Explores the evolution of URL handling in Java, questioning whether generic URL APIs like URL.openConnection() were a good design choice. The author argues that Java 11's HttpClient, being protocol-specific rather than generic, represents better API design. Generic URL handling introduces security risks, performance unpredictability, and forces lowest-common-denominator APIs. Modern applications typically handle a single URL scheme and benefit from specialized, focused implementations rather than attempting universal URL support.

Chrome 135 introduces Invoker Commands, allowing buttons to perform actions on dialogs and popovers declaratively using commandfor and command attributes, eliminating the need for JavaScript onclick handlers. The feature supports built-in commands like show-modal, close, and toggle-popover that mirror their JavaScript counterparts, plus custom commands prefixed with double dashes that can be handled via the toggle event. A polyfill is available for broader browser support.

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) offers significant advantages over JSON for API development through strong typing, binary serialization, and automatic code generation. While JSON remains popular for its human readability and flexibility, Protobuf provides 3x smaller payload sizes, type safety across multiple languages, and eliminates manual validation errors. The article demonstrates practical implementation using Dart and the Shelf framework, showing how Protobuf can be used independently of gRPC in traditional HTTP APIs. The main trade-off is reduced human readability of binary data, requiring schema files and specialized tooling for debugging.

Autobase 2.5.0 introduces Expert Mode to its UI, enabling advanced cluster configuration options for experienced users. Key features include a YAML editor for custom parameters, updated cloud provider pricing and instance specifications (Hetzner ARM instances, 4th-gen Intel on AWS/GCP), configurable IOPS and throughput for AWS EBS volumes, and Ansible 12 compatibility. Autobase is an open-source tool for deploying and managing highly available PostgreSQL clusters, automating tasks like deployment, failover, backups, and scaling without requiring deep DBA expertise.