This is really fun - here are my notes on how to try it out using Docker for Mac simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/12/...

Turns out you can communicate across containers via 63-bits of available space in a shared lock you acquire on /proc/self/ns/time that all processes have access to. No networking required. The post has a demo of a chat app communicating across unprivileged containers. h4x0r.org/funreliable/

This kind of thing makes the software internals discord jobs channel unparalleled for systems software jobs. PhD student posts a cool and relevant job at a public database company he has no connection to, the hiring manager / director of engineering pops in to say its his team.

The latest EDB Engineering Newsletter is out - Robert Haas introduces patches for query hints in Postgres - Armin Ronacher builds durable workflows using just Postgres - Anantha Kumaran migrates tables across Postgres instances with logical replication & more edbeng.substack.com/p/edb-engine...

Dinner last night was a gnocchi bake (chicken sausage, anchovies, spinach, tomatoes, garlic and onion, parmesan, mozzarella, basil)

What a turnout for the first ever Madison Systems meetup. I'm blown away by the systems talent and interest in Madison! Make sure to subscribe to the Madison Systems Luma calendar for updates on future events: luma.com/madisonsystems

I take a 30 minute call with anyone who donates to one of a few educational non-profits.

Dinner this evening: french onion soup.

Reminder, this Sunday is the Madison Systems Coffee Chat!

good points by graydon hoare on fil-c graydon2.dreamwidth.org/320265.html

Drew DeVault taught me a really important lesson early in my career, that it's possible for a person to change the direction of an organization. notes.eatonphil.com/2025-11-03-a...

djb buys into Fil-C pretty big endorsement cr.yp.to/2025/fil-c.h...

@tylerhillery.com, @xiangpeng.systems, and I are super stoked to announce the creation of the Madison Systems group and our first event, a coffee chat on Nov. 9th at Union South (UW-Madison campus)! Luma invite here: luma.com/v69tvpla

serious eats's butternut squash orrechiette creamy, cheesy, one of my favorite recent dishes

Very fancy South Bay Systems setup at Adobe Founders tower tonight 🚀 @southbaysystems.xyz

Last night: a sardine, capers and olives, tomato pasta This morning: a breakfast carbonara with chicken sausage

Why do we even need tools like pgbouncer or pgcat for Postgres? And what does transaction pooling even mean? Let's play around with transaction pooling in pgcat to see. www.enterprisedb.com/blog/transac...

@abigalekim.bsky.social @xiangpeng.systems and I are kicking off Madison Systems with a coffee chat on Sunday, Nov 9th. Come nerd out on systems! luma.com/v69tvpla

Coffee clubs are such an easy way to build a local community. I've added a section to my page linking to a few other similar groups in other cities/neighborhoods. NYC Systems Coffee Club started when one friend promised me he'd show up at least. Send me when you start your own.

If you find yourself in SF next week, @almog.xyz is talking about SlateDB at the SF Systems Meetup on Wednesday!

This reminded me I've been sitting on draft blog posts about Copy-and-Patch JIT compilation for a while, and so I've finally published the first chunk of it: a minimal tutorial and explanation of how and why Copy-and-Patch actually works. Start at transactional.blog/copy-and-pat...

JIT: so you want to be faster than [the PostgreSQL] interpreter on modern CPUs www.pinaraf.info/2025/10/jit-...

South Bay Systems returns on October 27th at Adobe in downtown San Jose. We have an Analytics-on-Object-Storage double feature this time starring two different Apache projects: Apache Pinot and Apache Doris. (Talk descriptions below.) Register now! luma.com/9o6bahgc

Occasionally I do a deep dive of thinking about whether AI will really fundamentally eliminate the need for software engineers and my conclusion remains the same: it won't. Might change the employment curve in some ways but barring the big singularity or w/e I don't see it removing the job

I missed a few. 23 developers at EDB were acknowledged as contributing to the Postgres 18 release. Company's a powerhouse.

this learned helplessness is silly, happy to chat with anyone on finding sponsors for independent tech meetups

I’d heard so much praise for this book and finally found time to read it. It’s a fascinating read that pushes us to reconsider the Eurocentric nature of Marxist accounts of production that often erase the history of medieval slavery.

A special edition of the EDB Engineering Newsletter this month celebrates the release of Postgres 18; including contributions by 21 engineers at EDB. Also features Theia Vogel's seahorses, Jeremy Schneider on Jepsen and CloudNativePG, Hints for Computer System Design, and more.

github.com/slatedb/slat... 👀 SlateDB has transactions. A year in the making. Lots of testing to do, but the APIs are there. This was all @flaneur2024.bsky.social. 🙏 I am very excited about this feature.

New blog post, some thought experiments about learning from incident write-ups: surfingcomplexity.blog/2025/10/04/t...

broccoli steaks over manchego with drizzled honey, shrimp

Had a fun time at the South Bay Systems meetup last night. Thanks @yugabytedb.bsky.social for hosting! @codedrift.social gave a great talk on WebAssembly: what it is (and isn't), how it connects to WASI, and promising projects. He cuts through a lot of the hype vs. reality. Recording coming soon.

Linguine and clams, white wine sauteed green beans, budweiser

My post on deterministic simulation testing is linked to from Antithesis, Jepsen, and now Amplify. I've made it, mom.

Applaud the confidence to give swag with almost no hint of who the company is (it's jetbrains, had to search the whole bag to find it on the handle)

Ending every corporate dinner with high fives and "good game"

DBeaver out here at PGConf with some of the most practical conference wag I've seen, glasses cleaning cloth.

Team won season finals last night for the second time in a row! Moving up a division for the fourth season in a row now. Such a fun sport and such a good way to make friends

fun :)

PostgreSQL 18 is released!

Excerpts from a chapter in Katherine Graham's Personal History memoir (Graham was owner and publisher of the Washington Post) on minorities in the workplace

My direct use of chatgpt (being the llm product I used the most) peaked sometime last winter or this spring. Back to Google for the most part.

I remember very clearly the years of months of <100 page views going back to 2015 (only started using google analytics in 2017). Write consistently and regularly over the course of years to give yourself the chance to acquire an audience and tune your writing and messaging.

New blog post, reflecting on nearly seven years since the Firecracker launch, and how we're using Firecracker to power serverless databases (in Aurora DSQL) and infrastructure for AI agents (in Bedrock AgentCore). Here's the post: brooker.co.za/blog/2025/09...

An LLM taking the lead writing for you isn't you writing, plain and simple. But what's more, readers enjoy humanity almost more than anything else, even (and maybe even especially) on the most technical topics. Be yourself! Tell your story in your words, your voice.

This is a good three-part series on what it means to bring OAuth2 support to Postgres, a feature my coworker Jacob Champion contributed. www.enterprisedb.com/blog/preview...

I cannot strongly enough encourage the creation of more events for folks in tech in NYC. It slipped my mind to share this one from earlier this week that Divya started for underrepresented folks in infra. Hope to see more from this group! luma.com/uyo6uxvj

Eliana is a backend developer interested in data systems, looking for work based in NYC. She's a Recurse Center alumnus and has been an active member of NYC Systems and the Software Internals book club. She's smart and thoughtful. Talk to Eliana. RT for reach. www.linkedin.com/in/eliana-ab...