frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

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•1y ago

Comments

castratikron•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
in CPU's - pipelining!
jchw•1y 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...)

I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2091544343589060625
181•bilsbie•14h ago•271 comments

Everything I own, owned

https://schlarp.com/posts/everything-i-own-owned/
1007•schlarpc•12h ago•279 comments

FDA clears blood test to aid evaluation for Alzheimer's disease

https://medicine.washu.edu/news/fda-clears-blood-test-to-aid-evaluation-for-alzheimers-disease/
65•dabinat•4h ago•18 comments

Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

https://www.ft.com/content/5ee49718-c258-4f01-aa32-7e5b76ae5245
559•naves•17h ago•501 comments

OCR It – pull text out of un-copyable documents for your LLM

https://github.com/thiagotigaz/ocr-it
55•thiagolima•4h ago•11 comments

Fast drilldown dashboards from a single Parquet file

https://www.hamiltonulmer.com/customer-dashboards-r2-hyparquet/
26•v3gas•3h ago•0 comments

Executable Is a SQLite Database

https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/23/your-executable-is-a-sqlite-database
119•setheron•6h ago•14 comments

How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

https://lalitm.com/post/find-problems-staff-engineer/
428•vanpra•16h ago•133 comments

Woman stranded in Spain after UK's eVisa system mistakes her for twin sister

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/24/woman-stranded-spain-uk-evisa-system-mistakes-twi...
51•giuliomagnifico•1h ago•36 comments

The Future Belongs to the Weird

https://essays.georgestrakhov.com/weird/
18•georgestrakhov•2h ago•6 comments

Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future

https://www.modelrepublic.org/articles/a16z-portfolio
214•reasonableklout•4h ago•72 comments

I built a low-latency AI companion that plays Skyrim with me

https://pantel.is/projects/ai-gaming-companion/
181•pantelisk•12h ago•36 comments

Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)

https://blog.elis.cc/articles/google-workspace-thinks-my-domain-is-an-email-provider/
315•el1s7•15h ago•103 comments

What Is a Harness?

https://earendil.com/posts/what-is-a-harness/
468•tosh•20h ago•155 comments

My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality

https://fabiensanglard.net/agent.md/index.html
327•ibobev•17h ago•138 comments

The treasury bond mess: is this the demise of the US as a safe haven?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/24/treasury-bonds-trump-administration-debt
12•fittingopposite•31m ago•0 comments

New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/0824/1588931-repair-rules/
147•austinallegro•5h ago•78 comments

How Complex Systems Fail (1998)

https://how.complexsystems.fail/
329•shortcrct•20h ago•72 comments

AI Chip Architectures

https://www.jepeake.com/ai-chip-architectures
94•Finbarr•1d ago•32 comments

Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

12•kaladan•55m ago•7 comments

Malware infects Android-based automotive head unit firmware

https://securelist.com/android-head-unit-malware/121106/
246•campuscodi•22h ago•126 comments

Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo

https://www.afro.who.int/countries/democratic-republic-of-congo/news/over-5200-cases-recorded-dem...
62•simonebrunozzi•4h ago•18 comments

Fable and the end of the free lunch

https://www.dbreunig.com/2026/08/23/fable-the-end-of-moore-s-law.html
162•dbreunig•16h ago•154 comments

My favorite nonfiction books about cults, scams, and schemes

https://bookdna.com/best-books/nonfiction-about-cults-scams-and-schemes
241•bwb•21h ago•89 comments

Explain it to me like I'm ten

https://timharford.com/2026/08/explain-it-to-me-like-im-ten/
149•bookofjoe•17h ago•55 comments

Why is Anthropic's public writing style so unlike Claude's?

https://cmart.blog/claude-writing/
35•zdw•7h ago•24 comments

Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

https://punyamishra.com/2026/04/16/why-sal-khant-on-learning-by-making-but-teaching-by-telling/
179•the-mitr•19h ago•105 comments

Mourning Steve French

https://lwn.net/Articles/1090098/
14•mfrw•6h ago•0 comments

Elevated Errors for Multiple Models

https://status.claude.com/incidents/vgz5psbjmt1h
30•rob•6h ago•10 comments

A website for debloated open source alternatives

https://debloat.dev/
352•ryanvogel•18h ago•109 comments