A Byte of Coding Issue 356

Hello moto,

Anyone have any tips on places to stay for a longer period of time (a couple of months) on Turkey’s southern sea coast (Mediterranean, Aegen, Icarian)? Ideally not super touristy. Let me know if you do!
Anyway, hope you have a nice weekend and here’s the issue.

Unexplanations: query optimization works because sql is declarative

Published: 21 February 2024

Tags: sql

Jamie Brandon explores how "query optimization works because sql is declarative" isn’t actually true and is misleading.

Some highlights:

• compares sql query optimization to compiler optimizations in python and haskell

• haskell is declarative, but its compiler can’t perform similar code optimizations

• defines minimum requirements for program transformations

gemini-cli: Access Gemini models from the command-line

Published: 21 February 2024

Tags: go, ai

Eli Bendersky introduces a CLI tool he built in go for interacting with google’s gemini AI model.

Some highlights:

• walks through using it to find related blog posts using vector embeds

• pretty fast and uses batch functions for larger datasets

• good for prototyping AI pipelines

Pluralistic: How I got scammed (05 Feb 2024)

Published: 5 February 2024

Tags: infosec, story

Not super technical, but an interesting, lighter infosec read perfect for just before the weekend. Cory Doctorow describes how he got scammed out of $8k by a phone call. I was actually with a friend when something similar happened to him and ended up saving him because I thought it was suspicious how much personal info the caller was asking for.

Some highlights:

• phisher pretended to be part of the bank’s fraud team

• generally getting a call from the bank on a weekend is suspicious

• always hang up and call them back via the fraud number on the bank’s website