Until unicode became widely supported, many databases used to reserve 1 byte for the length of a VARCHAR, typically at the 0th position of the column. The content was understandably limited to 255 characters.

Because of that extra byte per row, it is considered a waste of memory to use VARCHAR for data that is expected to be fixed-length. Well, it's an even larger waste in some cases. A certain popular ORM continues to insist on mapping UUID to VARCHAR(36), wasting a whopping 21 bytes per row! Certainly something to keep in mind at a time when both RAM and disks are expensive.

SQLite of course doesn't care, and stores all string as TEXT.

If you need to hide your browsing history from an abusive partner, it would be more secure to use incognito mode and hit Alt+F4 when you need to escape. Unfortunately, Chrome renders incognito windows in dark mode by default. If you're normally on light mode, the transition is extremely conspicuous. Edge and Firefox do the same. It's as if all browser vendors have colluded to make it difficult to browse in secret.

That's better than half the tech howtos out there.

Some movies actually provide a plausible-sounding explanation for the volley fire thing. A dude in charge commands everyone to wait until the unsuspecting enemy enters the kill zone. But even in that case, I guess the archers won't wait with their bows drawn.

If you know this already, then you didn't need to read OP or any of this thread. :)

The problem is that Redis tries very hard to position itself as a persistent data store, with defaults that lean toward persistence (no default eviction policy). Beginners need to fight these defaults every step of the way if all they want is a cache.

1) Wrap your client library so that it's impossible to store anything without an expiry date. You don't want 6-months-old data suddenly coming up in your app!

2) Either turn off persistence, or use a separate database for the cache. In other words, don't mix volatile data with stuff you actually care about.

3) Set up a reasonable maxmemory value with an appropriate maxmemory-policy, so that Redis doesn't eat up all your RAM.

4) Resist the urge to use complex data structures. If you try to update a single field on an expired hash, you will end up with an incomplete object.

If you don't want all that hassle, then yes, Memcached probably works better out of the box.

But it's a hefty upfront investment for people who just want to experiment. The good thing about $200/month subscriptions is that you can cancel them any time and cut your losses. Not so with a $4000 computer that loses half of its resale value as soon as you plug it in.

I think the current sweet spot for people who don't already own a high-end gaming PC is to rent a server with a beefy GPU from Hetzner et al. and run local models there.

It doesn't matter if it costs a lot of money to maintain. Yachts and sports cars do the same. That's actually like the whole point of it, after all.

Guess what, the big players are hoarding all the RAM and GPUs so that other people can't afford decent hardware. It's working out beautifully for them!

Humanoid robots loaded with an AI agent, on the other hand, could actually make you a sudo sandwich, do your laundry, or help you with that weekend project in the backyard. They're finally about to get useful.

I'm not a fan of humanoid robots personally (they creep me out), but I'd love to have a functional R2-D2 with me.