1171
Optimizers need a rethink
Thoughts on how compiler and database optimizers should evolve in the future, focusing on predictability and guarantees instead of smarts and heroics
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 6,945 posts.
1172
Streaming joins are hard
Why are streaming joins so tricky? Discover the hidden complexities of real-time data, and learn how to tame the infinite stream!
1173
Rustls Outperforms OpenSSL and BoringSSL
ISRG has been investing heavily in the Rustls TLS library over the past few years. Our goal is to create a library that is both memory safe and a leader in performance. Back in January of this year we published a post about the start of our performance journey. We've come a long way since then and we're excited to…
1174
Against /tmp
I commented on Lobsters that /tmp is usually a bad idea , which caused some surprise. I suppose /tmp security bugs were common in the 1990s when I was learning Unix, but they are pretty rare now so I can see why less grizzled hackers might not be familiar with the problems.
1175
MVCC – the part of PostgreSQL we hate the most (2023)
As much as Andy loves PostgreSQL, there is one part that is terrible and causes many headaches for people. Learn what it is and why it sucks.
1176
Blocking code is a leaky abstraction
Asynchronous code does not require the rest of your code to be asynchronous. I can’t say the same for blocking code.
1177
Net 9.0 LINQ Performance Improvements
Understand .NET 9.0 LINQ performance improvements, faster iterator and the usage of Span
1178
Why does everyone run ancient Postgres versions?
Many companies are running old Postgres versions and missing out on many improvements. The reasons: Postgres works and upgrades suck.
1179
Optimizing the Ion compiler back end
In September, machine learning engineers at Mozilla filed a bug report indicating that Firefox was consuming excessive memory and CPU resources while running Microsoft’s ONNX Runtime (a machine learning library) compiled to WebAssembly.
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Zero-latency SQLite storage in every Durable Object
Kenton Varda introduces the next iteration of Cloudflare's Durable Object platform, which recently upgraded from a key/value store to a full relational system based on SQLite. For useful background on …
1182
Lessons learned from profiling an algorithm in Rust
Recently, I've been working on a new approximate nearest neighbor search algorithm called RaBitQ . The author has already provided a C++ implementation that runs quite fast. I tried to rewrite it in Rust (yet another RiiR). But I found that my implementation is much slower than the original one. Here is how I improve…
1183
Node.js, Pipes, and Disappearing Bytes
Someone in one of my online communities recently asked about why their Node command was dropping output when piped to another command:
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Every bug/quirk of the Windows resource compiler (rc.exe), probably
Fuzz testing decades-old software can turn up some curious behaviors
1185
Why do systems fail? Tandem NonStop system and fault tolerance
Explore Tandem NonStop architecture principles and their relevance to high availability in software systems like Elixir, Gleam, and Erlang.
1186
Designing a Fast Concurrent Hash Table
I recently released papaya, a fast and feature-complete concurrent hash table for Rust. In this post I want to dive into the design and research that went into creating it, as well as why you might consider using it over existing solutions.
1187
WASM Is the New CGI
I read a wonderful twitter thead about CGI and the birth of the web and this triggered a thought I've been kicking around. > Wasm is the new CGI And to be cle...
1188
Practices of Reliable Software Design
It should have good performance and be able to hold many entries. Reads are more common than writes. I know how I would do it already, but I’m curious about your approach.
1189
The costs of the i386 to x86-64 upgrade
If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as “legacy cruft from the 1990s that nobody cares about any longer”. It's time to see how any of that carried over through the 16-bit to 64-bit evolution.
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An illustrated proof of the CAP theorem (2018)
The CAP Theorem is a fundamental theorem in distributed systems that states any distributed system can have at most two of the following three properties.
1191
Windows dynamic linking depends on the active code page
Windows paths have been WTF-16 -encoded for decades, but module names in the import tables of Portable Executable are octets. If a name contains values beyond ASCII — technically out of spec — then the dynamic linker must somehow decode those octets into Unicode in order to construct a lookup path. There are multiple…
1192
Fast B-Trees
( This is part of a series on the design of zest . See the list of posts here .)
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AVX Bitwise ternary logic instruction busted
How a modern AVX instruction shares a similar design with a 1985 blitter chip, by Arnaud Carré
1194
John Carmack on inlined code (2014)
(Here begins a comment written by John Carmack in 2014, about an email he sent to a programmers’ mailing list in 2007.)
1195
Optimizing Postgres table layout for maximum efficiency
Introduction When modeling a Postgres database, you probably don’t give much thought to the order of columns in your tables. After all, it seems like the kind of thing that wouldn’t affect storage or performance. But what if I told you that simply reordering your columns could reduce the size of your tables and…
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Virtualizing iOS on Apple Silicon
Nick Botticelli's personal website
1197
Good Retry, Bad Retry
Sometimes, a seemingly simple and obvious solution can lead to a series of problems later on. This is especially true when adding retries.
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Perfctl: Stealthy malware targeting Linux servers
Perfctl is particularly elusive and persistent malware employing several sophisticated techniques
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The Heart of Unix (2018)
Despite all of its warts, I like working in Linux. I've used it for 15 years and I've never been as productive in another environment. Most people claim that it's the configurability of Linux that keep the users coming. That may have attracted me at first, but what attracts me now is its programmability.
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Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
The slides, the video, and the text behind my presentation at EuroBSDCon 2024 and BSDCan 2025 - Why and how we're migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs.