--- title: "Why is x86's EAX register called that?" publication: "StatusCode Weekly" issue: 259 published_at: "2020-03-25" canonical_url: "https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/259" --- Plus more virus related news, an emergency website kit, and writing code in a tweet. #259 — March 25, 2020 [Read on the Web](https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/259) StatusCode Weekly Covering the week's news in software development, ops, platforms, and tooling. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/k8l3wuhew2fdm4gox6xx.jpg)](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/show-the-world-you-can-write-a-cool-program-inside-a-single-tweet) [Showing the World You Can Write a Cool Program Inside One Tweet](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/show-the-world-you-can-write-a-cool-program-inside-a-single-tweet) — Over the past few weeks I’ve been following [@BBCMicroBot](https://twitter.com/bbcmicrobot), a Twitter bot that runs user supplied code and replies with a video of the result. It’s built around an emulator for the popular 1980s British microcomputer, the BBC Micro, and [some of](https://twitter.com/BubBobz/status/1241789841291055104) [the creations](https://twitter.com/0xC0DE6502/status/1236699471410577408) are truly impressive.. give it a go! Here's a complete [online BBC Micro emulator.](https://bbc.godbolt.org/) IEEE Spectrum [Why Cloudflare Started Putting Unpopular Assets in Memory](https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-started-putting-unpopular-assets-in-memory/) — Cloudflare’s CDN service has taken a curious step and come up with a way to reduce their hit tail latency and SSD wear by placing _unpopular_ assets in memory. Yuchen Wu explains. The Cloudflare Blog [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/9fa8f36d.png)](https://www.crowdcast.io/e/interactive-lab-building-2) [Online Lab: Build a Blockchain App with JavaScript](https://www.crowdcast.io/e/interactive-lab-building-2) — Learn how to build a distributed ledger into your JavaScript application using open source tools and best practices in this interactive lab from IBMers Lennart Frantzell and Dave Nugent. IBM Developer sponsor [O'Reilly Media Shutters In-Person Conferences Division](https://www.oreilly.com/conferences/from-laura-baldwin.html) — This is the _end of an era_ 😔. O’Reilly recently cancelled their popular _Strata_ events due to the current world situation, but has now shuttered the entire in-person events division. This means no more [OSCON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Reilly_Open_Source_Convention), too. O'Reilly Media [FCC Opens Up Spectrum to Keep Mobile Data Smooth During Pandemic](https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-open-up-more-spectrum-to-keep-mobile-phones-working-during-coronavirus-pandemic/) — With unprecedented demand thanks to coronavirus, mobile phone companies are getting access to more radio spectrum which will help keep those 4G services rolling. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (ZDNet) [Deals on Services in the Time of COVID-19](https://www.notion.so/Deals-for-businesses-in-the-time-of-COVID-19-bed1c16caf6e4861a24a6e2c21ee1c9a) — A lot of companies have stepped up to offer various services at a discount or for free to help people working on COVID relating projects or anyone else who’s struggling with working from home, etc. right now. Worth a skim. Notion **Quick bytes:** - Google Cloud has introduced a beta of [Game Servers](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gaming/introducing-google-cloud-game-servers), a Kubernetes and Agones-based offering to host and scale game server clusters. - As of this week, [YouTube is limiting video quality](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/youtube-to-limit-video-quality-around-the-world-for-a-month) globally (going SD by default, mostly) to reduce local pressures on bandwidth and networks. Netflix has [done similarly.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51968302) - The latest version of the Safari browser is [blocking third-party cookies by default](https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocking-and-more/), but also erasing 'script writeable' local storage after seven days of inactivity which will have impacts on many PWAs.. - Work schedules at Google have caused them to [pause upcoming Chrome releases](https://twitter.com/ChromiumDev/status/1240322481778569216). 💻 Jobs [Find a Dev Job Through Vettery](https://www.vettery.com/tech?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=cooper-webopsweekly&utm_term=tech&utm_content=grouped&utm_campaign=ad-77581) — Vettery is completely free for job seekers. Make a profile, name your salary, and connect with hiring managers from top employers. Vettery [DevOps Engineer at X-Team (Remote)](https://x-team.com/remote-devops-engineer-jobs/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=email-ad&utm_campaign=webops) — Work with the world's leading brands, from anywhere. Travel the world while being part of the most energizing community of developers. X-Team 📕 Tutorials, Stories, and Opinions [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/v1585156085/xbozgo24eflxkhkamjcb.png)](https://keleshev.com/eax-x86-register-meaning-and-history/) [x86's EAX Register: Its History and Why It's Called That](https://keleshev.com/eax-x86-register-meaning-and-history/) — A well explained look back at the history of the x86 architecture through the lens of its most commonly used register.. Vladimir Keleshev ▶[How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0VfmXKq54) — A fun trip back to the 1980s to get some insights behind the development of Prince of Persia from its creator, Jordan Mechner. Jordan also published [his development journals](https://jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/) from the time which I enjoyed reading a couple of years ago. Ars Technica [Setting Up Git 'Identities'](https://www.micah.soy/posts/setting-up-git-identities/) — This is where you have different identities across different projects with, say, different GPG keys in each case. Micah Henning [Faster CI/CD for All Your Software Projects Using Buildkite](https://buildkite.com/?pk_campaign=statuscode-250320&pk_source=cp-statuscode&pk_medium=newsletter) — See how Shopify scaled from 300 to 1500 engineers while keeping their build times under 5 minutes. Buildkite sponsor [Converting an Old MacBook Into an Always-On Personal Kubernetes Cluster](https://devopsdirective.com/posts/2020/03/always-on-minikube/) — If you just happen to have an old machine sat around, here’s a potential project to pass the time.. DevOps Directive [Software Development Trends 2019: Results from the Coding Sans Survey](https://codingsans.com/blog/software-development-trends) — We helped promote a survey asking developers about their development practices and the results are out. JavaScript and Java lead the way but TypeScript has seen a huge jump. Slack and Jira lead the way in project comms tools. Coding Sans [Building an 8-Bit Home Computer With Just 6 Chips](https://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/build-this-8bit-home-computer-with-just-5-chips) — It’s called the [Amethyst](https://github.com/74hc595/Amethyst). Sourcing the chips right now might be tricky, but if you can get them, an interesting project to take up your time.. IEEE Spectrum [In Praise of S3, The Greatest Cloud Service of All Time](https://info.acloud.guru/resources/brazeal-in-praise-of-s3-the-greatest-cloud-service-of-all-time) — A short but sweet love letter. Forrest Brazeal [Please Don't Write Your Documentation in Markdown](https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/please-dont-write-your-documentation-in-markdown/) — An interesting argument, but I can’t see it taking off broadly. Hillel Wayne [Why Is Facebook Not in the Cloud Business?](https://interconnected.blog/why-is-facebook-not-in-the-cloud-business/) — An analysis of the technical and cultural reasons why Facebook is not rolling its own Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, or whatever, despite having the ability. Kevin Xu 🛠 Code and Tools [Emergency Website Kit](https://mxb.dev/blog/emergency-website-kit/) — In cases of emergency, many organizations need a quick way to publish critical information. But existing (CMS) websites are often unable to handle sudden spikes in traffic. This could help you get things running fast. Max Böck [Backstage: An Open Platform for Building Developer Portals from Spotify](https://github.com/spotify/backstage) — This dev portal (recently open-sourced) aims to unify all infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation within a single, consistent UI. [Here’s a blog post explaining how it’s used within Spotify](https://labs.spotify.com/2020/03/17/what-the-heck-is-backstage-anyway/). Spotify [31 Days of #MarchMediaMadness. New Cloudinary Challenges, Win Daily](https://cloudinary.rocks/MarchMediaMadness) Cloudinary sponsor [Git 2.26 Released: The Highlights](https://github.blog/2020-03-22-highlights-from-git-2-26/) — Git protocol v2 is now used by default (yay for efficiency!) and there are some new config file ‘tricks’ too. Taylor Blau (GitHub) [The First Docker GitHub Action is Available](https://www.docker.com/blog/first-docker-github-action-is-here/) — A GitHub Action to build and push Docker images. Nicholas Adcock (Docker, Inc.) [LLVM 10.0.0 Released](http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-announce/2020-March/000087.html) Hans Wennborg [Krucible: Temporary Kubernetes Clusters for Testing and Development](https://usekrucible.com/) Krucible [PGSync: Sync Postgres Data Between Databases](https://github.com/ankane/pgsync) — Fast, aims to provide good security, and you can sync partial tables or groups of tables. The README shows off some interesting examples. Written in Ruby. Andrew Kane [`zig cc`: A Powerful Drop-In Replacement for GCC/Clang](https://andrewkelley.me/post/zig-cc-powerful-drop-in-replacement-gcc-clang.html) Andrew Kelley Curated by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). [Change your email address](https://webopsweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or[Stop getting this newsletter](https://webopsweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*). © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom