Bas' Take on Tech: Gen Z, Cloudflare, EU, Redis
Gen Z software developers at the workplace, Cloudflare News, EU vs. Apple, Redis, and more
Howdy,
thanks for reading my tech newsletter about the recent buzz, Python, and DevOps.
Have a great week ahead!
🧑💻 Gen Z: What are they like at the workplace?
Gergely has interesting insights on Gen Z software engineers and how they’re observed at the workplace. Overall, it turns out they have higher expectations for salary, promotions and benefits while at the same time being harder to retain with little “loyalty”.
From my anecdotal evidence that makes sense: In addition to the usual division in society, I have also noticed a division in the attitude of young colleagues towards work. They want to aim high, earn a lot of money and have a great career, or they want more freedom, work less and in turn accept lower earnings. Mediocrity and default options had had their day, it seems. And I think that's a good thing.
☁️ Cloudflare: Improved Offerings
Cloudflare seems heavily invested in AI, but also has a lot of news to share from their Developer Week 2024:
D1 and HyperDrive (their “hosted SQLite” and “SQL Proxy”) are now in GA. There is an interesting article about D1 on their blog. I recently played a little with their D1 service. So expect a blog post to come.
The “Workers” service (Function as a Service) now supports Python via WASM. I haven’t looked into it, yet, but of course, that sounds interesting!
Cloudflare recently acquired PartyKit and now offers real-time WebRTC apps in their “Calls” product.
A lot more stuff can be found in their Developer Week Wrapup article.
🇪🇺 EU vs. Apple: PWAs and Third-Party App Stores
The EU, known for bringing USB C to the iPhone, has another beef with Apple: The App Store. A lot of complaints about Apple’s model of revenue sharing has occurred and deals have been made behind closed doors.
Following EU regulation, Apple allows third-party app stores and Epic Games has announced to launch one.
In an act of what some would call “Malicious Compliance”, Apple announced to disable PWAs but recently reverted the decision. There is a longer article by Thomas Steiner on the issues following the EU vs Apple thing.
As a customer, I don’t always like Apple's business decisions, but I don’t feel any urge to be protected by bureaucracy. Like in the browser wars era: The anti-trust regulations on Internet Explorer didn’t do much. All it took to turn the page completely was a better product from someone else: Chrome didn't take long to dethrone Internet Explorer.
⚖️ Open Source: Redis License Change and Rebranding
Redis, probably the most popular choice for caching backends, and a spiritual successor of Memcached, changed its license. Goodbye BSD, hello SSPL. That’s not big news as it was announced on March 20, 2024. A day later, they published an article on their blog, titled “The Future of Redis”, in which one of the most prominent points is about “Generative AI”. Yesterday, they announced a rebranding on their 𝕏 Account.
There are a two things to mention: All of the license changes we’ve seen recently in popular is targeted at cloud giants, like AWS. As arstechnica puts it: “[AWS], you cannot continue reselling Redis as a service as part of your $90 billion business without some kind of licensed contribution back”. The business model behind Open Source infrastructure software, like MySQL, Elastic Search, or – now – Redis, has always been to provide an excellent product free of charge to ensure widespread adoption and to cash in on larger scale installations and customization. Turns out, in a world where software is increasingly running on servers in an oligopoly, that seems no longer feasible. Free (libre) Software gave us freedom from big tech, and now big tech found the loophole through “the cloud”. Ironically, it’s now big tech that forks free software to have a version with a more permissible license (which is what I expect to happen to Redis, too). We’ve come from terminal computers to personal computers, and now we’re back to relying on computing power operated by “big tech”. Since the adoption of technology is ubiquitous in society now, I suspect that there is no way back from these oligopolies or relevant smaller entities. Founding a “big cloud competitor” will soon be (or already is?) as impractical as founding a new telco. As much as I hate to say this, “tech” in and of itself is on the verge of becoming an old boring industry.
The second one is about Redis and “AI” and the rebranding: AI is the hype. Unlike “Crypto”, which has some brilliantly architected solutions to something between the lines of libertarian ideas and get-rich-quick-schemes, AI promises nothing less than the star-treky “Hey, Computer” magic.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
–Arthur C. Clarke
Romanticising this idea of technology that feels like magic, brings associations of great minds tinkering with bleeding-edge technologies to create a “soulful machine” that helps the human being. That – in essence – is the same spirit of some engineers sitting in a Silicon Valley garage soldering some transistors to make the impossible a reality: The personal computer.
In that sense, the license change due to the monopolization of cloud providers and the focus on AI are closely related to each other. They both solve the same problem: Once from a legal and bookkeeping perspective, and once through finding a new hacker spirit.
Making the rebranding more mass-appealing and less techy points towards the same direction.
📰 More headlines
X (formally Twitter) is testing 'Adult Content’ Groups
The best printer is still whatever Brother printer is on sale as HP is turning printers into a subscription
Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj among 200 artists claim that AI music “must be stopped”
💻 Tech Pieces
🏕️ Side Note / Summer Camp
The line-up of THAT Conference in Wisconsin has been announced and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to give a talk about GitHub Actions.
THAT Conference, or the “Summer Camp for Geeks”, has by far been the best conference series I’ve been to.
If you consider joining the geeks from July, 29th till August, 2nd, please book a ticket using the code “CampCounselor” to get 25% off the ticket price.
🚀 What else?
I have changed this newsletter from “occasional” to at least once every two weeks. The new format not only contains curated news and insights from the tech world but also sets the stage for fellow developers.
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