Alexander Ulrich
@aulrich.bsky.social
Database systems enthusiast. Building platforms for data-centric applications at Oracle Labs.
Open World for Native Image 🌎 Your Native Image application can now load new classes at runtime, while keeping all benefits of AOT optimizations 🚀 Best of both worlds! To use it: build with @graalvm.org 25.1+ and `-H:+RuntimeClassLoading`.
www.theregister.com/2026/03/12/i... RIP to the man behind the funniest bit of all time: the invention of the null pointer
Quicksort inventor Tony Hoare dies at 92
Obit: Classicist, philosopher, wit, and one of the greatest British computer scientists of all time
theregister.com
Feeling incredibly grateful! 🙏 Together with my amazing @Oracle colleagues, we raised nearly $14,000 to support high-impact biomedical research into ME/CFS, the disease my partner is suffering from, through @weandme.bsky.social . 💪🤩 #OracleGiving #MECFS
GraalVM 25 is here, with lots of updates for native compilation, GraalPy, GraalJS, and WebAssembly. Faster and better than ever!🐰🚀 Download: www.graalvm.org/downloads/ Release notes: www.graalvm.org/release-note...
I realize posting this here is preaching to the choir. But after the Grok White Genocide thing & Ye essentially launching an exclusive Neo Nazi single on the platform... I felt motivated to write about X and how bizarre it is that so many people (news outlets, celebrities, politicians) use it
What Are People Still Doing on X?
Imagine if your favorite neighborhood bar turned into a Nazi hangout
theatlantic.com
Our USING KEY variant of recursive CTEs has landed in DuckDB 1.3 Formerly an off-the-beaten-path researchy idea, now available in a real off-the-shelf DBMS. Hooray! 🎉 duckdb.org/2025/05/23/u...
USING KEY in Recursive CTEs
Recursive CTEs in SQL allow for powerful iterative queries like graph traversals but can be memory-intensive and slow due to repeated row accumulation. DuckDB’s new USING KEY feature addresses this by...
duckdb.org
Cat: “I cannot convey to you just how much I genuinely despise this food.” Me: “Here, have this instead.” Cat: “OMG I LOVE IT.” Me: “It’s exactly the same bowl of food. I just took it away for six seconds then put it back in the same place.” Cat: “I am fire and the wind. Do not attempt to know me.”
China admits its latest aggression around #Taiwan is a rehearsal for a blockade. This latest exercise is described as "stern warning and forceful deterrence" by an Eastern Theater Commander spokesman. A quick examination of the exercise and its purpose. 1/11 🧵
before tiktok, before bluesky, before twitter, before meta, before it all, there were sewers. after all, there will be sewers.
NASA’s updated global temperature spirals including 2024. Up and up and up.
2024 @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social #climate data out today: 📈 2024 - first year more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial; for ERA5 it was 1.6ºC 🌡️ the past 10 years were the 10 warmest years on record 📈 2024 was warmest year for all continental regions, except Antarctica and Australasia 🌍🌡️🧪⚒️🌊
A long thread on the war and the current situation. Although the worst-case scenarios didn’t materialize in 2024, it was the most difficult period since spring 2022. There were positive developments, and bright spots, but the current trajectory is negative. 1/
The currently viral Meta AI profiles are old and are already inactive because they were such a colossal failure and were indistinguishable from AI spam. This 'inevitable' future Zuckerberg is trying to shove down our throats is being completely rejected www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro...
Meta's AI Profiles Are Indistinguishable From Terrible Spam That Took Over Facebook
The Meta AI profiles everyone is mad about are old, were a colossal failure, and many are already dead.
404media.co
I treat Facebook as a glorified address book. In the last year, I've been floored by the amount of AI slop in my timeline that Meta promotes. And now the company is going all-in on supporting AI bots that are making more AI slop. 2025 will be a big year for the enshitification of the internet!
Meta’s Big Bet on Bots
Meta says to expect AI “profiles” on Facebook and Instagram.
nymag.com
As a straight white man, I salute the hubris, shamelessness, and utter contempt for humanity it requires to create a corporate bot "Proud Black queer momma" account which spits out saccharine posts polished with fake children and appropriated AAVE. Bravo! 🫡
Olivier Simard-Casanova@o.simardcasanova.net · 2y agoMeta is testing, or has started to ship, its AI generated profiles, here on Instagram www.instagram.com/himamaliv #SocialWeb
"In 2023 Elsevier began using AI during production without informing the board, resulting in many style and formatting errors, as well as reversing versions of papers that had already been accepted and formatted by the editors." very innovative, very cool
Evolution journal editors resign en masse
Board members expressed concerns over high fees, editorial independence, and use of AI in editorial processes.
arstechnica.com
Buckle up because we're banging into the new year with my annual retrospective of the last year in databases! Highlights include license change blowback, Databricks vs. Snowflake gangwar, @duckdb.org's shotgun weddings, and buying a quarterback to impress your lover: www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/...
Databases in 2024: A Year in Review
Andy rises from the ashes of his dead startup and discusses what happened in 2024 in the database game.
cs.cmu.edu
I was excited to tell my kids that there's a sequel to Encanto, only to scroll down and learn that Google's AI just completely made this up
Elon Musk denounced Wikipedia (again), lying about its budget. Of course he and other post-truth reactionaries hate it. It's a bastion of truth they haven't been able to buy or bully. Wikipedia isn't perfect—what is?—but it's a valuable resource we should, and can, protect. My latest, in Arc Digital
Don't Let the Enemies of Truth Ruin Wikipedia
Elon Musk and other reactionary liars hate the "last good website" because it won't go along with their distortions
arcdigital.media
Also I've come to the conclusion that literally everyone I ever followed (or enjoyed seeing) on the former Twitter has migrated off the service; I'd say about 75% are primarily posting here and 25% are primarily on threads (and most are on both in some way). The replacement is entirely complete.
Our cat, somewhat inconvenienced by a bite wound and as a result having to wear a cone collar, has taken to watching professional StarCraft 2 games. I’m sure he’s a fierce critic of strategy.
Jemand flieht aus Saudi-Arabien nach DE, um dann die deutsche Gesellschaft anzugreifen? Ein langes, ausgeruhtes Interview mit dem Radikalisierungsexperten, der Taleb A. schon vor der Tat kannte — und #Magdeburg in einer Reihe mit #Halle und #Hanau sieht: www.mdr.de/nachrichten/...
Experte: Tatverdächtiger klassisches Beispiel für globalen digitalen Rechtsextremismus | MDR.DE
Der mutmaßliche Täter von Magdeburg gilt als Anhänger des digitalen globalen Rechtsextremismus. Dass gerade Akteure dieses Spektrums die Tat nun instrumentalisieren, ist aus Experten-Sicht nicht nur ü...
mdr.de
The future is uncertain but can we just relish this moment as prisoners reunite with families after decades?