The hottest Scalability Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

Designing Instagram's Video Uploads: Optimizing for Low Latency and scalability

Engineering At Scale • 255 implied HN points • 20 Jan 25
🕹 Technology System Design Video Processing Software Architecture Scalability
  1. Instagram's video upload system needs to handle millions of uploads daily while keeping the process fast and efficient. It converts videos into different formats for users with varying internet speeds.
  2. The system can be designed in approaches, starting from simple methods to more complex asynchronous solutions. Improving reliability and speed is key to making the service work better.
  3. Using segmented video uploads allows faster processing. By uploading smaller parts of the video, the service can work on them at the same time, reducing wait times for users.

Queues offer more than orderly processing

System Design Classroom • 679 implied HN points • 02 Jul 24
🕹 Technology System Design Architecture Microservices Distributed Systems Scalability
  1. Queues help different parts of a system work independently. This means you can change one part without affecting the others, making updates easier.
  2. They improve a system's ability to handle more users at once. You can add more servers to take in requests without needing to instantly boost how fast they are processed.
  3. Queues also keep things running smoothly during busy times. They act like a waiting area, holding tasks so no work gets lost even if things get too hectic.

Why Sharding?

Dan Hughes • 239 implied HN points • 24 Jun 24
🔮 Crypto Blockchain Scalability Technology Decentralization Innovation
  1. Sharding is a great solution for scaling blockchain networks. It allows the system to handle more transactions by dividing tasks into smaller pieces, making processing faster and more efficient.
  2. Relying solely on improving hardware to scale blockchain systems is not enough. It can lead to problems with latency and conflicts that slow down the network as demand increases.
  3. Atomic commitment in sharding ensures that transactions across different parts of the network can be completed all at once or not at all. This helps keep the system clean and prevents messy issues when something goes wrong.

Why Rollups Are Not Shards: Deconstructing the Logical Fallacies

Dan Hughes • 139 implied HN points • 03 Jul 24
🔮 Crypto Blockchain Scalability Consensus Decentralization Smart Contracts
  1. Rollups and sharding are not the same. Rollups are like mini blockchains that still rely on Ethereum, while sharding would integrate more seamlessly and effectively.
  2. The rollup approach adds more complexity to the Ethereum system, causing challenges for developers in terms of security and performance.
  3. A single, unified execution environment would be more beneficial for scaling, rather than having multiple rollups with different rules and complexities.

GroupBy #40: Data Infrastructure at Airbnb

VuTrinh. • 179 implied HN points • 18 Jun 24
🕹 Technology Data Engineering Software Development Infrastructure Open Source Scalability
  1. Airbnb focuses on using open-source tools and contributing back to the community. This helps them build a strong and collaborative data infrastructure.
  2. Their data infrastructure prioritizes scalability and uses specific clusters for different types of jobs. This approach ensures that critical tasks run efficiently without overwhelming the system.
  3. Airbnb has improved their data processing performance significantly, reducing costs while increasing speed. This was achieved through careful planning and migration of their Hadoop clusters.
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OpenAI is too cheap to beat (redux)

The AI Frontier • 59 implied HN points • 18 Jul 24
🕹 Technology AI Infrastructure Data Economics Scalability
  1. Data and infrastructure are really important for companies like OpenAI. They collect a lot of data, which helps them improve their models faster than others.
  2. OpenAI is cheaper for fine-tuning models compared to using your own infrastructure. This means most companies will find it more cost-effective to use OpenAI's services instead of trying to run their own setups.
  3. Even though open-source models have potential, big companies will likely stay ahead due to their ability to serve models quickly and cheaply. Switching to a different system is hard and expensive, making it tough for smaller players.

Edge 462: What is Fast-LLM. The New Popular Framework for Pretraining your Own LLMs

TheSequence • 126 implied HN points • 02 Jan 25
🕹 Technology AI Models Open Source Scalability Research Innovation
  1. Fast-LLM is a new open-source framework that helps companies train their own AI models more easily. It makes AI model training faster, cheaper, and more scalable.
  2. Traditionally, only big AI labs could pretrain models because it requires lots of resources. Fast-LLM aims to change that by making these tools available for more organizations.
  3. With trends like small language models and sovereign AI, many companies are looking to build their own models. Fast-LLM supports this shift by simplifying the pretraining process.

Proto-Danksharding

DeFi Education • 599 implied HN points • 26 Aug 23
🔮 Crypto Blockchain DeFi Ethereum Transactions Scalability
  1. Proto-Danksharding is a new feature for Ethereum that helps lower transaction costs and provides temporary data storage. This makes it cheaper and faster for Layer 2 solutions to function.
  2. High transaction costs are a major hurdle for DeFi, limiting its growth. By making transactions cheaper, it can attract more users and enable smoother operations.
  3. The collaboration between Optimism and Base aims to share transaction revenues, which could boost their performance and value in the future, benefiting both projects.

📽 Webinar: How Convirza Scaled SLMs for Real-Time Call Analytics – Without Breaking the Bank

TheSequence • 126 implied HN points • 15 Nov 24
🕹 Technology AI Analytics Webinars Infrastructure Scalability
  1. Convirza found a way to analyze call data quickly and affordably. They combined many tools into one setup, making everything run smoother.
  2. Their response time for customers is now under two seconds, even when many people are using the service. This helps workers get the info they need fast.
  3. By switching to a new system, they reduced costs a lot. They no longer need expensive machines for each task, which keeps their expenses low while still providing accurate results.

Enhancing DeFi: Using Concordium's feature-rich blockchain

Concordium Monthly Updates • 137 implied HN points • 24 May 23
🔮 Crypto Blockchain DeFi Scalability Security Transaction Costs
  1. DeFi has the potential to revolutionize traditional finance by creating a more open and accessible financial ecosystem.
  2. To address security concerns, Concordium offers privacy-enhancing features to protect user identities.
  3. Concordium tackles scalability issues by implementing a unique architecture that ensures high throughput and efficiency.

3 quick tips on how to build more scalable systems [System Design Sundays]

Technology Made Simple • 119 implied HN points • 17 Apr 23
🕹 Technology System Design Scalability Engineering Software Architecture
  1. Location matters: Place software close to clients for faster response times using CDNs, edge computing, or geo-replication.
  2. Cache wisely: Optimize speed by using in-memory caching, database caching, or web caching to avoid repeated actions.
  3. Async is key: Improve efficiency with asynchronous processing through message queues, event-driven architectures, or microservices.

The Future of ESG Reporting in Developing Economies: Blockchain-Powered Accountability

Concordium Monthly Updates • 117 implied HN points • 06 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Blockchain Data Privacy Scalability
  1. ESG reporting in developing economies faces challenges like lack of awareness, resources, and regulatory frameworks.
  2. Concordium's blockchain technology offers transparency, accountability, and efficiency for ESG reporting.
  3. Concordium's use of sharding, ZKP, inbuilt identity layer, and layer 1 structure enhances ESG reporting in developing economies.

Discomforts of Great Design Management

Product Composition • 117 implied HN points • 03 Mar 23
🪑 Design Management Trust Responsibility Scalability Authenticity
  1. Your work in design management is naturally unquantifiable, leading to anxiety and dissatisfaction in many managers.
  2. As a design manager, prioritize building trust with your team, even in challenging situations.
  3. Design managers need to be responsible for the output, not just facilitate, and balance scalable with unscalable practices.

A deep dive on Bitcoin's flaws and how to fix them

Senatus’s Newsletter • 78 implied HN points • 21 Jul 23
🔮 Crypto Security Decentralization Affordability Speed Scalability
  1. A perfect cryptocurrency needs to have uncensorability, certainty of supply, and transferability as a store of value.
  2. Bitcoin faces challenges with decreasing security spend and centralization of hashrate, impacting its resilience to attacks.
  3. Issues in Bitcoin such as affordability, speed, and scalability make it less efficient as a medium of exchange, while alternative cryptocurrencies offer better solutions.

Google's 3 Pillars for Building Resilient and Scalable Systems [Systems Design Sundays]

Technology Made Simple • 79 implied HN points • 12 Dec 22
🕹 Technology Systems Design Automation Scalability Resilience
  1. Scalability is crucial for systems to handle increased loads like more users without losing performance.
  2. Resilient systems can handle various challenges like constant user actions and security threats.
  3. Automation and loose coupling are key pillars for enhancing the scalability and resilience of systems.

Vroom Goes Bust: A Cautionary Tale in the Fast Lane of Online Used-Car Sales

Gad’s Newsletter • 23 implied HN points • 29 Jan 24
💼 Business E-commerce Financial Analysis Scalability Future outlook
  1. Vroom, a once promising player in online used-car sales, faced financial struggles and announced ceasing e-commerce operations.
  2. Comparison between Carvana and Vroom reveals operational challenges like inventory turnover, highlighting Vroom's decline in efficiency.
  3. Online used-car platforms face hurdles like high inventory costs, aging inventory, and challenges in digital transformation.

It's not the DevOps engineers’ fault that the ecosystem is broken

Condensing the Cloud • 19 implied HN points • 18 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Software Development DevOps Ecosystem Version Control Scalability
  1. Blaming DevOps engineers for a broken ecosystem is counterproductive; collaboration is key.
  2. Version control systems may not always control software versions effectively, requiring additional tools in the software supply chain.
  3. Implementing scalable technologies like Kubernetes may not always be the best decision and can lead to inefficiencies.

[Video] A Brief Introduction to Kafka (with analogy)

Weekend Developer • 1 HN point • 06 Jul 24
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Microservices Fault Tolerance Scalability
  1. Kafka ensures system consistency in the microservices world by allowing events to be recorded and processed consistently even during service downtime.
  2. Kafka enables a decoupled, event-driven approach to microservices communication, providing fault tolerance and scalability as the number of services grows.
  3. The benefits of Kafka in microservices include event-driven architecture, fault tolerance, and scalability, all contributing to a reliable and consistent system.

Building CAUSL - Episode 5: Long Term Goals

CAUSL Effect • 19 implied HN points • 17 Mar 23
💼 Business Entrepreneurship Consultancy Branding Goals Scalability
  1. It's important to define who you are and what you want. Knowing your identity helps you stay true to your goals.
  2. Setting long-term goals gives you clarity and direction. This helps in making decisions aligned with where you want to be in the future.
  3. Scaling your impact is key. Aiming to help many people or companies rather than just a few can lead to bigger success.

System Design of Uber's CacheFront - Serving more than 40 million low-latency reads per second

Engineering At Scale • 4 HN points • 03 Mar 24
🕹 Technology System Design Caching Databases Scalability Integrations
  1. Uber developed CacheFront, an integrated caching solution to overcome problems like maintenance overhead, reduced developer productivity, and region failovers caused by using Redis for caching
  2. Docstore's architecture includes a Control plane, Query Engine, and Storage Engine, with relevant responsibilities for each layer like query execution, data persistence, transaction management, and more
  3. CacheFront's design addressed non-functional requirements like consistency guarantees, cache warming & region failovers, fault tolerance, hot partition issues, and performance & cost improvements

A Deep Dive into the Underlying Architecture of Groq's LPU

Confessions of a Code Addict • 4 HN points • 01 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Hardware Compiler Distributed Systems Scalability Reliability
  1. Groq's LPU showcases an innovative design departing from traditional architectures, focusing on deterministic execution for enhanced performance.
  2. The TSP architecture achieves determinism through a simplified hardware design, enabling precise scheduling by compilers for predictable performance.
  3. Groq's approach to creating a distributed multi-TSP system eliminates non-determinism typical in networked systems, with the compiler efficiently managing data movement.

Common iPaaS Challenges

The API Changelog • 4 implied HN points • 28 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Integration Customization Scalability Legacy Systems
  1. Setting up the right iPaaS solution for your business comes with challenges due to integrating systems with different data formats and protocols.
  2. Customization is critical in iPaaS solutions to manipulate data, interpret errors, and adapt to changes in APIs for successful integrations.
  3. Scalability in iPaaS solutions is essential to handle increasing requests, queueing for load balancing, and prioritizing requests to prevent overload and ensure integration continuity.

The Evolution of iPaaS

The API Changelog • 4 implied HN points • 10 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Integration Scalability
  1. iPaaS evolved from manual, inefficient data exchange methods before the rise of EAI and SOA.
  2. Modern iPaaS is cloud-based, user-friendly, and supports real-time integration for businesses.
  3. Challenges in iPaaS evolution include security, data privacy, legacy system integration, and the emerging use of AI.

System Design Concepts: Dive deep into Database Sharding Strategies

Engineering At Scale • 2 HN points • 05 Aug 23
🕹 Technology System Design Scalability Performance Data security
  1. Range-Based Sharding divides data based on ranges like organizing books in bookshelves to make searches easier.
  2. Hash-Based Sharding evenly distributes data across different shards using a hash function, but may require data rebalancing when the number of shards changes.
  3. Consistent Hashing minimizes data movement when adding or removing shards, improving scalability while Geo-Based Sharding stores data close to users for better performance.

System Design Fundamentals: Understanding Scalability

Engineering At Scale • 0 implied HN points • 10 Jun 23
🕹 Technology System Design Scalability Cloud Computing Infrastructure Software Development
  1. Scalability is crucial for software systems to handle increasing demand and data.
  2. Building scalable systems can involve horizontal scaling (adding more machines) or vertical scaling (adding more resources to the same machine).
  3. Cloud technologies, like auto-scaling and managed databases, offer solutions for building scalable systems.

The Nextjs that runs on Vercel is not the same that runs on your infrastructure

Microfrontends, Architecture and Trade-offs • 0 implied HN points • 03 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Frameworks Serverless Containers Scalability Infrastructure
  1. When using modern frameworks like NextJS or Remix, running on serverless infrastructure is common and efficient.
  2. Deploying a NextJS app on Vercel leverages serverless/edge functions, leading to better scaling without nodejs event loop limitations.
  3. For more control and customization, consider options like deploying NextJS in a containerized, auto-scalable environment or creating a custom framework using vite-plugin-ssr.

How to Design Software — Image Uploaders

Joseph Gefroh • 0 implied HN points • 19 Oct 19
🕹 Technology Software Design Image Processing Scalability Security System Architecture
  1. When designing a system for image uploading, it's important to consider technical concerns such as displaying, authorizing, validating, processing, storing, and associating the images.
  2. Tradeoffs to think about include scaling to handle large uploads efficiently, ensuring security to prevent vulnerabilities, managing authorization based on business logic, and maintaining consistency in the image uploading workflow.
  3. A well-designed image uploading system should support creating and using various image variants, offloading processing to separate services, ensuring consistent growth across subsystems, and establishing clear architectural boundaries for scalability.

detecting snake oil

Thái | Hacker | Kỹ sư tin tặc • 0 implied HN points • 31 Mar 08
🕹 Technology Security Networking Cryptography Scalability
  1. Security-clueless companies often focus too much on fancy network devices like firewalls and IDS without considering the human element, a key weak point in security.
  2. Be cautious of companies that claim their products or solutions are 'secure' without specifying what threats they protect against or how they handle unexpected disasters.
  3. Companies that overlook scalability, high-availability, and the importance of cryptography in their security solutions may not fully understand the comprehensive nature of security.

Simplify scaling to big customers with tags

CommandBlogue • 0 implied HN points • 28 May 24
💼 Business Product Development Enterprise Solutions Software Engineering Scalability
  1. As companies grow, they often need to add complex features to their products, which can be overwhelming. A simple way to manage this complexity is by using tags to help organize information better.
  2. Tags allow users to categorize items in multiple ways, making it easier to find what they need. Unlike folders, tags let you label something with several different tags without duplication.
  3. Implementing a tagging feature is essential for products as they scale, providing flexibility and improving user experience. It helps keep things organized even when users have lots of content.