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stephenlf

472 karma · joined June 21, 2025

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stephenlf··on The GitHub wiki is an anti-pattern (2022)
I agree with this post. I’ve never found the GitHub wiki experience to be particularly ergonomic. I don’t have any issues with it, but it’s no more convenient than a simple /docs folder. And from there, it’s almost trivial to turn /docs into GitHub pages. Similar effort for a much better end product.

Wikis typically connote distributed, anonymous edits. This feature is partially covered by git already.

stephenlf··on The "omarchy" stuff is getting weird and weirder
The whole thing reads like an odd parody. “A modest proposal.”
stephenlf··on Cpak – OCI application package format for Linux desktops, servers and devices
> Follow a complete course, change real manifests and see what cpak accepts, refuses or changes. Professional paths lead to an exam and a public, verifiable credential.

Holy Claude

stephenlf··on US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs
Robin Hood?
stephenlf··on Pandas Should Go Extinct
Besides the performance benefits, I use Polars at work because it’s just (subjectively) nicer to work with. The “pl.col” API lets you create arbitrary generated/virtual columns anywhere you want, declaratively. You can throw in these column expressions in wherever without actually computing their values and storing that in memory. Very powerful stuff.
stephenlf··on 118M Queries per Second on Neki
I watched an interview that Casey Muratori did with Tyler Cloutier (SpacetimeDB founder and spokesperson) [1]. One of the points that Tyler is that, given modern CPU architecture with cache lines, a distributed database needs to fan out to at least 50-100 nodes to beat the throughput of a cache-optimized, single node database.

It’s cool to see the flip side of that argument. Planet scale is answering the question, “what does it look like when you DO fan out your workload to >100 nodes?”

There’s a place for both technologies. Very cool stuff.

[1] https://youtu.be/ONxwjqFjP3A?is=awlEJwGLxQmRE25i

stephenlf··on I need a clear Python roadmap?
https://stephenlf.dev/blog/python-library-in-2026/
stephenlf··on What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?
How is that simpler?
stephenlf··on Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
The entire internet is breathing a sigh of relief
stephenlf··on Fortune Telling Fraud
This scam has apparently resurfaced among Esty spell vendors
stephenlf··on Trusting-Trust Attack against an Entire Linux Distribution
“Widely regarded” still applies, I think.
stephenlf··on Simple Is Not Small
Yeah that example was pretty flimsy and contrived.
stephenlf··on It took a year to ship WebAssembly in Anubis
Comparatively, this is what it's like getting all of this working across browser versions, platforms, and so many other things:

…<img not found/>…

I don’t know what this picture was supposed to be, but a 404 demonstrates your point perfectly well.

stephenlf··on Maybe we shouldn't be reviewing all this code
Pair programming worked well for me in college because my peers had about the same level of background knowledge and the goal was well defined. At my day job, pair programming doesn’t work as well, since the knowledge gaps in different parts of the system are too great. We don’t have a cohesive skill set.
stephenlf··on uv: Deduplicate all files in the wheel cache
uv is the backbone of any modern Python library. I’m excited to see improvements.

https://stephenlf.dev/blog/python-library-in-2026/

stephenlf··on uv: Deduplicate all files in the wheel cache
uv is the backbone of any modern Python library.

https://stephenlf.dev/blog/python-library-in-2026/

stephenlf··on I built a scanner to find a SaaS worth cloning. Its best answer was "don't."
Do you know anybody who wants to read AI-generated research papers? I don’t. Do you?
stephenlf··on Claude Session URL appended to commit messages and PR descriptions by default
This isn’t the only ridiculous thing Anthropic does to promote Claude. They still don’t support AGENTS.md
stephenlf··on A lightweight Git CLI extension that adds S3:// support
The text on this website cuts off on my browser (iPhone 15 Safari). Phone-width websites have been solved for over a decade, so I’m not sure how the devs missed this. But I’m sure that the developers nailed the git extension.
stephenlf··on California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
This IS systemd we’re talking about.
stephenlf··on Bug Blindness
Asking others for feedback is absurdly powerful.
stephenlf··on POWBlock is a universal bot/DDoS defense primitive for any server
Kudos for finding the perfect name
stephenlf··on Show HN: Trading experiments, 5 years, all reproducible. The answer was no
This whole page sounds AI generated. If the author couldn’t bother to write a decent promotion, why would we think that the book was even half decent?
stephenlf··on Queryable Executables
Fantastic ideas. The SQL Injection to ACE pipeline is incredible.
stephenlf··on Python's pre-declared constants are kinda weird
Yes. These are funny little quirks, but nobody will ever get tripped up by them.
stephenlf··on My Friend Aaron
Spooky and riveting!
stephenlf··on Fuzzing the Gleam Compiler
Fantastic article. Thanks for sharing. I love the honest take on LLM-based fuzzing. It’s exactly something I would do with a similar problem.
stephenlf··on Turns are Better than Radians
I was hoping for some code examples but got none. Can anyone help?
stephenlf··on How to Find Quality Buyer in Manufacturing
By: <|°_°|>
stephenlf··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
Slick project. Very cool.
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