Live data from Hacker News

Making Postgres slower

byteofdev.com

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: Making Postgres slower

#21
The Defence of Duffer's Drift is an early example of this genre.

In the first story in the book you learn how to do platoon level tactics badly( and lose most of your men )

In each subsequent story, a few tactical parameters are tweaked and the story is recounted again, with improved results.

The same approach is used in newer tactical books like Musicians of Mars 2.

The first Team Badger story in Musicians is very similar to the first story in Duffer's Drift, allowing for changes in location, equipment and techniques..

Warning: PDFs below:

The Defence of Duffer's Drift https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins...

Musicians of Mars 2 https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2023/01/19/5a01ae1c/16-1...

"The lingering sulfur odor of gunpowder, mixed in the haze of the dust and smoke of battle, dominated the senses of CPT Fred Morris, commander of Team Badger. He sat amid the wreckage of what used to be some of the world’s finest combat machines, M1A2 Abrams tanks and M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicles.

Now most of his company’s tanks and Brads were mere smoking hulks, emanating the distinct smell of burning electronics to add another element to the senses of the dismal scene before him.

He sat, quietly reflecting on the sequence of events that led to the destruction of his beloved team. His mind raced as he recounted how the enemy force, so much more formidable than he had expected, employed assets, capabilities, and tactics that he had not taken into account. At the same time, he wondered why he was unable to bring to bear his own extensive combat power to earn decisive victory. He had felt so ready, so confident, and believed that his team had prepared so diligently.

Yet, still they had been defeated so soundly. How could that be? LTC Joe Milner, the task force commander, had given Team Badger the task to defend the center of the task force main battle area (MBA) in an area defense to destroy the attacking enemy motorized rifle brigade. Specifically, CPT Morris and Team Badger were to defend against the enemy’s main effort motorized rifle battalion in Battle Position (BP) Badger, along the enemy’s most likely avenue of approach.

That motorized rifle battalion plowed through Team Badger as if it were not even there."

Re: Making Postgres slower

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strategy was actually used during World War II, to ensure pilots could come home safely. Weather forecasting not being what it is today, meteorologists determined what conditions would result in the _most_ lives being lost, then together with mission commanders "designed" missions to simply not meet those conditions. Source: https://medium.com/butwhatfor/suppose-i-wanted-to-kill-a-lot...

The missile knows where it is because it knows where it is not… https://youtu.be/bZe5J8SVCYQ?si=QrIlpJ6BuJADd_zF

Obviously this is a total aside, but can anyone explain what’s going on with that? Is it just explaining terrain mapping in an intentionally obtuse way, or is it some kind of parody? It’s really frustrated me because lots of people like to trot it out like a meme in the same way it was here.

Re: Making Postgres slower

#23
I really want to see some operational setups be available as a sort of playground for observability tooling.

A decent sized SaaS-like with usage simulation, and a postgres/rabbit setup that is merely fine. A place to check if your debugging tooling/strategy is upt to snuff.

Re: Making Postgres slower

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missile knows where it is because it knows where it is not… https://youtu.be/bZe5J8SVCYQ?si=QrIlpJ6BuJADd_zF

Obviously this is a total aside, but can anyone explain what’s going on with that? Is it just explaining terrain mapping in an intentionally obtuse way, or is it some kind of parody? It’s really frustrated me because lots of people like to trot it out like a meme in the same way it was here.

It's a joke (meme, copypasta) but it's also accurate.

As I understood: Missile uses gyros and accelerometers to figure out how far it flew already towards the target. This is not 100% accurate.

So it additionally uses terrain mapping to figure out how it looks down there. Compare ground (am I flying above a slope?) to its internal maps and it can figure out where it is and adjust path if off course.

So it figured out the position by knowing that the position is most likely not the position where it's supposed to be.

Re: Making Postgres slower

#25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missile knows where it is because it knows where it is not… https://youtu.be/bZe5J8SVCYQ?si=QrIlpJ6BuJADd_zF

Obviously this is a total aside, but can anyone explain what’s going on with that? Is it just explaining terrain mapping in an intentionally obtuse way, or is it some kind of parody? It’s really frustrated me because lots of people like to trot it out like a meme in the same way it was here.

> Is it just explaining terrain mapping in an intentionally obtuse way

AFAIK, yes, that's what it actually was (or the basic sentiment actually came from). It was some part of training video in the US army/navy (don't know exactly), but the actual story or origin remains a bit unclear. At least my search within the web did not yield any (assumingly) valid source. I think at some point it just got to "it is what it is now" because it is a very, very complicated way to explain this stuff.

Re: Making Postgres slower

#28

The Defence of Duffer's Drift is an early example of this genre. In the first story in the book you learn how to do platoon level tactics badly( and lose most of your men ) In each subsequent story, a few tactical parameters are tweaked and the story is recounted again, with improved results. The same approach is used in newer tactical books like Musicians of Mars 2. The first Team Badger story in Musicians is very s…

See also the films Groundhog Day and (especially) Edge of Tomorrow.

Also, this contemporary homage published recently on a British military blog: https://wavellroom.com/2025/07/25/defence-baltic-bridge-drea...

Re: Making Postgres slower

#29

The Defence of Duffer's Drift is an early example of this genre. In the first story in the book you learn how to do platoon level tactics badly( and lose most of your men ) In each subsequent story, a few tactical parameters are tweaked and the story is recounted again, with improved results. The same approach is used in newer tactical books like Musicians of Mars 2. The first Team Badger story in Musicians is very s…

See also the films Groundhog Day and (especially) Edge of Tomorrow . Also, this contemporary homage published recently on a British military blog: https://wavellroom.com/2025/07/25/defence-baltic-bridge-drea...

Naked from 2017 too. Got only 5.4 on IMDB but i liked it.

Re: Making Postgres slower

#30
I really like the idea of finding what dials can be turned and then doing so and seeing how much headroom you normally have and how far away from things breaking you are.

Plus, those sorts of artificial limitations can be really helpful in finding where your systems bottleneck and what are the main optimizations that you should do (for example, I've seen N+1 problem sneak past because at the time the performance was good enough but once there was enough data it crumbled).

Post reply on HN