Commentary
25 pagesA $500 ChatGPT Plan? The $200 Pro Subscription May Become Irreplaceable
On September 24, a new tier surfaced in OpenAI’s frontend: ChatGPT Pro Max, $500 a month. Some screenshots showed $600, a price that included local VAT. The next day, OpenAI itself merged a PR into the open-source Codex repository, renaming the Pro …
On September 24, a new tier surfaced in OpenAI’s frontend: ChatGPT Pro Max, $500 a month. Some screenshots showed $600, a price that included local VAT. The next day, OpenAI itself merged a PR into the open-source Codex repository, renaming the Pro …
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 …
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. …
The Mouthless Model: AI's OLTP Moment
Three in the morning, an alert: replication lag 187 seconds, sustained for seven minutes, production cluster, both replicas still alive. Do you wake the on-call DBA? That is a one-bit question. Hand it to the smartest model available today and it …
Three in the morning, an alert: replication lag 187 seconds, sustained for seven minutes, production cluster, both replicas still alive. Do you wake the on-call DBA? That is a one-bit question. Hand it to the smartest model available today and it …
RAG Isn't Dead. But It's Getting There.
One of the people who helped invent RAG went out and bought a domain name to prove RAG isn’t dead. Episode seven of the Chinese PostgreSQL community’s 30th-anniversary livestream series was about PG + AI. One of the questions on the host’s cue card …
One of the people who helped invent RAG went out and bought a domain name to prove RAG isn’t dead. Episode seven of the Chinese PostgreSQL community’s 30th-anniversary livestream series was about PG + AI. One of the questions on the host’s cue card …
Catalog Bullshit: Take the Database Apart, Then Rent a PostgreSQL Table Back to You
Starting with Snowflake’s Governance Checklist A few days ago, Snowflake shared a poster with blue type on a black background in an official tweet. Titled THE ARCHITECT’S GOVERNANCE CHECKLIST, it listed nine problems: Revocation gaps Policy drift …
Starting with Snowflake’s Governance Checklist A few days ago, Snowflake shared a poster with blue type on a black background in an official tweet. Titled THE ARCHITECT’S GOVERNANCE CHECKLIST, it listed nine problems: Revocation gaps Policy drift …
Did Oracle's Mistakes Hand PostgreSQL the Win?
On August 19, 2026, The Register published an interview with Michael Stonebraker. The Turing Award winner who started the Berkeley Postgres project—and is still founding companies in his eighties—was asked why PostgreSQL had won. His answer was a …
On August 19, 2026, The Register published an interview with Michael Stonebraker. The Turing Award winner who started the Berkeley Postgres project—and is still founding companies in his eighties—was asked why PostgreSQL had won. His answer was a …
How a Word Dies
A brief history of credibility inflation in China’s tech industry Introduction The phrase “far, far ahead” can no longer be used with a straight face. Put it in a technical document or a serious review, and readers will laugh. The phrase was used, …
A brief history of credibility inflation in China’s tech industry Introduction The phrase “far, far ahead” can no longer be used with a straight face. Put it in a technical document or a serious review, and readers will laugh. The phrase was used, …
MySQL 9.7: Same Old Leftovers, Reheated
Two years ago, I wrote MySQL Is Dead, Long Live PostgreSQL. MySQL 9.0 had just shipped, and Oracle had unveiled a VECTOR data type with great fanfare, billing it as “MySQL for the AI era.” One look was enough: it was a BLOB in a cheap disguise. No …
Two years ago, I wrote MySQL Is Dead, Long Live PostgreSQL. MySQL 9.0 had just shipped, and Oracle had unveiled a VECTOR data type with great fanfare, billing it as “MySQL for the AI era.” One look was enough: it was a BLOB in a cheap disguise. No …
After the Debate, Let's Talk Seriously About 'Ontology'
Last month I wrote a post called “The Palantir Ontology Scam”. The core point was simple and summarized in a Rosetta Stone-style comparison table: Palantir’s Ontology is, at the technical level, database modeling. Object Type is a table. Property is …
Last month I wrote a post called “The Palantir Ontology Scam”. The core point was simple and summarized in a Rosetta Stone-style comparison table: Palantir’s Ontology is, at the technical level, database modeling. Object Type is a table. Property is …
AI Was the Excuse for 4,000 Layoffs. Software Engineer Hiring Rose 11%
Yesterday brought a bombshell. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 40% of its staff in one stroke. More than 4,000 people are leaving, shrinking the workforce from over 10,000 to fewer than 6,000. The explanation, of course, was AI. Dorsey went …
Yesterday brought a bombshell. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 40% of its staff in one stroke. More than 4,000 people are leaving, shrinking the workforce from over 10,000 to fewer than 6,000. The explanation, of course, was AI. Dorsey went …
Palantir's Ontology Narrative
I. Two Kinds of Faces By late 2025, Palantir’s market cap had blown past $400 billion — a 20x run in just two years. Every roadshow, every whitepaper, every tech blog from this company hammers the same word: Ontology. The word has been packaged as …
I. Two Kinds of Faces By late 2025, Palantir’s market cap had blown past $400 billion — a 20x run in just two years. Every roadshow, every whitepaper, every tech blog from this company hammers the same word: Ontology. The word has been packaged as …
AI Ripped the Skin Off Software
AI stripped away software’s skin, exposing the database skeleton underneath. The market isn’t panic-selling — it’s repricing. I. The Bloodbath Software stocks are experiencing a historic meltdown. In January 2026, the iShares Software ETF (IGV) …
AI stripped away software’s skin, exposing the database skeleton underneath. The market isn’t panic-selling — it’s repricing. I. The Bloodbath Software stocks are experiencing a historic meltdown. In January 2026, the iShares Software ETF (IGV) …
New Programmers in the AI Era: Where Do You Go?
The Window Is Closing Recently I was chatting with a few friends in tech, and we landed on a question that silenced everyone: “Should we still hire fresh grads?” Nobody could answer. Not because they didn’t want to — because they didn’t dare. AI …
The Window Is Closing Recently I was chatting with a few friends in tech, and we landed on a question that silenced everyone: “Should we still hire fresh grads?” Nobody could answer. Not because they didn’t want to — because they didn’t dare. AI …
MySQL and Baijiu: The Internet’s Obedience Test
1. Two Painful Shots Remember your first sip of baijiu? It scorched down your throat like a wire of fire. Your face contorted, eyes watered, stomach flipped. Every instinct screamed: this isn’t food, it’s poison. The senior at the table grinned: …
1. Two Painful Shots Remember your first sip of baijiu? It scorched down your throat like a wire of fire. Your face contorted, eyes watered, stomach flipped. Every instinct screamed: this isn’t food, it’s poison. The senior at the table grinned: …
Column: Database Guru
WeChat Sovereignty & Self-Reliance Build a China-rooted, world-facing PG distribution Supply-chain trust: I won’t bet on absentee maintainers PG “export controls” and supply-chain trust Any domestic DBs that actually deliver? Stop embarrassing us …
WeChat Sovereignty & Self-Reliance Build a China-rooted, world-facing PG distribution Supply-chain trust: I won’t bet on absentee maintainers PG “export controls” and supply-chain trust Any domestic DBs that actually deliver? Stop embarrassing us …
Dongchedi Just Exposed “Smart Driving.” Where’s Our Dongku-Di?
I rented a car today, drove from Shanghai back to Ningbo. Yesterday I watched Dongchedi’s autonomous-driving showdown—closed highway + real city roads + 30+ “smart driving” models. Everyone faceplanted except Tesla. The episode aired and every Tesla …
I rented a car today, drove from Shanghai back to Ningbo. Yesterday I watched Dongchedi’s autonomous-driving showdown—closed highway + real city roads + 30+ “smart driving” models. Everyone faceplanted except Tesla. The episode aired and every Tesla …
Dify Gets Humiliated Again: It Can't Catch a Break
Today, something straight out of magical realism unfolded in Dify’s GitHub repository. The open-source community was minding its own business, maintaining the project, when a pull request apparently from Livzon Pharmaceutical landed out of …
Today, something straight out of magical realism unfolded in Dify’s GitHub repository. The open-source community was minding its own business, maintaining the project, when a pull request apparently from Livzon Pharmaceutical landed out of …
Open-Source "Tyrant" Linus's Purge
Recently, Linus kicked out several Russian developers from the project, triggering an outcry in the open source world. But many people forget that Linux is Linus’s personal project — it was 30 years ago, and it still is today. Linus himself has …
Recently, Linus kicked out several Russian developers from the project, triggering an outcry in the open source world. But many people forget that Linux is Linus’s personal project — it was 30 years ago, and it still is today. Linus himself has …
MongoDB: Now Powered by PostgreSQL?
Preface Tomorrow I’ll publish an article criticizing MongoDB, as a response to their recent malicious marketing that provocatively targets PostgreSQL. But before that, I want to share a brilliant article from 2015 that exposes some of MongoDB’s dark …
Preface Tomorrow I’ll publish an article criticizing MongoDB, as a response to their recent malicious marketing that provocatively targets PostgreSQL. But before that, I want to share a brilliant article from 2015 that exposes some of MongoDB’s dark …
Can Chinese Domestic Databases Really Compete?
WeChat Public Account Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it’s a question that offends people. So let’s try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can help readers understand …
WeChat Public Account Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it’s a question that offends people. So let’s try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can help readers understand …
Are Specialized Vector Databases Dead?
Vector storage and retrieval is a real need, but specialized vector databases are already dead. The ecological niche left for specialized vector databases might support one company’s survival, but trying to build an industry around AI stories is …
Vector storage and retrieval is a real need, but specialized vector databases are already dead. The ecological niche left for specialized vector databases might support one company’s survival, but trying to build an industry around AI stories is …
Are Databases Really Being Strangled?
WeChat | Zhihu If “cloud databases” can be considered passable products with slightly underwhelming cost ROI, then many “domestic databases” are simply shoddy, inferior products that can’t be helped. Xinchuang OS/databases are essentially IT …
WeChat | Zhihu If “cloud databases” can be considered passable products with slightly underwhelming cost ROI, then many “domestic databases” are simply shoddy, inferior products that can’t be helped. Xinchuang OS/databases are essentially IT …
Back to Basics: Tech Reflection Chronicles
Recently, there have been some hotly debated topics in the tech community: Are cloud databases an IQ tax? Is public cloud a pig-killing scam? Are distributed databases a false need? Are microservices a stupid idea? Do you still need ops and DBAs? Is …
Recently, there have been some hotly debated topics in the tech community: Are cloud databases an IQ tax? Is public cloud a pig-killing scam? Are distributed databases a false need? Are microservices a stupid idea? Do you still need ops and DBAs? Is …
NewSQL: Distributive Nonsens
WeChat Column As hardware technology advances, the capacity and performance of standalone databases have reached unprecedented heights. In this transformative era, distributed (TP) databases appear utterly powerless, much like the “data middle …
WeChat Column As hardware technology advances, the capacity and performance of standalone databases have reached unprecedented heights. In this transformative era, distributed (TP) databases appear utterly powerless, much like the “data middle …