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A Major Postgres Upgrade with Zero Downtime

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/programming

The team faced a major version upgrade for their Aurora Postgres instance right before Christmas and aimed to minimize downtime. They drew inspiration from a report by Lyft, which achieved only 7 minutes of downtime. By adapting the procedures, they managed to reach 0 seconds of downtime. This experience report aims to share their journey, including initial challenges and eventual success, to assist others facing similar upgrades. Their system, which operates at a modest scale with less than a terabyte of data and significant query throughput,

Which one of you is this?

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/ruby

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Current state of IT hiring and salaries in Europe: 18,000 Jobs, 68,000 Surveys

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/programming

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Enhancing your MIDI devices with Perl

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the growing capabilities of budget MIDI hardware, highlighting that even affordable devices now typically include features like clock, sequencer, arpeggiator, chord voicing, DAW integration, and transport control. However, this feature-rich design may lead to compromises in usability, such as complicated mode switching or missing specific functionalities. The article focuses on enhancing a MIDI keyboard, the M-Audio Oxygen Pro 61, by implementing features inspired by a video from Polarity Music. The video explores using

Implementing API threat protection

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/programming

An API (Application Programming Interface) facilitates communication between different systems and services. When APIs are unsecured, they can result in unauthorized access to sensitive data, service disruptions, and significant financial and reputational harm. Therefore, securing APIs is crucial for data protection and maintaining user trust. Data transfer is fundamental to application functionality, and it must be protected at all times during transit. Unprotected data is vulnerable to interception and tampering, risking exposure of sensitive information and system disruptions. Key reasons for protecting data in

Mike Perham on his decision to sponsor Hanami for $12,000

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/ruby

On January 17, 2025, a significant $12,000 grant was announced for the Hanami framework, highlighting a commitment to supporting open source software. The author, a long-time open source advocate, expresses concern over Ruby's reliance on Rails and emphasizes the need for alternative frameworks like Hanami. Project leader Tim Riley is set to increase his dedication to Hanami, with support from Ruby businesses and a major sponsor. Hanami 2.2 introduces database ORM and migration support, notably

So You Want To Remove The GVL?

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/ruby

The post discusses the implications of Ruby's Global Virtual Lock (GVL) on Rails applications and their performance, particularly in relation to concurrent programming. It highlights the common belief that Rails apps are mainly IO-bound, implying that the GVL's impact is minimal. However, the author disagrees, arguing that many Rails applications are not purely IO-bound and that the GVL necessitates using processes (forking) to leverage server cores effectively. While some advocate for removing the GVL, the author cont

Dopamine addiction to coding - it's a ritual

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the mindset and approach towards coding, emphasizing the importance of enjoying the journey rather than fixating solely on the end goals, such as financial success. The author, Gheorghe Ungureanu, suggests that many aspiring coders fail because they focus too much on rewards and outcomes, often sacrificing joy and other pleasures in life. Instead, he advocates for a passion-driven approach, encouraging individuals to find activities that bring them pleasure, likening the pursuit of coding to an addiction that can lead

OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: Hacker News

Get a 2-month free trial with an annual subscription for $49 (down from $59.88), which includes access to eight daily articles curated by senior editors. After the trial, the subscription costs $75 per month. Subscribers enjoy complete digital access to quality Financial Times journalism, with expert analysis. The offer includes a 20% discount for those paying annually. Terms and conditions apply, and over a million readers currently subscribe to the Financial Times.

AI bots everywhere. Does anyone have a good whitelist for robots.txt?

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: Hacker News

The conversation centers on concerns about managing web crawlers and ensuring that legitimate institutions like archive.org are not blocked while still protecting content from unwanted scraping. Users express frustration over the difficulty of maintaining an updated robots.txt file and discuss alternatives such as requiring logins to access content. There are inquiries about a "bot fight mode," its newer version, and how user-agents can be misrepresented by bad actors. Recommendations include using services like Cloudflare for bot management, enabling caching to save costs, and utilizing

An interview with Chris Lattner

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: /r/programming

Chris Lattner, a key figure behind several foundational programming platforms such as LLVM, Clang, Swift, and MLIR, is now developing a new programming language called Mojo. Mojo is designed to enable Python programmers to write significantly faster code. Contrary to common misconceptions, Mojo is not a variant of Python; it's an entirely new language akin to Swift or Rust, featuring a distinct compiler. Mojo employs a traditional lexer and parser, with its front end focusing on type checking and semantic analysis. A

Libraries and Well-Being: A Case Study from The New York Public Library

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: Hacker News

A study from the New York Public Library, which surveyed 1,974 users, indicates that libraries have a significantly positive impact on individuals and communities, particularly in lower-income areas. Utilizing the PERMA model of positive psychology, the research highlights how library visits contribute to users' well-being and personal growth. Key findings include that 92% of respondents felt calm after visiting, 74% felt better equipped to handle life's challenges, and 90% reported a greater love for learning. Additionally,

Discovery Coding

Published: 2025-01-29 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the distinction between two approaches to writing: in fiction and programming. Author Stephen King exemplifies a 'discovery' style in writing, where he begins without an outline and develops ideas through the writing process. Similarly, in programming, "discovery coding" is introduced as a method where programmers understand and solve problems by writing code without a prior plan, engaging with the code to discover insights and solutions. This contrasts with "outliner" programmers who prefer detailed plans before coding. The text

New speculative attacks on Apple CPUs

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: Hacker News

The content introduces SLAP and FLOP, two new speculative execution attacks targeting Apple CPUs. SLAP exploits the Load Address Predictor (LAP) found in Apple’s M2/A15 series, which optimizes memory retrieval by predicting addresses. If the LAP guesses incorrectly, it allows the CPU to execute operations on unauthorized data, potentially leaking sensitive information through attacks carried out via the Safari browser. FLOP targets the Load Value Predictor (LVP) in the M3/A17 generation and newer

AI and Two Hundred Dollar Tasks

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: Hacker News

In 2013, the author was inspired by GitHub's octocat to create a mascot and commissioned a designer for $200. This led to the realization that many tasks costing around $200—like professional headshots, transcription, translation, or article writing—are transactional and require specialized skills. With advancements in AI technology, these tasks can now often be performed efficiently by AI tools. For instance, instead of hiring someone for transcription after research interviews, AI services can handle this task quickly. While

Building a T1D smartwatch for my son from scratch

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: Hacker News

The author discusses the challenges of managing Type 1 diabetes (T1D) for their 9-year-old son, whose pancreas functions on manual mode, lacking natural regulation of insulin and glucagon. While they benefit from advanced technologies like Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) and Closed-loop Insulin Pumps, these come with issues such as frequent alarms for low blood sugar, which can be disruptive, especially during activities like lunch, recess, or sports. The son needs to develop a sense of

Lowering Our AST to Escape the Typechecker

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: /r/programming

The text discusses the transition from type checking to a compiler process called "Lowering," which converts a typed Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) into an intermediate representation (IR). This marks a shift from frontend concerns—where the AST accommodates user-friendliness and error diagnostics—to backend optimization, where the IR serves the compiler's needs, focusing on aspects like memory layout and calling conventions. In this phase, the compiler assumes successful type checking and any errors encountered indicate internal issues requiring fixes, leading to a mentality

Maxima in the browser using Embedded Common Lisp on WASM

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: Hacker News

Maxima is a computer algebra system, and its browser frontend was developed by Marius Gerbershagen using technologies such as Embeddable Common Lisp, emscripten, gnuplot, and MathJax. The source code for the project is available for access.

IAC confirms existence of a Super-earth in the habitable zone of a Sun-like Star

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: Hacker News

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) have confirmed the discovery of a new super-Earth, designated HD 20794 d, orbiting within the habitable zone of the nearby Sun-like star HD 20794, located about 20 light-years away. This discovery, following over two decades of observations, is significant for future studies of Earth-like planetary atmospheres and the potential for life beyond Earth. HD 20794 d is

Magic behind Ruby code you see every day

Published: 2025-01-28 | Origin: /r/ruby

In an article by Paweł Dąbrowski dated January 28, 2025, the author explores the creation of popular Ruby methods, focusing on the #blank? and #present? methods within the Ruby on Rails framework. These methods are widespread in Rails applications due to their flexibility across various object types, although they aren't part of the Ruby standard library, which some developers find inconvenient for pure Ruby coding. Dąbrowski delves into the source code of Rails and especially