Monday’s Android app deals and freebies: Absolum, Death Worm, Minabo, more

A 3 ms ALTER can stall Postgres: how to migrate a 5-billion-row table with no downtime

An ALTER TABLE that takes 3 ms can still stall every query on the table. In my first demo it took 3 ms. In a second one, on real Postgres, a long transaction held the table, so a similar ALTER waited…

• 3 ms ALTER statement delays all queries on affected table.
• ALTER took 3 seconds after long-running transaction blocked table.
• Migration method minimizes downtime for 5-billion-row table.

42m ago ·dev.to

OnBlink: Communicate with minimal movement

This is a submission for the Presage SmartSpectra SDK Challenge What I Built OnBlink lets someone speak a phrase or open an app using only their eyes and a regular webcam. A blink signal opens a menu.

• OnBlink enables communication via minimal eye movements
• Uses SmartSpectra to detect double blinks, long blinks
• Customizable menu with phrases or app opening

43m ago ·dev.to

The Disk Isn't Yours: Four Ephemeral-Host Myths and a Restart Drill

You deploy a small worker on a free server. It runs fine for a week. Then the host restarts, and the worker wakes up confused. This post is about that morning. Not the deploy. The wake-up.

• Disk is not a database: writes to local files disappear when container is deleted
• Processes may restart unexpectedly on free hosts, requiring supervisor for restarts
• State transitions must be explicit; write results first, mark durable, acknowledge last

44m ago ·dev.to

Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of…

40m ago ·tech.slashdot.org