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...)

Actively exploited sandbox RCE in all Chromium versions

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2026-85046
253•negura•4h ago•143 comments

Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem

https://www.anthropic.com/research/formalizing-fermats-last-theorem
505•jlebar•7h ago•321 comments

Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

https://collusion.wiki/
1496•moultano•14h ago•1193 comments

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.2

https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/artificial-analysis-intelligence-index-v4-2
51•nojs•2h ago•16 comments

Statichost.eu – European static site hosting

https://www.statichost.eu/
177•p4bl0•5h ago•55 comments

GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

https://openrouter.ai/openai/gpt-6-astra
128•Topfi•4h ago•68 comments

Shutting down our public encrypted DNS

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/shutting-down-our-public-encrypted-dns-servers-and-sponsoring-quad9-i...
255•mywacaday•7h ago•103 comments

Reversing MikroTik's Silent Patch: The RouterOS 7.23.4 Fix They Wouldn't Explain

https://npratley.net/reversing-mikrotiks-silent-patch-the-routeros-7-23-4-fix-they-wouldnt-explain/
19•ytch•2h ago•6 comments

Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

https://engineering.atspotify.com/2026/9/portal-by-spotify-cut-my-claude-code-token-usage-by-90
41•cebert•2h ago•13 comments

Can AI design circuit boards yet?

https://eebench.org/blog/can-ai-design-circuit-boards-yet/
172•iopapa•6h ago•111 comments

Can guitar frets perform multiplication?

https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2026/09/Can-Guitar-Frets-Perform-Multiplication.html
32•wibbily•3h ago•8 comments

RSA-260 Factorized

https://twitter.com/penlume/status/2095372672356212876
65•samyok•1d ago•28 comments

Show HN: Open-Source eInk Bike Computer

https://opentrailpaper.com
237•stingrae•9h ago•81 comments

An open DNS recursive service for free security and high privacy

https://quad9.net/
64•mooreds•6h ago•14 comments

Government Rails Site Hit Hours After CVE Patch

https://rietta.com/blog/ruby-on-rails-cve-exploited-hours-after-patch/
75•rietta•7h ago•22 comments

Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean 4

https://github.com/anthropics/fermats-last-theorem
68•aaraujo002•7h ago•15 comments

Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

https://news.gallup.com/poll/713933/record-high-say-government-corruption-widespread.aspx
203•karakoram•4h ago•139 comments

Show HN: Moadim.io – A scheduler for agents

https://moadim.io/
12•tupe12334•2h ago•5 comments

When declaring an incident becomes everyone's favorite workaround

https://greatcircle.com/blog/2026/08/11/declaring-incidents-for-side-effects/
11•bobbiechen•4d ago•1 comments

The Rust React Compiler is now native in Vite

https://blog.master.dev/react-now-rusted-all-the-way-out/
116•acusti•8h ago•22 comments

IBM Bob

https://bob.ibm.com/
228•artpar•13h ago•262 comments

ExactTex. A gradually-typed superset of LaTeX

https://github.com/camilochs/exacttex
14•camilochs•3d ago•1 comments

Connecting every app to every other app

https://blog.val.town/connectors
11•Chidiebere229•3h ago•0 comments

Icons as a Service

https://nravic.com/blog/images/
22•nravic•4h ago•0 comments

Decompiler Explorer

https://dogbolt.org
36•tripdout•3d ago•1 comments

Updates on HEIR, the Homomorphic Encryption Compiler Project

https://www.jeremykun.com/2026/09/04/updates-on-heir-homomorphic-encryption/
24•turtleyacht•5h ago•0 comments

deSEC – Free Secure DNS

https://desec.io/
114•gurjeet•10h ago•41 comments

How to Create a Tor Exit Node (2015)

https://madpsy.uk/how-to-create-a-tor-exit-node/
43•Eridanus2•6h ago•18 comments

“Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs

https://gmcgoldr.github.io/2026/09/04/llm-next-token-predictors.html
87•garrinm•9h ago•183 comments

Adult Film Producer Unmasks Prolific 'John DOE' Torrent Pirate as Meta Executive

https://torrentfreak.com/adult-film-producer-unmasks-prolific-john-doe-torrent-pirate-as-meta-exe...
355•speckx•9h ago•211 comments