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...)

Simons Foundation launches $15M effort to help mathematicians navigate AI era

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/news/simons-foundation-launches-15m-effort-to-help-mathematician...
117•aaraujo002•2h ago•78 comments

Wayland desktop for Linux with skeuomorphic design

https://github.com/fyzugx/DEsk
230•FinalDestiny•3h ago•96 comments

I Know Why the Mathematicians Weep

https://www.derekthompson.org/p/i-know-why-the-mathematicians-weep
178•RickJWagner•3h ago•247 comments

Neural Networks Are Already Clean

https://already-clean.goodfire.com/
35•themgt•55m ago•6 comments

Libreboot 26.10 "Ominous Olive" released with UEFI, Chromebook support

https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot2610.html
163•iamnothere•4h ago•84 comments

Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran

https://fortran-lang.org/news/2026/09-15-Fortran-birthday/
71•rbanffy•1h ago•38 comments

Steam Client Is Now Faster Than Epic's New Vibe Coded Launcher

https://respawnfirst.com/steam-client-is-now-faster-than-epics-new-vibe-coded-launcher/
91•starkparker•56m ago•105 comments

Zero-Click Spyware Delivered via Targeted Ads: AdFection

https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/
162•jcomp•6h ago•24 comments

Show HN: Unfenced – Land for sale that borders public land

https://unfenced.land/
164•otherwatersflow•5h ago•120 comments

Biscoff Cookies Were Supposed to Be Temporary. Then Passengers Fell in Love

https://www.seriouseats.com/biscoff-history-12168161
23•mhb•1d ago•17 comments

Krea 3 – Frontier Image Model 4× faster than Nano Banana Pro

https://www.krea.ai/krea-3
26•dvrp•55m ago•17 comments

The technical actions needed to ensure the continuity of UTC

https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2026/resolution-5
16•gliffie•47m ago•3 comments

Things to know when you get cancer

https://jjmaxwell4.com/writing/things-to-know-when-you-get-cancer/
1780•jjmaxwell4•21h ago•424 comments

C++26 Contracts: Introduction to Preconditions and Postconditions

https://www.cppstories.com/2026/cpp26_contracts/
74•ibobev•3h ago•63 comments

Prompt injection in HTTP headers: what 217M web responses show

https://www.signalscorps.com/blog/prompt-injection-in-http-headers/
43•panoramas4good•2h ago•9 comments

Show HN: Proa – a Rust web framework with fast SSR and multi-target rendering

https://proa.so/
13•burnrate•1h ago•0 comments

Wanted to download an ISO, ended up writing a kernel exploit

https://blog.dfb.sh/blog/eap770-root-for-two-zeros/
272•0xdeafbeef•2d ago•138 comments

OpenCode 2.0

https://anoma.ly/notes/opencode-2-0/
794•gmays•20h ago•343 comments

Show HN: Sygal – Convert PDFs, scans and web pages to Markdown, locally

https://sygal.app
6•cyrillsemah•33m ago•0 comments

The Haunted Toys R Us

https://www.retroist.com/p/the-haunted-toys-r-us
46•speckx•3d ago•22 comments

The largest eagle hunted unlike any other bird of prey (2021)

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/december/worlds-largest-eagle-hunted-unlike-any-other-bi...
20•EndXA•1d ago•0 comments

GridSnap – an open-source Divvy-style window snapper for macOS

https://github.com/konieczkow/gridsnap
32•zderror•3h ago•17 comments

I designed a nose guard for my dog and gave it away. Now 500 dogs wear one

https://snoutcover.com/one-year
168•ragswag•1h ago•88 comments

Tiny Little Office

https://tinylittleoffice.com/
606•donohoe•18h ago•158 comments

The First Social Network: In rural Argentina residents send messages w AM radio

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/10/19/the-first-social-network
116•bookofjoe•1d ago•44 comments

Market selloff, rising rates test AI data centre deal boom

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/market-selloff-rising-rates-test-ai-data-centre-deal-boo...
18•tartoran•41m ago•6 comments

Do dentists know what they're doing?

https://mapwriting.substack.com/p/dentists
910•doitLP•3d ago•644 comments

Show HN: Indigene – Native plants for where you stand

https://indigene.app/
96•olivierlacan•2d ago•17 comments

Americans' social activity has steeply declined in the past 30 years

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/9/29/americans-social-activity-has-steeply-declined-in-...
539•hubraumhugo•1d ago•516 comments

Catch a Bird – I made it for my own sanity

https://catchabird.com
352•eduardsik•3d ago•102 comments