Hacker News: nlittlepoole

New comment by nlittlepoole in "How we give every user SQL access to a shared ClickHouse cluster"

nlittlepoole — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 23:04:00 +0000

what are the properties of the table? is the whole table 2B rows or is that the amount of row updates/inserts that happen per period (day, week, month)? We do handle a lot of large table volumes on both our products already, but there will be cost tradeoffs the larger the data volume and lower the latency you try to target.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "How we give every user SQL access to a shared ClickHouse cluster"

nlittlepoole — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:39:36 +0000

Open Table Formats (Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi, etc) are the approach we've taken. That let's us offer a query engine but also let's the tenant bring their preferred engine (Snowflake, Spark, DuckDB, etc). It also addresses dirty reads and some other state problems that come from trying to use the file system. It scales as much as the bucket does, so we haven't found a use case we couldn't scale to yet.

We (https://prequel.co) recently started offering this as a white labeled capability so anyone can offer it without building it yourself. Its a newer capability to our export product where instead of sending the data to the tenant's data warehouse, we enable you to provision an S3/GCS/ABS/etc bucket with the data formatted. Credential management, analytics, etc is all batteries included so you don't have to do that either. The initial interest from our customers was around BI integrations but agent use is starting to pick up which is kinda interesting to see.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Databases in 2025: A Year in Review"

nlittlepoole — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 14:20:03 +0000

DuckDB can read/write SQLite files via extension. So you can do that now with DuckDB as is.

https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/core_extensions/sqlite

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Valuing Land: The Simplest Viable Method"

nlittlepoole — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:26:24 +0000

Yeah exactly. Wouldn't it be easier to make it self reported but use a mechanism to incentivize accurate market prices. Like enforce that the owner can't sell for more than x% the reported amount and rents are capped based on the reported amount. Use of the property as collateral has to match the reported value. You can only be insured for value up to that reported number. Lots of things the state can do to create that incentive.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Ask HN: What is the current (Apr. 2024) gold standard of running an LLM locally?"

nlittlepoole — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 13:51:26 +0000

https://jan.ai/ is pretty idiot proof.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Darwin: A framework for evolving decentralized web apps"

nlittlepoole — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 12:20:07 +0000

You need a viable Proof of Human/Personhood system and afaik one does not yet exist.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?"

nlittlepoole — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 16:59:03 +0000

I agree with your take here. I have a partner that anyone in this thread would label as a #1 but my two siblings are essentially on the same plane of intimacy. If my partner left my life for whatever reason, I'd still have my siblings and while losing someone is hard it wouldn't destroy me because of that support. Its a fairly normal dynamic in my family. I had two uncles who lived together their whole lives, even through relationships that didn't end up working out even though they had children. My grandmother lived in the same apartment building as her brother for 30 years and her other two siblings lived in the same neighborhood. Her husband (my grandfather) died a few years into their marriage and her siblings (who never got married) always fulfilled the role that a partner would play.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "AI Will Make Our Society Even More Unequal, Economists Warn"

nlittlepoole — Mon, 01 May 2023 18:24:30 +0000

> The modern Luddite, I think, doesn't necessarily "hate" looms, or their inventors. They just don't have any faith that those necessary compensations you describe will ever happen, or at least not quickly enough to save them. Perhaps the government is convinced by exactly that argument above. Or at very least too apathetic (or financially tangled) to fight it.

Agree

> We all act along the axes where we can affect something, effect something. Smashing looms is a fool's errand, but sometimes that's all the power you feel you have.

However I think what's fascinating about this is it requires believing you can't change your skill set to something else. Sometimes I don't think its as simple as feeling empowered, but also fear and anxiety about change.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "AI Will Make Our Society Even More Unequal, Economists Warn"

nlittlepoole — Mon, 01 May 2023 14:36:40 +0000

I agree with your premise but ultimately its the responsibility of governments to manage how society distributes what is produced. In the US at least, it seems most of the tension here comes from the fact that we've decided that if you are not doing "work", then you don't "deserve" food, shelter, or healthcare. Trying to stop automation always seems like a fools errand because there is simply too much incentive to automate.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2023)"

nlittlepoole — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 17:55:13 +0000

are you guys only sticking to Ethereum? Any plans for Algorand support?

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Faster PostgresSQL to BigQuery Transfers"

nlittlepoole — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 21:48:53 +0000

Can we get any of Iceberg/Delta/Hudi that isn't terribly complex to setup? Like configurable completely from Standard SQL via the CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE syntax.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Demystifying Apache Arrow (2020)"

nlittlepoole — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 15:12:50 +0000

100% agree.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Shorting Tether"

nlittlepoole — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 16:48:36 +0000

I partake in this trade. There are other DeFi markets than Aave with better rates (6% to 9% range) for borrowing Tether. I also don't only use one market or one chain to hedge a bit smart contract risk. I also didn't sell Tether and just hold cash. Maxing out my I Bonds allocation and then buying treasuries has offset the interest on Tether such that I've been slightly net positive for the last 18 months on my position. This is all gambling money, no money I actually need day to day is tied up in this and my retirement/savings are invested an a traditional portfolio of stocks/bonds/real estate.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Hetzner continues its growth in the US with a new location"

nlittlepoole — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 14:55:26 +0000

Doing the exact same for some side projects. It's been a delight.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Being OK with not being extraordinary (2021)"

nlittlepoole — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 02:16:33 +0000

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed the "Tyranny of the Power Law".

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Layoffs at Canadian tech startups"

nlittlepoole — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 16:26:45 +0000

I agree an employee should be cautious for the exact risks you outlined but I don't know if I'd say this is a function of any power dynamic. Employees should be saving such that they have 3 months of expenses saved away for this exact scenario. Between that, unemployment benefits, and any severance most people should be able to find a new job without "havoc" on their lives.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "WikiHouse – Open source, modular, wood based, zero carbon housing"

nlittlepoole — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 13:58:47 +0000

I agree with you but I think one thing that might help people fear this change less is reiterating that the density necessary isn't Manhattan or Downtown Chicago. There are a lot of ways to make an efficient urban area without being a massive megalopolis. Neighborhoods like Park Slope in Brooklyn or Sunset in SF are good examples. Multifamily housing doesn't have to mean high rises.

People also don't have to live in what we think of as cities at all. Rural living is fine if people live closer together in those areas. Such that they live in walkable towns that don't require driving and can be easily connected to other towns and cities via a bus or train. Europe is much better at this but you see vestiges in New England. It's just nobody should really be living beyond walking or biking distance of core services (transport, shopping, etc). The benefit for those who love nature is more untampered natural beauty in the surrounding areas. If anyone has ever been to a place like Banff it's lovely when fine right.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%"

nlittlepoole — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 19:33:30 +0000

I see it as a combination of demographics (less millennials than boomers to drive consumption) and a lack of investment 20 to 30 years ago into next generation infrastructure and institutions (energy, transport, healthcare, education, etc) that would have given us more productivity growth outside of software and the internet.

New comment by nlittlepoole in "The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)"

nlittlepoole — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 19:11:40 +0000

just so we can be perfectly clear, is the point you are trying to defend, that the differences circumstances of black people in America as compared to Asians can be explained with work ethic?

New comment by nlittlepoole in "The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021)"

nlittlepoole — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 19:01:13 +0000

Absolutely there is but the way that those outside the group make it seem is that we're 100% responsible for how the culture that exists got to where it is. The mainstream culture has problems but a lot of those problems are the result of historical inequities. It needs to be fixed but all of American society needs to see it as something they are also responsible for fixing and not fixing by simply pushing people to adopt the cultural norms of another group of people.