Weekly deep-dives into database internals — storage, ACID, indexes, distributed systems. One production concept per issue working code in the vault. For engin
Joined February 2025
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Jun 12
TLS protects data in transit — it does not verify the server is behaving correctly, and it does not protect data at rest, in logs, or in your database.
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Jun 11
Verify that HTTP/2 is enabled on both the inbound edge (client → load balancer) and the upstream path (load balancer → backend) — half-upgraded paths are the most common HTTP/2 deployment mistake. #systemdesign #networking #http
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Jun 10
The HTTP request lifecycle has seven distinct phases — and your application only controls two of them.
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Jun 10
SQL and relational algebra — the formal foundation behind every query you've ever written
Link:bytesbtrees.substack.com/pub…
A fintech query returned zero rows for two days. No error. No warning.
One NULL inside a NOT IN turned every comparison into UNKNOWN — perfectly correct SQL.
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Jun 9
Twitter's timeline architecture has a decision point
that 80% of candidates miss.
It's not which database to use.
It's what happens when a user has 50 million followers.
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Jun 9
Rule: write-fanout is the default.
Switch to hybrid only when celebrity accounts
make write amplification measurable in your metrics.
The architecture follows the data. Not the other way around.
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Jun 9
Full walkthrough — data model, fan-out architecture,
celebrity handling, L5 vs L6 breakdown:
systemdr.systemdrd.com/publi…
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