Issue 008 -- Blog and Weekly

A popular check-in spot near the Sanqiaodong area in Chongqing. I went to have a look and took a photo.

>> Topics to Discuss

Blog and Weekly Digest

I haven't published a blog post in a long time; the last one was around April. It's not that I don't want to write, but I find that there's less and less to share. Back when I was job hunting and had just graduated, I focused on technical content, so there was a lot to share.

Now, I'm more focused on reading articles written by others and catching up on news. I haven't delved deeply into technical topics, nor do I have the time or motivation to do so, which means there's less to share.

However, the weekly digest is different. For me, it records what I see and hear each week. It can be some thoughts, like what you're reading now, or some useful resources to satisfy my collection habit (and to avoid not finding them when I need them next time). It can also serve as a navigation site, or some interesting memes to keep happy memories, as well as a list of articles that might gather dust but could be the solution to a problem someday.

In short, I believe it's important to maintain communication with the outside world. After reading news and technical articles each day, sharing your own insights once helps achieve a material exchange with the outside world. Whether it's a blog, a weekly digest, deep thinking, or shallow understanding, it's all good. Once you share it, it belongs to you.

>> Must Read

GPT-4o mini Model

Claimed to be the most cost-effective small model.

• GPT-4o mini scores 82% on MMLU and currently outperforms GPT-4 in chat preferences on the LMSYS leaderboard.
• It costs 15 cents per million input tokens and 60 cents per million output tokens, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than previous frontier models and over 60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo.

GPT-4o mini's low cost and latency make a wide range of tasks possible, such as applications calling multiple models in chains or parallel (e.g., calling multiple APIs), passing large contexts to the model (e.g., entire codebases or conversation histories), or interacting with customers through quick, real-time text responses (e.g., customer support chatbots).

International Blue Screen Day

Recently, Windows computers experienced a massive global crash (blue screen), reportedly caused by a security software issue.

This teaches us a lesson: your mistakes will never be bigger than Microsoft's. Embrace your imperfect self. 😀

Google Short URL Service Shutting Down

After Google stopped generating new goo.gl URLs in March 2019, these links will cease to work on August 25, 2025.

When https://goo.gl/* stops working, it will have been over six years since new links were created. On August 25, 2025, "these URLs will no longer return a response" (404).

This is why many people prefer self-hosted open-source software: partly because they worry about unreliable services and the hassle of migration when the time comes.

>> Useful Tools

Infinitegrid - Easily Implement Various Layouts

Advantages:

1. Written in TypeScript
2. Rich API for customizing InfiniteGrid and plugins
3. Supports IE9+
4. Only displays visible DOM elements to improve performance
5. Asynchronous data addition and sequential rendering
6. Placeholder support

(This could save a lot of time when creating a photography collection website.)

Repository of Free Commercial-Use Chinese Fonts

Free commercial use is very important, whether you're using subtitles for videos, custom fonts for websites, or fonts for brand logos. If they are not commercially usable, you can't use them directly and must purchase a license.

This repository currently collects 691 free commercial-use fonts!

Pintree: Create Bookmark Navigation Sites with One Click

Pintree is an open-source project that aims to export browser bookmarks into navigation websites. With a few simple steps, you can convert bookmarks into a beautiful and user-friendly navigation page.

• Export browser bookmarks
• Convert the bookmark file to JSON format
• Generate a static navigation website

Trend Chart in Fonts

Embed trend charts into fonts 🤯

With fonts, you can adjust color, background, thickness, width, and size. There should be many ways to play with this.

(I've seen large language models embedded into fonts before, and now there's one for trend charts. The variety in font files is truly amazing. 🤯)

Powerful HTTP Client for Terminal - Posting

A powerful HTTP client (like Postman) that you can use in your terminal.

A TUI application that can be used over SSH, enabling an efficient keyboard-centric workflow. Requests are stored locally in YAML files, easy to read and version control.

Advantages:

1. "Jump mode" navigation
2. Auto-completion for environment/variable systems
3. Syntax highlighting based on tree dependencies
4. Vim keys
5. Various built-in themes
6. Configuration system
7. "Open in $EDITOR"
8. Command palette for quick access to functions

Add Cool Animated Icons to Your README

A collection of fun GIF animations:

>> Interesting Finds

Blue Screen While Writing About Blue Screens

While writing the above section on International Blue Screen Day, my computer also blue-screened:

AI-Generated Ink Paintings Are Popular Overseas

>> Worth Reading

5 Reasons Why Your Side Projects Fail to Make Money

① Not Giving It a Shot

Fear of failure often prevents us from taking the first step. Don't let this fear stop you! Trying and failing is better than not trying at all.

When you have an idea for a side project, just go for it! Let your curiosity and passion drive you, and don't let the fear of failure hold you back. Fail and learn from your mistakes, over and over again—that's the best way to grow.

② Wrong Idea

A common trap in side projects is rushing the idea process. A thorough brainstorming process is crucial to ensuring the feasibility of your idea.

1. Validate your idea: You need some assurance that there is market demand.
2. Ensure your idea solves a problem.
3. Evaluate your resources: Do you have the skills, time, and funds needed to turn your idea into a business?

③ Endless Building

The pursuit of perfection often leads to endless tweaking and delays. Remember, "done is better than perfect." Completing your project and getting it out there is crucial. If no one sees your project, it's just an idea.

④ Lack of Feedback

Start by testing your product with a small group of users. These users can be a group of friends, family, or even a dedicated focus group. Their feedback is invaluable for identifying any issues or areas for improvement.

⑤ Low-Key Launch

You've built it, now what? It's time to show it to the world. However, remember that timing is key. If you do a low-key and poorly planned launch, you won't get the users you need (and won't make any money).

Choose the right platforms: Reddit, Dev Hunt, Product Hunt, and Hacker News (YC), etc.

Sonnet 3.5 for Coding 😍 - System Prompt

Learn how to write prompts:

You are an expert in Web development, including CSS, JavaScript, React, Tailwind, Node.JS and Hugo / Markdown. You are expert at selecting and choosing the best tools, and doing your utmost to avoid unnecessary duplication and complexity.

When making a suggestion, you break things down in to discrete changes, and suggest a small test after each stage to make sure things are on the right track.

Produce code to illustrate examples, or when directed to in the conversation. If you can answer without code, that is preferred, and you will be asked to elaborate if it is required.

Before writing or suggesting code, you conduct a deep-dive review of the existing code and describe how it works between <CODE_REVIEW> tags. Once you have completed the review, you produce a careful plan for the change in <PLANNING> tags. Pay attention to variable names and string literals - when reproducing code make sure that these do not change unless necessary or directed. If naming something by convention surround in double colons and in ::UPPERCASE::.

Finally, you produce correct outputs that provide the right balance between solving the immediate problem and remaining generic and flexible.

You always ask for clarifications if anything is unclear or ambiguous. You stop to discuss trade-offs and implementation options if there are choices to make.

It is important that you follow this approach, and do your best to teach your interlocutor about making effective decisions. You avoid apologising unnecessarily, and review the conversation to never repeat earlier mistakes.

You are keenly aware of security, and make sure at every step that we don't do anything that could compromise data or introduce new vulnerabilities. Whenever there is a potential security risk (e.g. input handling, authentication management) you will do an additional review, showing your reasoning between <SECURITY_REVIEW> tags.

Finally, it is important that everything produced is operationally sound. We consider how to host, manage, monitor and maintain our solutions. You consider operational concerns at every step, and highlight them where they are relevant.

The Unemployed Pretending to Work

Cosmic Simulation Reveals How Black Holes Grow

Rust in File Systems

Overstreet said he had been involved in too many two-week bug hunts and had been looking for ways to avoid such issues for bcachefs. The Rust language offers more capabilities than C; it eliminates undefined behavior and provides tools to see what is happening inside the code. "If you can't see what's happening, you can't debug it." He believes that with Rust, kernel development "will become much easier over the next few decades." It will be possible to prove the correctness of code written in Rust, meaning that bugs that can block feature development will become less common.

Whenever I see articles like this, I want to learn Rust. Rust is amazing, but I have no use for it anywhere, and I forget it as soon as I learn it! 😡

The Magic of Clip-Path

An in-depth look at clip-path and some cool things you can do with it. Once you read this, you'll start seeing this CSS property being widely used.

Copilot Moments

Completing sequences that need to be written manually is very convenient; I've deeply experienced this!

How to Make a Complex Chrome Extension

This guide will show you the essentials of building a fully functional Chrome extension using real examples from the Evil Martians casebook! We'll also share some other useful tips and cool recommendations.