Monthly Digest - February 2019

Hello everybody! 👋

Oh my... last month I visited San Francisco for the first time and helped to organize the Global Diversity CFP Day here in Berlin. Additionally, I'm onboarding a new job... life is interesting. All these things lead to a slight delay in this newsletter, but here we go!

Let's dive into my favorite content of February!

Amazon, Google, and co. get more influence every day. Kashmir Hill took the journey and blocked all of them. A fascinating read that may make you realize how much we all depend on these tech giants.

In case you're a Netlify user I released netlify-menubar which lets you monitor your static sites and trigger builds right from the MacOS menubar. I use it for two months now and I don't want to miss it anymore.

divs are valid elements inside of a description list

This learning was a big one for me as I'm a big believer in semantic markup. I use description lists whenever possible. Unfortunately, these were very hard to style. As we have grid and flex today, it's not as bad anymore, but I struggled a lot with the styling in the past. I learned that div elements are valid inside of description lists!

A deep-dive into promise resolution with objects including a then property

I saw some interesting tweets about dynamic imports in JavaScript, started reading GitHub issues and ended diving deep into the ECMAScript spec. I learned that promises could have surprising behavior when you resolve them with objects including a then property. After eight years of writing JavaScript, I feel like I understand promises way better today!

Sara Wachter-Boettcher wrote an article that profoundly resonates with me. A few days ago, when mentoring the new speakers of the future at the Global Diversity CFP Day, I heard the question "What do I have to say?" a lot. I struggle with that myself... The thing is – everybody knows something someone else does not know. Sara encourages us all to share what we know and learn.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and this month the story of the HackerGiraffe was published by Darknet Diaries. It was a fascinating story about the security of the internet (check your printers!!!) and what short-time fame can do to your life.

I always struggle with "being too busy" because I want to do too many things. There is always something to build. There is always something to read. And while these things are not necessarily dreams, I try to let go of certain things to have a healthier life.

If Your Dreams Don't Serve You, Let Them Go.

My favorite singer-songwriter Lucy Rose released a new song. I can't wait to see her in March. What shall I say – "Solo" appeared in my Spotify playlist and I had to stop doing everything!

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And that's it for the beginning of March. Talk to you in 25 days! Hopefully... 🤞