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7 Databases in 7 Weeks for 2025

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: /r/programming

The author shares insights from extensive experience with databases-as-a-service, highlighting the ever-evolving landscape of database technologies. In 2025, they recommend exploring seven specific databases for a week, distinct from popular choices like Neo4j, MongoDB, or MySQL, which they find uninteresting. The focus is on PostgreSQL, which is praised for its stability, ACID compliance, and extensive support. The author emphasizes PostgreSQL's rich ecosystem of extensions, such as AGE for graph data and

Building a distributed log using S3

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the implementation of a durable, distributed, and highly available log system using Amazon S3, as part of a series on this topic. It emphasizes the importance of logs in data and event streaming systems, noting that they are immutable, ordered collections of records with unique sequential identifiers. The author highlights the advantages of using S3 for log storage due to its zero disk architecture and the append-only nature of logs. For implementation, each record is stored as an object in S3 with a unique

Why Golang slices still surprise me

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the concept of slices in the Go programming language, highlighting their dual nature as either dynamic arrays or fat pointers, each with distinct properties and uses. 1. **Slice Structure**: A slice has three fields, with one being the capacity for handling exponential growth, similar to dynamic arrays in languages like C++ and Python. 2. **Bounds Checking**: Go improves on C’s shortcomings by implementing mandatory bounds checking for slices, preventing out-of-bound errors, which is not possible in

Why it took a long time to build that tiny link preview on Wikipedia (2018)

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the development of a new feature for a website that showcases page previews with an image and text when hovering over links. Initially conceived four years ago, the project was inspired by a previous volunteer's idea. The challenge involved handling millions of pages stored as raw wikitext without burdening editors to manually assign thumbnails. A software engineer, Max Semenik, created an algorithm to automatically select appropriate images for articles, but it required adjustments to meet the specific needs of page previews. The team

TidesDB - Open-source high-performance, durable, transactional embedded key-value storage engine (BETA RELEASE)

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: /r/programming

TidesDB is a high-performance, durable, and transactional embedded storage engine optimized for flash and RAM. It is an efficient key-value storage engine library written in C, utilizing a log-structured merge-tree (LSM-tree) as the underlying data structure. While it isn’t a complete database, it serves as a library for building one. TidesDB is currently in beta and can be built using CMake. Each database method returns an error code and message, with NULL indicating no error.

I trained myself to run farther using the Strava API and an IOT dog food bowl full of M&Ms

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: /r/programming

The author describes a creative approach to motivating themselves to run by using an IoT dog food dispenser filled with M&Ms as a reward system tied to their running distance monitored via the Strava API. This system proved to be highly effective, leading the author to regularly run long distances and even complete a half marathon, eventually moving on from the dispenser's rewards. Reflecting on adulthood, the author expresses a newfound understanding that adulthood involves juggling a myriad of maintenance tasks rather than simply knowing the date. This

Education and Healthcare Suck for the Same Reasons

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the detrimental effects of an overemphasis on measurable outcomes in both healthcare and education. It begins with a morning scene in a hospital where a patient’s needs are overlooked amidst routine medical measurements, drawing a parallel to a classroom where a teacher focuses solely on standardized test scores, neglecting the individual students. This highlights a broader issue: systems are prioritizing metrics over the human experience. While acknowledging the value of measurements in both fields—advancements in medical technology and educational assessments—the article

OpenWRT One Released: First Router Designed Specifically for OpenWrt

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: Hacker News

On November 29, 2024, SFC and its OpenWrt member project announced the launch of the OpenWrt One, a wireless Internet router designed to prioritize software freedom and the right to repair. This device aims to empower users by allowing them to control their own network using the software of their choice, ensuring it is not locked down or "bricked." The OpenWrt One complies with copyleft licenses, providing fully open source code from the start, enabling owners to modify

Map UI – Ghost in the Shell

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: Hacker News

The content appears to promote a research initiative called "INTERFACE LOVE," which focuses on user interface design in various media, including video games and cinema. It highlights a specific example of map UI from the film "Ghost in the Shell," alongside legal credits for the original creators. The article encourages readers to subscribe for continued access to the full archive of related content.

Perl Advent Calendar 2024 - Day 1 - While You're Waiting for Corinna by Ovid

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the excitement around the upcoming release of Corinna, a modern Perl feature, but notes that some users are still stuck on older versions of Perl, limiting their access to it. The narrative humorously likens the anticipation to awaiting Christmas gifts from Santa, who is also a Perl developer. Among Santa's tools is an LRU (Least Recently Used) cache, which is efficient for managing a varied demand for toys. The author describes the modern features of a caching implementation that resembles Moose but

Controlling AI's Growing Energy Needs

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: Hacker News

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Jeff Dean Responds to EDA Industry about AlphaChip

Published: 2024-12-01 | Origin: Hacker News

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vince - Self Hosted Alternative to Google Analytics

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: /r/programming

Vince is a cost-effective, self-hosted alternative to Google Analytics that prioritizes user privacy and compliance with regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and PECR. It eliminates the need for cookie notices and reduces costs and engineering resources while providing actionable insights for websites. Vince is delivered as a single binary with no external dependencies and features a custom storage system using Compressed Roaring Bitmaps for fast queries and efficient data storage. The tool was designed and developed by Geofrey Ernest.

Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: Hacker News

Privastead is a privacy-focused home security camera solution that utilizes end-to-end encryption to ensure strong privacy guarantees. It is designed to provide enhanced privacy compared to existing home security cameras. The system includes a camera hub and a mobile app, forming a secure messaging group that protects video transmissions even if a key is compromised. Privastead supports any IP camera with an open interface, although its prototype currently operates with cameras that support RTSP and ONVIF protocols. Users are encouraged to contribute to the

Ntfs2btrfs does in-place conversion of NTFS filesystem to the open-source Btrfs

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the tool **ntfs2btrfs**, which allows for in-place conversion of Microsoft's NTFS filesystem to the open-source Btrfs filesystem, similar to how **btrfs-convert** works for ext2. The tool saves the original image as a reflink copy at **image/ntfs.img**, and users can delete this if they want to free up space after conversion. While the tool is considered stable, the author assumes no responsibility for any issues that may arise

AMD Disables Zen 4's Loop Buffer

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: Hacker News

A loop buffer is utilized in a CPU's frontend to store a limited number of previously fetched instructions, allowing for the execution of small loops while conserving power and enhancing performance by bypassing certain frontend limitations. This technique has been employed by major chip makers like Intel, Arm, and AMD. Notably, AMD's Zen 4 is the only high-performance core from AMD that incorporates a loop buffer, which is referenced as a micro-op dispatch source in its documentation, with a capacity of 144 entries,

Learnings after 4 years working with 50+ companies on data engineering projects

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: /r/programming

In the first four years of founding Tinybird, the author has focused on assisting over 100 companies with their technical needs, with hands-on support for more than 50, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. Tinybird addresses various projects, often involving the optimization of existing systems to achieve real-time processing capabilities, leading to significant cost savings for clients. The author clarifies that 'real-time' processing does not necessarily mean using complex technologies like Kafka or Spark, but rather achieving faster data processing

Concurrency diagrams

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the common misunderstandings engineers face regarding concurrency in program design and system architecture. These misunderstandings often arise from differing internal assumptions about how concurrent processes function, which can remain unnoticed until they become costly to fix later in development. To mitigate this, the author suggests using concurrency diagrams, which visually represent the system's components and their interactions over time. These diagrams help clarify assumptions and can even alter the creator's perspective on system sequencing. Time is plotted along the vertical axis, while functional components are

Django and Postgres for the Busy Rails Developer

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: /r/programming

The author, a software engineer, consultant, and author, reflects on their experience transitioning from MySQL to PostgreSQL and recently working with Python, Django, and PostgreSQL after being a long-time Rails developer. They note their curiosity about Django due to their experienced team and plan to share insights on Django's database components, relevant libraries, tools, and a comparison with Ruby on Rails. The author observes that both Ruby and Python are versatile languages suitable for scripting and object-oriented programming, mentioning that Python execution

A dead simple command line journal (encrypted entries & almost no dependencies)

Published: 2024-11-30 | Origin: /r/programming

The content outlines a command line journaling system designed to be minimal and easy to set up across multiple UNIX devices, using just two bash scripts. Inspired by the jrnl project, it emphasizes encrypted file storage using symmetric AES256 encryption with GPG. The setup process prompts users for a password, creates a structured folder system based on ISO 8601 time and date formats, and generates a hidden directory (.jrnl/) in the user's home directory to hold the main script and environment variables. Users can