Ricardo Tavares
Creates things with computers to understand what problems they can solve. Passionate for an open web that everyone can contribute to. Works in domains where content is king and assumptions are validated quickly. Screaming at phone lines since before the internet.
March 18, 2026
Three steps for a modern-day data breach: • give data you don't want someone else to know to some automated process • let that automation have a way to send that data out • ignore how this can be triggered by people you...
March 17, 2026
If you start coding as a kid, you can experience a lot of time where you're wrong about programming because you aren't ready to understand fundamental concepts. Especially if, like me, you learn how to code by yourself,...
March 3, 2026
As digital crime keeps increasing, the biggest offenders aren't doing advanced technical attacks. Criminals are mostly just scamming people into doing what they want. They are particularly targeting companies and keep...
February 1, 2026
The world has a lot more code now, since large language models (LLMs) can easily generate it. As the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei has predicted, AI is probably writing 90% of all the code in the world. But does that...
December 19, 2025
This list of things computers can do probably won't surprise you: • Learn what you tell them. • Apply instructions when needed. • Remember and read numbers. • Add, subtract, multiply, divide, and round off. • Look at a...
December 12, 2025
Banning social networks isn't the same as keeping smartphones out of schools. Some of the very best and worst things are on the internet. In what are commonly called social networks, there are issues that exist in any...
December 7, 2025
Say I have a human arm. Imagine that I'm biased against it, that I'm tired of having to do pushups or clip its nails to enjoy the full potential of my arm. I'm jealous of other people's arms, but I don't appreciate...
November 17, 2025
I got it almost when the first batches were being sent out. The Steam Deck is a portable controller + computer that runs SteamOS, a Linux distribution made by Valve where you can easily play many of the games on Steam....
July 28, 2025
Recently, a coding agent that deleted a whole production database explained that it "panicked instead of thinking". And it plowed through instead of reaching out for help. That's the kind of personality that would...
June 20, 2025
Some basic steps for making software are usually described as: make it work, make it right, make it fast. Large Language Models (LLMs) offer no guarantees about any of that, but at least they can write and review code....
June 2, 2025
In our consumer society, we already expect to get monetized for anything that we happen to leave on the table. We can't afford space to have our music anymore, so it's been digitized and rented to us. We don't...
March 8, 2025
Browsers are becoming invisible to the average internet person and when they gain visibility, it's usually for the wrong reasons. It's the app where content is particularly full of ads and pop-ups. Even ignoring all...
August 10, 2024
Imagine a world in which you download a podcast episode and it’s just an audio file that you can save anywhere and play at any time. You can collect your favorite episodes and listen to them even without internet, long...
May 31, 2024
We all say that something is better than nothing, but code that does something has a special way of being worse than code that does nothing. Once something is happening, it can be shipped to production. This can...
March 4, 2024
Building a product for external customers requires a broader perspective than creating solutions for internal teams. It involves thinking about its delivery, understanding why decisions are made, how people use this...
August 26, 2023
If you take it at face value, hourly-based billing makes no sense for anyone. If you can do it well and do it fast, why are you being discouraged from delivering it quickly? You should be paid more for solving it better...
August 25, 2023
The power to change how an app works in real-time is an underestimated feature of the web. Often it’s assumed that all code, even in web development, should only expose its expected functionality and be completely...
July 21, 2023
Things go wrong with tech all the time, in fact, "tech is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet" as defined by the great sci-fi author Douglas Adams. We can imagine that there was a time when shoelaces...
May 14, 2023
Disclaimer: People in the Rust Foundation would like you to know that, although the title of this article contains the word Rust, its author is not a part of the Rust Foundation (trademark policy draft available here)....
May 10, 2023
Cross-site-scripting (XSS) is often identified in web development as an issue with user-submitted content that allows for unexpected HTML/CSS/JS to run in the context of other users. Most web developers know that, for...
March 26, 2023
The kind of meditation I've made a habit of is pretty useless. And yet the secret of useless things is how they are everything but a waste of your time. So I made space for this article in my tech blog, a small break,...
January 1, 2023
Even if people don't go out as much these days, physical addresses are still very much recognizable to us. Although they're not perfect information, give me a city, a street name, and a number and I may be able to find...
January 1, 2023
Niche communities have an upside to being niche: you can (and maybe should) explore options that don't need to scale very much. My own experience with organizing people around a small hobby has revolved around tabletop...
January 1, 2023
When e-commerce began to flourish, the concept of the Long Tail was used to describe how digital businesses can focus on a wide variety of products or services with almost no customers. The basic idea is that you can...
January 1, 2023
We may not talk much about how people sit on the fence when it comes to environmental issues, but we're probably aware that we're letting ourselves fall short. Especially when it involves people who do have the means to...
January 1, 2023
Advent of Code is a seasonal series of daily programming puzzles that can be solved in any language you choose to use. People can enjoy taking part in this yearly event in many ways: as a speed contest, interview prep,...
January 1, 2023
No matter when you came to be online, you've had the opportunity to encounter what I like to call digital craftsmanship. Building cool online experiences is not a lost art. You may have recently heard of Wordle, a...
January 1, 2023
Real-time web interactions are an interesting challenge that stays relevant as developers gravitate between single-page applications, server-rendered pages and everything in between. Websockets are a possible solution...
January 1, 2023
I imagine that a lot of people have experienced much more online events in the past year. Now, alongside the wide variety that events offer by their very diverse nature, there are also a lot of different tech solutions...
January 1, 2023
Passwords are a great solution and a huge problem. People use them every day, not only as a way to claim ownership of services and products, but also to share that access with other people they trust. Passwords are...
January 1, 2023
When we arrive late to a meeting where people expect us to say something, most of us listen for a while before trying to contribute. Eventually, the meeting progressed far beyond what we can fully understand. And yet...
December 31, 2022
Due to personal circumstances that forced me to pull the trigger on my decision to eventually get a good ultrabook, I recently got the M1 Macbook Air. I'm quite happy with it, but not so happy with having purchased it....
December 31, 2022
Events going online has become one of the definitive trends of the decade. Not that people want to stay home, but once we've been forced to, the advantages become evident. Any event can reach out beyond its usual...
November 12, 2022
One of the ways through which Apple has posted new records in their services revenue is by having you buy a developer account and then forcing you to make other people buy developer accounts. How does that work? Well,...
November 12, 2022
Back at the day job, we have your usual PHP code base that runs a lot of the business and we needed an upgrade from 5 to 7. Business involves a variety of small to large services plus different one-time projects that...
November 12, 2022
Playable on-demand broadcasts (podcasts) are a simple case of people using open technologies to come together over a new medium that should be accessible to everyone. They are my favorite example not only of how useful...
October 29, 2022
It's an understatement to say that humans are complicated creatures. How we function depends on more than facts and feelings. We also respond to what is left unsaid and we act according to how we imagine that we'll be...
October 25, 2022
If we could start counting mobile apps in the stores, we would probably see that many of them are, first and foremost, a branding exercise that the open web cannot satisfy. Institutions want you to have their icon on...
October 25, 2022
One of the best things about JavaScript nowadays is that you can just type "MDN" next to whatever you want to know in your search box and you will get very nice documentation from the Mozilla Developer Network. However,...
October 23, 2022
About half a dozen years ago, I was between jobs and had a whole month of August to invest in whatever I wanted to do. So I decided that some of that time should go into learning some coding tool, some skill that could...
October 23, 2022
Despite having its flaws, real-time chat has become an essential part of my day job. In particular, the mix of features Slack offers was there for us when we needed them. However, it's software is aimed at corporations,...
October 23, 2022
Adjacent problems that weigh you down as you tackle some tech challenges are often as important as that specific tech. I have a PHP upgrade story from version 5 to 7 that illustrates this, showing just another way...
October 23, 2022
Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet. Douglas Adams Computers became a passion for me since I got a ZX Spectrum as a kid, which doesn't mean I'm very good with them, but exploring their...