Cuttings on rmoff's random ramblings

🔥 Hot off the press from my 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆!!

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 14:18:55 +0000

Posted on LinkedIn · 10 Nov 2026

🔥 Hot off the press from my 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆!! ⚙️⚙️ 💡 #Inspired by Kafka, 𝗞𝗮𝗳𝘂𝗰𝗸 is a 𝙗𝙧𝙤𝙠𝙚𝙧 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙄 𝙖𝙜𝙚.

⚡ As you’d expect with any modern Kafka, it’s diskless. In fact, it’s 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 diskless. 📊 In benchmarks (which I’ve shared too, you can check the numbers) it’s 𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥 𝟮𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 than Kafka! 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴, 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵.

🚀 #Proud and #Humbled to announce that Kafuck is now 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲. ⭐ Try it out, 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼, and let me know what you think

🔗 https://github.com/rmoff/kafuck/

#kafka #opensource #diskless #blazinglyfast #firstprinciples #buildinpublic #ai #hashtag #makenomistakes

Every slide deck and blog post everywhere this month, brought to you by Claude

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 15:37:39 +0000

Posted on Bluesky · 27 Oct 2026

Every slide deck and blog post everywhere this month, brought to you by Claude

Announcing DuckDB 2.0.0 LTS “Cinnamon Teal”

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 16:27:07 +0000

26 Oct 2026

DuckDB 2.0.0 LTS “Cinnamon Teal” released. Includes “agent mode”, DuckDB as a server (quack protocol), triggers, and more

Announcing DuckDB 2.0.0 LTS “Cinnamon Teal”

The DuckDB team · duckdb.org

Linus Torvalds on AI use in coding

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 16:05:18 +0000

26 Oct 2026

Linus Torvalds with some wise words, in his own inimitable style :D

Linus Torvalds on AI use in coding

lore.kernel.org

I don’t understand this whole idiotic concept of “don’t use AI for X”.

Here’s a new rule just for you: don’t use compilers for any of your kernel submissions.

Because if you can’t show that you really understand what the machine is actually doing by writing your code in assembler, then I don’t want to see your code contribution. You clearly aren’t competent if you can’t write it that way.

Practitioner Voice

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:27:06 +0000

21 Oct 2026

Practitioner Voice

Jim Highsmith · martinfowler.com

Academic writing hides behind rigor. Thought leadership hides behind polish. Now a third option has arrived — LLM Voice — that doesn’t require hiding at all, because there’s no one there.

Practitioner authority comes from having been in the situation, not as a researcher studying it, but as a person responsible for the outcome.

Pluralistic: Itch scratching

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:27:04 +0000

20 Oct 2026

Pluralistic: Itch scratching

Cory Doctorow · pluralistic.net

I think that so much of the outrage about slop code – floods of garbagey pull requests and bug reports – is the result of the collapse of this dynamic. Slop’s not merely annoying or time-wasting: it’s a betrayal of the love and care that goes into writing and maintaining code for others.

The Five Camps of Data Modeling (and Which One You’re Stuck In)

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:27:04 +0000

19 Oct 2026

The Five Camps of Data Modeling (and Which One You’re Stuck In)

Joe Reis · practicaldatamodeling.substack.com

Practitioners rarely look beyond their niche. Data engineers who’ve never designed a normalized table. App devs who’ve never heard of slowly changing dimensions. ML engineers who’ve never modeled a core business domain. Ontologists who’ve never shipped a production pipeline.

From Data Contracts to Quality Checks

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:27:04 +0000

16 Oct 2026

From Data Contracts to Quality Checks

Chris Gambill · gambilldataengineering.substack.com

A data contract only earns its keep when its computable requirements become enforceable checks.

Scattering assertions throughout notebooks does not solve that problem. Neither does documenting requirements in a wiki that has no connection to runtime behavior.

Agents: The new, New Kingmakers

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:27:04 +0000

13 Oct 2026

Agents: The new, New Kingmakers

Stephen O'Grady · redmonk.com

Successful Developer Relations campaigns were about persuading and negotiating with large developer populations. Agent relations, however, will require influencing a small number of models, one that can likely be counted on two hands.

What LLMs are Doing to Conference Programs, and How to Use Them Effectively if You're Going to Do It Anyway

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:27:16 +0000

08 Jul 2026

“The LLM grinds everything into the same inherently untrustable confidently-expressed blandness”

What LLMs are Doing to Conference Programs, and How to Use Them Effectively if You're Going to Do It Anyway

Dian Fay · di.nmfay.com

How Anthropic enables self-service data analytics with Claude

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:27:04 +0000

18 Jun 2026

Guess what? Even the cool kids know that sometimes you don’t reinvent the wheel, you just model your data properly :)

> the definition of active user depends on which dimensions you anchor to.

How Anthropic enables self-service data analytics with Claude

Josh Cherry · claude.com

Medallion Architecture Isn't As New As You Think

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:27:05 +0000

03 Apr 2026

Chris Gambill nails it in this discussion of why holding data at multiple levels of refinement makes a ton of sense, and is not just “duplication”

Medallion Architecture Isn't As New As You Think

Chris Gambill · gambilldataengineering.substack.com

How I built a new composite qualitative metric - The Lovable Score

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:02:44 +0000

25 Mar 2026

🪝 I love a good hook at the beginning of a blog post, and Elena Verna nails this one

How I built a new composite qualitative metric - The Lovable Score

Elena Verna · elenaverna.com

I'm Not Gonna Waste Time Debunking Crap on LinkedIn.

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:04:32 +0000

24 Mar 2026

This rant from Brent Ozar is my kind of rant. Love it. Is it ironic posting it on LI? Don’t care. People should read it.

I'm Not Gonna Waste Time Debunking Crap on LinkedIn.

Brent Ozar · brentozar.com

AI will fuck you up if you’re not on board

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:47:38 +0000

09 Mar 2026

last week I made r/dataengineering cross, this week it’s the AI-sceptics on lobst.rs :D

AI will fuck you up if you’re not on board

lobste.rs

Embrace the uncertainty

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:01:08 +0000

05 Mar 2026

Brittany Ellich absolutely nails it in this excellent article: “But here’s the thing: no one actually knows what the future is going to be.”

Embrace the uncertainty

brittanyellich.com

Jack of all trades: query federation in modern OLAP databases

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:27:05 +0000

05 Mar 2026

Excellent blog post from Nicoleta Lazar comparing query federation between Trino and StarRocks with sources including Iceberg

Jack of all trades: query federation in modern OLAP databases

Nicoleta Lazar · medium.com

Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) on X

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 09:46:21 +0000

27 Feb 2026

Think I just realised why some software devs are still so voraciously stubborn in their anti-AI stance.

Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) on X

twitter.com

The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:27:05 +0000

11 Feb 2026

How was December 2013 both only yesterday and over twelve years ago?!

Either way, some articles’ core messages hold true over time—and this is one of those articles.

The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction

linkedin.com

Cynthia Dunlop (@c_a_dunlop) on X

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:27:30 +0000

11 Feb 2026

Rather chuffed to get featured on @c_a_dunlop’s blog (alongside many names who I’ve fanboi’d for years, giving me serious imposter syndrome 🙃)

Cynthia Dunlop (@c_a_dunlop) on X

twitter.com

Can You Teach Claude to be ‘Good’?

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:27:05 +0000

29 Jan 2026

I enjoyed this Hard Fork interview; very accessible for a layperson like me :)

> Amanda Askell, Anthropic’s in-house philosopher in charge of shaping Claude’s personality, discusses the company’s newly released “Claude Constitution”

Can You Teach Claude to be ‘Good’?

youtu.be

List of Kafka TUIs

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:52:16 +0000

20 Jan 2026

I put together a quick list of TUIs for #ApacheKafka. Any others to add to this list? Which ones are people using?

List of Kafka TUIs

old.reddit.com

Streaming Microservices: Contracts & Compatibility

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:15:33 +0000

15 Jan 2026

What one conference talk do you keep coming back to, again and again, over the years?

I’ll start: @Gwen (Chen) Shapira’s “Streaming Microservices: Contracts & Compatibility” talk from QCon 2017:

(Related to this, a tweet from Gwen a year later but it still makes me chuckle: “Don’t make me go out there and unfuck your data pipelines for you.” https://x.com/gwenshap/status/967118574014799872)

Streaming Microservices: Contracts & Compatibility

Gwen Shapira · infoq.com

Lessons Learned from Building LinkedIn’s First Agent: Hiring Assistant

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 11:17:18 +0000

09 Jan 2026

OK, this is exactly what I was looking for: “Lessons Learned from Building LinkedIn’s First Agent: Hiring Assistant”.

Anyone got more good examples like this? https://twitter.com/rmoff/status/1999426776037044420

Lessons Learned from Building LinkedIn’s First Agent: Hiring Assistant

Karthik Ramgopal · infoq.com

Build Your Own Database

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:27:13 +0000

14 Nov 2025

A step-by-step guide to building a key-value database from scratch: - love the explainer/interactive animation in this

Build Your Own Database

Nanda Syahrasyad · nan.fyi

ChatGPT Ain’t Got $%@& On Me!

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 16:01:03 +0000

12 Nov 2025

One for my DBA friends! A very good talk from @andypavlo.bsky.social, looking at how LLMs can actually be used to help improve performance. It’s measured and reasonable, with plenty of caveats and real-world considerations from someone who really gets RDBMS.

ChatGPT Ain’t Got $%@& On Me!

p99conf.io

The Silent Crowd

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 11:46:02 +0000

06 Nov 2025

Good post from Sam Harris about public speaking, including some good lessons for conference speakers specifically

The Silent Crowd

Sam Harris · samharris.substack.com

Why I’m not a fan of zero-copy Apache Kafka-Apache Iceberg

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 07:13:05 +0000

24 Oct 2025

One of the things I love about @vanlightly.bsky.social’s posts is that he is both opinionated and highly informed and articulate in his argument. This post is a great example: Why I’m not a fan of zero-copy Apache Kafka-Apache Iceberg