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setheron

1,053 karma · joined June 4, 2012

Software Engineering Alumni from University of Waterloo. https://fzakaria.com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/fzakaria; my proof: https://keybase.io/fzakaria/sigs/KyeYEObQNSlKKt-hy6DszIs2uGt7gRou7CzeSZoR6Q8 ]

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setheron··on I am done with this shit
We can work on harder problems at the frontier of the models knowledge. I'm working on one such domain, and I find AI use helpful, but I still need to be incredibly astute.
setheron··on A build graph that rolls dice
Stuck feeling it's so cool and also so complicated.
setheron··on Executable Is a SQLite Database
You might like https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/24/actually-queryable-executabl...
setheron··on Executable Is a SQLite Database
I like your phrasing; I think too often we get caught trying to optimize for everything.

For my own edification I often let performance & size slip to see if I can re-imagine something simpler from the start from a complete new direction;

This is often the greenfield hubris because it doesn't have all the same battle-scars of the full implementation so I try to make sure I take a very different approach to make it worthwhile :)

Then I just have faith that performance and size can always be improved over time.

setheron··on Executable Is a SQLite Database
I won't share any feedback specially but choosing low level primitives as research I found challenging due to the unfamiliarty in peer review circles.

I enjoyed all the papers I read on my graduate classes that bordered on "art" whereas now they seem to be obsessed with performance only.

setheron··on Executable Is a SQLite Database
I might look at this next; with Nix it's easy to explore and rebuild seamlessly ;P
setheron··on Executable Is a SQLite Database
(author) I'm enjoying the comments. When I published a short-paper with this idea in academic circles, the feedback wasn't so kind
setheron··on Executable Is a SQLite Database
(author) In the post I say I did write sqlelf which is just that, sqlite + virtual tables prior to this.
setheron··on Three ways to smuggle SQLite into Nix
That's an interesting idea as well. Daniel wrote https://github.com/danielfullmer/nkv which also was a pretty fun experiment on how to improve data access within Nix. I love these cursed ideas.
setheron··on Three ways to smuggle SQLite into Nix
(author) If you have questions, happy to try and answer some.
setheron··on Solo – a .so loader for static Linux binaries
If you dynamically sold an SO are you still static even if you did it "custom" ? At that point it's a dynamic loader in another name?
setheron··on Super Mario Derivations
(author) -- fun to see this here. I wrote this on the way (on the airplane) to DEFCON34 and Nix Vegas[1] I didn't even get a chance to cruise around and see anything of DEFCON proper since the Nix community had me captive the whole time!

I gave 3 talks that I will update on my site[2] once they released.

[1]: https://nix.vegas [2]: https://fzakaria.com/talks

setheron··on The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded
I dunno about all this hullabaloo. I'm at https://nix.vegas/ having fun and using Nix.

https://imgflip.com/i/aye90c

setheron··on Linux kernel will support $ORIGIN, sort of
This also can be handled by binfmt_misc; I include a demo of it in a gist.
setheron··on Linux kernel will support $ORIGIN, sort of
Feel free to email me! (author)
setheron··on Linux kernel will support $ORIGIN, sort of
I would love to learn more about this; I'm deeply interested in replacing ELF with something either simpler or maybe leveraging sqlite for much of the functionality.
setheron··on Linux kernel will support $ORIGIN, sort of
(author) YESSSSSSS
setheron··on Linux kernel will support $ORIGIN, sort of
(author) You did a great job articulating the points!
setheron··on Don't you mean extinct?
I don't want to curate my own AGENTS file. I'd rather just copy someone else's verbatim similar to code formatting style.

Fabien, care to share your whole file? I'll plug it into my NixOS machine.

setheron··on An update on residential proxies and the scraper situation
https://fzakaria.com/2026/07/09/who-does-anubis-actually-sto...

I wrote about this recently as well.

setheron··on A native graphical shell for SSH
I'm confused -- does this compile it live when the server ships code? How do we resolve dependencies, toolset etc.. Is the idea to just pick an old enough platform toolchain you expect to be present?
setheron··on A TacoSprint 2026 Retrospective
We also wrote an academic-style trip report at https://fzakaria.com/assets/pdfs/Attention_Nix_and_Tacos_is_... (arxiv submission is pending!)
setheron··on Show HN: machine0 – Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI
You can still apply. People dropped out. Reach out to me if you want. My email is in my website (see profile).

We leave Saturday to hack on Nix !

setheron··on Show HN: machine0 – Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI
Come join us at https://tacosprint.org/ We have more availability! (Also sponsor maybe )
setheron··on Show HN: machine0 – Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI
Big fan of exe.dev so the added Nix seems like a solid value add.

exe.dev is great but lurking in my mind is: "how will I replicate this if I ever need to move to AWS etc.." for all the service composition.

Site looks great too

setheron··on A Visualization of Unfathomable Wealth
The purpose is just to visualize scale.

Similar to Jeff Dean's visualization of numbers every programmer should know, visualizing scale is helpful -+ or at least I find it so.

setheron··on Every Byte Matters
(author) thank you for the kind words.
setheron··on Every Byte Matters
Add it to my watch list!
setheron··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2026)
amazing transparency, pay and information on the site.
setheron··on Every Byte Matters
The struct can be optimized but if we keep growing it with our features we hit the same problem for the cache line sequential access.

Smaller structs help with keeping working set down though.

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