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AWS Acquires DuckLabs

ducklabs.com

241–250 of 293 posts

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#242
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Google is much better at not tearing well-working teams apart in reorgs, and letting people go they have acquihired a few quarters earlier. Of the few examples I have I my head, I'd even say that the fate of a product that has been acquired by Google is probably even better than those of Google's internally developed products. e.g. Waze is still alive and kicking 13 years after acquisition under its own brand a…

Google is better but it's an incredibly low bar. Amazon will drive these people to quit within a couple years over filling out MBRs and threats about how the MBR isn't good enough (MBR = monthly business report, pure bullshit theatre that drives the whole company mad 2/4 weeks every month). Google would drive them to quit over a longer timeframe, with no threats or harrassment, just because every time they try to shi…

Why don't they hire MBR specialists and embed them? Leave the development groups alone.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#244
post #8

I'm glad that DuckDB has a foundation in place and hope it is resilient enough to push the DB forward when the time comes. Out of all the big orgs, Amazon is probably the one that has the least regard for keeping technically interesting projects alive, and the certainly will bulldoze it for some dumb reason when the next re-org comes.

I think 'least regard' belongs to Oracle. For some reason I thought DuckDB was one of Gabe's ideas over at DuckDuckGo :-). That said, the acquisition by Amazon is interesting in that it seems to overlap with their existing DB offerings? Which makes me wonder what exactly it is that they are getting out of this.

Potential competitor removed from play

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#246
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, they are very serious about DynamoDB and it is a very good product. Wish they released more information about it, though.

Man I admire AWS marketing team for convincing people DynamoDB is a very good product. 100 items max per Transaction BatchGet 100 items, 16 MB max low write limits on same key Item size 400 KB max etc.

DynamoDB has basically two legitimate use-cases that I'm familiar with:

1. You're selling a system to a customer to use within their own AWS account, that you will have no access to, and it needs a transactional datastore (not just an object bucket) of some kind. The fact that it costs nothing by default (particularly valuable when the customer is trying to deploy a proof-of-concept), scales more-or-less perfectly without anybody touching it, requires zero day-to-day maintenance by you or the customer, and all it will ever ask is that you throw money at it, is very, very much a feature. One example I'm familiar with in the wild is Teleport: https://goteleport.com/docs/reference/deployment/backends/#d...

2. You have a huge OLTP workload that fits Dynamo's KV patterns (e.g. Amazon.com shopping carts, which is what it was originally built for). You don't care how much DynamoDB costs (in either dollars or engineering limitations) because any alternative would melt your face off if you even tried.

Most of the pain that comes from Dynamo is people who try to use it as a primary datastore in place of a relational database just to get the serverless pricing model. It's not worth giving up the flexibility on greenfield systems. It does become worth it to give up the flexibility when your system is mature and you don't have genuine flexibility anymore anyway.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#247
AWS is a great home for DuckLabs. They just want people to use more compute and storage, so they have a degree of technology-neutrality. This is the key to allowing DuckDB to continue to grow in whatever directions are natural, rather than being warped by some kind of walled garden data platform strategy.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to see how they will update their About page. Currently it says “Today, DuckLabs remains independent and fully owned by the original creators. We've deliberately chosen not to take venture capital, so we can focus on sustainable engineering, correctness, and keeping DuckDB open and MIT-licensed for everyone. “ Future will tell if that ends up being true.

>...sustainable engineering, correctness, and keeping DuckDB open and MIT-licensed for everyone Hah. Never have I ever heard a sentence that described Amazon less.

Amazon is actually pretty good about open sourcing core technologies like that. Firecracker is a big one. They also support Valkey and pay some of its maintainers.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#249
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you really need for generational wealth? In my opinion, if you're more than 10 years away from retirement and received a surprise $1 million, you're setup for the rest of your life and your children as well assuming they don't immediately blow it all when you die (that's what a good trust should be for). Assuming historical returns, your money doubles roughly every 7 years, so within the rest of your life…

1 mil is not generational wealth in the US. It is a big chunk of money, no doubt. It’ll buy a reasonable 2-3 bedroom house in the city I live in, with nothing left over. No one’s definition of generational wealth involves not touching the money for two generations…

A house you own outright is already generational wealth

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you really need for generational wealth? In my opinion, if you're more than 10 years away from retirement and received a surprise $1 million, you're setup for the rest of your life and your children as well assuming they don't immediately blow it all when you die (that's what a good trust should be for). Assuming historical returns, your money doubles roughly every 7 years, so within the rest of your life…

> How much do you really need for generational wealth? Common definition is somewhere between 1.5 to 5 million per child.

Says who? Ive never heard this and can't find anyone saying this.
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