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Various projects disappeared from kernel.org hosting overnight
18 days ago
- Several projects hosted on kernel.org vanished overnight, causing concern among users.
- A misconfiguration in the primary mirror led to the deletion of all content under /pub directory.
- Data restoration is in progress, with some projects like iw and usb already returning.
Egypt Is Building a New Nile
17 days ago
- Egypt's New Delta project aims to reclaim 9,200 sq km of desert for agriculture to relieve pressure on the Nile Delta, which sustains 95% of the population but is strained by population growth, urbanization, and water scarcity.
- The project involves complex water management: the Al Hammam canal recycles agricultural wastewater, a second system draws from the Nile, and a large treatment plant processes water for irrigation, using pumping stations and underground pipes to overcome engineering challenges.
- Satellite images show rapid progress with new circular fields, but concerns exist about sustainability, as much irrigation relies on non-renewable groundwater, and critics note the focus on export crops may not address food security or reduce reliance on wheat imports.
- Historical context includes the Aswan High Dam altering flood cycles and sediment flow, and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam introducing uncertainty over Nile water flow, exacerbating Egypt's water challenges.
- Previous desert reclamation efforts like Toshka had limited success, raising questions about large projects' long-term viability. The New Delta's success hinges on sustainable operation amid water scarcity and population growth, potentially shaping Egypt's future.
Nationwide outage for Australia's largest mobile operator Telstra
13 days ago
- Telstra's mobile network experienced a major nationwide outage, potentially affecting millions of customers and causing disruptions to public transport, payment systems, and traffic lights.
- The outage began early Wednesday morning, impacting not only Telstra users but also customers of other providers that use its network, such as Boost and Aldi, with some emergency Triple Zero calls also affected in certain areas.
- In response, Telstra is investigating the issue, while emergency services advise using alternative devices for calls, and public transport services in NSW and Victoria have been suspended or delayed, with no estimated fix time provided.
We Mapped Rural Data Center Development – and Opposition
12 days ago
- Northern Virginia's Data Center Alley, with the most data centers globally, is expanding into rural areas due to AI-driven growth.
- Rural counties host about 6% of operating data centers, with 12% of new projects in these areas, facing challenges like smaller tax bases and limited resources.
- Analyses vary: Pew Research reports over 1,500 new data centers planned, with 67% in rural areas, using a broader definition than the Daily Yonder.
- Power imbalances in negotiations, like in Port Washington, Wisconsin, where a $15 billion data center could double local taxes, highlight rural vulnerabilities.
- Data centers are often built near high-voltage transmission lines (345kV and above), with rural facilities median distance about four miles from such infrastructure.
- Resistance groups, numbering around 129 in rural counties, are growing bipartisan opposition, with polls showing 70% of Americans oppose local AI data centers.
Blockmachine
11 days ago
- Blockmachine provides fast and correct verifiable blockchain infrastructure via RPC access across supported chains.
- Features include competitive pricing from a network of competing suppliers, ensuring low costs, fast and reliable low-latency access, and verified correctness through continuous testing.
- Public performance dashboards display real-time uptime, latency, and error rates, ensuring transparency.
- The service works by connecting apps to standard JSON-RPC endpoints, with automated routing to the best nodes and billing only on successful requests.
- The current live offerings include the core network, customer console, Ethereum RPC, and crypto payment rails, with plans to expand chain coverage and regional reach.
Making 768 servers look like 1
5 days ago
- Database sharding is essential for scaling relational databases beyond a few terabytes of data, as it addresses bottlenecks like write limitations and storage capacity that arise with single-node databases or read-replicas.
- A proxy layer (router) is key in sharding systems like Neki for Postgres and Vitess for MySQL, as it manages query routing, data distribution, and connection pooling, making multiple shards appear as a single database to applications.
- Sharding involves distributing data across many servers (e.g., 768 servers for a petabyte-scale system), using strategies like hashing IDs, and may include load balancers to handle high query volumes while hiding complexity from apps.
Let's Build PlanetScale from Scratch: Infrastructure
4 days ago
- The author is building Homescale, a tool for creating writable database instances and point-in-time branches from immutable snapshots without full database copies.
- Homescale uses a Docker-like model with images, containers, and branches, supporting multiple database engines like Postgres.
- It separates storage from compute, enabling branching in the storage layer using copy-on-write (COW) to share unchanged data across branches.
- Ceph provides the underlying block storage with RBD for immutable snapshots and writable COW clones, integrated via Kubernetes and Rook.
- Homescale leverages Kubernetes as a control plane for managing resources like PVCs and VolumeSnapshots, with plans for local and cloud deployments.
Half a Second – a book about the XZ backdoor
a day ago
- In March 2024, a Microsoft engineer discovered a hidden backdoor in XZ Utils, a widely used Linux compression tool, after noticing a half-second delay in login.
- The backdoor was inserted over two years through manipulation of a burned-out, solo volunteer maintainer, highlighting vulnerabilities in open-source infrastructure.
- The incident reveals a structural imbalance: critical but unglamorous software components often rely on unpaid, overstretched volunteers, while major parts receive corporate funding.
- The book 'Half a Second' is narrative nonfiction for general readers, explaining technical aspects in plain language, and is available in free web, PDF, and EPUB formats.

Hasty Briefsbeta

#infrastructure

Various projects disappeared from kernel.org hosting overnight

Egypt Is Building a New Nile

Nationwide outage for Australia's largest mobile operator Telstra

We Mapped Rural Data Center Development – and Opposition

Blockmachine

Making 768 servers look like 1

Let's Build PlanetScale from Scratch: Infrastructure

Half a Second – a book about the XZ backdoor