Five Links #59
Five Links is back from a hiatus...
Hello,
It’s been a while.
A lot has happened since my last email. For personal reasons, I archived most of my side projects in 2023, and Five Links took an unplanned hiatus around the same time.
In the meantime, I’ve been writing periodically on my blog. Here’s a quick catch up:
- In this day and age, running a business without any social media presence is unusual – I wrote about how that works for me
- I penned some notes on the thought process behind my studio redesign
- In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I’ve published the lengths/durations of all my recent projects
- I’m making a conscious effort to relentlessly give credit
- I’ve started documenting and sharing my experience of various design courses
- I outlined the benefits I’ve found in charging on a time and materials basis
One of the things I’ve missed about this newsletter is hearing back from people: links they’ve found interesting, projects they’ve been involved with, etc. If you have a link to share or a project to tell me about, I’ve love to hear from you – just hit reply.
Thanks for sticking with this extended intro. Next week’s edition will be back to the normal short form.
Links below 👇
(Not interested? No problem: unsubscribe here)
Absorbing
Five links for your inbox from this week.
1. Vibe coding meets hallucinated dependencies meets bad actors
Bad actors are slop-squatting hallucinated dependencies to carry out supply chain attacks.
Even worse, when you Google one of these slop-squatted package names, you’ll often get an AI-generated summary from Google itself confidently praising the package, saying it’s useful, stable, well-maintained.
2. That's Not How A SIM Swap Attack Works
Here's how a SIM swap works.
- Attacker convinces your phone company to reassign your telephone number to a new SIM.
- Attacker goes to a website where you have an account, and initiates a password reset.
- Website sends a verification code to your phone number, which is now in the hands of the attacker.
- Attacker supplies verification code and gets into your account.
3. Falsehoods programmers believe about fonts
Some of my favourites from this list:
- Fonts render the same everywhere
- Fonts should render the same everywhere
- Someone else will check the font license
- I can share the font with everyone on my project
- Fonts are a great way to deliver icons
- You're allowed to subset any font
- It's good practice to set an explicit font size regardless of user preferences
4. Measuring the impact of early-2025 AI on experienced open-source developer productivity
Emphasis my own:
When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.
5. The moral dilemma of platform choice
As someone who isn’t a major influencer or content creator, it’s easy to think our platform choices don’t matter. “I’m too small to make a difference,” we might tell ourselves. But perhaps that’s exactly why these choices matter more than ever. When enough small voices make ethical choices, it creates a collective impact.
What am I up to?
- Unoffice Hours run on a fortnightly schedule. The next available slot is 20 August.
- I’m offering design consultations to give feedback on design work without the commitment of a larger project. These are running at a discounted rate until the end of September.
- I’m currently booking projects from October/November onwards.
If you enjoy discovering the links in the emails, please tell other people about it: give it a share or forward it to someone you think might like it. If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe here.
If you come across a link/app you think might be of interest to other people on this list, hit reply and let me know.
Until next time,
Dave
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