In the latest episode we discuss the late Mark Weiser's ideas about "ubiquitous computing". Did we achieve it, did we forget about it, or did it morph into something less friendly? www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

The Earthworm project is designed to monitor the heartbeat signals of Kubernetes clusters using eBPF

In our latest episode we talk about regular expressions. What are they, where did they come from, and most importantly: are they evil? www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

I'm really impressed with how good the LLMs have become. Yesterday GPT5 gave me an answer about an AWS service that was so detailed and confident that it took me almost an hour to realize it was entirely fabricated and unsupported by any AWS documentation.

It's strange how some people think that AI is an existential threat but it doesn't even crack my Top 5 of Things To Worry About

Next week is the start of @db.cs.cmu.edu's latest seminar series: Future Data Systems @samarchdb.bsky.social and I are hosting speakers from leading systems in the datalake / lakehouse space. Mondays @ 4:30pm ET via Zoom. Open to the public. Videos posted to YouTube: db.cs.cmu.edu/seminars/fal...

We're talking about Unix again, especially about what made it successful. Turns out it might be because the developers didn't start off with any particular objective in mind, they just wanted to make it easier to write programs: www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

This week we're talking about the history of the Unix operating system, focusing on its origins at Bell Labs: www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

One of said boys is my great friend @erewok.bsky.social

Does anyone else wonder about how many important things would stop working if S3 were suddenly disabled?

For this episode we delve into computational complexity, attempting to build up to Ryan Williams's remarkable recent result regarding space complexity vs time complexity. We are undeterred by not knowing what the hell we're talking about: www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

SimKube 2.4.0 was released last night! Main new feature is that if you export a trace, objects that are owned by other objects in the trace are discarded. You don't want a situation where your trace contains both a Deployment AND the ReplicaSet that the deployment owns. github.com/acrlabs/simk...

Ok my blog post about my work with Astronomer is public now, go read it! blog.appliedcomputing.io/p/astronomer...

AWS keeps sending me messages for "next generation firewalls", but they abbreviate it as NGFW, and i can't help but see "not gonna fucking work"

This week we talk to our friends Bobak Farzin and Kevin Fahey about their experiences building software with AI tools. While tech-savvy, neither are full-time developers, so they have an interesting perspective on the good and bad parts of vibe coding: www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Air travel is the worst thing that I intentionally inflict on myself, and I say that as someone who has trained for and run ultra-marathons

This episode we're talking about databases again, specifically relational databases (or relational database management systems, we're not sure) www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

I love it when the names of the teams in basketball games make a fun adjective/noun pairing. My current favorites are Thunder Nuggets and Fever Dream, but Jazz Grizzlies has potential.

Assuming that it doesn't wreck your business an AI-caused outage teaches some good lessons

We kick off a series of episodes on database technology with a discussion of the late, great Jim Gray, winner of the 1998 Turing Prize and the person most responsible for the concept of database transactions. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

My challenge to you is to talk about it (more). Talk about climate change. Talk about the importance of the scientific infrastructure in the US. Talk about the implications of these cuts on the economy, our health, public safety, the environment, and what this means for the next generation as well.

Been reading a book about the 14th c. I think the takeaway is that just because everything is terrible it doesn't mean things won't get much worse

I wonder if I could get a space contract? I can't build rockets but I can blow stuff up.

David R. Hagen just solved a small mystery that I mentioned 13 years ago in the mouseover text of a comic drhagen.com/blog/the-mis...

I wonder how much electricity is used in converting data from web pages and PDFs back into database records that resemble the database records from which they were created?

Teach a robot to fish and soon you won't remember how to.

LLMs seem good at translating between equivalent SQL (eg turning correlated subquery into join) but not good at translating between SQL dialects (eg Postgres to Spark)

In our latest episode we have a great discussion with Matt Teichman, a lecturer in computer science at U. Chicago, an OCaml programmer, and host of the Elucidations podcast. We cover linguistics, philosophy, functional programming, libraries, and music: www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

It's been a while since I've written about the innards of @compiler-explorer.com. xania.org/202506/how-c... has the details, some statistics and some fun war stories.

o3 can now synthesize TLA+ specifications from code. Caught between the feelings of "yay more people will use formal methods" and "wait fewer people will hire me to help them use formal methods" zfhuang99.github.io/github%20cop...

Just wanna put it out there: I am definitely NOT worth kidnapping for my Bitcoin

Somebody needs to write "What to Expect When Your Parents Turn 75".

For any North American folks having FOMO about @localfirstconf.com, there’s a new conference on sync engines as app architecture! SF in November syncconf.dev

I posted a thing. Maybe next week I'll post a thing about tech, like I've been promising for a while: blog.appliedcomputing.io/p/the-ennui-...

This week we talk to UX expert Jonathan Whitmire about the scope and meaning of user experience and the relationship between designers and software engineers. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Very neat post up from @materialize.com engineers on finding and fixing unsoundness in Rust's mpsc channels. We had quite a few grim stack traces implicating timely, but that turned out (phew) to be Rust memory corruption rather than timely glitches. materialize.com/blog/rust-co...

Live from the 10 Years of Rust celebration in Utrecht, Netherlands, we are very happy to announce a new version of Rust, 1.87.0! See the blog post and release notes for all the details! blog.rust-lang.org/2025/05/15/R...

This week we talk about Local-First software, an exciting new way to think about building software that puts more focus on local data without sacrificing collaboration. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

It's annoying how much better the Internet connection is at my dad's house in rural Indiana through a local ISP than at my house in suburban California through Spectrum

Here's the latest episode of Better Offline. I'm joined by Steve Burke of @gamersnexus.bsky.social to talk about how tariffs are throwing the PC gaming industry into disarray, and how the era of affordable computing is coming to an end. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline

This week we survey the tech news again. It turns out that the world is still weird. The AIs are hallucinatin' but so are the people. Neo-Luddites oppose the robots, but it's just a matter of time until we can't outrun them. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

"The first thing we do is, let’s unplug all the lawyers". This week we talk to John Benson, a lawyer and hacker, about his use of LLMs and other technology in the legal profession. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Announcing the Local-First Landscape A comprehensive guide to help developers choose the right tools for building local-first applications. localfirst.fm/landscape

New band name: Stardust Monkeys

Using Django in a contract project recently. Kind of like running into an old friend in a bar and being reminded why you liked them.

This week Erik and i talk about traitorous generals, gangsters, malicious agents, and faulty message sending. Surprisingly, it has almost nothing to do with politics. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Anyone going out to look for nudibranchs April 24-30? Share your observations for the #InverteFest project!

Saw a dead dolphin at Torrey Pines Beach this morning. Not sure if it's the toxic algae but that's a first in almost 40 years of running that section of beach.