Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

Can I nerd snipe y’all with a question?

I’ve seen mentioned a few times obliquely about the toolkit of services that hyperscaler teams use to build high powered distributed systems.

I’m aware of various “building blocks” that are used to build distributed systems in hyperscalers. eg, a distributed lock service, disaggregated write ahead log, and perhaps a few others, but I don’t think anyone has written down a glossary of these? Am I missing one? Or is this just cult knowledge?

(Object storage and serverless compute feel like they would fit here, but they’re too high level for what I’m thinking of. I’m more interested in things that would probably never make it as a product offering because they’re a bit too bare bones but are still invaluable for building systems. Log structured merge trees come to mind as another potential example here.)

Does anyone have anything they could share regarding said glossary of building blocks? I’d love to know more about how various teams view these building blocks and how they compose them effectively to build distributed systems at scale. As well as what they think those components are 🙂

Hallo Fediversum,
ich habe mein iPad in einem Flugzeug nach Singpapur vergessen. Da ich mich auf der Durchreise befand, klappte es nicht mit einer Übergabe oder Weiterleitung nach Bangkok. Also liegt das iPad noch bei Lost&Found am Changi-Airport Singapur. Gibt es ggf. hier jemanden, der 1. aus dem Kölner Raum kommt und aktuell in Singapur ist oder am Flughafen Changi vorbeikommt und das iPad von dort mit nach Deutschland bringen könnte? Bitte boosten, Danke!
#singapur #changi_airport #ipad

The talks from posit::conf are all online now, which means you can watch my keynote on the Psychology of Technologists here. I am very happy this was recorded as it was one of the talks of the year I'm the most proud of.

If you've been following my work for a while you will see many familiar projects but I believe this includes a lot of the WHY behind what I do. ❤️

https://youtu.be/B-bMX_l3nkk?si=YkSp3ttLupbetQ6Y

... this got fixed in Mastodon 4.5! https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/11/mastodon-4.5/

overheard: “they’re on twitter, instagram, X.. i don’t even know what X is, what is X?”

Total Geek customization achievement unlock!

I want URLs from Discord to open in my "professional" Chrome Profile and all others to open in my personal. There is an app called #Velja that acts as my primary browser but all it does is forward URL requests to any browser (or profile). Crazy geeky and very specific but it's absolutely SAVING my ass.

This is what is possible if your OS isn't locked down tighter than a drum.

Was reading a Hacker News discussion today where one person brought up one of the most hilarious, simple and effective mass law enforcement actions ever: Operation Flagship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Flagship

"Operation Flagship was a sting operation jointly organized by the United States Marshals Service and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. that resulted in the arrest of 101 wanted fugitives on December 15, 1985."

"The fugitives voluntarily went to the Washington Convention Center, responding to an invitation sent by the fictitious television company Flagship International Sports Television, (which had the same initials, F.I.S.T., as Fugitive Investigative Strike Team) to claim two free tickets to watch the Washington Redskins American football home game against the Cincinnati Bengals and for a chance to win tickets to Super Bowl XX. A total of 166 marshals and police officers were involved in the operation, with undercover personnel posing as tuxedo-wearing ushers, cheerleaders, emcees, caterers, mascots, and maintenance staff."

They could do this all day long, and probably could create something similar to ensnare a whole bunch of English-speaking cybercriminals. Like tell them all there's a fancy watch convention that is giving away a whole crate of Trezor wallets made of gold.

And it's not just Cursor... rival agentic coding IDE Windsurf announced their own custom RL-trained fast coding model today as well!

Here are notes and a pelican on Windsurf's new SWE-1.5 model https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/29/swe-15/

I will be in Berlin on December 10th giving talks. I'm looking for other places to give talks in Europe around the same time. Please reach out if know of a spot for me to speak, happy to joint sponsor with Letta. Preferences for London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.

The other day we had our first ever chained AI tool success on the #curl factory floor:

- tool A found a possible flaw in code and reported it.

- using the plain English description from tool A, tool B could create a reproducible by itself that verified the finding

The sense of magic is strong in this.

Now us poor humans need to fix it. The AIs are still really lousy at writing patches.

This was a tough but necessary decision - I posted my own notes on this here, from the perspective of a current PSF board member https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/27/psf-withdrawn-proposal/
https://fosstodon.org/@ThePSF/115446659188615376

That makes sense.