frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Malware infects Android-based automotive head unit firmware

https://securelist.com/android-head-unit-malware/121106/
65•campuscodi•1h ago•18 comments

Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg92y1wzn8o
74•epestr•4h ago•44 comments

To become a better writer, read as much as you can

https://nappertime.com/the-golden-rule-of-becoming-a-better-writer/
286•andsoitis•10h ago•183 comments

The End of an Athlon

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-end-of-an-athlon/
136•userbinator•8h ago•53 comments

My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes

https://bookdna.com/best-books/nonfiction-about-cults-scams-and-schemes
3•bwb•28m ago•0 comments

JIT Compiling Code in 5μs

https://malisper.me/jit-compiling-code-in-5-us/
112•zX41ZdbW•8h ago•65 comments

MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust

https://martypc.net/
148•boilerupnc•11h ago•55 comments

Show HN: Live 3D satellite tracker and the declassified Pentagon UFO archive

https://skylens.yantraai.app/
31•skylensspace•4h ago•4 comments

I gave Qwen 3.8 27B a reverse-engineering job and it finished in 30 minutes

https://www.xda-developers.com/qwen-3-8-27b-reverse-engineering-job-frontier-model/
119•raybb•4h ago•60 comments

Why your local LLM feels dumber than it is

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/why-your-local-llm-feels-dumber-than-it-is/253917
404•felineflock•20h ago•164 comments

Fast and Hard Code

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/8/22/fast-hard-code/
72•tosh•8h ago•36 comments

The Art and Beauty of Blade Runner (2015)

https://nappertime.com/the-art-of-and-beauty-of-blade-runner/
127•cocacola1•13h ago•60 comments

Hister – A private, full content search index that you control

https://hister.org/
409•auraham•4d ago•91 comments

ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs

https://quantumi.sh/public/labs.html
433•jemoka•23h ago•129 comments

Thinking in Python

https://thinkinginpython.com/
230•pjacotg•20h ago•43 comments

Scrap (2006)

https://twitter.com/moxie/status/2091218652133732491
384•tosh•20h ago•207 comments

typ.ing

https://typ.ing/
313•bookofjoe•4d ago•96 comments

RF Cafe

https://www.rfcafe.com/
222•gregsadetsky•4d ago•44 comments

NanoGPT Speedrun Frontier

https://www.primeintellect.ai/research/nanogpt-speedrun
121•stared•16h ago•30 comments

New MCP Roadmap

https://blog.modelcontextprotocol.io/posts/mcp-roadmap/
237•pentagrama•1d ago•141 comments

How a Texas student blew the whistle on a rogue AI hacking attempt

https://www.reuters.com/world/how-texas-student-blew-whistle-rogue-ai-hacking-attempt-2026-08-20/
183•olalonde•2d ago•92 comments

Iranian hackers shut down UK power plant for 4 days

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/22/iranian-hackers-shut-down-uk-power-plant/
41•giuliomagnifico•4h ago•16 comments

NetBSD and my life (2005)

https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-advocacy/2005/09/10/0000.html
137•gnyeki•19h ago•29 comments

ATProto spaces: A new extension to ATProto that enables non-public data

https://atproto.com/blog/atproto-spaces-alpha
158•grappler•2d ago•24 comments

Risk of transmission of amyloid β pathology via transfused blood products

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(26)00767-1
13•sbulaev•8h ago•0 comments

A Friendly Introduction to Racket

https://geometridae.bearblog.dev/a-friendly-introduction-to-racket/
250•signa11•1d ago•134 comments

I set a trap for a book-marketing scammer (2025)

https://rwwgreene.substack.com/p/i-set-a-trap-for-a-book-marketing
64•rznicolet•20h ago•39 comments

Munder Difflin – Agent harness to run an office of your clones

https://munderdiffl.in/
293•simonpure•1d ago•129 comments

Figmimic – A bookmarklet to copy any webpage into Figma as editable layers

https://marcua.net/minitools/figmimic/
116•speckx•20h ago•17 comments

Z80 – The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive (2021)

https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/mi/2021/06/09623402/1yJTvlRLmhi
148•asdefghyk•1d ago•74 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.
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.

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.