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Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

lobste.rs

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Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#41

Post by vasco »

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…

This makes little sense but I guess they get little traffic so pretty much any database will work for them.

If traffic grows they will find problems, then limitations, then move to postgres. And if not it's fine. Story old as time.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#43

Post by eterm »

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…

SQLite definitely seems like a poor choice for dealing with many concurrent requests.

Maybe it's improved since I last used it, but to my knowledge SQLite essentially forces all writes to be serialised, at risk of data corruption otherwise.

There are tricks for improving the performance such as WALs, but that is merely a performance boost rather than genuine concurrency with things like row-level locks that you might find in other databases.

I guess if the whole thing is architected with a write-through cache that handles concurrent writes and deals with serialising all the writes, then it can be a single writer streaming changes through to the database, but then you still have a point of serialisation, it just will manifest itself slightly differently.

And SQLite is something that will give you constraints you will always have to consider.

Whereas running mariadb or postgres on the same machine would deliver similar benefits without a risky migration.

If your DB is small enough to run as a SQLite database, then it probably ought to have never been on a different machine in the first place.

There is a very happy medium between SQLite and a database on a different machine, one I am continually surprised to see people ignore.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#44

Post by joemi »

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.…

It's a lot smaller of a community than HN, so it will naturally have a smaller range of opinions merely due to the fact that it has a lot fewer users.

That said, I don't believe it's as much of a hivemind as you've portrayed. I've seen dissenting opinions voiced there which weren't downvoted (or at least not noticeably), while the same opinion in a similar thread here on HN would be downvoted and flagged. So I don't think that getting downvoted enough so that you're invited to delete your account is a common occurrence with productive members.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#46

Post by mh- »

dgellow wrote: post #29
Aurornis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The concern usually only comes when you fall on the "outside" of the prevailing opinion within the group of people voting on comments.

edit: my response isn't about lobste.rs. I don't have an account there.

Re: Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

#48

Post by mh- »

stymaar wrote: post #22
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.

I didn't realize that re-timestamped comments. That's a pretty unexpected behavior, if true. I wouldn't like if that happened to a comment I left - a lot can happen in a week.
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