all things engineering

Thinking of a new startup idea? Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the types of ideas to stay away from—what we commonly refer to as "tarpit ideas." ...

This article explains how BuildKit works in depth, why it's faster than Docker's previous build engine, and what it looks like under the hood.

Whether or not you need a co-founder is always a hotly debated topic — but going one level deeper, founders often wonder what kind of co-founder they need. ...

Marco just joined Crunchy Data and he reflects on his career in distributed systems in this post. He provides an overview of several options for approaching distributed Postgres workloads and the pros and cons of each approach.

A look ahead at some ongoing projects in PostgreSQL in 2024 and beyond

The complete podcast (and transcript!) of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s interview on Nvidia’s history and business strategy.

Learn how engineers thrive in environments where they can focus without distractions or competing priorities.

Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.

Books Reviews in a slightly easier to read format available at: ,http://go.zachgoldberg.com/bookreports Title,Author,What it's about,Rating,First Read,Other read dates,Intending to re-read,Review / Summary ESSENTIAL, life changing reads, highe...

By Zach Goldberg

Christophe Pettus - PostgreSQL Experts - PgConf.NYC 2023

Google Cloud stopped the largest known DDoS attack to date, which exploited HTTP/2 stream multiplexing using the new “Rapid Reset” technique.

7 lessons we've learned while managing 200+ open-source repositories - automation with a human touch.

Mark Smith of Discord described the benefits of "opinionated systems;" systems providing strong indications of best practices. Talk from ScyllaDB Summit 2018.

The complete podcast (and transcript!) of Nvidia’s recent history and current business strategy.

How NVIDIA went from gaming company to machine learning pioneer

How NVIDIA cheated death in the early days to invent modern graphics processing

CRDTs don't have to be all academic papers and math jargon. Learn what CRDTs are and how they work through interactive visualizations and code samples.

We often talk about being authentic at work. But what does that even mean? Why do these discussions always turn into group therapy sessions without an actionable outcome? I think it’s because we don’t have the vocabulary to truly talk about the problem. To make progress, we first need to understand that there are 3 types of authenticity: cognitive, affective, and conative.

The software industry is learning once again that complexity kills

Acquired dives into the history behind storied venture firm Sequoia Capital and its legendary founder, Don Valentine. Part 1 tells Don’s story, starting from humble beginnings born to uneducated parents in Yonkers, NY, through shaping the fabric of Silicon Valley itself first as head of Sales & Marketing at both Fairchild and National Semiconductor, and then for generations to come via his pioneering concept of “company building” at Sequoia Capital. No matter where you sit in the ecosystem today, Don and the companies he helped build laid the foundation for everything technology would become over the past 60 years.

The wait is over. Acquired returns with a very special Part II of the Sequoia Capital story, joined by the very best person in the world to help us tell it - Doug Leone. Since 1996, Doug has served as Sequoia’s Global Managing Partner, in charge of overseeing the firm’s incredible expansion from a single, $150m early-stage fund focused on Northern California to the multi-billion dollar global powerhouse it is today. Doug is incredibly candid and insightful about all that has gone into building the modern Sequoia: from winning Google and missing Facebook, to the enormous (and enormously successful) bet on decentralized expansion in China and India, to the firm’s “proudest moment” at the depth of the dot com bust. This episode is an absolute must-listen for anyone in the tech, startup and venture ecosystems today. Thank you to Doug and all of the Sequoia team for joining us to make it happen!

Industry veterans, degenerate gamblers & besties Chamath Palihapitiya & Jason Calacanis cover all things economic, tech, political, social & poker.

Marcus Blankenship discusses programmer motivation (and de-motivation), which is key to job satisfaction, performance, and turnover. Travis Kimmel spoke with Blankenship about why engineering motivation matters, the unique motivation needs of engineers, mentoring and coaching for motivation, 1:1s, and self-motivation.

Joel Spolsky (“Joel on Software”), founder and CEO of Stack Overflow, discusses lessons of building successful software companies. Host Nate Black spoke with Joel about the venture funded “land grab” situations vs. “bootstrapping with profitability”. How do venture capitalists think and how can you make fundraising easier? What’s the strategy to keep as much ownership of your company as possible? Besides growth and revenue, a third factor of a company’s valuations is risk. “Proof points” are a way of demonstrating low risk and will earn a higher valuation. What is the deciding factor for whether you will be successful when starting a company? What do founders risk when failure doesn’t mean going hungry? Rants include: what software companies still get massively wrong, how to do remote teams right, how developers undervalue their time by reinventing the wheel, how to make sure you are happy in your next job, and how to be a good citizen on Stack Overflow.

The Signal Protocol is a set of cryptographic specifications that provides end-to-end encryption for private communications exchanged daily by billions of people around the world. After its publication in 2013, the Signal Protocol was adopted not only by Signal but well beyond. Technical informat...