It is also a bit tricky tradeoff. You do not want to be stuck with the same data format forever. So databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL need a downtime when doing a major version upgrade. They both try to keep it short, usually seconds, but minutes can happen in either database.

Yes. But for most workloads it is not much for PostgreSQL. You often will not have to shard at all.

I have not ran MySQL for some years but it at least used to have exactly the same issue. Upgrading a database with MySQL can take a long time if you have many tables. The main difference is only really that PostgreSQL does it with a separate tool, pg_upgrade, while MySQL does it as part of the main binary.

For both MySQL and PostgreSQL you will need to use some kind of logical upgrades if you want no downtime.

They don't change the on-disk structure all the time though...

Mostly because MySQL development is slower.

Even when MySQL development velocity was more rapid, they maintained binary table format compatibility across major version upgrades the vast majority of the time. Literally the only exception I can think of, which necessitated a table rebuild, was the fractional timestamp storage change when going from MySQL 5.5 (2010) to 5.6 (2013).

MySQL has advocated for decades spinning up a replica with the upgraded version, waiting for it to catch up to master before promoting it to the new master. You can do the same thing with Postgres.

Exactly, MySQL and PostgreSQL are the same here. Maybe one is a bit faster than the other at doing major version upgrades but the behaviours are quite similar.

If your dad had owned an emerald mine I am sure you could also have been that dumb.

But to be more serious: It is impossible to say if this is good or bad for XAI without more numbers. What if they bought their compute way over market price and sell it at a loss?

No, CoreWeave for example also rent compute to the big AI companies. This likely just means Grok has few users so they need to rent their extra capacity to their competitors.

Their satellite internet business is the only thing which makes them money, which is enabled by their orbital launch business which is as of right now not profitable and I have no idea of if it ever will be but without it they would not be able to launch enough satellites.

Their stupidity with AI and buying X mostly seems to be about scamming investors to make Musk even richer. Like this particular deal is just them doing what CoreWeave does at a SpaceX valuation.

Launch isn't profitable simply because ongoing Starship R&D is eating into it. A lot of opex, capex, and pre-revenue.

If they start running Starship anywhere near the way they do Falcon 9, it'll flip into profits. A lot of big bets SpaceX made ride on Starship coming online. I'm honestly surprised Starlink is already so profitable without it.

One of their big named bets includes: orbital datacenters. Which puts this specific deal into perspective.

80% of the space launch business is putting starlink satellites into orbit, so it's all internal funny money. They could very well be letting the space launch business take losses to make the satellite internet business look better (only profitable part of the whole thing).

Wasn't starship supposed to be funded by the NASA contract?

Orbital datacenters sound like a dangerous bet. I couldn't think of a worse place for a lot of delecate electronics.

Have you considered Magma Chamber datacenters?

It's more unpopular than that. Not surprising since they're competing underhandedly for electricity generation with everyone else.

Well it would be a lot easier if those companies wanted to build them in uninhabited areas in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure. Somehow they don't want to do that...

I can understand this being a move to increase valuation, but I can't connect with the stupidity and scamming investors argument.

Sorry, I was unclear. With that I did not talk about this particular deal. This particular deal seems sane. XAI built more compute that they can use themselves since Grok is not very successful so to not just have the hardware standing there they rent it out to competitors. Makes total sense.

It is other things Musk has gone with Twitter and SpaceX which are shady.

I'm pretty sure xAI is just Musk throwing a tantrum after being played for a fool by Lying Sam.

And 200% within 2 years?

Yeah, I am employed by an open source company (to be clear not open core) and most of the external code contributions we get are a net cost for us. It takes more time to review than it would have taken for our team to code and review.

The real value we get from being open source is high quality bug reports and trust from our customers, not the external contributions. The only reason we welcome external contributors is marketing and generally being welcoming. If LLMs make this cost even higher for us then we might have to stop accepting external PRs.

Yeah, they are essentially praising price dumping.

> But apparently trying to distinguish those from the 'one-shot' vibe coded PRs is too much work for the Ladybird team.

Yes, that is exactly what this announcement is about. That it was too much work for them to tell those two apart.