Blog Columns
Six thematic columns, each with its own dedicated RSS feed.
Database Guru
75posts
Database news, industry surveys, architecture, and best practices.
Cloud-Exiter
66posts
Cloud economics, repatriation, and building sovereign infrastructure.
Postgres Mage
126posts
PostgreSQL ecosystem, internals, extensions, and production tuning.
AI Agent Explorer
97posts
Practical engineering with coding agents, LLMs, AI4DB, and DB4AI.
Travel Notes
12posts
Trips, hikes, landscapes, and field notes across mountains and seas.
Miscellaneous
40posts
Essays, reflections, and personal writing inside and outside of tech.
After the Attention Wall, What Keeps the AI Boom Alive?
AI coding and micro-dramas have both hit the ceiling of human attention, and personal agents cannot pick up the slack. AI for Science and embodied AI could drive the next wave, but neither will scale …
Apple's Latest: 512 GB of Gold-Plated RAM, a Touchscreen MacBook, and Tired Pricing Games
The 512 GB RAM upgrade alone costs more than a second Mac Studio, while a touchscreen MacBook, a 60 Hz iPad mini, and cracking foldable screens round out a disappointing week. Apple is still local …
AI Software Engineering: Choose Problems You Care About
AI has driven the cost of prototyping software down to nearly zero, leaving conviction, verification, and long-term maintenance as the real bottlenecks. The first rule of choosing what to build is …
MinIO's One-Year Memorial: How to Revive a Dead Open-Source Project
One year after open-source MinIO was archived, how Silo uses AI agents, production user feedback, and strict scope boundaries to patch vulnerabilities, restore the web console, and maintain drop-in …
Kimi's Marketing Backlash: Don't Spend Ad Money to Burn Trust
Kimi's overseas marketing controversy brings an old problem to the surface: paying for ads while pretending they are organic word of mouth. How undisclosed sponsorships poison technical information …
The Personalities of Frontier AI Models
ChatGPT is the cautious chief engineer, Claude the strategist, Gemini the staff writer, and GLM the unbothered grunt. Notes from heavy daily use on how each model behaves, what it over-optimizes for, …
My First EV Road Trip
After 12 years of driving gas cars, I rented a range-extended EV for a road trip to Huangshan. What won me over wasn't fuel savings, but the attention freed up by assisted driving—though beyond the …
Is This Our Last Programmers' Day?
Human computers became the first programmers; today's programmers stand at the same crossroads. As AI takes over coding, an engineer's value shifts to design, taste, delivery, accountability, and …
The Internet Is Getting Shot Full of Holes
From PHP and GitLab to AI toolchains and certificate authorities, half the internet was breached in a single week. As AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and exploitation, active maintenance, clean …
When the Cloud Gets Riddled with Holes
TiDB Cloud breached, Zeabur shutting down, PostgreSQL 19 delayed: as AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and exploitation, how does the patch deployment gap change the security calculus for cloud …
Stealing Two Days in Huangshan Between Releases
A family road trip from Shanghai to southern Anhui—rice paddies at Tachuan Academy, hairy tofu in Hongcun, and shipping the Silo October security release and Oink v1.3's native photo gallery from the …
How Will the AI Bubble Burst?
AI capability, real-world adoption, and financial capital are moving on three out-of-sync curves. Demand is narrow and deep, while pricing, credit, and duration have fallen into a triple mismatch: how …
AI Adoption May Not Run That Deep
From 2 billion chatbot users to 5,000 frontier lab insiders: a five-tier Fermi estimate of AI adoption shows broad reach, but surprisingly shallow depth.
Reviving the Chinese-Speaking PostgreSQL Community
A PostgreSQL community starts with its users. With a distribution, documentation, package mirrors, localized messages, and a Chinese-language portal now in place, the next step is connecting them into …
Why Localize PostgreSQL into Chinese?
Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese message catalogs in PostgreSQL 19 now meet the release threshold across all 28 components. Chinese localization lowers reading overhead during production …
A Tiny Aluminum Cube: Tinkering with the Beelink ME Pro NAS
Four spare hard drives and four NVMe SSDs fit neatly into a Beelink ME Pro. Why I chose it over the Minisforum N5, what assembly and Ubuntu setup involve, and what a NAS with enough CPU power to do …
Three Midlife Obsessions: NAS, Routers, and Chargers
Over China's seven-day National Day holiday, I upgraded my home LAN to 10GbE, replaced two NAS boxes, and packed six machines into a rolling 12U rack. With AI helping on hardware selection, rack …
Both of My Claude Accounts Were Banned
Anthropic banned two of my Claude accounts during China's October holiday. The hardest part to replace is two years of accumulated context, not the model itself—and the post-ban data export turned out …
Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom
From coding agents to always-on personal assistants, AI is starting to manage everyday life. A cloud computer, an identity, a wallet, and a group chat are becoming standard issue—but first decide …
A $500 ChatGPT Plan? Why the $200 Pro Tier May Become a Grandfathered Bargain
ChatGPT Pro Max is priced at $500 a month, but the real question is the usage multiplier: 50× keeps the wholesale discount alive, while 25× or 20× signals shrinking subsidies—and turns the existing …
PostgreSQL 19 Beta 4: Five Major Features Reverted
PostgreSQL 19 Beta 4 reverted five major features at once: SQL/PGQ property graph queries, online data checksums, temporal UPDATE and DELETE, partition merge and split, and DDL reconstruction …
Why Established Companies May Never Become AI-Native
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. Incentives and structure keep established companies from capturing AI's gains. AI-native companies will grow from scratch, …
Codex Edited My Video in One Shot for About 8 Yuan
I gave Codex three panel recordings and a casually dictated prompt. Forty-eight minutes later, it delivered a finished edit with subtitles, at an estimated amortized subscription cost of about 8 yuan. …
The Application Layer Is Collapsing: The Moat Moves to the Database
As agents take over software interfaces and execution logic, where does the application layer go? Future software will consist of a lasting system of record and harnesses that are continually replaced …
After the Attention Wall, What Keeps the AI Boom Alive?
AI coding and micro-dramas have both hit the ceiling of human attention, and personal agents cannot pick up the slack. AI for Science and embodied AI could drive the next wave, but neither will scale …
Apple's Latest: 512 GB of Gold-Plated RAM, a Touchscreen MacBook, and Tired Pricing Games
The 512 GB RAM upgrade alone costs more than a second Mac Studio, while a touchscreen MacBook, a 60 Hz iPad mini, and cracking foldable screens round out a disappointing week. Apple is still local …
AI Software Engineering: Choose Problems You Care About
AI has driven the cost of prototyping software down to nearly zero, leaving conviction, verification, and long-term maintenance as the real bottlenecks. The first rule of choosing what to build is …
MinIO's One-Year Memorial: How to Revive a Dead Open-Source Project
One year after open-source MinIO was archived, how Silo uses AI agents, production user feedback, and strict scope boundaries to patch vulnerabilities, restore the web console, and maintain drop-in …
Kimi's Marketing Backlash: Don't Spend Ad Money to Burn Trust
Kimi's overseas marketing controversy brings an old problem to the surface: paying for ads while pretending they are organic word of mouth. How undisclosed sponsorships poison technical information …
The Personalities of Frontier AI Models
ChatGPT is the cautious chief engineer, Claude the strategist, Gemini the staff writer, and GLM the unbothered grunt. Notes from heavy daily use on how each model behaves, what it over-optimizes for, …
My First EV Road Trip
After 12 years of driving gas cars, I rented a range-extended EV for a road trip to Huangshan. What won me over wasn't fuel savings, but the attention freed up by assisted driving—though beyond the …
Is This Our Last Programmers' Day?
Human computers became the first programmers; today's programmers stand at the same crossroads. As AI takes over coding, an engineer's value shifts to design, taste, delivery, accountability, and …
The Internet Is Getting Shot Full of Holes
From PHP and GitLab to AI toolchains and certificate authorities, half the internet was breached in a single week. As AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and exploitation, active maintenance, clean …
When the Cloud Gets Riddled with Holes
TiDB Cloud breached, Zeabur shutting down, PostgreSQL 19 delayed: as AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and exploitation, how does the patch deployment gap change the security calculus for cloud …
Stealing Two Days in Huangshan Between Releases
A family road trip from Shanghai to southern Anhui—rice paddies at Tachuan Academy, hairy tofu in Hongcun, and shipping the Silo October security release and Oink v1.3's native photo gallery from the …
How Will the AI Bubble Burst?
AI capability, real-world adoption, and financial capital are moving on three out-of-sync curves. Demand is narrow and deep, while pricing, credit, and duration have fallen into a triple mismatch: how …
AI Adoption May Not Run That Deep
From 2 billion chatbot users to 5,000 frontier lab insiders: a five-tier Fermi estimate of AI adoption shows broad reach, but surprisingly shallow depth.
Reviving the Chinese-Speaking PostgreSQL Community
A PostgreSQL community starts with its users. With a distribution, documentation, package mirrors, localized messages, and a Chinese-language portal now in place, the next step is connecting them into …
Why Localize PostgreSQL into Chinese?
Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese message catalogs in PostgreSQL 19 now meet the release threshold across all 28 components. Chinese localization lowers reading overhead during production …
A Tiny Aluminum Cube: Tinkering with the Beelink ME Pro NAS
Four spare hard drives and four NVMe SSDs fit neatly into a Beelink ME Pro. Why I chose it over the Minisforum N5, what assembly and Ubuntu setup involve, and what a NAS with enough CPU power to do …
Three Midlife Obsessions: NAS, Routers, and Chargers
Over China's seven-day National Day holiday, I upgraded my home LAN to 10GbE, replaced two NAS boxes, and packed six machines into a rolling 12U rack. With AI helping on hardware selection, rack …
Both of My Claude Accounts Were Banned
Anthropic banned two of my Claude accounts during China's October holiday. The hardest part to replace is two years of accumulated context, not the model itself—and the post-ban data export turned out …
Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom
From coding agents to always-on personal assistants, AI is starting to manage everyday life. A cloud computer, an identity, a wallet, and a group chat are becoming standard issue—but first decide …
A $500 ChatGPT Plan? Why the $200 Pro Tier May Become a Grandfathered Bargain
ChatGPT Pro Max is priced at $500 a month, but the real question is the usage multiplier: 50× keeps the wholesale discount alive, while 25× or 20× signals shrinking subsidies—and turns the existing …
PostgreSQL 19 Beta 4: Five Major Features Reverted
PostgreSQL 19 Beta 4 reverted five major features at once: SQL/PGQ property graph queries, online data checksums, temporal UPDATE and DELETE, partition merge and split, and DDL reconstruction …
Why Established Companies May Never Become AI-Native
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. Incentives and structure keep established companies from capturing AI's gains. AI-native companies will grow from scratch, …
Codex Edited My Video in One Shot for About 8 Yuan
I gave Codex three panel recordings and a casually dictated prompt. Forty-eight minutes later, it delivered a finished edit with subtitles, at an estimated amortized subscription cost of about 8 yuan. …
The Application Layer Is Collapsing: The Moat Moves to the Database
As agents take over software interfaces and execution logic, where does the application layer go? Future software will consist of a lasting system of record and harnesses that are continually replaced …
After the Attention Wall, What Keeps the AI Boom Alive?
Data as of October 30, 2026. Based on discussions with Claude and Gemini. Nothing here is investment advice. Compute hits the attention wall. When I wrote “Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom” and “How Will the AI Bubble Burst?” recently, I noted that …
Data as of October 30, 2026. Based on discussions with Claude and Gemini. Nothing here is investment advice. Compute hits the attention wall. When I wrote “Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom” and “How Will the AI Bubble Burst?” recently, I noted that …
Apple's Latest: 512 GB of Gold-Plated RAM, a Touchscreen MacBook, and Tired Pricing Games
In the early hours of October 29 Beijing time, Apple held an unstreamed “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles. It capped a three-day rollout: an OLED iPad mini on Monday, the M6 iMac and base MacBook Pro on Tuesday, and the touchscreen MacBook Pro as …
In the early hours of October 29 Beijing time, Apple held an unstreamed “Pro and Tell” event in Los Angeles. It capped a three-day rollout: an OLED iPad mini on Monday, the M6 iMac and base MacBook Pro on Tuesday, and the touchscreen MacBook Pro as …
AI Software Engineering: Choose Problems You Care About
Friends keep asking me: “Vonng, you’re burning through fifteen $200 AI subscriptions at once. What on earth are you building?” I have written about plenty of what came out of that—a bit of everything, really. To borrow an investing term, AI has …
Friends keep asking me: “Vonng, you’re burning through fifteen $200 AI subscriptions at once. What on earth are you building?” I have written about plenty of what came out of that—a bit of everything, really. To borrow an investing term, AI has …
MinIO's One-Year Memorial: How to Revive a Dead Open-Source Project
On October 15, 2025, MinIO published its final open-source release, then progressively locked down and archived the repository. At the time, I figured I would wait a month or two to see if someone in the community would step up and take it over. …
On October 15, 2025, MinIO published its final open-source release, then progressively locked down and archived the repository. At the time, I figured I would wait a month or two to see if someone in the community would step up and take it over. …
Kimi's Marketing Backlash: Don't Spend Ad Money to Burn Trust
Moonshot AI released its latest model, Kimi K3.1 Pro, a couple of days ago. On paper, it was a strong release: its Artificial Analysis (AA) Intelligence Index jumped from 44 in the previous generation to 55, right on the heels of first-place Claude …
Moonshot AI released its latest model, Kimi K3.1 Pro, a couple of days ago. On paper, it was a strong release: its Artificial Analysis (AA) Intelligence Index jumped from 44 in the previous generation to 55, right on the heels of first-place Claude …
The Personalities of Frontier AI Models
Yesterday I wrote that engineers now have to learn to run their own agent teams. At this point, you can no longer treat frontier models as mere tools; they behave much more like digital coworkers. Most of the time they act as direct reports, …
Yesterday I wrote that engineers now have to learn to run their own agent teams. At this point, you can no longer treat frontier models as mere tools; they behave much more like digital coworkers. Most of the time they act as direct reports, …
My First EV Road Trip
I’ve been driving for 12 years—databases by trade, cars on the road—yet until this trip, I had never once been behind the wheel of an EV. It’s not that I’m some diehard internal-combustion fundamentalist; I just don’t have a daily commute. Back when …
I’ve been driving for 12 years—databases by trade, cars on the road—yet until this trip, I had never once been behind the wheel of an EV. It’s not that I’m some diehard internal-combustion fundamentalist; I just don’t have a daily commute. Back when …
Is This Our Last Programmers' Day?
Today is October 24—celebrated in China as Programmers’ Day, since 1024 = 2¹⁰ is a neat, auspicious round number in binary. Given the occasion, I want to share a few thoughts on programming as a profession. I have a strong hunch: this may be the last …
Today is October 24—celebrated in China as Programmers’ Day, since 1024 = 2¹⁰ is a neat, auspicious round number in binary. Given the occasion, I want to share a few thoughts on programming as a profession. I have a strong hunch: this may be the last …
The Internet Is Getting Shot Full of Holes
Yesterday I wrote “When AI Tears Through Cloud Security”, arguing that at the pace AI is finding vulnerabilities, every cloud server and managed database will eventually be shot full of holes. That already looks too conservative. In just the past two …
Yesterday I wrote “When AI Tears Through Cloud Security”, arguing that at the pace AI is finding vulnerabilities, every cloud server and managed database will eventually be shot full of holes. That already looks too conservative. In just the past two …
When the Cloud Gets Riddled with Holes
The past two weeks in cloud computing and databases have played out like a disaster movie. First came the TiDB Cloud data breach that dominated the news over the past couple of days. The extortion group FulcrumSec put up a dedicated page for PingCAP …
The past two weeks in cloud computing and databases have played out like a disaster movie. First came the TiDB Cloud data breach that dominated the news over the past couple of days. The extortion group FulcrumSec put up a dedicated page for PingCAP …
Stealing Two Days in Huangshan Between Releases
Over the past couple of days, I drove from Shanghai through Hangzhou down to Huangshan. We spent this morning around Hongcun and checked into an inn at the foot of Mount Huangshan for the night—stealing two days away to show the family around and …
Over the past couple of days, I drove from Shanghai through Hangzhou down to Huangshan. We spent this morning around Hongcun and checked into an inn at the foot of Mount Huangshan for the night—stealing two days away to show the family around and …
How Will the AI Bubble Burst?
This article is 70% AI-generated, synthesized from a four-way debate between Vonng, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. Data is as of October 17, 2026. Nothing here constitutes investment advice. Looking around in October 2026, anyone who both writes …
This article is 70% AI-generated, synthesized from a four-way debate between Vonng, Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. Data is as of October 17, 2026. Nothing here constitutes investment advice. Looking around in October 2026, anyone who both writes …
AI Adoption May Not Run That Deep
At DevDay in late September, OpenAI reported a staggering figure: 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Two weeks later, Andrej Karpathy threw out a very different number: only about 5,000 people worldwide have seen frontier AI running at full …
At DevDay in late September, OpenAI reported a staggering figure: 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Two weeks later, Andrej Karpathy threw out a very different number: only about 5,000 people worldwide have seen frontier AI running at full …
Reviving the Chinese-Speaking PostgreSQL Community
PostgreSQL is the world’s most advanced open-source database, and one of the very few major open-source projects genuinely run by its community rather than controlled by a single company. I have always believed that the soul of an open-source project …
PostgreSQL is the world’s most advanced open-source database, and one of the very few major open-source projects genuinely run by its community rather than controlled by a single company. I have always believed that the soul of an open-source project …
Why Localize PostgreSQL into Chinese?
The PostgreSQL 19 release schedule is set: RC1 lands next Thursday, October 15, and barring surprises, the final release follows on October 29. Good news for Chinese-speaking users along with it: following Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese …
The PostgreSQL 19 release schedule is set: RC1 lands next Thursday, October 15, and barring surprises, the final release follows on October 29. Good news for Chinese-speaking users along with it: following Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese …
A Tiny Aluminum Cube: Tinkering with the Beelink ME Pro NAS
Last night before bed, I threw together a quick post on the three gadgets middle-aged men obsess over: NAS boxes, routers, and chargers. It picked up more than 30,000 reads in a single day. Apparently the stereotype holds up. In that post, I said I …
Last night before bed, I threw together a quick post on the three gadgets middle-aged men obsess over: NAS boxes, routers, and chargers. It picked up more than 30,000 reads in a single day. Apparently the stereotype holds up. In that post, I said I …
Three Midlife Obsessions: NAS, Routers, and Chargers
The joke goes that middle-aged men have three hobbies: NAS boxes, routers, and chargers. I stayed home for all seven days of China’s National Day holiday. Rather than fight the holiday crowds, I kept my head down and worked. I didn’t spend the entire …
The joke goes that middle-aged men have three hobbies: NAS boxes, routers, and chargers. I stayed home for all seven days of China’s National Day holiday. Rather than fight the holiday crowds, I kept my head down and worked. I didn’t spend the entire …
Both of My Claude Accounts Were Banned
China’s National Day holiday in early October started on a sour note: Anthropic banned my Claude accounts. Both of them at once. I had used my primary account for nearly two years, and losing it overnight stung. It felt like losing an old friend. …
China’s National Day holiday in early October started on a sour note: Anthropic banned my Claude accounts. Both of them at once. I had used my primary account for nearly two years, and losing it overnight stung. It felt like losing an old friend. …
Welcome to the AI Secretary Boom
Dictated by Vonng, written up by Claude. Today is set to be a lively day. OpenAI’s annual DevDay opens in San Francisco, with Sam Altman’s keynote scheduled for 10 a.m. Pacific on September 29—1 a.m. on September 30 in Beijing. According to a …
Dictated by Vonng, written up by Claude. Today is set to be a lively day. OpenAI’s annual DevDay opens in San Francisco, with Sam Altman’s keynote scheduled for 10 a.m. Pacific on September 29—1 a.m. on September 30 in Beijing. According to a …
A $500 ChatGPT Plan? Why the $200 Pro Tier May Become a Grandfathered Bargain
On September 24, a new subscription tier surfaced in OpenAI’s frontend: ChatGPT Pro Max, at $500 a month. Some screenshots showed $600, which included local VAT. The next day, OpenAI merged a PR into the open-source Codex repository that renamed the …
On September 24, a new subscription tier surfaced in OpenAI’s frontend: ChatGPT Pro Max, at $500 a month. Some screenshots showed $600, which included local VAT. The next day, OpenAI merged a PR into the open-source Codex repository that renamed the …
PostgreSQL 19 Beta 4: Five Major Features Reverted
Original WeChat post (in Chinese) Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday traditionally about reunion. Happy holidays to everyone celebrating. The news for the occasion, though, is less about things coming together than getting pulled apart: …
Original WeChat post (in Chinese) Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday traditionally about reunion. Happy holidays to everyone celebrating. The news for the occasion, though, is less about things coming together than getting pulled apart: …
Why Established Companies May Never Become AI-Native
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. A few days ago, I joined a roundtable. The moderator asked how a company should calculate the ROI of deploying agents. Instead of answering directly, I offered a …
What is happening is not transformation, but new species replacing old ones. A few days ago, I joined a roundtable. The moderator asked how a company should calculate the ROI of deploying agents. Instead of answering directly, I offered a …
Codex Edited My Video in One Shot for About 8 Yuan
WeChat article When GPT-6 Astra came out a little while ago, I heard that people were using it with Codex to edit videos, with pretty good results. With another update out, I finally had to try it myself. Yesterday, I took part in a panel discussion …
WeChat article When GPT-6 Astra came out a little while ago, I heard that people were using it with Codex to edit videos, with pretty good results. With another update out, I finally had to try it myself. Yesterday, I took part in a panel discussion …
The Application Layer Is Collapsing: The Moat Moves to the Database
This is the script for a talk at the AI-Native Technology Innovation Forum of the 2026 Shanghai AI Application Ecosystem Conference, September 22, 2026. Speaker: Ruohang Feng (Vonng), creator of the PostgreSQL distribution Pigsty. Good afternoon. …
This is the script for a talk at the AI-Native Technology Innovation Forum of the 2026 Shanghai AI Application Ecosystem Conference, September 22, 2026. Speaker: Ruohang Feng (Vonng), creator of the PostgreSQL distribution Pigsty. Good afternoon. …