Issue #001 • April 10, 2024

News

1. The package XZ Utils had a backdoor
   A microsoft developer found a backdoor in xzutils, a popular data compression library on almost all linux installations. The backdoor interferes with authentication in sshd via systemd, tapping into the service that allows remote access to systems over the SSH protocol, potentially allowing attackers to break sshd authentication and gain access to any linux system with this version of the package. More Info
   

2. Bun launched v1.1
   Bun ss a fast, all-in-one toolkit for running, building, testing, and debugging JS and TS and they launched a massive update. They've made bun fully compatible on windows and made a lot of stability, compatibility and performance updates.
   

3. Vercel updated their pricing
   Cheaper than ever!
   

4. JavaScript might get Signals natively
   Two delegates of TC39 (The technical committee who collaborate to evolve and maintain the definition of JavaScript) have proposed Signals for JavaScript. Signals are common in frameworks like React, Solid, Preact and are used to pass messages between component. Read the proposal here
   

5. Google Launched Jpegli
   Jpegli is a new JPEG coding library from Google. Their results show that "Jpegli can compress high quality images 35% more than traditional JPEG codecs."
   

6. Directus release State of Data 2024
   State of Data is a survey for developers to share how they use data in their projects, from databases to APIs.
   

7. Cloudflare had their Developer Week and introduced a few new products
   Including new features for Cloudflare Workers, R2, Cloudflare D1 (CF's Serverless DB) General Availability and a lot more
   

8. Twitter drama: VPS vs Vercel for hosting

New Tools

1. Princeton university's NLP team released SWE-agent
   "SWE-agent turns LMs (e.g. GPT-4) into software engineering agents that can fix bugs and issues in real GitHub repositories"
   

2. Faces.js
   A JavaScript library for generating vector-based cartoon faces
   

3. Cally
   Small, feature-rich calendar components

For Knowledge

1. An interactive guide to CSS Container Queries

Thanks for reading! Here's a tech meme for you.

Bonus XZUtils meme:

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