microgpt
This is a brief guide to my new art project microgpt, a single file of 200 lines of pure Python with no dependencies that trains and inferences a GPT. This file contains the full algorithmic content of what is needed: dataset of documents, tokenizer, autograd engine, a GPT-2-like neural network architecture, the Adam optimizer, training loop, and inference loop. Everything else is just efficiency. I cannot simplify this any further.
The real cost of random I/O The random_page_cost was introduced ~25 years ago, and since the very beginning it’s set to 4.0 by default. The storage changed a lot since then, and so did the Postgres code. It’s likely the default does not quite match the reality. But what value should you use instead? Flash storage is much better at handling random I/O, so maybe you should reduce the default? Some places go as far as recommending setting it to 1.0, same as seq_page_cost. Is this intuition right?
https://vondra.me/posts/the-real-cost-of-random-io/ HN
interesting article about the legacy default setting values vs. updated real world measurements and the resulting consequences.
sqldef is a CLI tool for diffing two SQL schemas. You can use it to manage the migration of RDBMSs using regular SQL DDLs. Supported databases: MySQL, MariaDB, TiDB, PostgreSQL, SQL_Server, and SQLite3.
this might come in very handy sometimes!
and by the way - belated happy new year everyone!
The challenges of soft delete
Anyone who has read Tolkien’s letters will know that he is at his funniest when filled with rage, and The Bovadium Fragments is a work brimming with Tolkien’s fury—specifically, ire over mankind’s obsession with motor vehicles. Tolkien’s anger is expressed through a playful satire told from the perspective of a group of future archaeologists who are studying the titular fragments, which tell of a civilization that asphyxiated itself on its own exhaust fumes. Tolkien’s fictional fragments use the language of ancient myth, reframing modern issues like traffic congestion and parking with a grandeur that highlights their total absurdity.
"Uncleftish Beholding" is a short text by Poul Anderson (...) which is designed to illustrate what English might look like without its large number of words derived from languages such as French, Greek, and Latin, especially with regard to the proportion of scientific words with origins in those languages.
https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/1100/docs/uncleftish-beholding.html
The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.
This document is the result of a series of discussions, some online and some in person, held between Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin and John Ousterhout between September 2024 and February 2025
https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code/blob/main/README.md
Tiger Style is a coding philosophy focused on safety, performance, and developer experience. Inspired by the practices of TigerBeetle, it focuses on building robust, efficient, and maintainable software through disciplined engineering.
edit: this seems to be a variation of the original source
advent_of_code 2025 is live! https://adventofcode.com/2025
i never managed to complete more than the first few before leisure time ran out and pre-christmas chores took over.