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Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers
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Bozhidar Batsov ☛ Using use-package the right way
That’s why I’ve decided to share with you the #1 tip to speed up your Emacs - defer the load time of your packages (in other words - load them as late as possible, ideally when you actually need them for the first time). There are many ways to achieve this, but probably the easiest and most popular these days is to use use-package to organize your package configuration.
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SaaS/Back End/Databases
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PostgreSQL ☛ The Schedule is out for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2025!
Fabulous Talks & Speakers for POSETTE 2025
The talk selection team is so excited about all the talks planned for our 4th annual free & virtual developer event, happening Jun 10-12, 2025.
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Simon Safar ☛ Just Throw It Into Postgres
Meanwhile also: once upon a time I read a blog post (that I, sadly, cannot find anymore) about how, if you were to archive all your social media posts, you should aim for just saving the result of curl requests you make in their original form, as boring blobs. It is very tempting to turn them into a neat, well-organized database structure that you can search efficiently right away. However, this assumes you did think of everything that you might ever want out of this data. What if you find some exciting new piece of metadata in them, something you didn't care about before? What if your original conversion script had a bug that you'd now like to fix? What if the site you're archiving suddenly changes its format? (Your scraper scripts are now broken...? maybe just in subtle ways?)
Meanwhile, if you just save the original bytes, you can fix everything later. Plus, given the amount of data your own social media posts consist of (... and which this post was primarily concerned about), a few Python scripts can go through them every single time you're looking for something.
So... now we have two roughly independent arguments against using relational databases!
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Content Management Systems (CMS) / Static Site Generators (SSG)
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WordPress ☛ WordPress 6.8 “Cecil”
WordPress 6.8, code-named “Cecil,” refines your creative workflow with a streamlined Style Book, now available in select Classic themes. Enjoy faster navigation via speculative loading, stronger security with bcrypt password hashing, and over 100 accessibility improvements. With thoughtful editor upgrades and behind-the-scenes performance boosts, 6.8 delivers polish, power, and precision.
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