11971
How we upgraded our 4TB Postgres database
Last fall, we migrated our 4TB Postgres database from version 9.6 to version 13 with minimal downtime. Here is how we did it (gotchas included).
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 80,859 posts.
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Are LLMs able to notice the “gorilla in the data”?
One paper that caught my attention a bit ago was Selective attention in hypothesis-driven data analysis by Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher. In their study, students who were given specific hypotheses to test were much less likely to notice an obvious “gorilla in the data” compared to students who explored the data…
11974
Firefox 50.0
We'd also like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox!
11975
Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown
Kaspersky GReAT experts discovered previously undocumented infection chains used in the Notepad++ supply chain attacks. The article provides new IoCs related to those incidents which employ DLL sideloading and Cobalt Strike Beacon delivery.
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Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
For decades, I have been talking about the importance of individual privacy. For almost as long, I have been using the metaphor of digital feudalism to describe how large companies have become central control points for our data. And for maybe half a decade, I have been talking about the world-sized robot that is the…
11978
Declining America
Recently I got an invitation from an organization I respect, to a gathering of senior people, unconference format. Yes, it’s mostly about AI. No, it doesn’t reek of boosterism. My guess is that the discussions would be relatively intelligent and unbeliever contributions would be welcome. I declined, because it’s in…
11979
Tracking Anthropic-discovered vulnerabilities
Seven months into Project Glasswing, VulnCheck has tracked 442 CVEs attributable to Anthropic, roughly 0.5% of all CVEs published this year, with only two identified as exploited in the wild. Of Anthropic’s 37,966 reported findings, only 7,349 (19.4%) have been made public and just 217 have been marked fixed.
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CockroachDB 2.0 Performance Makes Significant Strides
Learn which performance metrics matter, why to demand benchmark TPC-C results under serializable isolation, and how CockroachDB 2.0’s performance compares to 1.1.
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Shipping WebGPU on Windows in Firefox 141
After years in development, we will be releasing WebGPU on Windows in Firefox 141! WebGPU gives web content a modern interface to the user’s graphics processor, enabling high-performance comp…
11983
I’m tired. So I’m selling my game that just went viral
Hacker Experience is an online hacking simulation game. Read more about it here.
11984
TPP banning requirements to transfer or access to source code of software
This is a video by Zack Struver about Senator Bernie Sander’s proposal to expand Veterans access to patented medical inventions. The video discusses both the proposal by Senator Sanders to give the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs the authority to… Continue Reading →
11985
LLM Year in Review
2025 Year in Review of LLM paradigm changes
11986
A note on the USB-to-PS/2 mouse adapter that came with Microsoft mouse devices
It's a purely mechanical adapter that relies on smarts in the mouse itself.
11987
I almost failed to search a 37 GB text file in under 1 millisecond
... in which we check if your password has been compromised in many inconvenient ways, in a tale of destruction, obsession, and self-discovery.
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AWS Secrets Manager – Store, Distribute, and Rotate Credentials Securely
Today we’re launching AWS Secrets Manager which makes it easy to store and retrieve your secrets via API or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) and rotate your credentials with built-in or custom AWS Lambda functions. Managing application secrets like database credentials, passwords, or API Keys is easy when…
11990
It's Playtime - Light Table Playground released
I’m happy to announce the official release of the Light Table Playground ! You can find instructions for getting it here: http://app.kodowa.com/playground
11991
Bear plus snowflake equals polar bear
The correct answer is: 6. Or 7, if you want to be pedantic and include the newline, but let’s not.
11992
this css proves me human
Posts on software engineering – engineering culture, system legibility, and performance.
11993
Disclosure: Another macOS privacy protections bypass
Today I'm disclosing a macOS privacy protections bypass. (You may recall that I disclosed another one last year .) The privacy protections system (also known as TCC: Transparency, Consent, and Control) was introduced in macOS Mojave, and one of its purposes is to protect certain files on your Mac from access by…
11994
11995
Testing like the TSA
When developers first discover the wonders of test-driven development, it’s like gaining entrance to a new and better world with less stress and insecurity. It truly is a wonderful experience well worth celebrating. But internalizing the benefits of testing is only the first step to enlighten…
11996
Microservices, Containers and Kubernetes in Ten Minutes
What is a microservice? What is Kubernetes for? In this post, we try to explain microservices, containers and Kubernetes in 10 minutes
11997
Announcing gRPC Support in Nginx
NGINX now proxies gRPC traffic, so you can terminate, inspect, and route gRPC method calls. Manage encryption and load balance gRPC traffic.
11998
My approach to building large technical projects (2023)
Whether it's building a new project from scratch, implementing a big feature, or beginning a large refactor, it can be difficult to stay motivated and complete large technical projects. A method that works really well for me is to continuously see real results and to order my work based on that.
11999
EFF: "Parallel construction" is really intelligence laundering
UPDATE: Add the IRS to the list of federal agencies obtaining information from NSA surveillance. Reuters reports that the IRS got intelligence tips from DEA's secret unit (SOD) and were also told to cover up the source of that information by coming up with their own independent leads to recreate...
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Advent of Compiler Optimisations 2025
Announcing AoCO 2025 - daily December posts about compiler optimisations