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Git commands I run before reading any code

https://piechowski.io/post/git-commands-before-reading-code/
1002•grepsedawk•7h ago•213 comments

MegaTrain: Full Precision Training of 100B+ Parameter LLMs on a Single GPU

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05091
137•chrsw•3h ago•30 comments

They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/
132•surprisetalk•4h ago•47 comments

Veracrypt project update

https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/general/thread/9620d7a4b3/
756•super256•8h ago•265 comments

Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

https://www.skoda-storyboard.com/en/skoda-world/skoda-duobell-a-bicycle-bell-that-outsmarts-even-...
300•ra•7h ago•387 comments

Show HN: Explore the Silk Roads through an interactive map

https://www.intofarlands.com/silk-roads-map
20•intofarlands•1h ago•1 comments

The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess

https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess
48•pabs3•2h ago•13 comments

US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology

https://www.cnet.com/home/security/when-flock-comes-to-town-why-cities-are-axing-the-controversia...
303•giuliomagnifico•3h ago•145 comments

Audio Reactive LED Strips Are Diabolically Hard

https://scottlawsonbc.com/post/audio-led
117•surprisetalk•1d ago•34 comments

I Ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

https://bryankeller.github.io/2026/04/08/porting-mac-os-x-nintendo-wii.html
10•blkhp19•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Go-Bt: Minimalist Behavior Trees for Go

https://github.com/rvitorper/go-bt
13•rvitorper•1h ago•1 comments

Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era

https://www.anthropic.com/glasswing
1431•Ryan5453•21h ago•742 comments

Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4W9V57SKs&t=5716s
281•tetrisgm•10h ago•94 comments

Microsoft Abruptly Terminates VeraCrypt Account, Halting Windows Updates

https://www.404media.co/microsoft-abruptly-terminates-veracrypt-account-halting-windows-updates/
63•donohoe•1h ago•11 comments

Lunar Flyby

https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/lunar-flyby/
881•kipi•1d ago•215 comments

Teardown of unreleased LG Rollable shows why rollable phones aren't a thing

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/04/teardown-of-unreleased-lg-rollable-shows-why-rollable-pho...
14•DamnInteresting•1d ago•9 comments

Your File System Is Already A Graph Database

https://rumproarious.com/2026/04/04/your-file-system-is-already-a-graph-database/
97•alxndr•2d ago•46 comments

Show HN: We built a camera only robot vacuum for less than 300$ (Well almost)

https://indraneelpatil.github.io/blog/2026/robot-vacuum/
76•indraneelpatil•2d ago•33 comments

Protect your shed

https://dylanbutler.dev/blog/protect-your-shed/
249•baely•13h ago•66 comments

System Card: Claude Mythos Preview [pdf]

https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/53566bf5440a10affd749724787c8913a2ae0841.pdf
783•be7a•21h ago•583 comments

LLM plays an 8-bit Commander X16 game using structured "smart senses"

https://pvp-ai.russell-harper.com
10•russellharper•3h ago•0 comments

Virtual Mars Traverse: Every inch of Curiosity rover's path since 2012 landing

https://www.rovers.land/
10•bookofjoe•3d ago•1 comments

Mario and Earendil

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/4/8/mario-and-earendil/
45•doppp•6h ago•19 comments

Show HN: I pipe free sports streams into Jellyfin – no ads, just HLS

https://github.com/pcruz1905/hls-restream-proxy
40•pruz•3h ago•8 comments

GLM-5.1: Towards Long-Horizon Tasks

https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.1
585•zixuanlimit•23h ago•239 comments

Show HN: BAREmail ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi

https://github.com/matt-virgo/baremail
6•Virgo_matt•1h ago•1 comments

How to get better at guitar

https://www.jakeworth.com/posts/how-to-get-better-at-guitar/
427•jwworth•2d ago•218 comments

Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rx7xzd10xo
461•speckx•22h ago•107 comments

Native Americans had dice 12k years ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/native-americans-dice-games-probability-study-rcna26...
115•delichon•4d ago•53 comments

Slightly safer vibecoding by adopting old hacker habits

http://addxorrol.blogspot.com/2026/03/slightly-safer-vibecoding-by-adopting.html
152•transpute•5d ago•82 comments
Open in hackernews

Anatomy of a SQL Engine

https://www.dolthub.com/blog/2025-04-25-sql-engine-anatomy/
168•ingve•11mo ago

Comments

jimbokun•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
Not necessarily, I see native speakers completely ignore this a lot.

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

kreetx•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
I prefer "ess queue ell" these days, but the first DBA I ever worked with pronounced it "squirrel".
gopalv•11mo 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•11mo ago
This is really great!!
gavinray•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo ago
This is a SQL to X library, though. I don’t think it’s what you need.
gavinray•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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.