Weekly tech - March 17th of 2025

Apple and the macbook dilema, learning SQL through mysteries, an alternative to Manus, Dagger on PHP thanks to attributes, yes, this week is dense, ready to start?

Welcome everyone, hope you're all fine?

New weekly tech and this week, time to unveil some topics that I've kept in my bookmarks for way too long, thanks to some free time and some travels, I've been able to finally explore some topics and test others, so, enough talking, let's roll.

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Common knowledge

So, time to start with common knowledge (or wisdom, choose the one that fits) and a feedback on using macbooks (Pro or not), especially since Ubuntu recently rewrote some core utilities thanks to Rust and with the recent developments pushed by Valve in order to replace Windows on the gaming aspect, you'll also find that Microsoft is rewriting Typescript in Go (why not after all).

• Do we really need Macbooks? Time to reflect on our real usages

• Ubuntu is currently switching to Rust for core utilities - French

• Microsoft is rewriting Typescript thanks to Go

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Database

Small detour in the database world to discover SQLNoir, a web platform to explore SQL and learn some tricks while solve mysteries, a good idea to explore hidden gems and test new skills.

• SqlNoir, solve mysteries through SQL queries

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Machine learning

So, what's new in the machine learning world? Well, here come Anus, an open-source alternative to Manus (yes, I know, the name...), you will also find a demo of Sesame, a model that aims to improve the current voice landscape of models, especially on the rythm and tone side (the paper behind it is really interesting), last topic with the GPUs support on Cloud Run that continue to be improved.

• Anus, a replacement for Manus (yes)

• Sesame is trying to cross the uncanny valley of voice

• Running Ollama on GCP Cloud Run

• Candle, a minimalist Rust framework

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PHP

Back to the basics with PHP and PXP that finally sign its own end, you will also find a demo of the Dagger SDK in PHP (thanks to attributes) and Firetower, a Laravel library that aims to monitor and alert you when the infrastructure is under high load and other specific cases (at least, some of them).

• PXP is dead, for now

• Dagger as a builder for PHP applications - Youtube

• Dagger, a component library for Blade templates

• LarAgent, a library to implement agents in Laravel applications

• Phiki, a syntax highlighter in PHP

• Firetower, a monitoring platform for Laravel applications

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Frontend

Last topic for today with the frontend and Panda, a framework that allows to write CSS in JS code (yes, I know).

• Panda, a CSS-in-JS framework

That's all for today, do not hesitate to comment / like if you want, as specified last week, I'll be out next week to the SymfonyLive Paris, so, let's meet again in two weeks, until then, have a wonderful weekend and a great weak.

See you soon!