Friday Blast #69
The Netflix Problem #youtube (2019) - a Vlog type link this time, but an interesting analysis of this space. Basically every big movie producing company has been building their own streaming platform lately. Which has caused a fragmentation of content much like in the days of ‘yore when movie companies also owned the cinemas. The author posits this is not a sustainable thing and points to the increase of piracy after years of decline as an leading indicator of this thing. It’s an interesting space for me, as I’ve always had a side-interest in the media business. But also because I like Netflix as a tech company. I’ll try to write a bit more about this, cause the video itself didn’t address all that’s happening in this space IMO.
How SQL database engines work #youtube (2012) - a quite old video on the innards of SQL DB engines, from the author of SQLite. All the back-and-forth between DB people in the room is really interesting. Nothing spectacular here, but it might be interesting if you’ve ever wondered what happens after SQL.
10 things I regret about node.js #youtube (2018) - it’s pretty rare we get such talks and this was was realy high on techyaks as a result. Every technology has it’s flaws and rough edges. It’s refreshing to acknowledge them and even more so to dedicate a big talk to all the things the author themselves considers mistakes. The one about ignoring the strong isolation of the browser and just allowing anything to run with user privileges was really interesting to me. Hadn’t considered it but now that I do I think every language should be like that. And it would make the life of JSBin and others much easier.
The curse of the data lake monster (2019) - a retrospective of sorts of how to build “data lakes”. The authors advocate for an incremental and business driven evolution of such a system. Rather than a big-bang project which isn’t linked to any business reality. And which will slow things down in the end.