[HN Gopher] Simon Riggs has died
___________________________________________________________________
Simon Riggs has died
Author : ajdude
Score : 803 points
Date : 2024-03-29 08:08 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (m6n.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (m6n.io)
| wendyshu wrote:
| He was a "major contributor" according to
| https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/
| filleduchaos wrote:
| There's also a statement here:
| https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/remembering-simon-rigg...
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| His contributions include:
|
| > Point in Time Recovery, Table Partitioning, Hot Standby, Sync
| Replication, focuses on enterprise issues, security,
| performance and scalability, business intelligence and
| replication/high availability.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Those are hell of big contributions.
|
| It'd be worth billions if Postgres was a greed-driven
| enterprise (like Redis, Elastic, Mongo). And this value is
| now available and enjoyed by everyone on Earth.
| politelemon wrote:
| > and the British, as a rule, don't do to-go portions from a
| restaurant.
|
| This isn't true at all.
| arghwhat wrote:
| If it's anything like Denmark, it's just that nobody local ever
| does it, and so we never learn that it is an option.
|
| Then we suddenly see a foreigner do it and wonder what _other_
| options we 've missed and start to wish life came with a
| manual.
| mock-possum wrote:
| One of the somewhat delightful things I've learned as an
| adult is - you can just ask people for anything, and they'll
| do it, much more often than you might think.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Shamelessness is a superpower :)
| swexbe wrote:
| People will even start to like you more for it!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect
| hooo wrote:
| I had never heard of this- thanks for linking!
| sneak wrote:
| I remember the time I was at the Ocha on Embarcadero in
| downtown SF and I saw some older VC type guy order his
| shrimp pad thai with no tails.
|
| My mind was blown and my life changed forever. Now I order
| french onion soup without the onions (high end steakhouses
| are happy to strain it), shrimp tempura rolls with no
| tails, whatever. I order my salmon nigiri with no skin.
| I'll order sides of sauces from other menu items I didn't
| get.
|
| It's rare they don't accommodate me. (Before you ask, I
| always tip super well and don't ever mind an upcharge for a
| special side sauce or whatever.)
| pests wrote:
| You are paying them! I still struggle with customizations
| and usually like to try things as envisioned by the chef,
| but some food textures I just can't do.
|
| Unless it's a place with a certain vision/theme/morals or
| artsy food, they just want to make you happy.
| pests wrote:
| So true.
|
| I used to drink a lot of pop/soda. When I initially cut back
| I stopped buying two liters for the house and only drank when
| eating out or the like. It always shocked my table mates to
| see me asking for a to-go cup for my drink.
|
| But now I see those same people getting their drinks to go
| too, especially after the lockdowns and everywhere was
| offering curbside drinks.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| For Danes, half the experience of a meal is the presentation.
| They would not want to eat an already half-eaten meal out of
| a styrofoam box.
| arghwhat wrote:
| As a Dane from central Copenhagen, I'm not sure where you'd
| get that idea from.
|
| While most would agree that fresh food tastes better
| (unless it's pizza, that jury is out on that one), that
| doesn't mean we're too posh for the looks of leftovers. A
| good portion of our food is also quite boring, and the most
| common takeaway comes pretty crudely presented and
| packaged. If we only ate food in fancy presentation, we'd
| all have starved to death by now.
|
| The reason I don't eat half-eaten meals is because I never
| half-eat meals in the first place. I order the amount of
| food I want to/can eat, and should that plan fail, I share
| with my tablemate(s) - although I tend to be the recipient
| on that one. We don't do it because we fear taking a crime-
| scene with us home in the form of a haphazardly filled
| styrofoam box like _poor_ people, but just because it seems
| polite and proper to both size your mail right and try
| finish it. That, and that we didn 't know that taking it
| with us home was even an option in the first place.
| IanCal wrote:
| I've only ever seen this done once here.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I've only ever seen it done in pizza places that already have
| takeaway boxes available.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Pizza places are also one of the few places in Europe where
| the portion is often too large.
|
| Otherwise I think the rare occasion where someone requests
| it is when a younger child has hardly touched their meal.
| diggan wrote:
| > I've only ever seen it done in pizza places that already
| have takeaway boxes available.
|
| Most, if not all, restaurants have something they can drop
| leftovers into if you ask for it.
|
| As someone who lives in Spain but is Swedish, I've never
| had any restaurant tell me "we don't have takeaway boxes"
| or "no, we won't do that" when asking to take my leftovers
| with me, neither in Spain or Sweden or any other country
| I've visited.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It is completely true. People do it _very_ occasionally, but
| not like in America.
| egeozcan wrote:
| In Germany, particularly in Hesse from what I've experienced,
| restaurant staff might take offense if you eat less than half
| of your meal and refuse to have the leftovers packed up. Just
| last week, a restaurant in Giessen went above and beyond by
| including an extra bowl of fruit salad alongside the remainder
| of our meal. That, I will remember a long time, especially
| after my wife's startling reaction to discovering a kiwi in the
| package - she's terrified of the fruit for some reason :)
| Archelaos wrote:
| I can confirm that. The cultural attitude in Germany is that
| food should not be wasted. One of my favourite cafe bars in
| Heidelberg, when it closes, gives away the unsold pastries to
| the people who are still there -- sometimes a whole bag full.
| MandieD wrote:
| There are still a lot of Germans around who remember not
| having enough to eat as children in the late 40s. Yes,
| their parents had done, or at least allowed, terrible
| things, but they were children. Meat was especially in
| short supply, and my 85 year old aunt-in-law is pretty sure
| they had rat a few times.
|
| So my elderly German in-laws would be horrified with how
| casually my Texan ones will buy and grill large, expensive
| slabs of beef, and end up throwing out a good deal of it
| because it was way more than the bunch could eat. I am,
| anyway, but have learned to bite my tongue.
| gregors wrote:
| Can confirm, my parents grew up starving in the ashes of
| WW2. My mother hid canned food under her bed, in her
| closets, everywhere for all of her life. It always
| annoyed me and when I'd ask her about it she always
| answered the same, "I hope you never know what it's like
| to starve".
| alex_duf wrote:
| In the UK, I never have seen it done or done it myself
| especially compared to when I lived in North America where it
| was standard.
| jayceedenton wrote:
| Yes it is. Asking your waiter to wrap up the rest of your food
| to go almost never happens in the UK.
|
| Maybe this is creeping in due to seeing Americans doing this in
| movies. You start to realise how people cope with those huge
| portions sizes in the US. Many people don't eat everything in
| one sitting.
|
| It's hard to explain why we don't do it in the UK. We generally
| assume that packaging is not free so therefore wouldn't expect
| someone to give free takeaway boxes. Also, like almost
| everything cultural in the UK, I expect it is rooted in class
| snobbery. If you need to take away, maybe this indicates that
| you're poor and need to make a meal last. These aren't
| conscious prejudices, they're relics of the past and
| subconscious.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| As italian, this kills me, what if there's leftover? The
| restaurant just throws it away? Food? For class snobbery?
| Like the restaurant can't reuse it, no? So it's just thrown
| away?
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I assume people would just adapt to the culture by
| generally not ordering more than they will eat.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| That's kind of tedious to do when a single menu item here
| in America is usually, to describe it aptly, _infamously
| yuuuuuge_.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| We're not talking about America, we're talking about the
| UK.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Apologies, the original story was about Simon getting
| overwhelmed by American servings so that context stuck.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| If anything, it shows us that life is short, and can end
| at any moment, and maybe we shouldn't fill it with non-
| problems, like calculating the size of the food we order
| in order to don't have to take it away .-.
| Jochim wrote:
| Outside of fine dining/small plates, portion sizes are
| fairly large in the UK if you're planning on eating three
| courses.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Indeed - this goes along with other cultural values of
| clearing your plate and not wasting food. Some pubs offer
| "senior" portions for adults who don't eat much.
|
| It is definitely rare, but not completely unheard of;
| more common if you're in a sitdown place that also does
| takeaway/delivery. I've done it a few times. One
| memorable incident was in Bradford where we arrived late
| at a curry house after interminable faffing around, were
| all extremely hungry, ordered more than we usually would,
| and halfway through the starters and giant naan realized
| that we'd overdone it. Think we got more than one meal
| out of the _leftovers_.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Leftovers happen (semiquote)
| znpy wrote:
| Very bland reply.
|
| Portion sizes vary by restaurant, and also you're not
| always the same level of hungry.
|
| Just yesterday i tried a new restaurant, the meal was
| delicious and the portions were unexpectedly large (and i
| had a single dish, a single course).
|
| I happily took the leftovers away.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| What's your point? That there might sometimes be
| leftovers even if you plan to finish it? So what? People
| also take left overs home and sometimes never eat them.
| It could very well be the case that places that don't
| send home boxed leftovers result in less overall waste
| than places that do. Especially when you consider the
| boxes sent home as well.
|
| No system is perfect and a culture of taking home
| leftovers does not necessarily reduce waste overall.
| rovr138 wrote:
| > I assume people would just adapt to the culture by
| generally not ordering more than they will eat.
|
| How do you adapt and order less than 1 thing?
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Is this a serious question? Order the smaller food items?
| diggan wrote:
| Restaurants are sometimes OK with splitting a dish in
| two/half if you ask nicely. Sometimes I do this for lunch
| when I'm not very hungry, and can't remember a single
| time someone said no.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > No system is perfect and a culture of taking home
| leftovers does not necessarily reduce waste overall.
|
| Well not being able to take home leftovers does increase
| waste, because as others have pointed out there will
| always be cases where you will have leftovers, no matter
| how careful you are.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I'll explain why this is not necessarily true. If you are
| able to take home leftovers, there is less incentive not
| to end up with leftovers. Hence the amount of leftovers
| should _increase_ as a whole. Some of those leftovers
| will be left in the restaurant by customer choice
| (resulting in waste) and some will be taken home. Some of
| the food taken home will not be eaten which then also
| will become waste.
|
| So the question as to which system results in less waste
| boils down to a question that must be answered
| experimentally.
|
| Reducing waste on a societal level is complex. Cultural
| practices of restaurants boxing food to take away may
| result in less waste but it may also result in more
| waste.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > If you are able to take home leftovers, there is less
| incentive not to end up with leftovers
|
| I feel that having leftovers is never desiderable, with
| or without the ability to take them home. In France the
| restaurants are obligated to allow you to take leftovers
| home, and in my experience this has not changed anything
| on the behavior of people eating in restaurants. The only
| thing that changes is that in the rare case in which you
| have leftovers, you can take them home.
| ric2b wrote:
| I regularly ask the waiter how large is the plate or if
| they do half-plate (quite common) if I'm not feeling very
| hungry.
|
| If they don't do half-plate and the plates are large I
| might ask around the table if someone wants to split or
| take a portion of mine.
| paganel wrote:
| You're not going to eat re-heated food that you've had at
| the restaurant a few hours prior, no-one who cares about
| food ever does (unless you're an American, maybe).
| defrost wrote:
| This sub thread is filled with many examples of non
| Americans happy to take uneaten leftovers for later - it
| varies by country and culture.
|
| > no-one who cares about food ever does
|
| That's a bit universal for what's simply your _opinion_.
| paganel wrote:
| Even if they're non-Americans, this is a verily heavily
| American-influenced forum so the people here most
| probably have more American habits compared to the
| average people in their countries.
|
| > That's a bit universal for what's simply your opinion.
|
| Yes, and that's a feature, not a bug, we're here to share
| our opinions, this is not a peer-reviewed forum.
|
| With all that said, I still cannot understand how come a
| person who says he/she cares about food could eat re-
| heated takeaway stuff (supposedly at the microwave, which
| makes it double yuck-y).
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Yes, and that's a feature, not a bug, we're here to
| share our opinions, this is not a peer-reviewed forum
|
| If it's your opinion, you may want to introduce it with
| "Personally, I would never ..." instead of writing "no-
| one who cares about food ever does", which is obviously
| false.
|
| > With all that said, I still cannot understand how come
| a person who says he/she cares about food could eat re-
| heated takeaway stuff (supposedly at the microwave, which
| makes it double yuck-y).
|
| There are other ways to re-heat food, you can mix with
| other things, you can also eat it cold if that's your
| thing. It's also not just about caring about food, it's
| also caring about money: when you eat your leftovers, you
| don't have to pay for new food.
| justinclift wrote:
| > ... almost never happens in the UK.
|
| Maybe it's a regional thing?
|
| Seemed to be fairly common in London when I lived there for a
| few years.
| jjgreen wrote:
| ... about to post the same, particularly in curry places
| ...
| dfawcus wrote:
| Look up the demographics of London.
|
| It is an exception compared to the rest of the UK.
| vr46 wrote:
| You're definitely not speaking about the UK as a whole, this
| is completely normal and rooted in not wanting to waste food.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| The wasteful step is to order more food than you will eat.
| Someone not finishing their meal is what I don't recognise.
| If someone has a small appetite I am used to them enquiring
| about portion size and arranging to split dishes with
| others rather than expect to bag up an excess. There are
| always people keen to get their hands on anything going
| spare anyway.
|
| I only see it happen if someone falls ill, is called away
| or there was an error in the order e.g. you manage to order
| four entire chickens instead of four portions.
| hk__2 wrote:
| This whole discussion feels like "why would you need
| debuggers, you should not introduce bugs anyway". Even if
| you are careful you will eventually end up in a situation
| with leftovers; it may be your fault, but it may also be
| the restaurant's fault.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| But why is it wasteful if you intend to eat a portion of
| your dinner for tomorrow's lunch? All the food is
| eventually eaten.
|
| Is it because a small paper box is involved? Would you
| find it less obscene if everyone carried a reusable food
| container with them to a restaurant to mitigate the risk
| of offensive boxed leftovers?
| vr46 wrote:
| Not really, because different people are different. Some
| may not have the capacity to eat fewer large portions -
| like me - and eat less, more frequently.
|
| Many people eat more than they need to at any given time,
| that is arguably greedy and argubably wasteful in a
| different way.
|
| Portion sizes are static, appetites vary, letting people
| manage for themselves is perfectly fine.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| No it's not - we've done this many times in London in all
| sorts of places, chains, small restaurants and even a very
| fancy restaurant (the waiters there looked positively happy
| when we asked).
|
| We don't do it often only because we don't over-order as a
| general rule (c.f. my wife's Chinese family in Canada who
| over-order every time we go out and take whatever is left
| home).
| michaelt wrote:
| _> If you need to take away, maybe this indicates that you
| 're poor and need to make a meal last._
|
| I'd say it's the other way around: The British norm of eating
| everything on your plate was traditionally to avoid food
| waste.
|
| And even though supermarket food is incredibly cheap these
| days, the norm is maintained by parents who want their
| children to eat their vegetables.
|
| So Brits rarely see one another asking for to-go boxes even
| though many restaurants will offer them for free.
| Jochim wrote:
| This simply isn't true anymore. Even pre-covid, many
| restaurants were delivering food and it was becoming normal
| to box up leftovers.
|
| I've had upmarket steakhouses offer to box up my remaining
| food despite them not offering delivery.
| petepete wrote:
| Also this anecdote is from 2006, nearly twenty years ago. It
| definitely wasn't popular then and now is only likely in
| certain types of establishment (probably places that do
| deliveries).
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Asking your waiter to wrap up the rest of your food to
| go almost never happens in the UK."_
|
| It happens, I've done it. Certainly at pizza restaurants and
| such where we've over-ordered. It's easy to chuck half a
| pizza or whatever in a takeaway box, and they're always happy
| to do so.
|
| It's just less common in the UK because meals generally
| aren't so oversized like they can be in the US. In the UK we
| usually order what we can eat. If there's food left on my
| plate, it's because it didn't taste good and I don't want it.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| The meals aren't actually oversized in the US, they are
| serving you 2 or 3 meals when you order. Nobody expects you
| to eat all of that food in one sitting. Many restaurants
| even place the to-go containers on your table without
| asking because it's culturally ingrained.
| lowercased wrote:
| > You start to realise how people cope with those huge
| portions sizes in the US. Many people don't eat everything in
| one sitting.
|
| Yep. It conflicts with the "clean your plate!" mentality many
| kids were brought up with, but realizing that a meal you buy
| is often really enough for two meals and that it's OK to take
| some back with you can help both your weight and your wallet.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > It's hard to explain why we don't do it in the UK
|
| Due to various factors, we can't afford to make more food for
| that price. So we charge the same (or more) for less food on
| the plate compared to other countries.
|
| > Also, like almost everything cultural in the UK, I expect
| it is rooted in class snobbery. If you need to take away,
| maybe this indicates that you're poor and need to make a meal
| last. These aren't conscious prejudices, they're relics of
| the past and subconscious.
|
| This is just you having a hammer and everything looking like
| a nail. If you're shamefully poor, you're not eating out at
| all. Cheap takeaway food like fish and chips is definitely
| not shameful, and people of all socioeconomic classes eat it.
| politelemon wrote:
| > It's hard to explain why we don't do it in the UK
|
| I wonder if you're assuming I'm not from the UK, I am. I've
| seen it regularly, across strata. You are not speaking for
| the entire nation.
|
| Clearly (judging by the mixed comments where some say it's
| not common, and some say it is) this is a regional thing, but
| the assumption being made in that thread, and your comment,
| is untrue.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I do it -- 'please put that meat in a container for me' --
| and have for a couple of decades. But then I rarely can
| afford to go out and most places provide normal portions you
| finish in one sitting.
| _joel wrote:
| I do it all the time, mainly to keep for the dog. I was asked
| this week at a pizza place if I wanted to take the rest home
| too. I don't think it's as uncommon as you think.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| In Germany it is also not common, but some people do it (like
| my mother)
| ergonaught wrote:
| Dude dies and y'all are talking about to-go portions.
| jll29 wrote:
| So now we have covered PostgreSQL and food waste, how about
| the topic of avoiding small aircraft for transportation
| (because they are so much more risky compared to larger
| commercial aircraft)?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_from_aviati.
| ..
| whelp_24 wrote:
| He was the sole occupant, and he was doing touch and gos
| (ie practice) not transportation.
| politelemon wrote:
| The original posted thread is talking about it, and making a
| sweeping generalization, I am commenting on that
| generalization.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > This isn't true at all.
|
| It is. Go somewhere like South Africa where you expect with
| most meals to have a takeaway box, as there's so much food. We
| might do it, especially if we have kids with us, but it's not
| something after basically every meal.
| sgt wrote:
| Then we put it in the fridge, never to be eaten.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| True :) That's why South Africans have US-style double
| fridges. To store uneaten restaurant food.
| gwd wrote:
| A few years ago my family went to a pub / Thai restaurant, and
| the portions were larger than we were expecting. I asked the
| owner if he could put the leftover food in a box for me to take
| away; he said, "Sorry, I can't do that -- what if you took it
| home and then got sick?" I knew that they also did take-away;
| so I countered, "Could you give me a box and then forget about
| it?" He smiled and got me some take-away boxes, then left so he
| wouldn't see what I did with them.
|
| So, it was sufficiently unusual that I had to be creative to
| make it happen.
| kitd wrote:
| _As a rule_ ... it decidedly is. Yes, it can be done, but the
| overwhelming majority of time, it isn 't,
| jnsie wrote:
| I was surprised he'd never been to a chain restaurant. They're
| not exactly lacking in the UK or Western Europe in general...
| west0n wrote:
| PostgreSQL is a very unique community compared to other database
| community(MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, ClickHouse et.c). It is INDEED
| decentralized, which means NO single company control it. This is
| related to the style of PostgreSQL's primary maintainers and
| leaders, who have ensured that the project's decisions and
| direction are determined collectively by the community members,
| rather than being controlled by a single company. Hopefully,
| their departure will not change this aspect.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Wow
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Design by committee has downsides. Let's not put Postgres'
| development practices on a pedestal.
| jeltz wrote:
| Design by committee is not really common in the PostgreSQL
| community. Instead people just work on whatever they or their
| employer wants to. Makes having a roadmap or cohesive plan
| impossible but the issues of design by committee rarely show
| up.
| ngrilly wrote:
| PostgreSQL's development never looked like design by
| committee.
| acdha wrote:
| Postgres is one of the top open source projects of all time.
| That doesn't mean everything is perfect with no room for
| improvement but almost anyone could learn from what's worked
| there.
| fieldcny wrote:
| This is how ALL open source used to be! Like literally ALL,
| this is the norm not this bullshit VC funded fremium
| restricted/tiered fuck the customer trap nonsense.
|
| People built things because they loved it and wanted to help
| others , not to get rich. Now everyone just wants to get rich,
| and fast.
| planb wrote:
| While I agree with your sentiment, maintaining software like
| postgreSQL is a full time job. But your last sentence seems
| to apply to everything on the internet lately. People used to
| do podcasts, create guitar tabs or publish cooking recipes
| because it was their hobby and they wanted others to
| participate. Now everything seems about making money.
| rglullis wrote:
| People would do these things for free because they had a
| stable job which guaranteed their material needs. Now every
| type of job can be automated and done better/cheaper by a
| machine, people will be forced to "monetize" everything
| that exists unless we get a literal revolution in how we
| tax and distribute the produced wealth.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| The jobs we're talking about here, podcasting,
| development, etc aren't jobs where everyone is forced
| out. Everyone is just more into making money these days
| and decide they want to make money doing those things
| rather than just fun. Let's not try making excuses.
| rglullis wrote:
| You are getting at it backwards. People are doing
| podcasts about investing, cooking, music production,
| <anything> because even those careers are being automated
| away and the money that they could be getting _working_
| is going away.
|
| Even Software Engineers: take all the swaths of engineers
| who were productive but didn't want / didn't make to a
| FAANG company and now are having to compete in a world
| where most companies can replace a lot of the people they
| don't need a team of 8 engineers because their team of 4
| now can have Co-Pilot and most of their "middle
| management" roles could be effectively replaced by some
| cheap, off-the-shelf SaaS.
|
| I'm literally in this scenario. I'm too old to be
| interested in competing with someone who is 20 years
| younger than me but can call themselves a "programmer",
| and whatever knowledge/experience I have can be had at a
| fraction of my "cost" by using a commodified service that
| automates a process. So, what is left for me? Either I
| need to go downmarket and work for "programmer" jobs
| (further increasing the supply and lowering salaries) or
| I need to find someone who is willing to invest in my
| "idea for a startup" (thus getting into the Silicon-
| Valley way of life), or I need to find a way to take my
| unique experience and repackage as something of value -
| and then get to be called "greedy" by people like you.
|
| By the way, may I interest you in becoming a customer of
| my not-yet VC funded company (https://communick.com)
| and/or join the people sponsoring me for $4/month for my
| Fediverse work
| (https://github.com/sponsors/mushroomlabs)?
| simion314 wrote:
| I do not believe you can replace a competent developer
| with an AI, or say you have 2 and replace them with 1 dev
| and 1 AI.
|
| You can't just type in ChatGPT something like "write me
| GTA5" and you get running code, just seen today an
| example of someone complaining that he asked soemthing
| like "Create a website in PHP for a company that does X"
| and they were expecting that by magic a website will just
| appear.
| rglullis wrote:
| Aside from clueless people on Elance and upwork, no one
| goes to a developer and says "write me GTA5" or "make a
| website in PHP that does X", either.
|
| What AI will do is leverage productivity of the
| individuals. Any new story will have its complexity
| reduced because the developer will be to use the existing
| codebase and say "hey, our current code is connecting
| with Foobar via the Zoberg SDK, now we are adding a
| customer that uses the BazBah platform and they need to
| change the order flow for 'deliver on payment' to
| 'deliver on invoice sent'. Show me what changes are
| needed to make this happen, and please write the
| integration tests to make sure that we are not breaking
| things from existing customers"
|
| This goes from a one week task that will require three
| hour-long to something that can be done in an afternoon,
| reviewed by the developer and (most importantly) _cheap
| to throw away if the original requirements change_.
| simion314 wrote:
| Does this work today? I guess it might be able to write
| tests but does the rest just work? In my experience the
| AI
|
| - uses bad code practices because there is more bad code
| on the internet then good
|
| - hallucinates APIs , so it tells you to use X but X does
| not exist in the library/framework you asked for
|
| - suggests wrong solution
|
| - if your language is not precise it gives you the answer
| to the wrong thing, like you see the answer and you
| realize it did not understand you
|
| In my experience if your developers are 20% more
| productive you do not fire 20% of them because there
| always is a big backlog of features or bugs to be
| handled.
| rglullis wrote:
| One of the reasons that I didn't drop out of college
| (almost 25 years ago) was because I was working part-time
| proofreading (and occasional translating tech manuals)
| for a translator who used to get about $25 per 1000
| "touches". It could be good money for an experienced
| translator, but nowadays it's a dead profession outside
| of legal documents who need a certified notary.
|
| Google's automatic translation was not good enough at the
| beginning to replace the translator's job, but by the
| time I was already graduated it was good enough for her
| to not need my proofreading and it was good enough for
| her to effectively get 60% of the job done. She has then
| effectively become the proofreader for a bad translator.
|
| And nowadays, the bad translator is good enough to the
| point where _her customers_ can just throw the original
| document on Google and do themselves the proofreading.
|
| This is what will happen with programming tools. Code
| generation tools are still just at the "smart
| autocomplete" stage and the experienced programmer is
| still needed to act as reviewers, but as AI gets better,
| it will be cheaper to drop the "professional expert"
| altogether and let someone with tangential knowledge
| (maybe a product manager) in charge.
| simion314 wrote:
| People still complain that machine translated Japanese is
| garbage so I bet will be the same with programming, some
| easy tass will be automated, complex stuff will be still
| done by humans with experience and understanding of the
| domain.
| rglullis wrote:
| - There is not that much "complex" stuff going around for
| all the people that will be looking for a job in the
| field.
|
| - what you call "garbage" might be someone else's "good
| enough for my needs". If I can go to Japan and a "
| garbage translator" still is enough for me to help
| navigate the city or poorly talk to a shopkeeper, then
| it's mission accomplished and I don't need to worry about
| a local guide.
|
| - lots of "complex stuff" are dependent on context, and
| can be made less complex if we relax one single design
| constraint. E.g, centralized social media networks have a
| strong requirement for not losing user data. Distributed
| systems solve this by (a) duplicating data between every
| node and (b) letting it be deleted by users and node
| operators who do not want to have the data stored for
| long term.
|
| It seems to me that you believe that what most software
| engineers is some dark magic that only a select few can
| master. It really isn't. The whole "software is eating
| the world" essay never mentioned what was going to happen
| after it ran of out of things to eat, now it is kind of
| obvious that it will gladly get into cannibalism.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| It's less automation and more about cheap labor. Content
| farms sprung up and flooded the landscape with worthless
| content to get a micro-slice of the pie.
|
| Very discouraging to many content creators when their
| work is just going to be buried in SEO chaff.
|
| Also, the automation wave is just beginning. Soon the
| human run content farms will be overwhelmed by AI created
| crap.
|
| This is likely to happen in software as well. Every
| product will need to compete with some AI generated piece
| of garbage that's barely passable functionally, but being
| sold at a fraction of the cost.
|
| Fun times!
| cjk2 wrote:
| 100% agree on this. Ansible sell out and Hashicorp are fine
| examples of this.
| manish_gill wrote:
| What's wrong with trying to get rich? Please explain.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Just tell everyone you're dealing with that your primary
| purpose is getting rich with the software.
|
| Don't tell them you have always been and always will be
| open source, just until you're big and give the middle
| finger to OSS in order to get richer.
| endisneigh wrote:
| A given piece of open source code when licensed _is_
| always open source. Changing the license doesn't
| retroactively do so for the previous code.
|
| There is no lie.
| iamtedd wrote:
| No. No no no. Don't weasel-word out of this with bullshit
| technicalities.
|
| The phrase isn't "FooBar v3.11 is free and always will
| be".
|
| There is no version number in the phrase, so the common
| understanding is that the product and every version of
| that product will always be free.
| endisneigh wrote:
| lol. If it helps you cope, imagine the company died,
| another company forked it with a new license.
|
| Same thing, same result. We are literally discussing this
| in a thread where a prominent maintainer died. Nothing is
| forever.
|
| There is no way to guarantee something will be the same
| forever.
|
| Again, fork and move on if things change to your
| dissatisfaction.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| You apparently are not familiar with the concept of
| software maintenance, upgrade, security patches. Or
| completely ignored it when wrote this comment.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yeah man, screw the VCs! That's why we're communicating
| through an open source platform... oh.
|
| Well at least this site isn't created by a VC... oh.
|
| Things are nuanced. VCs can fund valuable useful things
| sometimes.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Nobody's saying screw VCs.
|
| We say screw to fooling your users that you're an OSS
| adopter and supporter, just until your project is big and
| you can say screw OSS.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You seem to be confused. Even if the project is big and
| they change the license, so what?
|
| The old code is there with the existing license still.
| Fork it and move on.
|
| People, man.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| you can't fork and maintain everything yourself, and that
| de-facto lock in is _exactly_ what companies bank on when
| they pull this kind of bait and switch. The idea is
| precisely to gain popularity with open source, "the
| first dose is free" style, and then capitalize on the
| dependency and popularity. Literally just the developer
| analog to the misleading "everything is free and always
| will be" advertisements of consumer facing software.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Ok find other people to help, that's how open source
| works no?
|
| There's no issue here. Just whining. There is no lock in
| at all.
|
| Even if it were OSI open source the maintainers like the
| very thread we are in could die. Then what? Oh you fork
| and maintain yourself, or the project rots.
|
| License changes are irrelevant.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Do you have any idea of what constitutes an OSS project
| besides characters written on an versioned repository?
| phatfish wrote:
| People should be more aware of what the license open
| source software is developed under allows.
|
| Amazon can wrap an open source project in an AWS front
| end and create a paid for cloud service off the back of
| community effort. Or, key contributors can decide they
| want to take the existing code and change the license
| their contributions are released under going forward.
|
| If the original license allows both these things to
| happen, then both are a risk and no one is being fooled.
| fieldcny wrote:
| Who cares if they do that? Do you see Torvalds and co
| running around crying because the entire world runs on
| Linux Kernels?
|
| I would love nothing more than for a project I built or
| contributed to wound up as an AWS service.
|
| Writing the code is just part of the value, running it is
| also very difficult. Especially as the use increases and
| expose new code paths and bugs and what not.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| I think if a big company or two decided to lead
| development and charge for their Linux Linux kernels he'd
| have an issue as his influence etc would change. Also he
| is lucky in that he doesn't have to care about the making
| money part. Companies have that issue.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Companies can make plenty of money.
|
| What they can't - without giving the middle finger to OSS
| - is satisfy greed.
|
| If you want to satisfy greed, fine, but be like Oracle.
| Sell a commercial license upfront. Don't pretend to be
| OSS.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| Well I'm not sure if it's just greed at the level at
| Amazon, Microsoft etc packaging your work and take all
| the support money from their vast influence.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| OSS users don't complain about AWS wrapping around it.
| It's very much welcome.
|
| The greedy people behind businesses managing OSS are
| concerned, because they are not satisfied with making
| money. They want to be THE ONLY ONES making LUDICROUS
| profits on top of community contributions.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I also have this feeling, but i do feel myself doubting
| from the lack of examples in this conversation. What are
| some recent examples of this type of scandal that we can
| use to solidify this conversation?
| berniedurfee wrote:
| I don't believe HN was created or is being maintained out
| of the goodness of anyone's heart.
|
| HN has monetary value to someone somewhere. Plus it's cheap
| to run.
|
| It's also a good advertising and recruiting platform for
| YC.
|
| There by the grace of VCs goes HN.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Monetization-era
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The main alternative to open source monetization is XKCD 2347
| (one guy in Nebraska). PostgreSQL appears to have hit that
| sweet middle ground that is so rare in open source.
|
| https://xkcd.com/2347/
| weinzierl wrote:
| The foundation is set up as a 501(c)(3) and to the benefit of
| the public. While it is not the only open-source project
| foundation working like that, many others are 501(c)(6)'s and
| primarily for the benefit of their (most often corporate)
| sponsors.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Redis ownership is decentralized as well. Redis the company
| owns the trademark and they were responsible for about one
| fifth of commits in recent years. The majority of contributions
| is external to them. The code base is BSD licensed and anyone
| is free to create a fork and continue development. Which looks
| like it is exactly what will happen now that Redis has decided
| that they don't need the input of the other 80% of commits from
| external contributors. Those contributors will inevitably shift
| their attention to one or several of the other forks. The Linux
| Foundation's Valkey fork looks like one of the main likely
| candidates for committers to rally behind. The biggest change
| will be the name change. The notion of the likes of Google,
| Amazon, Microsoft, etc. abandoning their Redis user base is
| unthinkable. They'll continue to offer that and they'll
| continue to lead the development of Redis. Redis the company
| will loose what little influence they had. I've never heard of
| anyone using hosted Redis directly from them.
|
| In general, projects like Postgresql and other successful open
| source projects have in common that generally contributors are
| not coming from a single company. Community diversity is what
| gives open source projects resilience against corporate
| shenanigans. Mysql in some form or another will persevere as
| well. It has survived a lot of this stuff already and it's
| still there as an open source option.
|
| I use it as a guide to select which things I use. I look for
| three things in open source tools and libraries that I use: 1)
| proper licensing (No agpl or shared source nonsense) 2)
| community diversity (no single companies that can change their
| mind), 3) active & recent development demonstrating the project
| is healthy.
|
| Of course the tragedy of individuals like Simon Riggs passing
| away is that they are so important for the health of these
| projects. With postgresql, I'm confident that there are others
| that can step up. But still, he's been very important and it's
| important to recognize their amazing contributions. The OSS
| world is full of these type of hero developers and it's what
| makes using OSS so wonderful. With Redis, that person would be
| Antirez. And he stepped back from Redis the company some time
| ago. It will be interesting to see what he does post fork.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > MySQL
|
| What's the point of it, by the way? Why would one start a new
| project based on MySQL instead of postgres today?
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| MySQL has an actively maintained LSM-tree based storage
| engine like MyRocks, while Postgres doesn't have
| production-ready options in that regard.
| dboreham wrote:
| Why is LSM useful for a RDB workload?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Log Structured Merge Trees are superior in write volume
| and scaling B+ trees higher. LSMs are part of the sauce
| of Cassandra and (I believe) DynamoDB for horizontal
| scaling.
|
| RocksDB is a single node very efficient (better than
| Cassandra's in the 2.x/3.x releases, not sure about now)
| single node LSM implementation.
| WJW wrote:
| Because you know it better? Same reason as for most
| technical decisions tbh.
|
| Besides that, there are still some points where the MySQL
| and/or the tooling around it simply performs better than
| Postgres. Anything to do with replication and big table
| migrations comes to mind.
| kreetx wrote:
| Not an expert, but briefly looking into this, MySQL is
|
| 1. easier to configure and manage
|
| 2. faster for read-heavy workloads
|
| 3. has pluggable storage engine (though, if you care about
| this, then 1. likely doesn't matter anymore)
| Icathian wrote:
| Just as a note, Postgres also has pluggable storage
| engine, using their tableam API.
| woooooo wrote:
| It's much less emphasized compared to MySQL, I didn't
| even know about it until your comment, and search results
| are sparse.
|
| MySQL has had multiple viable storage engines for most of
| its existence. MyISAM, InnoDB and more recently MyRocks.
| TurningCanadian wrote:
| You might be able to argue that Postgres' foreign data is
| a different form of pluggable storage engine. E.g. you
| can even use a CSV file as a backing store for a table
| with file_fdw.
|
| https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-foreign-
| data.htm...
|
| https://dbaclass.com/article/how-to-access-csv-files-on-
| file...
| steve_rambo wrote:
| Multi-master replication out of the box. Very useful, very
| occasionally.
| rob wrote:
| Because I make money with WordPress.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I personally also prefer postgres but I have used mysql in
| the past as well on and off over the last 20+ years or so.
| Managed postgres was at some point slightly more expensive
| in Amazon for some reason. So that's a good reason. If all
| you need is some simple database, either is fine.
| netol wrote:
| Because it may be good enough. In my case, because I
| already maintain an instance of MariaDB in production, and
| I may prefer to share this that maintain another thing
| Fartmancer wrote:
| I would choose MySQL because I'm more familiar with it and
| it's good enough for what I need. PostgreSQL might be able
| to give me better benchmarks but it won't have any
| meaningful benefit for me the developer or for the user.
| graemep wrote:
| Benchmarks are not the reason people choose PostgreSQL
| over MySQL. I have never even bothered to benchmark the
| two for any project that could have used either.
|
| Features, better ACID (at least historically) and maybe
| better standards compliance.
|
| The big one for me is being able to run schema changes in
| transactions, which makes it easy to roll back a failed
| migration.
| mdavidn wrote:
| Also, the license. PostgreSQL is controlled by the open
| source community via a nonprofit organization.
| graemep wrote:
| True, but I would say governance rather than license.
|
| Not being Oracle is a huge advantage ;)
| berniedurfee wrote:
| I wouldn't, only because the big O is behind MySQL.
|
| Otherwise, why not? It's basically a Chevy vs Ford
| decision.
| ksec wrote:
| Had Oracle stopped investing into MySQL, may be people
| would have moved on. But they didn't. Just like when people
| were worried about JAVA, instead we have 15 years of
| continuous improvement. And that is the same with MySQL.
| There are lots of features MySQL has as defaults, while
| postgres simply accept it is not something they want to
| deal with but leave it to extensions.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| What's wrong with AGPL
| twodave wrote:
| AGPL is fine for open source projects. It isn't really
| useful for a commercial closed-source or even an open-core
| codebase in some cases.
|
| On the other hand, usually that's the intention when a
| project selects AGPL. There's usually a commercial license
| you can buy instead (see iText for example).
| anileated wrote:
| AGPL is absolutely fine for commercial closed-source
| projects. Don't fall for anti-AGPL propaganda.
|
| https://drewdevault.com/2020/07/27/Anti-AGPL-
| propaganda.html
| twodave wrote:
| It isn't fine because it will come up in due diligence as
| a risk, every single time. It's easy to say "it's fine",
| and in theory I agree with you. But it's a cost that
| doesn't make sense if you know what the auditors are
| going to say and expect. Auditors flag even more benign
| things than the AGPL, but to pretend it's not a thing is
| just whimsy.
| freedomben wrote:
| I very much _want_ drew 's post to be correct, but I
| can't let confirmation bias cause me to consider this due
| diligence.
|
| Are there any lawyers or legal cases that you know of
| that have proven this? or at least lawyers who have
| reviewed it and given a legal opinion?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It has a few clauses and language in there that generally
| scare corporate lawyers. There are two main groups of
| people advocating the use of this license.
|
| 1) companies that sell non oss commercial licenses for
| their AGPLed software that they own the copyright to and
| want you to buy those. A lot of those companies are now
| starting to prefer shared source type licenses.
|
| 2) open source advocates that don't like any commercial
| usage of their software and will actively want to prevent
| any form of intermingling of closed source and open source
| components like is common in many commercial projects. This
| is nominally to protect their freedom. But of course it has
| consequences in the context of commercial projects that
| don't want to opensource their proprietary stuff. Whether
| that is actually true or not for any particular use
| requires a bit of careful legal scrutiny.
|
| Some places that do license audits (e.g. most banks,
| insurers, and other large companies that need to be alert
| to potential legal pitfals) would probably flag anything
| under this license. Three reasons for this: these licenses
| are only fine under very specific circumstances and certain
| combinations of licenses are not compatible. And finally of
| course these audits and lawyers are expensive. So, the
| easiest way to stay safe would be a blanket ban on anything
| with this license. Which is my general attitude towards
| this license.
|
| Anyway, don't take your advice from random commenters
| (including me) on hacker news and consult a lawyer when in
| doubt. Yes that costs money. Alternatively, save some money
| and just steer clear of this mess.
| twodave wrote:
| I'd guess Microsoft ends up replacing Redis with Garnet[0] in
| their stack at some point.
|
| [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/research/blog/introducing-ga...
| wslh wrote:
| Interesting comment, why do you think PostgreSQL succeeded
| where others with the some structure don't? Is it most probably
| the kind of people involved more than the structure?
| enonimal wrote:
| I don't have an answer but I'd love to know this too. Why has
| Postgres got this unique staying power?
| byronic wrote:
| Coming at this from a small sample size, every time I've
| seen it used has been because some of the developers on a
| team love it and think it's cooler than the other options.
| And, over time, the operational experience has gotten
| better (AWS' Postgres support for RDS/Aurora is all recent,
| for example); and, in fairness, I'd take psql over SQL
| Server any day of the week.
|
| Regarding why it has popularity beyond mySQL/mariaDB is
| still a confounding mystery as far as I'm concerned. The
| additional behaviors Postgres tends to encourage (I'm
| looking at you, publisher/subscriber and trigger functions)
| seems to lead to devs advocating it as 'easy' while those
| in my position are left to keep the damn thing running.
| mdavidn wrote:
| I developed my preference for PostgreSQL years ago,
| before MySQL supported foreign key constraints or
| defaulted to durable commits. MySQL also had this
| annoying tendency to silently store invalid timestamps as
| zero. All of these things have been fixed since (I
| hope?), but I still can't shake my impression that
| PostgreSQL takes correctness more seriously.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| I would say it's similar to Linux:
|
| It's a free, solid foundational technology, guided by
| steady hands.
|
| In a software economy full of profiteers, charlatans, and
| marketing babble, the project is providing real value to
| users.
| koolba wrote:
| > It's a free, solid foundational technology, guided by
| steady hands.
|
| Beautifully said.
| deepersprout wrote:
| I remember the discusson between Simon and Robert about RLS in
| Postgres, a feature I was eagerly awaiting at the time:
| https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA%2BU5nM%2BADSzcSs_2d...
|
| Simon always replied in a professional and objective tone, while
| making his point. I liked him.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Ouch, RIP. I didn't know anything about this guy, but now I feel
| like I should attempt some kind of code contribution to Postgres
| in his memory.
| indyjonas wrote:
| I met Simon in the 2000s when he was invited to give a Postgres
| training at the company I was working for at the time. My
| teammates and I invited him for a glimpse of Bavarian beer garden
| culture. Not only was Simon a world-class, no-nonsense database
| software engineer and entrepreneur, he was also a really nice
| fellow to hang out with. I'll miss him.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Man this is really sad. :(
|
| Having interacted with Simon on both a community and commercial
| basis through 2ndQ he was always polite, professional and happy
| to spend time explaining things to mere mortals.
|
| RIP Simon. You will be missed.
| uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
| That's sad to hear. I only met Simon briefly at a conference a
| decade ago, but I've worked at companies based around Postgres
| for almost twenty years now. Given his work both on Postgres
| directly and in founding 2nd Quadrant, I don't think it's a
| stretch to say I owe him my career.
| chasingthewind wrote:
| Some discussion and a really upsetting video on Reddit that I'm
| assuming is this incident
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1boxor4/cirrus_sr...
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Wow, I had seen the headlines about a fatal plane crash at
| Duxford but I hadn't made the connection that this was the same
| incident.
|
| What an awful tragedy. RIP Mr Biggs.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| So Sad, that video link is private, this one works.
|
| https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/372326
| ranguna wrote:
| https://youtube.com/shorts/kSRcmjLllHY?si=-_yAfyExAq79veRn
| lsh123 wrote:
| Botched go around killed many pilots. May be trimmed too much
| up for landing with flaps and didn't push nose down hard
| enough. In general, touch and goes in a high performance planes
| is not a good idea (no time for checklists, runway length, and
| actually wrong muscle memory for real takeoffs / landings).
| RIP.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| As the old quotation goes, Aviation in itself is not
| inherently dangerous, But to an even greater degree than the
| sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness,
| incapacity or neglect.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's a balance of risks in T&G vs full-stop taxi-backs. On
| the day of the individual flight, taxi backs are surely
| safer. But if they let you get in less than half of the
| circuits (as would be common at busy GA airports) or if they
| cause your proficiency training to become twice as expensive,
| the overall system safety difference isn't clear.
|
| I come down on the side of being willing to do touch and goes
| in any aircraft (and have shared circuits with heavy jets
| doing touch and goes, so it's done at all levels).
|
| From the video, this does look like a botched climb from
| either an intended T&G or bounced landing after a series of
| T&Gs, so I've got to agree with your point about the "that
| day" safety here.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I kinda wish computer systems were more involved in planes.
|
| Computer systems have controlled the movement of elevators
| for 50+ years. They stop the elevator moving when the door
| isn't shut very effectively. They have certainly saved more
| lives compared to even a well trained elevator operator.
|
| With today's tech, it would be possible to make a computer
| that prevents stall of any aerofoil. Anytime an aerofoil is
| nearing stall conditions, do whatever is necessary to prevent
| it stalling by actuating control sticks in the direction to
| prevent the stall.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > I kinda wish computer systems were more involved in
| planes.
|
| > Computer systems have controlled the movement of
| elevators for 50+ years. They stop the elevator moving when
| the door isn't shut very effectively. They have certainly
| saved more lives compared to even a well trained elevator
| operator.
|
| I thought you were talking about the elevators on a plane
| and was trying to figure out why whether a plane door was
| closed mattered for controlling the elevators.
| asdfjvk wrote:
| Self-driving cars can't even manage 2 degrees of freedom
| with billions of driver-miles of data. What do you think
| can be done in 3d space, with more instruments and many
| orders of magnitude of less data?
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > With today's tech, it would be possible to make a
| computer that prevents stall of any aerofoil. Anytime an
| aerofoil is nearing stall conditions, do whatever is
| necessary to prevent it stalling by actuating control
| sticks in the direction to prevent the stall.
|
| What a brilliant idea! It certainly could never directly
| lead to the deaths of 346 people in two separate plane
| crashes or anything.
|
| On a slightly less snarky note, what do you imagine an
| autopilot is?
| gbacon wrote:
| Even if the accident pilot had intended a stop-and-go and
| assuming reports of a bounce are accurate, it was too late.
| Trying to force a landing risks porpoising. Going around
| after a bad bounce is the safer choice -- but a high workload
| event: full power, first notch of flaps, nose forward, and
| the all-important right rudder.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Are pilots four point strapped? The video looks like a heavy
| impact with a whip effect from the wing hitting the ground,
| but the forces involved look generally in the class of
| automobile impact. Is GA lax on restraints?
|
| Are there "airbags" in GA, or accidental deployment too high
| a failure risk?
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > but the forces involved look generally in the class of
| automobile impact.
|
| I don't think that's something you can eyeball?
|
| For one thing, planes infamously don't appear to be moving
| super fast even when moving at speeds that would raise
| eyebrows in a car. On normal final approach a Cirrus SR22
| has an airspeed of around 80 knots (92 mph, 148 kph) and
| that looks like this:
| https://youtube.com/shorts/XZcW11zgWQE - the accident plane
| almost certainly had a higher velocity when it hit the
| ground
|
| And for another, impact with the ground especially in a
| dive is _very_ different from impact with another vehicle
| as is typical for road accidents. Instant deceleration is a
| whole other beast. Imagine driving straight into a thick
| concrete wall at over 90mph - there 's nothing that
| seatbelts and airbags are going to do to save you from
| fatal injury (an example of such a test crash:
| https://www.carscoops.com/2022/11/what-happens-when-you-
| cras...)
| tnvmadhav wrote:
| RIP :(
|
| Thankful for all the work.
| germandiago wrote:
| RIP. :(
| worddepress wrote:
| This happened at Duxford, a very famous airfield in the UK build
| during WWI. I think they have regular air shows there. Happens to
| be near Cambridge, UK, which is the high-tech (in many fields)
| area.
| odiroot wrote:
| The museum there is really worth visiting.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Yeah. It's great
| chx wrote:
| You can see an SR-71 there!
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Duxford houses the Imperial War Museum Duxford, the American
| Air Museum, the Fighter Collection and the Historic Aircraft
| Collection [0]. Went their once years ago and was very
| impressed with the size of the collections.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duxford_Aerodrome#IWM,_America...
| ioltas wrote:
| I've met Simon for the first time in Tokyo in 2009 for a birthday
| related to JPUG (Japan PostgreSQL User Group) when hot standby
| was getting integrated into the upstream project. I saw him last
| time in Prague three months ago, and we have joked about a few
| things while discussing about life and how things were going on
| as I did not go to the Postgres Europe conference for 6~7 years.
|
| The community has lost a member, and many people have lost a
| friend. That's so sudden. My thoughts go to his family and people
| who knew him. I'm so sad. RIP, Simon.
| alpaccount wrote:
| May he rest in peace, humanity surely lost a great mind today.
| ngrilly wrote:
| Having been following PostgreSQL's development and casually
| reading pgsql-hackers for years, Simon Riggs is a name I
| immediately associate to PostgreSQL. It's clear he will be
| missed. Rest in peace.
| harha_ wrote:
| ;__;7 I find news like this very sad. People who do massive
| amounts of good just suddenly die.
| tlocke wrote:
| I met Simon once ages ago when I was due to speak at a PostgreSQL
| conference. It was my first time speaking at a conference and he
| was a nice bloke and gave me a bit of advice afterwards. He said
| not to worry about having to be entertaining, it's enough just to
| get the points across, that's what people were there for. I found
| that very reassuring!
| susanthenerd wrote:
| I think he deserves the black banner to be put
| LinuxBender wrote:
| emailed dang asking for this
| sgt wrote:
| Article in daily mail:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13245363/Father-kil...
|
| I don't normally like the Daily Mail but they do often include a
| lot of photos. For those of us who didn't know Simon, but knew of
| him through Postgres, it's nice to see a face and get a more
| human connection through these photos. Looks like a guy who lived
| life to the fullest.
| aidos wrote:
| Really sad to hear this news.
|
| Personal anecdote from when friends went through a family
| tragedy - the daily mail were incredibly invasive and
| insensitive. They trawled Facebook to pull photos (like they've
| done here) but also figured out close friends and camped out on
| their doorsteps to try to get them divulge more information.
| keeptrying wrote:
| Wow, incredible achievement to build Postgres replication.
|
| Something so many people use. Inspiring.
|
| (Note to self: never mention genitals in an obit!)
|
| I hope I build something that's used at this scale.
|
| RIP Simon.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Very sad.
|
| I will not fly in a small plane, just as I wouldn't ride a
| motorcycle (both have similar death/time rates.) Your preferences
| may differ.
|
| This doesn't mean riding in a car is risk free. Many well known
| computer figures have died that way too. A friend of mine who
| went on to become fairly well known in the early internet died
| that way, a head-on accident on I-95.
| gorlilla wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that. My best friend, since we were 2 years
| old, died at 29 in a motorcycle accident the same year he took
| over the family business. He got clipped by a car that swerved
| into his lane to avoid another car and that was all it took to
| take him away from us.
| jetrink wrote:
| I wonder if small planes aren't actually far more dangerous
| than motorcycles. A significant minority of motorcycles are
| operated by thrill-seeking people who routinely drive
| recklessly and avoid wearing safety equipment. They tend to be
| young, inexperienced, and unconcerned with risk. Pilots, on the
| other hand, tend to be serious, careful people. They use
| checklists. They have to undergo extensive, supervised
| training. Pilots have a culture of understanding and mitigating
| risk. For all those differences, the mortality rates are almost
| the same.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The average death rate for motorcycles and general aviation
| is around 1 death per 100,000 hours. Just an average, as you
| observe.
|
| BTW, flying a small plane costs maybe $40/hour in fuel, but
| if your life is worth $12.5M (the statistical value of a
| human life these days) then the cost of the risk is
| $125/hour, three times as much. This tells me it's likely a
| good idea to include an emergency whole-plane parachute
| system on general aviation aircraft, even at the cost of fuel
| efficiency.
| juggli wrote:
| RIP Simon.
| steve-chavez wrote:
| Simon Riggs's 2ndQuadrant was one of the first patreons for
| PostgREST. I'll forever be grateful, their support came in a hard
| time. Rest in peace Simon.
| segmondy wrote:
| So side, Simon was a very brilliant dude. He was flying the
| cirrus sr22 which has parachute system, I wonder what happened.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| The parachute dutifully deployed after the plane crashed.
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| Here is the incident report: https://aviation-
| safety.net/wikibase/372326
| jeff-davis wrote:
| Simon was one of the first people I met in the Postgres
| community, perhaps in 2007 at the first PGCon that I attended.
| We've attended many of the same conferences in places around the
| world, and I've occasionally had the chance to explore those
| places with him. He was always kind to me and helped me
| immensely. I was proud to have the chance to co-author a major
| feature with him. The last time I saw him was this past December.
|
| Very sad.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The daily rate of notable deaths in the CS/hacker space will
| exceed the front page space of hacker news. Aging sucks.
| percivalPep wrote:
| I worked for him at a 7 person consulting company in the 90's
| before his work on PostgreSQL. Back then he was a very focused
| and driven individual. We didn't stay in touch, but I bumped into
| him a few times at conferences and it was always good to catch
| up. RIP Simon and much love to friends and family at this
| difficult time.
| karlzt wrote:
| This reminds me of:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37199495
|
| _Kris Nova has died (865 points | 7 months ago | 130 comments)_
|
| Interesting deaths.
|
| R.I.P.
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