💾 Building Our Own S3: Cutting $500K in Cloud Costs
A sharp illustration of engineering pragmatism — when tailored infrastructure outsmarts one-size-fits-all cloud services, real savings and performance gains follow.
Nanit engineers developed an in-memory storage layer named N3 to replace Amazon S3 as the primary video storage for their baby-monitoring system, achieving annual savings of about $500,000. The system optimizes short-lived video uploads, reducing per-object costs while keeping S3 as a fallback. Rigorous testing and a production proof validated its performance, improving network throughput, memory efficiency, and TLS overhead.
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🪪 Decentralized Avatars with .well-known/avatar
An elegant step toward self-sovereign identity on the web, showing how small, practical standards can decentralize everyday user data.
A new proposal introduces ‘.well-known/avatar’ — a standardized, decentralized way to host user avatars directly on their domains. It eliminates reliance on centralized services like Gravatar by enabling websites to fetch avatars via a simple, well-known endpoint using WebFinger conventions. The author seeks community input on protocol design, privacy considerations, and implementation simplicity.
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⚙️ Synadia and TigerBeetle Fund the Zig Software Foundation with $512K
A strong endorsement of Zig’s rise in the systems programming world — proving that simplicity and determinism are winning over modern infrastructure engineers.
Synadia and TigerBeetle have pledged $512,000 to the Zig Software Foundation to advance the Zig programming language over the next two years. The investment supports Zig’s mission of delivering simplicity and correctness for building robust, high-performance distributed systems.
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🧩 React vs Backbone in 2025: Have We Really Simplified the Frontend?
A timely reflection on developer fatigue and over-engineering, reminding us that clarity often beats cleverness in UI design.
The article contends that despite years of evolution, frameworks like React haven’t truly simplified frontend development compared to older tools like Backbone. It critiques React’s hidden complexity—state management quirks, dependency arrays, and closure pitfalls—arguing Backbone’s explicit, minimal approach remains refreshingly transparent.
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🔋 California’s Battery Revolution Ends Rolling Blackouts
A compelling glimpse into how large-scale storage is transforming renewable energy from intermittent to dependable — an engineering feat as much as an environmental one.
California has avoided summer Flex Alerts for two consecutive years after expanding battery energy storage capacity by over 3,000% since 2020. These batteries store solar energy for peak demand, strengthening grid reliability and cutting reliance on gas plants. The shift marks a milestone toward the state’s 2045 carbon neutrality target, though safety and infrastructure challenges persist.
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☢️ NRC Reports Multiple Minor Nuclear Incidents, No Public Risk
A reminder that nuclear oversight thrives on transparency — even small incidents are logged and disclosed to maintain public trust.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s October 2025 report lists several minor incidents, including a reactor trip, brief ventilation failure, and contamination events across multiple sites. None posed a public safety risk but were recorded for regulatory transparency.
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🧑💻 The Most Common Code Review Mistakes Engineers Make
A crisp reminder that good code reviews are about collaboration, not control — empathy and clarity build better software than pedantry ever will.
Sean Goedecke highlights frequent errors in code reviews, from nitpicking diffs to over-commenting and enforcing personal style preferences. He emphasizes clear communication, selective blocking reviews, and a trust-based culture to make feedback more constructive and less bureaucratic.
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