Many ask themselves, «Why would I use a semantic layer? How to build one?». But a better question is: How many times have you implemented the same revenue calculation differently across your company's dashboards, reports, and apps? This is why semantic layers exist.

Why Semantic Layers Matter — and How to Build One with DuckDB - MotherDuck Blog

Learn what a semantic layer is, why it matters, and how to build a simple one with DuckDB and Ibis using just YAML and Python | Reading time: 21 min read

motherduck.com

Prompt engineering is knowing the correct answer and trying to get the chatbot to produce it.

I had never seen anyone use PHP for build scripts.. There is always a first: Pluto language github.com/PlutoLang/Pl... (a Lua++ language, which I discovered on agents.md)

Pluto/scripts/compile.php at main · PlutoLang/Pluto

A superset of Lua 5.4 with a focus on general-purpose programming. - PlutoLang/Pluto

github.com

mnemonic to remember Dostoevsky's spelling: he has a toe.

A curious thing is happening with my @zed.dev usage.. I am finding the LLM autocompletion extremely annoying. This is leading to me opening up folders using Sublime Text instead.

That's the kind eclectic early learning material you see in the wild

learning about dokuploy - dokploy.com

Dokploy - Effortless Deployment Solutions

Simplify your DevOps with Dokploy. Deploy applications and manage databases efficiently on any VPS.

dokploy.com

Ozzy Osbourne died today. He was a big part of my college years music. I found out because Kid#1 messaged to tell me. Even she knew :|

Guy* that uses Claude just for aesthetic reasons. typography and design so much better than "we just slapped on bootstrap" (openai, gemini .. i'm looking at you) *Not me. I should go back just for this reason. Reminded after seeing this: claude.ai/share/1217b4...

'@zed.dev is unusable because it screws up @djangoproject.com templates. Back to SublimeHQ, which surprised me today with a "LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED". you got me.

I'll be surprised if this doesn't exist already: Daily summary of all substack/blog/subscriptions generated locally using a model running on your machine via say ollama etc. ideally this also should capture the feedback in terms of "i liked "XYZ's post", and use that to float up articles..

Two things from the QT'd post by @mitsuhiko.at 1. Wow! there is a Python documentary coming: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqBq... 2. "Consider this: I can name the person who brought me into Python.". So can I! it was @roshanrevankar.com :D

Armin Ronacher@mitsuhiko.at · last yr.

It is time for us to invite vibe-coders into our programming communities. lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/7/20/th...

I think this is a nice summary of vibecoding: "The future of software development might just be jazz. Everyone improvising. Nobody following the sheet music." A lot of new programmers may not even know that there is such a thing as sheet music worksonmymachine.substack.com/p/nobody-kno...

Nobody Knows How To Build With AI Yet

The future of software development might just be jazz. Everyone improvising. Nobody following the sheet music.

worksonmymachine.substack.com

I won't be attending @pyohio.org this year, and I have asked them to cancel my registration.

I was trying to use @thenile.dev (free plan) yesterday and felt the interactions on the console as well as db operations (through Django admin on local host as it happens), were both noticeably slow.

Is there a service that combines meeting transcription and screen capture (of slides Primarily) and prepares a summary document, action items and supporting visuals? It is a useful product. The first half is done by services like fireflies.

My first attempt at using AWS's Kiro was whelming. The requirements it wrote so "Architecture Astronaut-y" that I had to consciously stop my eyeballs from rolling away.

Found out about Huell Howser's California's Gold, a show about California www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sRg...

California's Gold S19E2 Places I've Wanted to Go

YouTube video by CA's Gold Fan

youtube.com

"reformulating what you have read in your words in order to describe leads to training yourself to observe the frames" -- this is the primary motivation to take notes in the Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten method. luhmann.surge.sh/learning-how...

The @tangled.sh Git hosting really does look like a viable alternative to central Git forges, even in its early alpha stage. I'm having a lot of fun playing with it; reminds me of the early Keybase from way back in the day! anil.recoil.org/notes/disent...

Socially self-hosting source code with Tangled on Bluesky

anil.recoil.org

After a surprise viral hit with my "write the tutorial you wished you'd found" post on HN, I felt it was worth doing a followup on why I think it's still worth blogging even if AIs slurp everything up and no-one reads it directly. HN link as an experiment: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4316...

Very good thought experiment. My hunch is that, If I know, or learning, how recommender systems work, writing the code in SQL should be an assist from LLM coding helpers.

Are you frustrated by how GitHub renders Jupyter notebooks? I have public service that renders GitHub notebooks with Quarto nbsanity.com It now works with gists!

From the AWS S3 Tables announcement [1], I learnt there are now Three types of buckets - General purpose, **directory buckets** (new to me), and Table buckets (newest). aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ne...

New Amazon S3 Tables: Storage optimized for analytics workloads | Amazon Web Services

Amazon S3 Tables optimize tabular data storage (like transactions and sensor readings) in Apache Iceberg, enabling high-performance, low-cost queries using Athena, EMR, and Spark.

aws.amazon.com

Dependency management fatigue, or why I forever ditched React for Go+HTMX+Templ blog.erodriguez.de/dependency-m...

Bluesky's growth is helped by making it easy to integrate with other #atproto apps. This of course is by design. eg: whtwnd.com/btbytes.com/...

Hello, World! | Pradeep Gowda

This is my first post on whtwnd.com using my bsky.app DID - @btbytes.com. I learnt how to set app passwords on bsky.app; created one just for WhiteWind, and then wrote this post.

whtwnd.com

I'm glad bluesky doesn't have a "for you" page. This allows me to be really selective about who I follow on here, and I'm never gonna follow a "list" here.

why does bluesky keep logging me out? i have to log back in multiple times a day.

For presentations in Typst, check out Touying, Polylux, or Typslides. There are also some nice templates on Typst Universe!

Stephen Judkins@stephenjudkins.bsky.social · 2y ago

Used typst in anger to make a presentation for work and...it's pretty dang good. I've used LaTeX in the past but it's also a slog to get up to speed again. This was very quick and easy, and the results look solid and professional

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #11,827!