How does GPS work?

How the heck does GPS work?
7 minutes by Shri Khalpada

GPS works by measuring how long a satellite's signal takes to reach your phone, then converting that time into distance. Three satellites can pinpoint your location, and a fourth corrects your phone's imprecise clock. Signals from over 100 satellites across multiple global networks are combined for better accuracy. Without corrections for Einstein's relativity effects, position errors would grow by roughly 10 kilometers per day.

Your CI/CD needs rescue
sponsored by Jetbrains

If you're using Jenkins, your setup is likely held together by duct tape, plugins, and hope. TeamCity by JetBrains can help you navigate the known Jenkins challenges and chart a safe migration path to a more stable CI/CD solution.

Learning software architecture
5 minutes by Alex Kladov

Good software design is learned through practice, not courses. The gap between scientific and industrial code often comes down to incentives, not knowledge. Social structures shape software as much as technical decisions do. If you can't fix the incentives, adapt to them, and use resources like Gary Bernhardt's Boundaries talk, Pieter Hintjens' writings, and Ted Kaminski's blog to build your instincts.

On rendering the sky, sunsets, and planets
29 minutes by Maxime Heckel

Maxime explores how realistic skies, sunsets, and planetary atmospheres can be rendered in real time using atmospheric scattering shaders. He explains key techniques such as raymarching, Rayleigh and Mie scattering, ozone absorption, and LUT-based optimization. The project demonstrates how these methods create realistic lighting, haze, and atmospheric effects for both Earth and other planets, while balancing visual quality and performance in browser-based graphics rendering.

Email is crazy
11 minutes by Sam Khawase

Email was built in the 1970s for a trusting academic network, but it now carries billions of messages daily across a far more hostile internet. The core protocol has no built-in authentication, so three separate systems, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, were bolted on over the years to fight spam and phishing. Encryption exists but is optional between servers, meaning mail servers can and do read your content. Despite all this, email keeps working reliably at massive scale.

If AI writes your code, why use python?
8 minutes by Noah Mitchem

Noah argues that AI coding tools are changing software development by making difficult languages like Rust and Go easier to use. In the past, developers preferred Python because it was faster to learn and build with. Now, AI can handle much of the complexity, allowing teams to choose faster and more efficient languages. As a result, performance and system design may become more important than simplicity when choosing programming languages.

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• Symptoms of bad software design