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GenCAD

https://gencad.github.io/
266•dagenix•10h ago•66 comments

I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation

https://github.com/tech4bot/rk3562deb
332•tech4bot•18h ago•148 comments

Ask an Astronaut: 333 hours of Q&A footage with astronauts

https://askanastronaut.issinrealtime.org/
117•gaws•2d ago•9 comments

Prolog Coding Horror

https://www.metalevel.at/prolog/horror
117•RohanAdwankar•10h ago•44 comments

It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

https://www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-hard-problem-of-consciousness/
34•ahalbert4•4h ago•104 comments

Crystals found inside wreckage from the first nuclear bomb test

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-crystals-found-inside-wreckage-from-the-first-...
36•jumploops•2d ago•7 comments

Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep

https://github.com/MinishLab/semble
294•Bibabomas•16h ago•100 comments

Jank now has its own custom IR

https://jank-lang.org/blog/2026-05-08-optimization/
110•DASD•2d ago•10 comments

WriteUp: 16 Bytes of x86 that turn Matrix rain into sound

https://hellmood.111mb.de//wake_up_16b_writeup.html
105•HellMood•8h ago•19 comments

Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

https://idahonews.com/news/local/two-f-18-fighter-jets-have-crashed-during-an-airshow-at-mountain...
186•ChrisArchitect•9h ago•167 comments

A Good Lemma Is Worth a Thousand Theorems (2007)

https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion82.html
45•susam•2d ago•9 comments

Show HN: Mezz, a curl-able WiFi sandbox for IoT pentesting

https://github.com/ABGEO/mezz
18•ABGEO•2d ago•3 comments

Profunctor Equipment in Haskell

https://bartoszmilewski.com/2026/05/16/profunctor-equipment-in-haskell/
8•g0xA52A2A•1d ago•0 comments

Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

https://electrek.co/2026/05/14/tesla-solar-roof-promise-vs-reality-pivot-panels/
239•celsoazevedo•1d ago•231 comments

Hindenburg’s Smoking Room

https://www.airships.net/hindenburg-smoking-room/
196•crescit_eundo•3d ago•154 comments

CUDA Books

https://github.com/alternbits/awesome-cuda-books
178•dariubs•18h ago•36 comments

Prolog Basics Explained with Pokémon

https://unplannedobsolescence.com/blog/prolog-basics-pokemon/
249•birdculture•2d ago•38 comments

Magical Realism: “Northern Exposure” 25 Years Later (2015)

https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/magical-realism-nothern-exposure-25-years-later
101•walterbell•2d ago•45 comments

I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

https://frederickvanbrabant.com/blog/2026-05-15-i-dont-think-ai-will-make-your-processes-go-faster/
561•TheEdonian•19h ago•388 comments

Cannibalistic attacks between gray seals leave telltale “corkscrew” injuries

https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-id-corkscrew-killer-behind-gruesome-seal-deaths
60•gmays•3d ago•20 comments

High-Entropy Alloy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-entropy_alloy
131•leonidasrup•3d ago•23 comments

Trials on veterans suggest ibogaine could provide a new treatment for PTSD

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260514-how-hallucinogenic-ibogaine-helps-veterans-overcome-ptsd
93•bushwart•19h ago•96 comments

Étienne Ghys: The Shape of Letters: From Leonardo da Vinci to Donald Knuth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OIxzewWilc
21•tzury•3h ago•3 comments

VoIP brings back old-fashioned pay phones to rural Vermont (2025)

https://spectrum.ieee.org/payphone-voip
147•bookofjoe•12h ago•44 comments

Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/AGWUVH-mercurial-aint-you-dead-yet/
188•ibobev•2d ago•195 comments

A nicer voltmeter clock

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-nicer-voltmeter-clock
336•surprisetalk•1d ago•44 comments

The History of ThinkPad: From IBM’s Bento Box to Lenovo’s AI Workstations

https://www.jdhodges.com/blog/thinkpad-history/
94•zdw•9h ago•43 comments

The SGI Buyer's Guide (2003)

https://hardware.majix.org/computers/sgi/buyers-guide.shtml
21•uticus•2d ago•9 comments

Colossus: The Forbin Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project
230•doener•3d ago•91 comments

Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2026/05/15/mozilla-to-uk-regulators-vpns-are-essential-privacy...
715•WithinReason•1d ago•304 comments
Open in hackernews

Anatomy of a SQL Engine

https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2025-04-25-sql-engine-anatomy/
168•ingve•1y ago

Comments

jimbokun•1y ago
Very nice write up enumerating all the stages of SQL query execution. Interesting even if you don’t care about the DoIt database specifically.
Austizzle•1y ago
Man, this title tripped me up for a minute because I pronounce it with the letters like Ess-Queue-Ell

So the "A" in "A ess-queue-ell" engine felt like it should have been an "An" until I realized it was meant to be pronounced like "sequel"

perching_aix•1y ago
Not necessarily, I see native speakers completely ignore this a lot.

Have you ever considered pronouncing it as squirrel by the way?

kreetx•1y ago
Many (most?) non-native English speakers do pronounce it as ess-queue-ell, especially in their own languages, so yes, the use of "a" instead of "an" does look off from that perspective.
SloopJon•1y ago
When I read SQL for Dummies almost thirty years ago, it made a point of distinguishing "sequel" as a historical predecessor to standard "SQL." As I recall, the author even asserted that SQL is not an acronym/initialism for structured query language. I felt funny saying sequel for the next decade or so, because I wasn't an old timer experienced with this pre-SQL technology.

Now I usually say sequel because everyone else does. That and it rolls off the tongue better than S-Q-L.

jtolmar•1y ago
I prefer "ess queue ell" these days, but the first DBA I ever worked with pronounced it "squirrel".
gopalv•1y ago
This is a great write up about a pull-style volcano SQL engine.

The IR I've used is the Calcite implementation, this looks very concept adjacent enough that it makes sense on the first read.

> tmp2/test-branch> explain plan select count() from xy join uv on x = u;

One of the helpful things we did was to build a graphviz dot export for the explains plans, which saved us days and years of work when trying to explain an optimization problem between the physical and logical layers.

My version would end up displayed as SVG like this

https://web.archive.org/web/20190724161156/http://people.apa...

But the calcite logical plans also have that dot export modes.

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CALCITE-4197

th0ma5•1y ago
This is really great!!
gavinray•1y ago
Calcite also has a relatively-unknown web tool for plan visualization that lets you step through execution.

It's a method from "RuleMatchVisualizer":

https://github.com/apache/calcite/blob/36f6dddd894b8b79edeb5...

Here's a screenshot of what the webpage looks like, for anyone curious:

https://github.com/GavinRay97/GraphQLCalcite/blob/92b18a850d...

ignoreusernames•1y ago
I recommend anyone who works with databases to write a simple engine. It's a lot simpler than you may think and it's a great exercise. If using python, sqlglot (https://github.com/tobymao/sqlglot) let's you skip all the parsing and it even does some simple optimizations. From the parsed query tree it's pretty straightforward to build a logical plan and execute that. You can even use python's builtin ast module to convert sql expressions into python ones (so no need for a custom interpreter!)
Abde-Notte•1y ago
Second this - building even a simple engine gives real insight into query planning and execution. Once parsing is handled, the core ideas are a lot more approachable than they seem.
albert_e•1y ago
Sorry for slight digression.

In a larger system we are building we need a text-to-sql capability for some structured data retrieval.

Is there a way one could utilize this library (sqlglot) to build a multi-dialect sql generator -- that is not currently solved by directly relying on a LLM that is better at code generation in general?

LtdJorge•1y ago
This is a SQL to X library, though. I don’t think it’s what you need.
gavinray•1y ago
You can use an LLM to generate query-builder expressions from popular libraries in whatever language.

For example, on the JVM there is jOOQ, which allows you to write something like:

  select(field("foo"), avg("bar")).from(table("todos"))
And then it will render dialect-specific SQL. It has very advanced emulation functionality for things like JSON aggregations and working around quirks of dialects.

Alternatively, you can ask an LLM to generate a specific dialect of SQL, and then use jOOQ to parse it to an AST, and then render it as a different dialect, like:

    val parser= DSL.using(SQLDialect.POSTGRES).parser()
    val parsedQuery = parser.parseQuery(postgresQuery)
    val renderedMySQL = DSL.using(SQLDialect.MYSQL).renderInlined(parsedQuery)
    println(renderedMySQL)
Unsure if functionality like this exists in other Query Builder libraries for other languages.
genai-analyst•1y ago
another digression here... sorry... i see you're trying to diy text-to-sql—at some point you're gonna hit a bunch of hiccups. like, the model writes a query that “almost” works but joins the wrong tables, or it assumes column names that don’t exist, or it returns the wrong agg because it misread the intent. and retries won’t always save you—it’ll just confidently hallucinate again.

we’ve been through all of that at wobby.ai we ended up building a system where the data team defines guardrails and reusable query templates, so the agent doesn’t just make stuff up. it can still handle user prompts, but within a safe structure. if you want to save yourself from debugging this stuff endlessly, might be worth checking out wobby.ai.

KyleBrandt•1y ago
Using dolthub's go-mysql-server for Grafana's upcoming SQL expressions feature (private preview in Grafana 12, but in the OSS version with a feature toggle).

GMS lets you provide your own table and database implementations, so we use GMS to perform SQL queries against Grafana's dataframes - so users can join or manipulate different data source queires, but we don't have to insert the data into SQL to do this thanks to GMS.