frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

I gave Opus 5.5 one prompt and six hours to visualize Invisible Cities

https://quesma.com/blog/invisible-cities-one-shot/
100•stared•1h ago•44 comments

“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117395269325940185
424•ent101•8h ago•411 comments

The Slow Formation of Durable Software

https://newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-slow-formation-of-durable-software/
81•benbreen•1d ago•20 comments

Telnet BBS Guide

https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/
25•kmstout•1h ago•8 comments

OpenAI Withdraws 3 Math Papers

https://github.com/openai/math/blob/main/history.md
168•theemathas•5h ago•122 comments

Claude Haiku 5.5

https://www.anthropic.com/claude-haiku-5-5
951•sfkgtbor•19h ago•446 comments

The 15-year search for a band that charted once and vanished

https://shahidhussain.com/writing/search-for-salvage/
229•shahidhussain•3d ago•80 comments

Living off-grid: Hundred Rabbits

https://100r.ca/site/home.html
288•Muhammad523•2d ago•102 comments

Time Travel in Braid (2015)

https://qntm.org/braid
20•Ariarule•3d ago•0 comments

Margaret Hamilton has died

https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
1821•muglug•16h ago•199 comments

GPT‑6 and Intelligent UI for everyone

https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-for-everyone/
689•joshuawright11•19h ago•401 comments

How did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn't

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-did-rosalind-franklin-miss-helix-her-iconic-dna-image...
229•pavel_lishin•2d ago•84 comments

Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in literature 2026

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/oct/08/wins-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-2026
51•sonabinu•1h ago•3 comments

'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal on Earth

https://www.404media.co/oldest-living-land-animal-jonathan-the-tortoise/
200•gumby•17h ago•108 comments

Float and integer arithmetic follow two different paradigms

https://blog.pkh.me/p/49-float-and-integer-arithmetic-follow-two-different-paradigms.html
6•ibobev•2d ago•0 comments

Cleo (Mathematician)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_(mathematician)
200•djoldman•1d ago•39 comments

The Mathocalypse

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10169
296•6bitquant•18h ago•310 comments

Show HN: Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app

https://bigwords.page/
575•SpeakingOfBrad•22h ago•144 comments

Dat-ecosystem: high level applications built on top of P2P protocols

https://dat-ecosystem.org/
29•janandonly•7h ago•13 comments

Bloody Cavemen

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n18/edmund-gordon/bloody-cavemen
22•Thevet•1d ago•3 comments

Sharing AI progress in mathematics

https://openai.com/index/sharing-ai-progress-in-mathematics/
1293•OfficialTurkey•1d ago•1465 comments

In Vienna and Beijing, the first (thorium) nuclear clocks begin to tick

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/science/first-nuclear-clocks-thorium-229.html
125•gumby•19h ago•39 comments

New repository settings for configuring pull request access

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-02-13-new-repository-settings-for-configuring-pull-request-acc...
30•Bluestein•2d ago•17 comments

Docker Agent

https://github.com/docker/docker-agent
269•saikatsg•20h ago•124 comments

Classic PC demoscene productions running natively in the browser

https://treylorswift.github.io/demoscene-recomp/web/
117•adunk•7h ago•103 comments

Push ifs up and fors down: The idiom, its algebra, and its limits

https://debasishg.github.io/blog/push-ifs-up-fors-down/
163•speckx•19h ago•74 comments

Animated ASCII Art for Web Pages

https://ascii.rest/
401•turrini•22h ago•71 comments

Why were Victorian elites so effective?

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-seven-vices-of-highly-effective-victorians/
194•karakoram•22h ago•321 comments

Analog Computer Simulator in the Browser

https://pavel-krivanek.github.io/The-Analog-Thing-Simulator/public/
34•adamnemecek•2d ago•12 comments

Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM

https://github.com/pingdotgg/ts-rust
91•jcbhmr•13h ago•168 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.