Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite • Hacker News Board

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#21

Post by dewey » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

Kuyawa wrote: post #9

No intention to antagonize but... why not postgre? Even my side projects run on postgresql with no overhead at all

It's also explained in the post shared:

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I've heard "why not PostgreSQL?" a few times this week. It was even our original plan in #539! Well, it was a pragmatic choice in two different ways:

The person who volunteered to do the work used SQLite.

I don't want to use solutions that are bigger and more complex than our likely needs. Postgresql is my default for projects, but it does have the added complexity of being a separate service to run, tune, and maintain.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#22

Post by stymaar » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

cromka wrote: post #12

Ironically, this post resurfaced on HN with my comment here shown as if made 15 minutes ago, which I in reality did last week?

Second chance pool, most likely.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#23

Post by edoceo » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

evanelias wrote: post #16

Some of the cited reasons for moving off MariaDB [1] seem misguided, in my opinion. Especially the part about "K1 are very enterprise-focused, so the database is likely to focus its work on features that are not relevant to us. There's increased risk they drop the free/open source version we use" K1 acquired the commercial entity behind MariaDB Enterprise, but that's separate from the non-profit MariaDB Foundation. A…

And even if it did go closed-souce, your existing install can run for ages because the vendor cannot force upgrade. One of my favorite features of FOSS.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#24

Post by kenforthewin » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:42 PM UTC

The site is performing poorly for me. For example, the login page took 9 seconds to load, same with the home page.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#25

Post by Aurornis » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

tetris11 wrote: post #2

Oh wow. Off-topic but quite refreshing to see a site not absolutely plastered in AI posts

Lobste.rs is very anti-AI. They force any LLM topic to be tagged with “vibecoding” even when the majority of LLM posts are not about vibecoding.

AI posts are usually the most commented on. Linus Torvalds’ comments saying that LLMs are actually useful is still on the front page, tagged as vibecoding, and has a lot of comments from people mostly disagreeing with him.

Lobste.rs is more of a monoculture than Hacker News. If you get downvoted enough they stick a banner on the top of the page inviting you to delete your account. It has a nasty side effect of driving away good contributors who don’t align perfectly with the hive mind. It’s a site where you learn to keep your mouth shut if your input doesn’t agree with what the core users want to hear.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#26

Post by xgbi » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #14

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Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#27

Post by srcreigh » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

homebrewer wrote: post #6

It's been fairly unstable recently, pages sometimes render for several seconds which I've never seen under MariaDB. Used to be instantaneous, always. Sometimes (maybe 5% or less) the request won't render at all, and you get a browser error page. Today they ran into this bug, lost a bunch of voting data, and went into read-only mode for several hours: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/57128 I wonder how much of this…

Pages (especially threads while logged in) taking seconds to load definitely happened to me pre SQLite migration.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#28

Post by xgbi » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #13

ethagnawl wrote: post #7

[flagged]

What's lobster.rs, some kind of Temu HN? Or is it the real deal?

Way more technical, way smaller. HN is a lot more wide in terms of audience and subjects, Lobsters is mainly programming.

I love it.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#29

Post by dgellow » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #25

tetris11 wrote: post #2

Oh wow. Off-topic but quite refreshing to see a site not absolutely plastered in AI posts

Lobste.rs is very anti-AI. They force any LLM topic to be tagged with “vibecoding” even when the majority of LLM posts are not about vibecoding. AI posts are usually the most commented on. Linus Torvalds’ comments saying that LLMs are actually useful is still on the front page, tagged as vibecoding, and has a lot of comments from people mostly disagreeing with him. Lobste.rs is more of a monoculture than Hacker News.…

I honestly don’t find any of this concerning

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#30

Post by dgellow » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:50 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #10

tetris11 wrote: post #2

Oh wow. Off-topic but quite refreshing to see a site not absolutely plastered in AI posts

It's a wonderful place. It feels like HN, but with the Silicon Valley attitude dialed way way way down, and with a much narrower scope (politics, economics and entrepreneurship are all off-topic, for example).

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