Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 05/08/2026I was excited that GitHub stacked PRs were finally available. Stuck "merging" for 24 hours. It was naive of me to expect GitHub to work properly. 030
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 04/05/2026I wanted to detect if the invoker of my CLI was AI. Here's a Rust crate to do that, detecting environment variables that harnesses set on entry. alasdairb.com/posts/is-ai-...alasdairb.comis-ai-agent for Rust: detect if your CLI is invoked by an agentAI agents are the new users of CLIs. I published a new Rust crate is-ai-agent to let CLIs know when they're being used by AI. 120
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢The New Stack @thenewstack.io · 25/11/2025By solving core issues of access, usability and context, AI is changing the way we interact with data. The future isn't dashboards; it's conversations.bit.lySelf-Service Analytics Failed. Can Agentic AI Finally Succeed?By solving core issues of access, usability and context, AI is changing the way we interact with data. The future isn't dashboards; it's conversations. 031
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 30/09/2025Guess I'm moving my projects off vercel; is @netlify.com the best bet? Haven't used it in a while. Maybe just Cloudflare? 100
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢𝙳𝚘𝚝𝚊𝚗 𝙷𝚘𝚛𝚘𝚟𝚒𝚝𝚜 ✈️ Open Source Summit 🇪🇺 @horovits.bsky.social · 01/09/2025📢 ClickHouse’s New Observability Stack Unveiled 📢 #ClickHouse is doubling down on #observability with the release of #ClickStack Check out my fireside chat with @mikeshi42.bsky.social, Head of observability @clickhouse.com, co-founder @hyperdx.bsky.social : 👉 horovits.medium.com/clickstack-c... 133
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 26/07/2025The UK's new age verification law for "adult content" is an identity fraud timb bomb. The most idiotic, tech-illiterate law passed in some time. Do not verify using your ID. Use a VPN. 020
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 07/06/2025Well that's a month in Tokyo at an end. Currently on the way to the Hook of Holland to catch the ferry home - first time in NL and I'm in awe of these greenhouses! Bonkers 150
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 27/05/2025we're literally just back at Hive now duckdb.org/2025/05/27/d...duckdb.orgDuckLake: SQL as a Lakehouse FormatDuckLake simplifies lakehouses by using a standard SQL database for all metadata, instead of complex file-based systems, while still storing data in open formats like Parquet. This makes it more relia... 230
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 26/05/2025Angie has been discharged from the hospital 🥰🥰 He didn't enjoy his time in recovery, too scared to eat so we'd visit and hand feed him each day, but now he's home devouring food and snoring like a train ♥️ 070
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 20/05/2025We got to visit Angie in recovery today; he's still in his oxygen crate, but he's awake and alert. Wagged his tail and scratched his beans to demand we release him. He's off all heart meds ♥️🥰 030
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 19/05/2025He made it through surgery 🥰♥️ They just finished sewing him up, everything was routine. First hurdle down 🥺🥺 020
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 18/05/2025Pre-op bloods done, he's getting in some last minute window time 030
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 18/05/2025We made it all the way to Tokyo, and it's now 2 hours until this boy has heart surgery ♥️ 030
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Micah Wylde @micahw.com · 10/04/2025Arroyo is joining @cloudflare.social! We're bringing Arroyo to the Developer Platform as a serverless stream processing system, and will also remain open-source and self-hostable. www.arroyo.dev/blog/arroyo-...arroyo.devArroyo is joining CloudflareArroyo has been acquired by Cloudflare to bring serverless SQL stream processing to the Cloudflare Developer Platfrorm, integrated with Queues, Workers, and R2. The Arroyo Engine will remain open-sour... 2163
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 10/04/2025this is gonna be pretty interesting blog.cloudflare.com/r2-data-cata...blog.cloudflare.comR2 Data Catalog: Managed Apache Iceberg tables with zero egress feesR2 Data Catalog is now in public beta: a managed Apache Iceberg data catalog built directly into your R2 bucket. 000
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 01/04/2025CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER LIMIT CHARACTER L 120
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 29/03/2025Gemini 2.5 Pro does seem to perform better at coding for me, but the integration in Windsurf is not nearly as good as Claude 3.7 yet 010
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 20/03/2025When I turned 30 last year, someone told me "30 is when your bones are no longer made of rubber". I am currently incapacitated by neck pain. Were they just warning me, or was it a curse? 140
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 17/03/2025marketers sharting VIBE CODING in every single LinkedIn post hits like my mum texting YOLO 020
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 13/03/2025I tried Gemini in Sheets a year ago, it was shit. I tried it again today, it is still shit. Impressive in its own way. 140
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢DuckDB @duckdb.org · 12/03/2025DuckDB got a local UI. Thanks to our friends at MotherDuck, you can now interact with your DuckDB database through an interactive notebook, running on localhost. Read the announcement blog post at duckdb.org/2025/03/12/d... 1017047
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 14/03/2024I want to talk about my move from Substack to Ghost for a second, and what it's been like working with a nonprofit tech company that actually lives its values. Especially if you're a writer still on Subtack, please read. 1/x First of all, about the org: They are a nonprofit, I just met employee +ghost.orgGhost: Independent technology for modern publishingBeautiful, modern publishing with newsletters and premium subscriptions built-in. Used by Sky, 404Media, Lever News, Tangle, The Browser, and thousands more. 14836961710
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 03/03/2025I have left Tinybird ✌️ My mum doesn't think my bespoke crochet dog jumper business plan is a winner, but she prefers cats anyway, so what does she know... 020
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Philippe Noël @philippemnoel.bsky.social · 27/02/2025ParadeDB is hiring for a few roles around Postgres internals and infrastructure. Introduce me to the best database engineer you know (or reach out if that's you!) Postings: paradedb.notion.site/ParadeDB-Job...paradedb.notion.siteParadeDB Job Board | NotionHi there! 0164
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 24/01/2025Do you think we'll reach a point where humans become so dumb from offloading all thought to AI that AI will start researching "Human Intelligence" to smarten us up because it's tired of us being so thick? 030
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 18/01/2025Hilariously/depressingly accurate. But apparently it's literally impossible to do sales ANY other way. 020
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Philippe Noël @philippemnoel.bsky.social · 17/01/20251/11. ParadeDB is now integrated with Postgres block storage. As far as we know, no one has integrated a search and analytics engine with Postgres storage before. This is a big deal. Here's why we did it, how we did it, and why you should care. 🧵 3297
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Steven Tey @steven.blue · 14/01/2025Introducing Dub Conversions 📈 Track how your clicks convert to signups and sales with our end-to-end attribution engine. Featuring native integrations with Stripe, Shopify, @clerk.com, @supabase.com etc. Learn more about @dub.co Conversions: d.to/conversions 1153
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 14/01/2025I built a little MCP experiment called Claudekeep before the new year. I wasn't doing much with it as it was just for learning, but @anthropic.com sent me a takedown notice for trademark infringement today, so it's gone. Oh well 🤷♂️ Maybe I'll call the next one ChatMCP. 000
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 08/01/2025Bluebird CLI v1.0.11 published this morning with better support for non-SASL Kafka. Thanks to @gschmutz.bsky.social for the PR! 010
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 07/01/2025The only Meta product I still use is WhatsApp...and only because I haven't convinced my partner and parents to use Signal...will 2025 finally be the year? 000
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 07/01/2025Ah, I see the reason for the exodus. I was only keeping Threads for dog pics anyway...I'll just spend more time staring at my own dog instead. 040
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 06/01/2025It's my first day back, easing in by releasing a set of trigger.dev tasks for @tinybird.co A few tinybird customers were already using trigger and told me about it; it's a code-first scheduler with a lovely DX, making this a pleasantly simple intro to the new year www.npmjs.com/package/@sda... 031
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 06/01/2025I mostly avoided social over the holidays, so happy new year! 030
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Forrest Brazeal @forrestbrazeal.bsky.social · 27/12/202412 months ago I had just given notice at Google. I was terrified and had no idea that 2024 would be the most remarkable year of my life. For each like on this post I’ll share something that 2023 me didn’t know. First: running your own business can actually be LESS scary than being an employee. 613710
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Marco Slot @marcoslot.com · 17/12/2024There are many incremental processing solutions, but they seem to never quite do what I need. I decided to build an extension that just keeps running the same command in Postgres with different parameters to do fast, reliable incremental data processing. That's pg_incremental. 1/n 1123
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 15/12/2024Finally won the Battle of the Bundler. The Mockingbird package has destinations with Node-only deps, but needs to support the browser as well. Couldn't figure it out with tsup. Wasted a day on Webpack. Finally got it with Vite after a few hours. And this is a problem that Windsurf failed HARD at 120
Reposted by Al Brown 🐢Elliot Gunn @elliotgunn.com · 10/12/2024Got a question for #dataBS: Anyone ever survived a data migration with a story to tell—the good, the bad, or the "we’ll laugh about this someday"? I’m writing a technical piece and I’d love to hear your wins, cautionary tales, and hard-earned lessons. Please DM if you're keen! 4185
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 10/12/2024Bluebird CLI v1.0.9 github.com/sdairs/blueb... Thanks to @jove95.bsky.social for contributing a Timeplus destination That was supposed to be it...but v1.0.9 is also a total rewrite 😅github.comRelease v1.0.9 · sdairs/bluebirdChangelog Rewritten entire CLI in TypeScript New structure for commands using topics & base command interface New Timeplus destination! Thanks to @jovezhong for contributing the new Timeplus dest... 010
Al Brown 🐢 @alasdairb.com · 10/12/2024I had nice Bluebird CLI news to share and then I realised I broke builds and its a little embarrassing that it took 16 commits, including rewriting the entire CLI to fix it...but I fixed it 010