mikegreenberg (u/mikegreenberg)

mikegreenberg commented on We made Postgres writes faster, but it broke replication paradedb.com/blog/lsm_tre... · Posted by u/philippemnoel

levkk · 2 months ago

My last big co, we had a team of 10 who's entire job was to sync data from Postgres into Elastic. It would take weeks and fallover regularly due to traffic.

If we could have a DB that could do search and be a store of record, it would be amazing.

mikegreenberg · 2 months ago

Once upon a time, I was using postgres for OLTP and OLAP purposes combined with in-database transforms using TimescaleDB. I had a schema for optimized ingestion and then several aggregate views which produced a bunch of purpose-specific "materialized" tables for efficient analysis based on the ingestion tables.

Timescale had a nice way of abstracting away the cost of updating these views without putting too much load on ingestion (processing multiple TBs of data a time in a single instance with about 500Gb of data churn daily).

mikegreenberg commented on Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025? · Posted by u/srijansriv

elteto · 3 months ago

I was thinking I’d love to do that when my son gets older. Any tips for a first time coach?

mikegreenberg · 3 months ago

FIRST and most of its teams are very open to collaborating and supporting rookies new to the org. I recommend reaching out to as many nearby teams as possible and see what support they can provide. Any serious teams are motivated to help as this directly contributes to their team's success during the competitive season. Competitions require a teams to have a pro-social aspect to their operations. Helping other teams is a strong signal in this area.

Additionally, find a nearby FRC competition and volunteer for at least one event (do more, if you can). Wander the robot pit and interact with the teams. There will be a lot of good intel for you there just wandering around and asking questions.

Source: Am volunteer judge for FRC.

mikegreenberg commented on Ask HN: How do I learn robotics in 2025? · Posted by u/srijansriv

jmpman · 3 months ago

If you’re an engineer, go volunteer for a First Robotics team, and advise high schoolers on your area of expertise.

mikegreenberg · 3 months ago

I couldn't agree more. FIRST is an excellent organization to get involved with. Even if you don't have specialities which directly align with the needs of a team, most will not turn you away (especially if you demonstrate passion).

Just a few thoughts about starting a team and/or volunteering:

Starting a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team is not for the feint-of-heart and requires significant time and money investment. This is the sort of endeavor you try when you're either retired or have a group of other dedicated volunteers willing to help you build the team over multiple seasons. If you spend a year or two mentoring/volunteering for a well-established team, you'll get a good sense of what you're getting into. FRC is a bit hardcore.

If no FRC teams exist nearby, FIRST Lego League (FLL) is a good entrypoint, but may not be technical enough for an adult interested in using FIRST to gain exposure to robotics. (It is plenty satisfying to mentor these teams, but Mindstorms can be somewhat limiting.) These are geared toward using Lego Mindstorms for learning robot concepts.

A good middle ground (for exposure to more practical robotics) would be volunteering with a FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team. It's the middle ground between FLL and FRC and is _doable_ for a single, dedicated, passionate adult to start (though I'd strongly recommend finding another volunteer to pursue this with).

If getting involved with a team is not an option, seek out nearby FIRST events that you can volunteer at. Many competition events need volunteers and you'll get a chance to interact with local teams and find plenty of opportunities to play with robots.

mikegreenberg commented on Maybe Bluesky has "won" anderegg.ca/2024/11/15/ma... · Posted by u/GavinAnderegg

pier25 · 10 months ago

So in theory one could publish into the ATP network (or whatever it's called) and a bunch of ATP clients could receive it?

And Bluesky is a publisher and a client?

mikegreenberg · 10 months ago

Correct. Bluesky is dogfooding AT Protocol.

https://atproto.com/specs/atp#protocol-extension-and-applica...

mikegreenberg commented on Maybe Bluesky has "won" anderegg.ca/2024/11/15/ma... · Posted by u/GavinAnderegg

llm_nerd · 10 months ago

Whatever one's feelings about these microblogging services, one truth that has become clear is that none of them -- X, Bluesky, Threads, or anything similar -- should be considered "the commons". They're private businesses with their own motives that are often in complete conflict with your own.

A lot of people made the mistake of treating Twitter like a commons and have been burned. My local police force posts all notices about traffic, missing people, foiled crimes, etc., on Twitter out of inertia. That is wholly inappropriate, and wasn't appropriate even when before it become some brain-worm infected oligarch's rhetoric megaphone. The same goes for many organizations, politicians, and so on. It was never the right choice. And the solution to one bad choice isn't to move to the same mistake on some other service. These people and orgs need absolute and complete ownership over their own platform.

Mastodon / ActivityPub seems like it might scratch that itch, but what a bloated sloppy mess that is. The right idea, with the wrong implementation.

Honestly would prefer all these people and places just published RSS feeds.

mikegreenberg · 10 months ago

> Honestly would prefer all these people and places just published RSS feeds.

Good news. That's what Bluesky does with the AT Protocol. They are a consumer of the AT Protocol and it is completely open and interoperable with private (and even offline and local-first) installations. (https://atproto.com/)

mikegreenberg commented on Proton launches its own version of Google Docs engadget.com/proton-launc... · Posted by u/prng2021

cedws · a year ago

It’s misleading marketing. They sell their email service as “E2EE”, even though the majority of emails flowing through their system are in fact NOT end to end encrypted, they’re visible to Proton in plaintext upon receipt. This is a fundamental limitation of email protocols. You only get E2EE by using PGP at both ends.

mikegreenberg · a year ago

This is a matter of semantics... anyone who actually cares about E2EE probably understands the nature of email being cleartext over the wire and that Proton can't control what is outside of their control. Maybe inaccurate but I doubt they are misleading (in the sense that they are hoping to fool people into thinking their email is encrypted over the wire).

Marketing copy would not likely care to include "E2EE" .... "at the point that Protonmail recieves your message" on their frontpage.

Further, this is explain quite clearly on their FAQ: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained

</pearlclutching>

mikegreenberg commented on Uncomfortable truth: How close is "positivity culture" to delusion and denial? jakeseliger.com/2024/06/2... · Posted by u/jseliger

Rhapso · a year ago

edit: the assorted "you are misinterpreting them they just mean hello" responses are fundamentally missing the point of this comment. This is an implicit part of the "positivity culture" being discussed here. We have an entire ritual where you have to lie about things being fine.

One thing i hate about our culture right now is the casual "How are you doing?" in service jobs.

"Well, this week i found out i have testicular cancer and my doctor can't seem to get insurance approval for my Crohn's medication" are the things top in my mind.

They are just being friendly in the superficial way. Having talked with folks, they really do mean it and they care, but they are also entirely unequipped for the real answers. The truth would offer me no satisfaction but the cruel catharsis of sharing my pain and they would only be hurt for it.

Lying like this is really hard for me, these people don't deserve infantalized lies, so i have settled on "Horrible, but I'm having fun anyway!" with what is probably a manic smile, it reduces the damage to "mildly unsettled".

Its ok to admit that your role in somebody's life is ephemeral and to act like it. "Good luck" or "I hope you have a good day" go so much further than the superficial simulation of intimacy and connection of asking how somebody's life is going while not expecting a real answer.

mikegreenberg · a year ago

I've felt this to the point that I attempt to preempt the fake concern with my own rhetorical "Hope everything is going well for you." I'd like to think this alleviates the other party from feeling like they have to share anything they aren't comfortable with but allows them room to respond if they choose.

mikegreenberg commented on Rainergy – Electricity from Rainwater rainergy.co/... · Posted by u/sharpshadow

BizarroLand · a year ago

This is just a system to bilk money out of people.

Midway down https://whatif.xkcd.com/23/ will explain how terrible an idea this is:

If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators?

—Damien [a house uses rain that falls on its lid to run a turbine]

A house in a very rainy place, like the Alaska panhandle, might receive close to four meters of rain per year. Water turbines can be pretty efficient. If the house has a footprint of 1,500 square feet and gutters five meters off the ground, it would generate an average of less than a watt of power from rainfall, and the maximum electricity savings would be:

(math that works out to $1.14/year)

The rainiest hour on record occurred in 1947 in Holt, Missouri, where about 30 centimeters of rain fell in 42 minutes. For those 42 minutes, our hypothetical house could generate up to 800 watts of electricity, which might be enough to power everything inside it. For the rest of the year, it wouldn’t come close.

If the generator rig cost $100, residents of the rainiest place in the US—Ketchikan, Alaska—could potentially offset the cost in under a century.

mikegreenberg · a year ago

You've missed my point or didn't read it. This is not about the market fitness of the idea/product. This is about the parent commenter throwing shade on the inventor's curiosity and aspiring entrepreneurial effort. Regardless about how right you or the parent is about the products fitness, making assumptions about the inventor's motive removes the opportunity for the inventor to learn/grow from their attempt at going to market.

Instead, it would be better to support the inventor with constructive criticism... how they might better measure PMF, how they might prove whether there's a need for their idea in the market earlier, or how they might get more efficiency out of their approach.

And if you don't have the criticism to offer, you can probably find a better way to share your knowledge without saying the idea is terrible or they are acting in bad faith. (Or just don't comment at all!)

mikegreenberg commented on Rainergy – Electricity from Rainwater rainergy.co/... · Posted by u/sharpshadow

10u152 · a year ago

This is a little silly.

Energy is obviously proportional to the mass and the height. A few kg of water and a few m of height will yield a minuscule amount of power. A very small solar panel and battery would be far less complex, cheaper and more reliable.

Also “ Rainergy reduces the amount of CO2 emissions to 10 g per KW/ H during the production of the electricity.” would apply to any renewable energy alternative.

mikegreenberg · a year ago

What is silly and obvious to you is exploratory for others. When you cast shade on curiosity, you snuff out the potential before it ever comes to light.

mikegreenberg commented on We have 4 days to contest KYC being required by internet services federalregister.gov/docum... · Posted by u/chadsix

pavon · a year ago

I can't see how an ISP (or VPN for that matter) would qualify for the second half "and with which the consumer is able to deploy and run software that is not predefined, including operating systems and applications."

This would apply to all hosting providers, which is bad enough.

mikegreenberg · a year ago

Some counterexamples:

- TCP is a spec delivered by a software implementation program. Maybe you disagree that TCP is being "deployed" as opposed to "used"?

- What about peer-to-peer hosted webpages? Certainly this is deployed software served over the internet connection?

The devil is in the details... details which are not specified in the order. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a lawyer arguing the finer details of "deployed" and "software" and falling on a definition which results in a less "open" Internet.

Also, I think of the meaning of "that is not predefined" is not at all clear. Predefined at what point in time?

IANAL.