Recent content in Home on Fabien Dubosson
I use Slack as a web application in Firefox instead of using the official desktop application . I won’t go into detail about why, but the main reason is that I use Firefox Multi-Account Containers , and I want links in Slack to open in a specific browser container, which is not possible from the Slack desktop application. One feature of the Slack web application that I particularly dislike…
Two of my passions are outdoor adventures and ecology, and thankfully we have more and more people making films about such adventures. Yesterday, I watched Alpine Quest : “From Vienna to Monaco: A Women’s Alpine Challenge”. Three women traversed the alps from Vienna to Monaco by combining cycling, ski mountaineering and trail running. 54 days, 1’600 km, 67’000 m of elevation gain. It is quite an…
I don’t know about you, but I always feel different when coming back to work after the end-of-year holidays. Not just rested, but also with a different mindset. One year ago, I told my engineering manager that I needed rest to level up, like in the game Morrowind . Seeing his face made me realize that The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind may not be such a well-known reference as I thought 1 . In…
Introduction Whenever I have to store an AWS access key on my machine, I’m always concerned about setting it up in clear text in my home folder. Even though I have LUKS encryption protecting my filesystem when the laptop is off, it is most of the time either running or suspended, which means the filesystem is accessible. If my laptop is stolen while suspended, there is a small chance that an…
While reading a discussion on HN , I noticed a comment mentioning “The Eleven Laws of Showrunning.” Following through the links leads to a typewriter-style essay in PDF form , written in 2016 by Javier Grillo-Marxuach 1 . The essay is about showrunners, more specifically, writers and producers of television shows. It’s a bit surprising to see it referenced in an HN discussion on software…
If there is one change that Linux users fear the most, it’s switching to a brand new laptop. Even though hardware support is much better than when I first started 25 years ago, it is still a gamble to know if you picked one that will get all functionalities supported. If you ever tried installing Linux on a Pentium 4 with a blurry CRT, you’ll remember the joy and pain of hardware…
I started this blog at the beginning of the year, hoping to publish about one article per month. In reality, I managed only three articles in the first six months. It’s time to reflect and adapt my approach. The main reason for this slower pace is that I set out to write only in-depth articles. Getting into “focus mode” for such writing requires uninterrupted time and serious commitment—something…
A Question of Ownership If your company uses Atlassian products, especially Confluence, you’ve probably received an email like this at some point: Example email from Confluence informing you that you have been made the owner of a page Congratulations, you’ve just been made the owner of a Confluence page. From now on, anyone viewing the page will see your name at the top: Header of a Confluence…
Introduction Edsger W. Dijkstra wrote a famous note titled “Why numbering should start at zero” This three-page handwritten document is often cited in discussions about why indexing in programming languages should start at zero. While his reasoning is relatively straightforward, the document lacks the structure and examples needed to fully grasp it—at least for me—without resorting to pen and…
Starting a blog has been in the back of my mind for more than 15 years. And to be honest, this website is far from my first attempt at building one. I believe I’m not the only engineer who has faced this problem, so in this post, I reflect on what finally made publishing this first article possible for me. The past All my previous blogging attempts started the same way: I would read someone’s…