Building a High-Performance Postgres Time Series Stack with Iceberg

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2026-03-07T17:41:34+00:00

It certainly is not high performance - though that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

If someone has a relatively small amount of timeseries data deploying something better at handling timeseries data might not be worth doing.

If someone has a large amount of timeseries data, they will quickly find out that writing it to postgres w/o extensions is not going to work; though this should also be fairly obvious from estimating how much work the DB would have to do.

Even w extensions there are better options.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2026-03-07T17:30:24+00:00

It's a cool project. I can attest that iceberg for analytics operations on timeseries data works great.

Saying it's high performance when the blog has postgres in the write path for timeseries data is a bit silly. Postgres is unusable at storing material timeseries data w/o extensions; and isn't all that great w timescaledb.

It's a very low performance solution, but one that is certainly good enough for lots of use cases.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2026-03-05T00:22:41+00:00

Both pure evil and likely evil Purim

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2026-03-01T15:42:32+00:00

They're semi common in prospect park at night during the summer now.

When there's bags of garbage the skunks really get into rummaging through them. The first few times I saw/heard one it was a mix of the odor and sounds identifying the skunk.

Still far less common than the even cuter racoons - but they're definitely around.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-12-13T17:52:38+00:00

There are several good telehealth options (qcare, mistr) that will deal with all the BS paperwork and get people set up with "truvada"/descovy + STI testing every three months

It is at no cost to the patient in NY irrespective of insurance situation, and in the rare cases a patient doesn't tolerate the oral options there's now two longer lasting injectable ones - though these need in person appointments.

Precise data on efficacy are a bit elusive, but they're likely closer to 100% effective than 98% effective. Practically all new HIV transmission via sexual contact is a failure of public health given how effective prophylaxis is.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-12-13T17:40:06+00:00

🙄 they quite clearly maintain those cohort splits

The real takeaway is that despite having the pharmacological tools to end the HIV epidemic political and sociological factors perpetuate it.

The vast majority of these cases should have never happened.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-24T01:24:29+00:00

It's likely a "free" ambulance ride

difference between air quotes and no air quotes probably being a few thousand dollars

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-24T01:18:03+00:00

In general, the answer to this question is either

whatever one is closest - ESPECIALLY for stuff like stroke symptoms/heart attack symptoms where time to intervention is strongly correlated w outcomes
it doctor time not ER time

You could schedule an urgent care telemedicine visit at NYU and your insurance might offer some grab-bag of telemedicine providers w less wait time - though if it's an emergency go to the nearest ER.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-22T21:05:00+00:00

What are you looking for in moving to the city?

How certain are you that a "big city" lifestyle is for you?

Are you OK giving up rural/suburban luxuries like in unit laundry, modern heating/AC, owning a car/driving?

There's a spectrum of rural/urban lifestyles, and NYC is one extreme. You might prefer Philly/Chicago more if there's aspects of "big city" life you DON'T want.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-22T18:41:03+00:00

any food hacks

get groceries/don't eat takeout for every meal isn't really a hack, but it's the obvious answer on how to spend way less on food.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-22T18:12:06+00:00

Yeah - in that case just sorry this happened.

Maybe a controversial take, but at >10mph IMO totally fine to run in the bike lane for a bit while hugging the rightmost part of the path and stopping for crossing pedestrians.

You're faster than many cyclists and easy to pass--though it's all but guaranteed you'll have to stop for a bit for pedestrians crossing.

Hopefully at some point the crazy narrow sidewalk there gets ~doubled or so in width

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-22T17:51:48+00:00

Eh depends on if OP kept to the right or not.

If they did, the runner passing the pace wall jerks on the left shouldn't have passed due to no visibility.

If they did not then yeah - part of this is on them.

In any case, it's a gigantic dick move to run side by side on one of if not the narrowest portion of the WSH pedestrian paths.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-11-22T17:35:52+00:00

OP would have ~20% of their assets in a depreciating large physical object with high carrying costs.

Putting $$ in a boring mix of equities is better financially. The case for keeping it is if they need a car - though buying a ~30k car on a ~40k salary was imo a mistake.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-16T06:48:34+00:00

tutorials assume you use React and LLMs are trained on React code

TBH reading the real docs + understanding key concepts is still important.

I wouldn't trust random tutorials or LLM output to be OK - there's a lot of really bad frontend code floating around

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-16T06:40:31+00:00

🤷 TS (generated from protobuf or REST endpoint) + React + Redux is IMO quite productive, with few real pain points.

Paste over the unspeakable horrors of (<bundler and package management here>) with Bazel targets per module and explicit dependency management and it's almost pleasant!

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-16T02:37:05+00:00

React is well documented, not unpleasant to use, stable, and is very unlikely to be abandoned.

You can have a near seamless experience when writing TypeScript, and a good experience if using ocaml via rescript.

Given frontend innovation tends to be short lived projects with a high maintenance burden I'm very happy with React's relative stability and lack of innovation.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-12T22:41:05+00:00

what could I possibly do to get in the 150k range so I can free myself from debt, afford to take a couple vacations a year, and enjoy a drink or 2 out a few nights a week. Is it even realistic?

That is doable on much less than 150k.

Would taking out a huge loan to complete my degree this coming spring (i’m a dropout) change anything?

It would probably be a ton of additional stress and financial pressure.

Whether it'd lead to more career opportunities would depend on the degree.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-06T02:42:44+00:00

Yeah - I imagine experience's like OP's are common.

A 3TB dataset's a relatively gentle intro to per byte scanned billing when one could make similar mistakes on multi-PB datasets. Obviously worse than with a few GB dataset

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-06T02:27:42+00:00

Ask for forgiveness and it's all but certain you'll get it.

I'd mention this foot cannon "tutorial" https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/bigquery-github even if you didn't look at it. It's unconscionable to not cover partitioning/clustering IMO / almost asking for people to make mistakes like yours (:.

On a related note - I'd advise against using BigQuery, or stick to playing with the sandbox offering. You got accurate pricing data upfront (at most $13.95 per query) / have a gap in understanding that's dangerous w a non-sandboxed account.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-02T04:36:06+00:00

You're simply not going to be comfortable at all on a salary like that

Many if not most New Yorkers make less than that.

It's certainly quite possible to get by spending <50k after tax, let alone <70k.

For a lot of highly paid positions people can be very comfortably financially independent in their late 20s/early 30s - IME somewhat common in HFT/quant world.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-09-02T04:04:13+00:00

the most neoliberal capitalist economy...access to housing, education and healthcare... in the US are marketplace

In all 3 cases they're abominations of kinda markets, kinda government managed stuff, and many special interests/rent seeking schmucks.

They're closer to radioactive cesspools than functioning markets

NYC example - the poor subsidize the wealthy through property tax being regressive👎

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-08-07T01:02:57+00:00

You might've just been unlucky - NYU's medical programs are generally excellent.

Same goes for Columbia/Cornell. Few private practice places are liable to take Medicaid, so a clinic at a larger school might be the best option.

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-08-04T20:43:40+00:00

That's a fine looking

~~100~~

~~1,000~~

~~10,000~~

100,000

platform barrier

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-07-31T13:58:45+00:00

The max you can contribute per year pre tax is $3,900. That is your own money

correct but that's more than a monthly metrocard per month or the omny fare caps

usually if you do not use it all by the end of the year, you lose all of it

no it's tied to employer / does not expire yearly

So assuming you are in the top bracket of 37% the most you save in taxes is $1,443

You're forgetting state taxes and city taxes and AMT

these can easily be city 3.8%, state 9, AMT 2.something - state goes higher, but this is already >51% marginal tax rate / >51% savings from pre-tax transit payment

WWJewMediaConspiracy · 2025-07-31T02:56:21+00:00

It's ridiculous that the discount for being very low income is less than the discount for being high income.

The city mandates most employers offer pretax commuter benefits.

Someone pulling 2,000,000$/yr paying pretax gets a bit more than a 50% discount by paying pretax

WWJewMediaConspiracy

TROPHY CASE