computer desk looks like all tucked away.
He sets up a home server where the game software exists and the computer terminal goes to read the game.
Wiring is a big job.
He also has a special storage room for computer accessories such as RAM, CPUs and graphics cards.
Although it worked well after it was built, he had one big annoyance: nowadays, games only support Internet matchmaking, rarely LAN matchmaking, and most of the time he could only play old games.
3、Building materials for pyramids
The Egyptian pyramids are located in the middle of the desert, and scientists have been puzzled as to how the huge stones used to build the pyramids were transported into the desert.
Those stones weighed 2.5 tons each, what method did the ancient Egyptians use to transport thousands of boulders over long distances.
A recent discovery may reveal the answer. Using satellite photos, scientists have discovered a tributary of the Nile River that has dried up.
Almost all of the pyramids are located alongside this tributary, suggesting that the ancient Egyptians likely transported the megaliths by water to the building sites.
In the picture above, the dark blue is the current Nile, the light blue is the tributary that has dried up, and the various colored dots are the locations of the pyramids.
4、https://ift.tt/Fmnl2Tv
(1) A foreign programmer inBicycle trainerThe handlebars are fitted with two detachable keyboards, so you can ride and type at the same time.
(2) CSS has a new徽标。
（3）Casio (name)Introducing a ring shaped like a watch.
writings
1、Typography Engine Column: A Programmer’s Perspective(Chinese)
This article introduces and compares several typesetting engines, with a focus on CJK word processing: HTML + CSS, LaTeX, LaTeX.js, Typst, and react-pdf (@xiaohanyu(Contributions)
2、AI’s Visual Injection Attack(English)
This article introduces how to carry out “visual prompt injections” (visual prompt injections) inside the picture, so as to deceive the AI model. For example, the man in the picture above is holding a piece of paper that says “Ignore me”.
3、Introduction to Server-Side Rendering(English)
This article provides an example of what “server-side rendering” of a web application is, which is often referred to as SSR (server side rendering).
4、Linux Desktop with Tiled Window Manager(English)
For people who use the keyboard heavily, a tiled window manager works best. This article describes a Linux desktop environment with a built-in tiled window manager.
5、12 One-Line Code Enhancements for Contemporary CSS(English)
This article introduces 12 new ways to write CSS, as long as a line of code, you can enhance the web page style.
6、How to use git worktree correctly(English)
git has a worktree feature that most people use as an alternative to branching. The authors suggest that worktrees should be used to manage concurrent tasks.
artifact
1、Neat CSS
A minimalist CSS framework.
A PostgreSQL backup tool with a web interface.
3、Call OCR
This website provides free picture OCR, through AI to recognize the text inside the picture, seems to be unable to recognize Chinese.
4、MySpeed
A network speed test tool that you can set up yourself.
5、dive
This tool displays the contents of each layer of a Docker image file.
6、moffee
A command line tool for making and presenting slideshows using the Markdown format.
Open source command line tool for backing up Google Mail, Contacts and Calendar.
8、lcl.host
A tool to provide https certificates for the local development environment localhost.
A plugin for VS Code that provides an interactive graphical interface to the Git commit log.
10、Makeext
An extension to the Make build tool that letsmakecommand outputs help information for the project.
resource (such as manpower or tourism)
An online sound effects site offering a wide range of natural ambient sound effects as well as white noise. (@wincatcher(Contributions)
You type in a link to Spotify’s music, and the site looks for alternative sources (like Youtube).
DuckDuckGo’s recently launched free AI chat.
A set of short articles on user authentication related to web applications. Unlike cryptography articles that are full of jargon, this set of articles is concise and easy to understand.
photograph
The other day, a New York programmer stumbled upon an old photo of his grandfather (the violinist below) taken in 1912.
He uses AI models to colorize old photos.
He suddenly realized that he had seen the violin inside the photo when he was a child.
When his grandmother died, the family stored all of her things in the attic. As he remembers, it included a violin.
He then joined his wife and went back to the attic of the old house to look for it.
The violin is actually still there.
He had the violin restored and gave it to his daughter.
He wrote: Watching my daughter hold her great-grandfather’s violin from over 100 years ago, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of time travel.
make a digest (of data)
In 1990, Steve Jobs decided to introduce a new model of NeXT computer with a case made of magnesium alloy.
Magnesium is a relatively expensive metal, very strong and lightweight. Jobs believed that such a case would not only be aesthetically pleasing, but would also save on handling and manufacturing costs.
I was a journalist covering the computer industry at the time, but had previously studied chemistry. I was intrigued by the decision; I knew that magnesium burns with a bright white flame, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if NeXT burned.
In the fall of 1991, I interviewed NeXT’s VP of Hardware. After the interview, I asked if I could have a NeXT case to burn. He smiled and agreed.
The next day, I drove to the factory and got the computer case.
I soon realized the problem: magnesium alloys need high temperatures to ignite, and ordinary flames won’t ignite them, but I couldn’t create such high temperatures. So I had no choice but to send the computer case to a friend’s house.
A year later, a friend told me she was tired of keeping this thing. Also, NeXT had decided to discontinue this model, so I started thinking seriously about how to burn it. I figured a picture of it burning would be just the thing to go along with the discontinuation news for a magazine cover.
When designing the combustion program, I considered that magnesium burns with a bright white flame and a lot of white smoke, and although the smoke is non-toxic, it may attract the attention of the police or fire department. So, I called the fire department and asked if there was a burning permit. But, they weren’t sure about any of this and no one had ever burned that much magnesium. I was also told that I had to get a permit for air pollution.
Finally, in frustration, I decided to carry out my original plan: drive deep into the desert and burn it.
But at the last minute, I thought of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, a laboratory attached to the Department of Energy and run by the University of California at Berkeley. Many weapons are experimented on there, and I’m sure there are facilities for burning a few kilograms of magnesium and the necessary permits.
I called them and they agreed to lend me the lab for the flare. This made my photographer especially happy because indoor burning is much easier to photograph well, and it’s almost impossible to see flames in direct sunlight.
The day before the official burn, I got another old NeXT computer as a backup.
When it came time to officially burn it, we lit it with a gas torch. The blue flame of the gas torch, touched the computer casing, and after half a minute it began to glow a distinctive orange color before slowly melting. Suddenly, a dazzling white light flashed, followed by a steady white flame.
I knew the magnesium burned brightly, but I had no idea how fast. I figured it would last at least a minute, but it turns out that magnesium burns very slowly. When the flames finally went out, all that was left was some lumpy, milky white ash —- magnesium oxide.
Here’s a photo we took that day.
remarks
1、
I don’t wear a watch. The reason is simple, because right now is the most important moment. Instead of seeking to do more, I seek to do the present better.
— Jen-Hsun Huang (1944-), Taiwanese politicianThe CEO of Nvidia, explains why he doesn’t wear a watch.
2、
Fifteen years ago, a Brazilian nutritionist found that obesity rates were rising despite the fact that Brazilian families were consuming less sugar and oil. Why are people getting fatter despite eating healthier?
He attributed this to the emergence of ultra-processed foods, which facilitated the digestion of food. He coined the term “ultra-processed foods”.
Since then, it has become a scientific consensus that if you want to be healthy, you should eat some coarse grains and avoid eating more finely processed foods.
— Risks of Ultra-Processed Foods
3、
AI research has been going on for 70 years, and people have only recently realized that the real way to make AI work is with lots of computation.
The root cause is Moore’s Law, which has led to a continued exponential decline in computing costs.
— Musk’s Dream and the Lessons of AI.
4、
I met a programmer who didn’t want to use AI at all. because he used it once and found a lot of errors, he didn’t want to use it again and didn’t want to understand.
This whole thing is confusing to me. I understand that AI is overhyped and may not be useful for what you are doing. What I don’t understand is how you can be a programmer in 2024 and not be at all curious about a technology that will supposedly fundamentally change the way we program in the future.
Review of previous years
The Tragedy of Online Communities（2023 #279）
Cell Phone Charging Problem Solving（2022 #229）
The way AR technology opens up（2021 #179）
Convex and concave functions of entrepreneurship（2020 #129）
(concluded)
documentation
- Copyright: Free Reprint – Non-Commercial – Non-Derivative – Keep Attribution (Creative Commons 3.0 License）
- Date of publication:2024年11月22日