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The best problem-solving writing in software engineering — databases, performance, security, frontend and distributed systems, in one feed.

11,842 articles
AI & ML — The three types of AI bot traffic and how to handle them

The three types of AI bot traffic and how to handle them

Bots account for over 20% of all web traffic. A quarter of that is AI crawlers alone. But not all bots are bad. Some are key to how your site gets discovered. Learn how AI bots shape visibility and what happens if you block them.

VVercel·August 13, 2025AI & ML
Frontend — CSS-Questions

CSS-Questions

CSS-Questions is a mini site where you can test your CSS knowledge with over 100 questions.

GGGeoff GrahamGeoff Graham·August 12, 2025Frontend
Networking — The Reformist CTO’s Guide to Impact Intelligence

The Reformist CTO’s Guide to Impact Intelligence

The productivity of knowledge workers is hard to quantify and often decoupled from direct business outcomes. The lack of understanding leads to many initiatives, bloated tech spend, and ill-chosen efforts to improve this productivity. Technology leaders need to avoid this by developing an intelligence of the business impact of their work across a network connecting output to proximate and downstre

SNSriram Narayan·August 12, 2025Networking
Design & UX — Stuff & Nonsense Practical Layout Workshop

Stuff & Nonsense Practical Layout Workshop

Web design veteran Andy Clarke is offering a two-hour workshop all about creating practical and creative page layouts this September 18. Register and save a few bucks with a coupon code.

GGGeoff GrahamGeoff Graham·August 11, 2025Design & UX
Frontend — Getting Creative With Quotes

Getting Creative With Quotes

How do you design block quotes and pull quotes to reflect a brand’s visual identity and help tell its story? Here’s how I do it by styling the HTML blockquote element using borders, decorative quote marks, custom shapes, and a few unexpected properties.

ACAndy ClarkeAndy Clarke·August 11, 2025Frontend
Engineering — Auf Wiedersehen, GitHub ♥️

Auf Wiedersehen, GitHub ♥️

tl;dr: I am stepping down as GitHub CEO to build my next adventure. GitHub is thriving and has a bright future ahead. The following is the internal post I sent to GitHub employees (Hubbers) this morning announcing my departure.

TDThomas DohmkeThomas Dohmke·August 11, 2025Engineering
SRE & Ops — Federation Platform and Privacy Waves: How Meta distributes compliance-related tasks at scale

Federation Platform and Privacy Waves: How Meta distributes compliance-related tasks at scale

We’re exploring Meta’s Federation Platform, a scalable set of tools for managing compliance-related tasks, along with Privacy Waves, our method for batching these tasks and ensuring accountability. Together, the Federation Platform and Privacy Waves create a structured, effective, and sustainable approach to operationalizing privacy work, enabling Meta to safeguard user data for the billions of […

CWChris Wiltz·August 11, 2025SRE & Ops
Security — Redesigning Workers KV for increased availability and faster performance

Redesigning Workers KV for increased availability and faster performance

Workers KV is Cloudflare's global key-value store, serving millions of requests per second across hundreds of billions of stored objects. The service powers critical infrastructure for dozens of Cloudflare products—from Access authentication to Pages static assets—making its availability essential to our platform's reliability. After the incident on June 12, we accelerated work to re-architect KV’

ARAlex Robinson, Tyson TrautmannAlex Robinson, Tyson Trautmann·August 8, 2025Security
Frontend — Quick Hit #54

Quick Hit #54

The WebKit blog is back with a follow-up on its CSS Masonry coverage. It leans into a direction (display: grid), and that direction is different than Chrome's

GGGeoff GrahamGeoff Graham·August 8, 2025Frontend