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Sorted string tables (SST) from first principles

https://www.bitsxpages.com/p/sorted-string-tables-sst-from-first
62•apurvamehta•4d ago

Comments

craftkiller•12h ago
The diagrams on this page are stunning! My only complaint is leaving the close/maximize/minimize buttons in the top left was unnecessary but this is the kind of clarity I always strive for (and fail to achieve) every time I make diagrams.

Did you use a tool to create them, and if so, what is that tool?

agavra•6h ago
Thanks! I use https://monodraw.helftone.com/ which is my favorite one-time-purchase software of all time. I definitely agree the buttons on the top left are unnecessary but ... it's cute and it makes me happy so I can't help it. Maybe I'll come up with a different style for the next blog
epistasis•10h ago
> There are several ways to organize immutable data durably that meet these requirements, the simplest of which is an append-only log.

This is also a fairly good way to handle large amounts of data with maximum performance on spinning rust, and at the heart of systems like Kafka.

I had assumed that the story would be very different with SSDs, so it's surprising to see append only logs show up again.

agavra•6h ago
We haven't even started to discuss Object Storage, but it ends up looking very very similar if you're building data systems that use that instead of raw filesystems (not so much for physics reasons, but because of the way object storage require immutable objects and penalize you for many API calls)
mac3n•9h ago
see https://gitlab.com/mac3n/ksip binary search on mmpa'd sorted text files no index needed
mac3n•9h ago
what this could really use is a compression format that compresses variable amount of text into fixed-size blocks. with that, it could binary-search compressed text
agavra•5h ago
RocksDB actually does something somewhat similar with its prefix compression. It prefix-compresses texts and then "resets"the prefix compression every N records so it stores a mapping of reset point -> offset so you can skip across compressed records. It's pretty neat
agavra•6h ago
this is pretty different but reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcask - if you're storing it all in memory why not just use a hash index?
mac3n•4h ago
The trick is, it's not all in memory - it's a memory-mapped file If you look at the cache (with `fincore` or similar) you'll see that the buinary search only loads the pages it examines, roughly logarithmetic in the file size.

And a text file is the most useful general format - easy to write, easy to process with standard tools.

I've used this in the past on data sets of hundreds of millions of lines, maybe billions.

It's also true that you could use a memory-mapped indexed file for faster searches - I've used sqlite for this.

agavra•6h ago
So cool to see this make the front page of hacker news! I'm the author, I'll be online here throughout the weekend to answer any questions you might have :) excited for the next post which is in the works about LSM trees.

“Erdos problem #728 was solved more or less autonomously by AI”

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/115855840223258103
258•cod1r•4h ago•181 comments

JavaScript Demos in 140 Characters

https://beta.dwitter.net
193•themanmaran•8h ago•44 comments

Flock Hardcoded the Password for America's Surveillance Infrastructure 53 Times

https://nexanet.ai/blog/53-times-flocksafety-hardcoded-the-password-for-americas-surveillance-inf...
281•fuck_flock•10h ago•84 comments

RTX 5090 and Raspberry Pi: Can it game?

https://scottjg.com/posts/2026-01-08-crappy-computer-showdown/
167•scottjg•7h ago•63 comments

Show HN: Rocket Launch and Orbit Simulator

https://www.donutthejedi.com/
100•donutthejedi•7h ago•30 comments

How will the miracle happen today?

https://kk.org/thetechnium/how-will-the-miracle-happen-today/
367•zdw•5d ago•203 comments

Show HN: Scroll Wikipedia like TikTok

https://quack.sdan.io
176•sdan•8h ago•45 comments

How Markdown took over the world

https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/09/how-markdown-took-over-the-world/
161•zdw•9h ago•122 comments

Scientists discover oldest poison, on 60k-year-old arrows

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/science/poison-arrows-south-africa.html
94•noleary•1d ago•32 comments

Show HN: Miditui – a terminal app/UI for MIDI composing, mixing, and playback

https://github.com/minimaxir/miditui
4•minimaxir•1d ago•0 comments

Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines

https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492
435•sidcool•10h ago•608 comments

Pre-commit lint checks: Vibe coding's kryptonite

https://www.getseer.dev/blogs/pre-commit-linting-vibe-coding
9•akshay326•4h ago•11 comments

Show HN: Yellopages – New tab Chrome extension

https://yellopages.kawaicheung.io/
7•kiwigod17•1d ago•1 comments

My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it

https://matthewrocklin.com/ai-zealotry/
71•akshayka•8h ago•121 comments

Deno has made its PyPI distribution official

https://github.com/denoland/deno/issues/31254
28•zahlman•5h ago•20 comments

Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

https://lend-me-your-ears.specr.net
421•vunderba•9h ago•153 comments

Turn a single image into a navigable 3D Gaussian Splat with depth

https://lab.revelium.studio/ml-sharp
58•ytpete•8h ago•38 comments

QtNat – Open you port with Qt UPnP

http://renaudguezennec.eu/index.php/2026/01/09/qtnat-open-you-port-with-qt/
39•jandeboevrie•6h ago•31 comments

The (likely?) cheapest home-made Michelson interferometer

https://guille.site/posts/3d-printed-michelson/
86•LolWolf•5d ago•54 comments

Kagi releases alpha version of Orion for Linux

https://help.kagi.com/orion/misc/linux-status.html
351•HelloUsername•14h ago•251 comments

See it with your lying ears

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/see-it-with-your-lying-ears
32•fratellobigio•2h ago•5 comments

Robotopia: A 3D, first-person, talking simulator

https://elbowgreasegames.substack.com/p/introducing-robotopia-a-3d-first
15•psawaya•1d ago•0 comments

Amiga Pointer Archive

https://heckmeck.de/pointers/
42•erickhill•11h ago•16 comments

Replit (YC W18) Is Hiring

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/replit
1•amasad•9h ago

How to store a chess position in 26 bytes (2022)

https://ezzeriesa.notion.site/How-to-store-a-chess-position-in-26-bytes-using-bit-level-magic-df1...
76•kurinikku•12h ago•68 comments

Show HN: A website that auctions itself daily

https://www.thedailyauction.com/
22•nsomani•1d ago•7 comments

Show HN: Similarity = cosine(your_GitHub_stars, Karpathy) Client-side

https://puzer.github.io/github_recommender/
120•puzer•3d ago•34 comments

The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

https://xdaforums.com/t/discussion-the-root-and-mod-hiding-fingerprint-spoofing-keybox-stealing-c...
439•Magnusmaster•10h ago•532 comments

The rise and fall of the company behind Reader Rabbit (2018)

https://theoutline.com/post/6293/reader-rabbit-history-the-learning-company-zoombinis-carmen-sand...
3•mmcclure•1d ago•1 comments

Favorite Tech Museums

https://aresluna.org/fav-tech-museums/
11•justincormack•4d ago•4 comments