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The Scalar Select Anti-Pattern

https://matklad.github.io/2025/05/14/scalar-select-aniti-pattern.html
47•goranmoomin•8mo ago

Comments

castratikron•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo ago
in CPU's - pipelining!
jchw•8mo 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...)

What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2026/02/02/whats-up-with-all-those-equals-signs-anyway/
116•todsacerdoti•2h ago•31 comments

Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition

https://krzysztofjankowski.com/floppinux/floppinux-2025.html
153•GalaxySnail•7h ago•101 comments

LNAI – Define AI coding tool configs once, sync to Claude, Cursor, Codex, etc.

https://github.com/KrystianJonca/lnai
25•iamkrystian17•2h ago•12 comments

Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

https://www.reuters.com/world/spain-hold-social-media-executives-accountable-illegal-hateful-cont...
32•xavaki•34m ago•37 comments

The Codex App

https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-codex-app/
691•meetpateltech•17h ago•504 comments

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https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610
424•trms•14h ago•152 comments

Rentahuman – The Meatspace Layer for AI

https://rentahuman.ai
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https://alignment.anthropic.com/2026/hot-mess-of-ai/
193•salkahfi•11h ago•54 comments

Todd C. Miller – Sudo maintainer for over 30 years

https://www.millert.dev/
475•wodniok•18h ago•236 comments

GitHub experience various partial-outages/degradations

https://www.githubstatus.com?todayis=2026-02-02
219•bhouston•14h ago•73 comments

Archive.today is directing a DDoS attack against my blog?

https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-a-ddos-attack-against-my-blog/
185•gyrovague-com•2d ago•65 comments

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https://serjaimelannister.github.io/hn-words/
84•Imustaskforhelp•3d ago•125 comments

From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.70066
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/50-years-of-the-jetsons-why-the-show-still-matters-43459669/
14•fortran77•4d ago•3 comments

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2026)

280•whoishiring•19h ago•348 comments

xAI joins SpaceX

https://www.spacex.com/updates#xai-joins-spacex
731•g-mork•13h ago•1612 comments

Same SQL, Different Results: A Subtle Oracle vs. PostgreSQL Migration Bug

https://databaserookies.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/same-sql-different-results-a-subtle-oracle-vs-po...
11•tanelpoder•1d ago•1 comments

Carnegie Mellon Unversity Computer Club FTP Server

http://128.237.157.9/pub/
94•1vuio0pswjnm7•5d ago•15 comments

The Connection Machine CM-1 "Feynman" T-shirt

https://tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-tshirt.html
82•tosh•4d ago•16 comments

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https://safe-now.live
14•tinuviel•2h ago•5 comments

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https://www.wiz.io/blog/exposed-moltbook-database-reveals-millions-of-api-keys
337•galnagli•19h ago•196 comments

The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

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427•donohoe•12h ago•498 comments

4x faster network file sync with rclone (vs rsync) (2025)

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/4x-faster-network-file-sync-rclone-vs-rsync/
313•indigodaddy•4d ago•143 comments

Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

https://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/sympa/arc/lfs-announce/2026-02/msg00000.html
174•cf100clunk•17h ago•231 comments

Zig Libc

https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-01-31
277•ingve•18h ago•118 comments

Julia

https://borretti.me/fiction/julia
124•ashergill•12h ago•21 comments

Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/court-orders-restart-of-all-us-offshore-wind-construction/
391•ck2•12h ago•253 comments

Nano-vLLM: How a vLLM-style inference engine works

https://neutree.ai/blog/nano-vllm-part-1
255•yz-yu•22h ago•25 comments

Pretty soon, heat pumps will be able to store and distribute heat as needed

https://www.sintef.no/en/latest-news/2026/pretty-soon-heat-pumps-will-be-able-to-store-and-distri...
210•PaulHoule•1d ago•178 comments

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https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/phenakistoscopes-1833/
15•tobr•2d ago•0 comments