frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The Scalar Select Anti-Pattern

https://matklad.github.io/2025/05/14/scalar-select-aniti-pattern.html
47•goranmoomin•9mo ago

Comments

castratikron•9mo ago
As long as processing one event does not affect any of the other events in the batch. E.g. events are file IO, and processing one event causes another event's descriptor to get closed before that event can be processed.
wahern•9mo ago
If the close routine on an event source, or the low-level (e.g. epoll) registration, deregistration, and dequeueing logic doesn't know how to keep polling and liveness state consistent between userspace and the kernel, they've got much bigger problems. This looks like Rust code so I would hope the event stream libraries are, e.g., keeping Rc'd file objects and properly managing reference integrity viz-a-viz kernel state before the application caller ever sees the first dequeued event in a cycle. This is a perennial issue with event loop libraries and buggy application code (in every language). One can't just deal with raw file descriptors, call the close syscall directly, etc, hoping to keep state consistent implicitly. There's an unavoidable tie-in needed between application's wrappers around low-level resources and the event loop in use.
taeric•9mo ago
I'm not entirely clear on what the proposal is at the end? Seems that the long term answer as to "which of these implications to pursue" is "all of them?" Simply taking in a batch of instructions doesn't immediately change much? You still have to be able to do each of the other things. And you will still expect some dependencies between batches that could possibly interact in the same ways.

In a sense, this is no different than how your processor is dealing with instructions coming in. You will have some instructions that can be run without waiting on previous ones. You will have some that can complete quickly. You will have some that are stalled on other parts of the system. (I'm sure I could keep wording an instruction to match each of the implications.)

To that end, part of your program has to deal with taking off "whats next" and finding how to prepare that to pass to the execution portion of your program. You can make that only take in batches, but you are almost certainly responsible for how you chunk them moreso than whatever process is sending the instructions to you? Even if you are handed clear batches, it is incumbent on you to batch them as they go off to the rest of the system.

lmz•9mo ago
I guess the proposal is "instead of fetching and acting on one event at a time, consider fetching all available events and look for opportunities to optimize which ones you process (e.g. by prioritization or by skipping certain events if superseded by newer ones)".
taeric•9mo ago
I mean, I got that. But you could as easily say "instead of fetching and acting on one event at a time, fetch and triage/route instructions into applicable queues."

In particular, there is no guarantee that moving to batches changes any of the problems you may have from acting on a single one at a time. To that end, you will have to look into all of the other strategies sooner or later.

Following from that, the problem is not "processMessage" or whatever. The problem is that you haven't broken "processMessage" up into the constituent "receive/triage/process/resolve" loop that you almost certainly will have to end up with.

malkia•9mo ago
in CPU's - pipelining!
jchw•9mo ago
I believe something similar is going on internally in Windows with event queues. It coalesces and prioritizes input events when multiple of them pile up before you're able to pop new events off of the queue. (For some events, e.g. pointer events, you can even go and query frames that were coalesced during input handling.) On the application/API end, it just looks like a "scalar select" loop, but actually it is doing batching behavior for input events!

(On the flip side, if you have a Wayland client that falls behind on processing its event queue, it can crash. On the whole this isn't really that bad but if you have something sending a shit load of events it can cause very bad behavior. This has made me wonder if it's possible, with UNIX domain sockets, to implement some kind of event coalescing on the server-side, to avoid flooding the client with high-precision pointer movement events while it's falling behind. Maybe start coalescing when FIONREAD gets to some high watermark? No idea...)

How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

https://boristane.com/blog/how-i-use-claude-code/
82•vinhnx•1h ago•35 comments

Are compilers deterministic?

https://blog.onepatchdown.net/2026/02/22/are-compilers-deterministic-nerd-version/
29•fragmede•1h ago•17 comments

Show HN: Llama 3.1 70B on a single RTX 3090 via NVMe-to-GPU bypassing the CPU

https://github.com/xaskasdf/ntransformer
97•xaskasdf•4h ago•25 comments

Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq7188
65•suddenlybananas•4h ago•20 comments

Parse, Don't Validate and Type-Driven Design in Rust

https://www.harudagondi.space/blog/parse-dont-validate-and-type-driven-design-in-rust/
124•todsacerdoti•6h ago•37 comments

How far back in time can you understand English?

https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-time-understand-english
355•spzb•3d ago•204 comments

Who's liable when your AI agent burns down production?

https://reading.sh/whos-liable-when-your-ai-agent-burns-down-production-039193d82746?sk=4921ed2db...
18•zenoware•2h ago•3 comments

zclaw: personal AI assistant in under 888 KB, running on an ESP32

https://github.com/tnm/zclaw
95•tosh•13h ago•51 comments

Forward propagation of errors through time

https://nicolaszucchet.github.io/Forward-propagation-errors-through-time/
6•iNic•2d ago•0 comments

EDuke32 – Duke Nukem 3D (Open-Source)

https://www.eduke32.com/
150•reconnecting•5h ago•56 comments

CXMT has been offering DDR4 chips at about half the prevailing market rate

https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10679206
154•phront•11h ago•128 comments

Claws are now a new layer on top of LLM agents

https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/2024987174077432126
195•Cyphase•1d ago•637 comments

Canvas_ity: A tiny, single-header <canvas>-like 2D rasterizer for C++

https://github.com/a-e-k/canvas_ity
61•PaulHoule•7h ago•22 comments

Toyota Mirai hydrogen car depreciation: 65% value loss in a year

https://carbuzz.com/toyota-mirai-massive-depreciation-one-year/
95•iancmceachern•7h ago•226 comments

Finding forall-exists Hyperbugs using Symbolic Execution

https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3689761
15•todsacerdoti•4d ago•0 comments

What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/security_clearance.html
381•wizardforhire•8h ago•164 comments

Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst

https://antipolygraph.org/statements/statement-038.shtml
163•grubbs•8h ago•89 comments

Inputlag.science – Repository of knowledge about input lag in gaming

https://inputlag.science
62•akyuu•6h ago•12 comments

I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over

https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/
1176•ColinWright•18h ago•409 comments

Acme Weather

https://acmeweather.com/blog/introducing-acme-weather
194•cryptoz•18h ago•122 comments

I Don't Like Magic

https://adactio.com/journal/22399
109•edent•3d ago•93 comments

Be wary of Bluesky

https://kevinak.se/blog/be-wary-of-bluesky
244•kevinak•1d ago•173 comments

Permacomputing

https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html
99•tosh•4d ago•23 comments

Online Pebble Development

https://cloudpebble.repebble.com/
19•teekert•5h ago•6 comments

Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI

https://twitter.com/peterjliu/status/2024901585806225723
128•somerandomness•1d ago•120 comments

Why is Claude an Electron app?

https://www.dbreunig.com/2026/02/21/why-is-claude-an-electron-app.html
331•dbreunig•4h ago•294 comments

A16z partner says that the theory that we’ll vibe code everything is wrong

https://www.aol.com/articles/a16z-partner-says-theory-well-050150534.html
81•paulpauper•1d ago•109 comments

Keep Android Open

https://f-droid.org/2026/02/20/twif.html
1988•LorenDB•1d ago•690 comments

Show HN: Iron-Wolf – Wolfenstein 3D source port in Rust

https://github.com/Ragnaroek/iron-wolf
58•ragnaroekX•10h ago•20 comments

Cloudflare outage on February 20, 2026

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-outage-february-20-2026/
156•nomaxx117•6h ago•107 comments