Sun, Jun 1, 2025

Weekly Notes and Discoveries | S Anand

MicroVMs like firecracker are like containers but offer higher isolation with slightly higher latency and memory via kvm hypervisors. ChatGPT #chatgpt

I was exploring free alternatives to the $4/mo Hetzner instance I use. Google offers a free e2 micro instance. But it's much smaller than the Hetzner CAX11/CX-22 server I run. 25% of CPU, 25% of RAM (which is the main problem -- 1 GB is often not enough), slower HDD, 5% of outbound traffic. Hetzner remains one of the best value offerings. #cloud #hosting

Planning to use pretty-quick instead of prettier. It's a wrapper that only fixes changed files based on git. #future #github #markdown #prompt-engineering

f2 is an intuitive cross-platform renaming tool. Usage:

f2 -f 'jpeg' -r 'jpg'
f2 -r '{id3.artist}/{id3.album}/${1}_{id3.title}{ext}'

git worktrees can create multiple copies of code. This is useful when using different coding agents run the same task in parallel. Ref #github
- git worktree add -b $newbranch worktree/$path creates a copy of HEAD in $path as a $newbranch
- git push from branch and create a pull request
- git worktree remove worktree/$path to remove worktree
- git worktree prune for garbage collection

Today, I'd go with Node's native test runner for backend JS testing. I used node-tap earlier. For front-end, I'd pick vitest. ChatGPT #chatgpt #github #tts

⭐ DuckLake is a DuckDB extension that makes Parquet files editable with history. And much more. DuckDB #database #markdown

Here's one way controls inflate cost. Tracking expenses, submitting receipts, and justifying usage adds transaction cost. So, rather than a $10 monthly top-up, I'd rather top-up $200 (even if it might go unused), rather than have to ask again. #pricing

LLMs optimize for compression. Humans optimize for adaptive flexibility. Ref arXiv #llm-ops #optimization

Gemini Deep Research accepts files and images. Cross-checking reports, providing private sources, etc. is now realistic. Ref #search

The new Flux1.Kontext model seems very good at image editing. Costs 4-8c per image. Peter Gostev #image-generation

When processing presentations for RAG via OCR: #document-conversion
- How to parse PDF docs for RAG is a useful OpenAI cookbook with a GPT 4o prompt