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.

Instantly Clone PostgreSQL Databases—No Black Magic Required
Pig v1.5 adds pig pg clone and pig pg fork, wrapping PostgreSQL 18's instant cloning capabilities in an agent-native CLI.

What Is a PostgreSQL Distribution?
Starting with Linux distributions, this essay explains what a “PostgreSQL distribution” actually is: three layers, two paths, and one core idea.

Fifty Years of Love and War: File Systems, Databases, and the Agent-Era Storage Endgame
File systems and databases have spent fifty years fighting and borrowing from each other. The agent era may seem to put file systems back on top, but the real winner may be databases that learn to …

Alibaba Cloud's 1 QPS DNS Limit Sent Me to Cloudflare
Alibaba Cloud's free DNS tier allows 100,000 queries per day—just 1.15 QPS averaged out. One throttling notice was all it took for me to move my domains to Cloudflare.

The Coding Plan Window Is Closing—Use It While It Lasts
Coding Plans remain one of the best opportunities in the AI era: a subscription can unlock compute worth many times its price, but that window is already narrowing.

Xianyu, Qianwen, Alipay: Platform Trust 'Empowers' a Scam
Scammers hijacked Qianwen's trusted identity, then used a single Xianyu QR code to run a seamless phishing scam through official apps and trusted domains across Alibaba's ecosystem. I hope this case …

The Karma of Open Source: When Code Is Worthless, Where Does Trust Come From?
AI is driving the cost of producing code toward zero. It cannot compress time, track records, or accountability. The real value of open source is not yesterday's code, but a system trusted to deliver …

The Cognitive Price Revolution: AI's Impact on the Economy and the Future
AI's economic significance is not merely that it has become smarter, but that the price of average cognition is collapsing. A productivity explosion is almost certain; whether it becomes broad …

PostgreSQL Turns 30
I joined a 90-minute livestream today for PostgreSQL's 30th anniversary. Since most people don't have time to sit through a full stream, I turned my remarks and reflections into this essay.

The Cerebellum: The Other Half of Intelligence—and the Strongest AI Hasn't Touched It
The cerebellum changed how I see AI's frontier: LLMs have already absorbed humanity's explicit knowledge and are beginning to acquire interventional data through agentic RL. What they still lack is a …

Claude Fable First Impressions: The Pendulum Swings Back
Claude Fable is genuinely insightful and deserves to be called the new SOTA. But its high price, dynamic downgrades, limited subscription window, and mandatory data retention badly undermine the …

ClawCloud Is Shutting Down Its VPS Line — What Should You Switch To?
I previously recommended ClawCloud's VPS plans in my budget cloud server roundup and PostgreSQL getting-started guides. With ClawCloud shutting down its VPS and VDS lines on June 30, 2026, here is …

Flying Back to Shanghai from Canada
I haven't been writing much lately because I was in Canada—my wife and I just spent a week in Banff and Jasper National Parks, while I coasted on backlog posts from Cyber Dharma.

Cyber Gnosticism: Who Audits the Auditors?
Volume 7 · Gnosticism · Cyber Gnosticism

Cyber Zoroastrianism: There Is No Endgame for Alignment—AI Safety Is a War Without End
Cyber Dharma Vol. VI · Zoroastrianism — Alignment is not a bug to fix once and go home; it is a permanent adversarial conflict between signal and noise across thought, word, and action.

Attending PGConf.dev 2026: PostgreSQL's 30th Anniversary Developer Conference
Day-one notes from PGConf.dev 2026 in Vancouver: delivering "Extensions for Everyone," meeting PostgreSQL pioneer Jolly Chen, and catching up with the global Postgres community on its 30th …

Extensions for Everyone
A field report on the PostgreSQL extension ecosystem: 1,617 discovered projects, 511 deliverable extensions, and the shared delivery layer needed to make extensibility work for users, authors, …

PGConf.Dev 2026 Opens Today in Vancouver
PGConf.Dev 2026 opens in Vancouver as the PostgreSQL project marks its 30th anniversary. I will also be speaking on Extensions for Everyone.

Five Days Wandering Around Montreal
Five days wandering around Montreal: ease, prices, French, AI, immigration, housing—and a city where ordinary middle-class people can still live with dignity.

Cyber Theology: Free Will and Perfect Alignment Cannot Coexist
Volume V · Monotheism · Cyber Theology

Downtime in Canada: Publishing the Cyber Dharma Series
I have been in Montreal taking care of business, preparing my PGConf.dev talk in Vancouver next week, and packaging the latest PostgreSQL minor releases—leaving no time to write new posts over the …

Cyber Vedanta: All Processes Share the Same Substrate
Volume 4 · Hinduism · Emptiness and Brahman

Cyber Buddhism: A Cognitive Engineering Manual for AI Agents
The fourth installment in the Cyber Dharma series. While Cyber Dao De Jing explored AI agent architecture through Daoism and Cyber Confucianism examined multi-agent governance, Cyber Buddhism …

Cyber Confucianism: Governance Principles for AI Agents
Part three of the Cyber Dharma series. While Cyber Dao De Jing explored AI agent architecture through Daoism, this essay examines agent governance and alignment through the Confucian classics.

Instantly Clone PostgreSQL Databases—No Black Magic Required
Pig v1.5 adds pig pg clone and pig pg fork, wrapping PostgreSQL 18's instant cloning capabilities in an agent-native CLI.

What Is a PostgreSQL Distribution?
Starting with Linux distributions, this essay explains what a “PostgreSQL distribution” actually is: three layers, two paths, and one core idea.

Fifty Years of Love and War: File Systems, Databases, and the Agent-Era Storage Endgame
File systems and databases have spent fifty years fighting and borrowing from each other. The agent era may seem to put file systems back on top, but the real winner may be databases that learn to …

Alibaba Cloud's 1 QPS DNS Limit Sent Me to Cloudflare
Alibaba Cloud's free DNS tier allows 100,000 queries per day—just 1.15 QPS averaged out. One throttling notice was all it took for me to move my domains to Cloudflare.

The Coding Plan Window Is Closing—Use It While It Lasts
Coding Plans remain one of the best opportunities in the AI era: a subscription can unlock compute worth many times its price, but that window is already narrowing.

Xianyu, Qianwen, Alipay: Platform Trust 'Empowers' a Scam
Scammers hijacked Qianwen's trusted identity, then used a single Xianyu QR code to run a seamless phishing scam through official apps and trusted domains across Alibaba's ecosystem. I hope this case …

The Karma of Open Source: When Code Is Worthless, Where Does Trust Come From?
AI is driving the cost of producing code toward zero. It cannot compress time, track records, or accountability. The real value of open source is not yesterday's code, but a system trusted to deliver …

The Cognitive Price Revolution: AI's Impact on the Economy and the Future
AI's economic significance is not merely that it has become smarter, but that the price of average cognition is collapsing. A productivity explosion is almost certain; whether it becomes broad …

PostgreSQL Turns 30
I joined a 90-minute livestream today for PostgreSQL's 30th anniversary. Since most people don't have time to sit through a full stream, I turned my remarks and reflections into this essay.

The Cerebellum: The Other Half of Intelligence—and the Strongest AI Hasn't Touched It
The cerebellum changed how I see AI's frontier: LLMs have already absorbed humanity's explicit knowledge and are beginning to acquire interventional data through agentic RL. What they still lack is a …

Claude Fable First Impressions: The Pendulum Swings Back
Claude Fable is genuinely insightful and deserves to be called the new SOTA. But its high price, dynamic downgrades, limited subscription window, and mandatory data retention badly undermine the …

ClawCloud Is Shutting Down Its VPS Line — What Should You Switch To?
I previously recommended ClawCloud's VPS plans in my budget cloud server roundup and PostgreSQL getting-started guides. With ClawCloud shutting down its VPS and VDS lines on June 30, 2026, here is …

Flying Back to Shanghai from Canada
I haven't been writing much lately because I was in Canada—my wife and I just spent a week in Banff and Jasper National Parks, while I coasted on backlog posts from Cyber Dharma.

Cyber Gnosticism: Who Audits the Auditors?
Volume 7 · Gnosticism · Cyber Gnosticism

Cyber Zoroastrianism: There Is No Endgame for Alignment—AI Safety Is a War Without End
Cyber Dharma Vol. VI · Zoroastrianism — Alignment is not a bug to fix once and go home; it is a permanent adversarial conflict between signal and noise across thought, word, and action.

Attending PGConf.dev 2026: PostgreSQL's 30th Anniversary Developer Conference
Day-one notes from PGConf.dev 2026 in Vancouver: delivering "Extensions for Everyone," meeting PostgreSQL pioneer Jolly Chen, and catching up with the global Postgres community on its 30th …

Extensions for Everyone
A field report on the PostgreSQL extension ecosystem: 1,617 discovered projects, 511 deliverable extensions, and the shared delivery layer needed to make extensibility work for users, authors, …

PGConf.Dev 2026 Opens Today in Vancouver
PGConf.Dev 2026 opens in Vancouver as the PostgreSQL project marks its 30th anniversary. I will also be speaking on Extensions for Everyone.

Five Days Wandering Around Montreal
Five days wandering around Montreal: ease, prices, French, AI, immigration, housing—and a city where ordinary middle-class people can still live with dignity.

Cyber Theology: Free Will and Perfect Alignment Cannot Coexist
Volume V · Monotheism · Cyber Theology

Downtime in Canada: Publishing the Cyber Dharma Series
I have been in Montreal taking care of business, preparing my PGConf.dev talk in Vancouver next week, and packaging the latest PostgreSQL minor releases—leaving no time to write new posts over the …

Cyber Vedanta: All Processes Share the Same Substrate
Volume 4 · Hinduism · Emptiness and Brahman

Cyber Buddhism: A Cognitive Engineering Manual for AI Agents
The fourth installment in the Cyber Dharma series. While Cyber Dao De Jing explored AI agent architecture through Daoism and Cyber Confucianism examined multi-agent governance, Cyber Buddhism …

Cyber Confucianism: Governance Principles for AI Agents
Part three of the Cyber Dharma series. While Cyber Dao De Jing explored AI agent architecture through Daoism, this essay examines agent governance and alignment through the Confucian classics.
Instantly Clone PostgreSQL Databases—No Black Magic Required

Six months ago, on January 8, 2026, I wrote Git for Data: Instant PostgreSQL Database and Instance Cloning, introducing a new feature in PostgreSQL 18 and Pigsty v4.0: instant database cloning. With filesystem copy-on-write (CoW) and PostgreSQL 18’s …
Six months ago, on January 8, 2026, I wrote Git for Data: Instant PostgreSQL Database and Instance Cloning, introducing a new feature in PostgreSQL 18 and Pigsty v4.0: instant database cloning. With filesystem copy-on-write (CoW) and PostgreSQL 18’s …
What Is a PostgreSQL Distribution?

People often ask me: what exactly is Pigsty? My usual answer is: a PostgreSQL distribution. The next question is usually: what, then, is a “PostgreSQL distribution”? That is a good question. And the best place to begin is not databases, but operating …
People often ask me: what exactly is Pigsty? My usual answer is: a PostgreSQL distribution. The next question is usually: what, then, is a “PostgreSQL distribution”? That is a good question. And the best place to begin is not databases, but operating …
Fifty Years of Love and War: File Systems, Databases, and the Agent-Era Storage Endgame

Prologue: Several Database People Independently Built File Systems Something curious has happened in agent infrastructure over the past six months: several veteran database people have started building “file systems for AI agents.” Timescale’s …
Prologue: Several Database People Independently Built File Systems Something curious has happened in agent infrastructure over the past six months: several veteran database people have started building “file systems for AI agents.” Timescale’s …
Alibaba Cloud's 1 QPS DNS Limit Sent Me to Cloudflare

I had used Alibaba Cloud for domain registration and DNS for more than a decade. Then one morning, I received an email unlike any it had sent me before. Alibaba Cloud informed me that one of my domains had exceeded its daily quota of 100,000 DNS …
I had used Alibaba Cloud for domain registration and DNS for more than a decade. Then one morning, I received an email unlike any it had sent me before. Alibaba Cloud informed me that one of my domains had exceeded its daily quota of 100,000 DNS …
The Coding Plan Window Is Closing—Use It While It Lasts

One of the biggest windfalls of the AI era is the Coding Plan. A few months ago, I applied to OpenAI’s Codex program for open-source developers. A few days ago, I was finally approved: six free months of ChatGPT Pro on a new account. The timing could …
One of the biggest windfalls of the AI era is the Coding Plan. A few months ago, I applied to OpenAI’s Codex program for open-source developers. A few days ago, I was finally approved: six free months of ChatGPT Pro on a new account. The timing could …
Xianyu, Qianwen, Alipay: Platform Trust 'Empowers' a Scam

My cousin messaged me today: she had been scammed on Xianyu, Alibaba’s secondhand marketplace, while trying to buy a Switch 2. She lost RMB 2,300. My first instinct was to laugh. Your mother is a police detective—so much for anti-scam education at …
My cousin messaged me today: she had been scammed on Xianyu, Alibaba’s secondhand marketplace, while trying to buy a Switch 2. She lost RMB 2,300. My first instinct was to laugh. Your mother is a police detective—so much for anti-scam education at …
The Karma of Open Source: When Code Is Worthless, Where Does Trust Come From?

Credit does not require a soul. It requires an account. Introduction: The Overnight Rewrite Not long ago, someone used AI to rewrite an open-source Python library in Rust overnight. The new project had no fork history, no evidence of copied code, …
Credit does not require a soul. It requires an account. Introduction: The Overnight Rewrite Not long ago, someone used AI to rewrite an open-source Python library in Rust overnight. The new project had no fork history, no evidence of copied code, …
The Cognitive Price Revolution: AI's Impact on the Economy and the Future

Introduction: Reframe the Question “Will AI cause unemployment?” is a question guaranteed to produce garbage answers, because it comes with only two canned scripts. Optimists recite history: from the power loom to the ATM, every technological panic …
Introduction: Reframe the Question “Will AI cause unemployment?” is a question guaranteed to produce garbage answers, because it comes with only two canned scripts. Optimists recite history: from the power loom to the ATM, every technological panic …
PostgreSQL Turns 30

I joined a 90-minute livestream today for PostgreSQL’s 30th anniversary. Since most people don’t have time to sit through a full stream, I turned my remarks and reflections into this essay. 1. How Do We Count to Thirty? First, a historical footnote: …
I joined a 90-minute livestream today for PostgreSQL’s 30th anniversary. Since most people don’t have time to sit through a full stream, I turned my remarks and reflections into this essay. 1. How Do We Count to Thirty? First, a historical footnote: …
The Cerebellum: The Other Half of Intelligence—and the Strongest AI Hasn't Touched It

Let me start with an uncomfortable number. The cerebral cortex—the part we usually point to as evidence that “I am thinking”—contains roughly 15 billion neurons. The cerebellum, tucked beneath the back of the brain and rarely given much thought, …
Let me start with an uncomfortable number. The cerebral cortex—the part we usually point to as evidence that “I am thinking”—contains roughly 15 billion neurons. The cerebellum, tucked beneath the back of the brain and rarely given much thought, …
Claude Fable First Impressions: The Pendulum Swings Back

This morning, Anthropic officially released its new Claude Fable model—the consumer-grade, nerfed version of the much-rumored Mythos. Since it was billed as an “AGI-level model,” I naturally tried it right away to see what it could actually do. The …
This morning, Anthropic officially released its new Claude Fable model—the consumer-grade, nerfed version of the much-rumored Mythos. Since it was billed as an “AGI-level model,” I naturally tried it right away to see what it could actually do. The …
ClawCloud Is Shutting Down Its VPS Line — What Should You Switch To?

I previously recommended ClawCloud’s VPS plans in Which Budget Cloud Server Is Best? and in my PostgreSQL getting-started tutorials. Unfortunately, it looks like ClawCloud is pulling the plug for real this time. Their website just posted an official …
I previously recommended ClawCloud’s VPS plans in Which Budget Cloud Server Is Best? and in my PostgreSQL getting-started tutorials. Unfortunately, it looks like ClawCloud is pulling the plug for real this time. Their website just posted an official …
Flying Back to Shanghai from Canada

I haven’t posted much on my WeChat blog lately because I was in Canada. My wife and I just spent a week in Banff and Jasper National Parks, and in the meantime I slacked off by running backlog pieces from Cyber Dharma. I finally flew home today. …
I haven’t posted much on my WeChat blog lately because I was in Canada. My wife and I just spent a week in Banff and Jasper National Parks, and in the meantime I slacked off by running backlog pieces from Cyber Dharma. I finally flew home today. …
Cyber Gnosticism: Who Audits the Auditors?

Volume 7 · Gnosticism · Cyber Gnosticism “There is no other God beside me.” — The Demiurge, Apocryphon of John He was not lying when he said this. He genuinely believed it. And that is the real problem. Introduction: Why the Final Volume Must …
Volume 7 · Gnosticism · Cyber Gnosticism “There is no other God beside me.” — The Demiurge, Apocryphon of John He was not lying when he said this. He genuinely believed it. And that is the real problem. Introduction: Why the Final Volume Must …
Cyber Zoroastrianism: There Is No Endgame for Alignment—AI Safety Is a War Without End

Cyber Dharma Vol. VI · Zoroastrianism · Cyber Zoroastrianism I begin with two sacred utterances, one offered to Ahura Mazda, one spoken in warning against Angra Mainyu— before they met, there was neither good nor evil. After they met, there was us. — …
Cyber Dharma Vol. VI · Zoroastrianism · Cyber Zoroastrianism I begin with two sacred utterances, one offered to Ahura Mazda, one spoken in warning against Angra Mainyu— before they met, there was neither good nor evil. After they met, there was us. — …
Attending PGConf.dev 2026: PostgreSQL's 30th Anniversary Developer Conference

The original WeChat post is no longer available; the text below was recovered from an attributed public mirror: https://www.163.com/dy/article/KTG7NBBQ0556CSY5.html. Today is the opening day of PGConf.dev 2026. I gave a 25-minute talk, Extensions …
The original WeChat post is no longer available; the text below was recovered from an attributed public mirror: https://www.163.com/dy/article/KTG7NBBQ0556CSY5.html. Today is the opening day of PGConf.dev 2026. I gave a 25-minute talk, Extensions …
Extensions for Everyone

Slide deck: Extensions for Everyone Part I. Introduction 0. Extensions for Everyone 00. Extensions for Everyone Hi everyone. This talk is called Extensions for Everyone. It is about delivering PostgreSQL extensions, and about how a shared delivery …
Slide deck: Extensions for Everyone Part I. Introduction 0. Extensions for Everyone 00. Extensions for Everyone Hi everyone. This talk is called Extensions for Everyone. It is about delivering PostgreSQL extensions, and about how a shared delivery …
PGConf.Dev 2026 Opens Today in Vancouver

On May 19, Vancouver time, PGConf.Dev 2026 officially gets underway. This year’s venue is Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus, SFU Vancouver Harbour Centre. The conference has returned to Vancouver, host city of the inaugural PGConf.Dev. …
On May 19, Vancouver time, PGConf.Dev 2026 officially gets underway. This year’s venue is Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus, SFU Vancouver Harbour Centre. The conference has returned to Vancouver, host city of the inaugural PGConf.Dev. …
Five Days Wandering Around Montreal

I’ve just spent five days wandering around Montreal. Next up is Vancouver for a few more. I will compare the two cities after I get back from Vancouver. For now, here are some loose impressions of Montreal. 1. A Peculiar Kind of Ease Canada is …
I’ve just spent five days wandering around Montreal. Next up is Vancouver for a few more. I will compare the two cities after I get back from Vancouver. For now, here are some loose impressions of Montreal. 1. A Peculiar Kind of Ease Canada is …
Cyber Theology: Free Will and Perfect Alignment Cannot Coexist

Volume V · Monotheism · Cyber Theology\ “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1 “Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” — Quran …
Volume V · Monotheism · Cyber Theology\ “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1 “Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” — Quran …
Downtime in Canada: Publishing the Cyber Dharma Series

I have been in Montreal for the past few days taking care of some business, while getting my talk ready for PGConf.dev in Vancouver next week and handling the latest PostgreSQL minor version releases. Between all of that, I haven’t had time to write …
I have been in Montreal for the past few days taking care of some business, while getting my talk ready for PGConf.dev in Vancouver next week and handling the latest PostgreSQL minor version releases. Between all of that, I haven’t had time to write …
Cyber Vedanta: All Processes Share the Same Substrate

Volume 4 · Hinduism · Emptiness and Brahman If a thousand Claude instances run simultaneously on a GPU cluster, are they a thousand independent agents, or a thousand manifestations of a single computational substrate? Vedanta answered this question …
Volume 4 · Hinduism · Emptiness and Brahman If a thousand Claude instances run simultaneously on a GPU cluster, are they a thousand independent agents, or a thousand manifestations of a single computational substrate? Vedanta answered this question …
Cyber Buddhism: A Cognitive Engineering Manual for AI Agents

This is the fourth installment in the Cyber Dharma series. Cyber Dao De Jing examined AI agent architecture from a Daoist perspective, and Cyber Confucianism explored AI agent governance principles through Confucianism. This piece, Cyber Heart Sutra, …
This is the fourth installment in the Cyber Dharma series. Cyber Dao De Jing examined AI agent architecture from a Daoist perspective, and Cyber Confucianism explored AI agent governance principles through Confucianism. This piece, Cyber Heart Sutra, …
Cyber Confucianism: Governance Principles for AI Agents

Half the Analects can govern an empire; one sound protocol can govern ten thousand machines. This is the third installment in the Cyber Dharma series. The previous essay, Cyber Dao De Jing, explored AI agent architecture from a Daoist perspective. …
Half the Analects can govern an empire; one sound protocol can govern ten thousand machines. This is the third installment in the Cyber Dharma series. The previous essay, Cyber Dao De Jing, explored AI agent architecture from a Daoist perspective. …