tl;dr in tech - Issue #81

How To Store Your App’s Entire State In The URL

By: Scott Antipa

tl;dr: In this post, Scott Antipa discusses the benefits of storing an app’s entire state in the URL. By doing so, users can easily share and bookmark links, and have control over their data. Scott shares the steps he took to implement this feature in his app, including serializing the app state into a JSON object, encoding the JSON object in base64, and storing it in the URL. He also includes some tips and tricks for working with URL-based state, such as being mindful of URL length limits.

You Want Modules, Not Microservices

By: Ted Neward

tl;dr: Ted explores the concept of microservices, arguing that there’s a mismatch between what they promise and what they actually deliver. He suggests looking into modules instead.

Rust Is A Scalable Language

By: Alex Kladov

tl;dr: Alex highlights Rust’s vertical scalability, which allows for the creation of all kinds of software, and its horizontal scalability, which enables the easy parallelization of large software artifacts across multiple people and teams.

Logging Practices I Follow

By: Eliran Turgeman

tl;dr: Eliran shares his best practices for logging. He believes that logging is an essential part of software development, as it helps with debugging, performance monitoring, and providing insight into how users are interacting with the application. Eliran shares tips for what to log, how to log it, and how to avoid common pitfalls such as over-logging, logging sensitive information, or logging too little information. By following these practices, Eliran believes that developers can create more effective and efficient logging systems.

I Scanned Every Package On PyPi And Found 57 Live AWS Keys

By: Tom Forbes

tl;dr: Tom shares his experience of scanning PyPi to find live AWS keys. Tom built a tool that automatically scans all new PyPi releases to notify AWS of potentially leaked keys. He also shares some analysis of the keys he found and draws some conclusions at the end. Tom recommends that developers use services such as AWS IAM roles and AWS Secrets Manager to better manage their access keys.

Reverse Engineering TikTok’s VM Obfuscation (Part 1)

By: Ibiyemi Abiodun

tl;dr: Ibiyemi discusses his experience of reverse engineering TikTok’s VM obfuscation. The platform has implemented various methods to make it difficult for reverse-engineers to understand exactly what data is being collected and how it is being used. Ibiyemi analyzes the call stack of a request made on TikTok to begin to paint the picture of what data is being collected and how. This is part one of a multi-part series, and Ibiyemi plans to continue exploring this topic further.

8 Hard Truths I Learned When I Got Laid Off From My SWE Job

By: Steven Buccini

tl;dr: Steven shares eight hard truths he learned when he got laid off from his software engineering job. Steven explains that getting laid off is a profoundly lonely experience and that it can take longer than you think to find a new job. He also shares some tips on how to handle interview invites, offers for help, and honesty during the job search. Steven believes that getting laid off can be a valuable learning experience, and that you can learn more from getting laid off than you did at your job.