Took some time to visit MiRONAFT Fablab with Sergey Kovtun who guided us around multiple the space.

This is the biggest open laboratory in Ukraine with an area of 1300 sq.m!

It has all the types of equipment I could imagine one may need — 3d-printers and scanners, hand and power tools, soldering workplaces complete with soldering stations, oscilloscopes and signal generators, CNC mills and lathes, laser engraver, cutters, you name it.

They partner with numerous industrial producers that provided two robotic arms, industrial welding robot, conveyor belts, compressed air and hydraulics educational platforms.

The place is full of enthusiast and hacker vibe and run mostly by students who are eager to make stuff.

I was so stunned with the location, that I have barely taken any photos.

A couple links I found interesting this month:

• iHateRegex
• No Free Plan
• Making videos with React
• User Engagement is code for Addiction
• I miss my bar
• Monolith First by Martin Fowler
• My personal data liberation infrastructure – how a privacy-concerned engineer works around to collect his data from web

Infosec:

• Hacker increased chemical level at Oldsmar’s city water system

An older video about “physical hacking”:

Here are some more links from January:

• How I stole the data in millions of people’s Google accounts
• Slack clone using React Native, expo and Getstream
• Muscle Wiki – select a muscle to see exercises to develop it

Videos:

Some more interesting links I found this month:

• waldian – wall-hanging sound and light sculpture
• reactotron – ultimate Redux helper tool for developing on mobile
• A 1020-year old shop in Kyoto
• Collection of OS and other GUIs screenshots
• This Website is valid JSON
• Cameras and Lenses – interactive in-depth explanation how cameras work
• Shitlist-driven development (circa 2016)
• Google Analytics Opt-Out browser extension
• Jet-powered VW Beetle for sale
• Official Apple Developer Downloads — in case AppStore downloads 12Gb of Xcode for too long.
• What happens when you type google.com in a browser — ages old interview question gets explored

Videos:

Ultimate Computer Mouse 🤘

I prerecorded myself in video meetings for a week (and nobody knew)

Prior to wedding with my lovely wife, I have created a React/Firebase family wish list, so relatives and friends could choose some gifts.

It was the most basic React to-do app that stored items on Firebase, which provided the reactivity to all clients (so in case two people visited the page at the same time, choosing the same gift was quite improbable).

At some point I decided to move adding new items to a mobile app. It was more as an experiment with React Native, rather than a security concern. So another pretty basic to-do list was created. I copied most logic over from web version, and in total created maybe 3 files. Also I only built it for Android. Didn’t really renewing Apple developer license weekly for an app that I barely use most of the time.

...

Fast forward 3 years, and I want to add a couple smaller features, refactor some if-conditions with router, etc.

By this time I have upgraded Android Studio on my machine, along with some of its build tools. I have very surface knowledge of mobile build pipeline and how all of the components interact. Also React Native app creator adds quite an opaque layer on top of it — I never had to configure any of those build scenarios.

So in short I created a new project with react-native CLI and copied old files over.
Thankfully my project is very small and I only had to update a couple of things in the components for it to work.

Together with this I created a Github actions workflow, so I don’t stuck with building this in future.

React Native looks much more unified for both iOS and Android now than 3 years ago, so it’s a plus.

When I joined DI.FM two years ago, it was my first completely remote work. I had some misconceptions and prejudices about it, but still wanted to try.

A lot of has changed since then, and this month I went on to join Wildix. I started and will continue as a remote developer, occasionally working at office.

Yesterday I worked in the office, and felt elation. I got a warm welcome, though there were only a few people at the time. It was nice to meet and talk with my coworkers in person. Also the office is great, has a lot of room, quiet and feels like a proper working space.

Even got a desk phone, heh, haven’t seen those in a while (telephony and PBX are the core company products).

The view should be great in a good weather.

More links found interesting this month:

• Is a billion dollar worth of server lying on the ground?
• Booting from a vinyl – because why not? Going much further than usual in overcoming the “boring”.

Videos:

Made me cringe a bit, this really looks like a future, but not the one I’m comfortable with.

Some more interesting links I’ve found this month:

• Amazon Drivers Are Hanging Smartphones in Trees to Get More Work
• Winamp Skins Museum
• Practise Typing by Retyping Entire Novels
• Google Technical Challenge (A Christmas Egg)
• Open Source Tools & Data for Music Source Separation
• World Smallest Office Suite
• Bit Rot