Threads and Old Man's Grumblings About Choice | ✉️ #23

Promotional graphic for MKDEV DISPATCH #23 with illustrated portrait of a person, paper airplane drawings, and text about threads and choices. Promotional graphic for MKDEV DISPATCH #23 with illustrated portrait of a person, paper airplane drawings, and text about threads and choices.

Hey! 👋

So the guys are not here today, you'll have to wait a few weeks for Pablo, Kirill and Leo to come back :)

While they skip an issue, let's think what we can talk about. Have you seen Threads already? It's not in the EU yet, so may be not, but you must have heard some talk about it. While everybody's talking about Twitter and E**n M**k, and the cage fight with the Meta guy (could you believe a few years ago that these will be our news taglines today?), the battle of the platforms seems more fascinating to me.

For now Threads has an algorithmic feed only. You can't just open the app and read the twee--threads from people you've subscribed to. The robots will decide what's fun and interesting for you today. An oldschool feed is in the works, but the idea that you could release such a huge product without it, and everybody being ok if a bit grumpy about this, is so baffling to a non-tech guy who grew up with early days of the Internet and social media around him.

When I was a wee tiny lad, the option to choose the information you consume was for me the thing that made the Internet so eye-opening, educational, fun and all that. My TV won't tell me what to watch! My magazine won't tell me what to think! The agency to choose your sources, your information, how you spend your time, that was lacking in oldschool media felt revolutionary. Since then the pendulum swung back.. a lot.

The consequences of the rise of the decision-making machines in our day to day life are wast and multilayered. Remember the days when your taxi driver had to use their knowledge of the city to drive you from the airport? I'm not the one for sweeping generalizations, and try not to be the one for heavy nostalgia. I do have a Windows 98 skin on my laptop, but that's cosmetics, I try not to let that kind of thinking in with the things that matter. Yet when thinking about algorithmic feeds I feel some kind of generational worry. Information we consume does form the way we think, that we can agree on. How worried should we be entrusting the filtering of this information to a bunch of private companies? Can we befool ourselves to believe that zucks and musks have our best interest in mind?


What We've Shared

A few new videos on our YouTube channel, as per usual.

In the Posts section of mkdev the Helm Lightning Course ends with..


What We've Discovered

  • Implement DNS in a weekend: If you are into this kind of weekend activities, then Julia Evans prepared an exercise to build an entire resolver from scratch. Good thing is that it will be more future proof than Google Domains.

  • Ensuring the Successful Launch of Ads on Netflix: Launching new service at Netflix scale is not an easy task. Reading how they plan such things in advance sparks joy.

  • Kubernetes Sidecars are almost here! Kubernetes Sidecars feature got merged. Read more about it in the KEP, and tell us about your use cases for sidecars!


A few job offerings for you

A DEVOPS ENGINEER and a SENIOR DEVOPS ENGINEER are needed to join a Product Development Team of a digital health organization as soon as possible. It's a remote job, but you will need to be within a reasonable distance from Cologne, Germany to facilitate occasional in-person meetings. Check out the links to find out what the company offers and what it expects from an ideal candidate. Press "I'm interested" on the top of the Job page to apply.


The 24th mkdev dispatch will arrive on Friday, August 4th. See you next time!