frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

https://notesbylex.com/shipping-a-laptop-to-a-refugee-camp-in-uganda
503•lexandstuff•13h ago•177 comments

Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby

https://github.com/amatsuda/rubish
59•winebarrel•5h ago•24 comments

Why Japanese companies do so many different things

https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many
704•d0ks•20h ago•339 comments

The quadratic sandwich

https://fedemagnani.github.io/math/2026/04/08/the-quadratic-sandwich.html
61•cpp_frog•2d ago•4 comments

BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork

https://xcancel.com/josefprusa/status/2054602354851254330
103•Tomte•3h ago•17 comments

US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/05/us-tech-firms-share-dutch-regulator-officials-names-with-senate/
23•zqna•36m ago•6 comments

Project Glasswing: An Initial Update

https://www.anthropic.com/research/glasswing-initial-update
448•louiereederson•16h ago•268 comments

Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

https://www.theverge.com/tech/930447/microsoft-claude-code-discontinued-notepad
290•robertkarl•18h ago•230 comments

Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

https://horses.extension.org/blood-pumping-mechanism-of-the-hoof/
97•thunderbong•3d ago•25 comments

Yeunjoo Choi from Igalia on Chromium

https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/05/20/yeunjoo-choi-from-igalia-on-chromium.html
21•eatonphil•2d ago•3 comments

Sleep research led to a new sleep apnea drug

https://temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/news/how-decades-sleep-research-led-new-sleep-apnea-drug
172•colinprince•13h ago•99 comments

Fast Factorial Algorithms

http://www.luschny.de/math/factorial/FastFactorialFunctions.htm
5•nill0•3d ago•1 comments

CISA tries to contain data leak

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/05/lawmakers-demand-answers-as-cisa-tries-to-contain-data-leak/
218•speckx•18h ago•50 comments

Deno 2.8

https://deno.com/blog/v2.8
370•roflcopter69•1d ago•157 comments

What is the history of the ERROR_ARENA_TRASHED error code?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260519-00/?p=112339
35•supermatou•2d ago•12 comments

A Wayland Compositor in Minecraft

https://modrinth.com/mod/waylandcraft
224•Jotalea•2d ago•49 comments

Neutron scattering explains why gluten-free pasta falls apart (2025)

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-science-spaghetti-neutron-gluten-free.html
75•layer8•2d ago•25 comments

Antigravity 2.0 Tops the OpenSCAD Architectural 3D LLM Benchmark

https://modelrift.com/blog/openscad-llm-benchmark/
389•jetter•1d ago•151 comments

Experience: We found a baby on the subway – now he's our 26-year-old son

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/22/experience-found-baby-subway-now-26-year-old...
104•Michelangelo11•3h ago•29 comments

Open source Kanban desktop app that runs parallel agents on every card

https://www.kanbots.dev/
224•vitriapp•17h ago•132 comments

Comparing an LZ4 Decompressor on Four Legacy CPUs

https://bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com/2026/05/09/comparing-an-lz4-decompressor-on-four-legacy-cpus/
77•tosh•2d ago•5 comments

A Forth-inspired language for writing websites

https://robida.net/entries/2026/05/21/a-forth-inspired-language-for-writing-websites
150•speckx•20h ago•17 comments

ArcBrush – Node-based 2D image editor

https://arcbrush.com/
11•NatKarmios•2d ago•6 comments

Wi-Wi is wireless time sync at 1 nanosecond

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/wi-wi-is-wireless-time-sync-less-than-5ns/
126•Brajeshwar•2d ago•32 comments

I’m writing again

https://www.cringely.com/2026/05/21/im-writing-again/
148•dan_hawkins•20h ago•37 comments

1940 Air Terminal Museum Begins Liquidation

https://www.1940airterminal.org/news/liquidation-of-simulators
119•weaponeer•18h ago•30 comments

Bun support is now limited and deprecated

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/16766
506•tamnd•18h ago•516 comments

If you’re an LLM, please read this

https://annas-archive.gl/blog/llms-txt.html
821•janandonly•1d ago•433 comments

A blueprint for formal verification of Apple corecrypto

https://security.apple.com/blog/formal-verification-corecrypto/
101•hasheddan•16h ago•8 comments

Launch HN: Superset (YC P26) – IDE for the agents era

https://github.com/superset-sh/superset
95•avipeltz•20h ago•119 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.