Arc Notes Weekly #102: Primetime
This week, saving $1.2M by leaving AWS for bare metal, why Postgres replaces Kafka more often than you think, and a cautionary startup infrastructure tale. Plus, AI debugging and SQLite concurrency.
This week, explore why one startup’s bare metal migration saved $1.2M yearly with better latency and 99.993% uptime, how Postgres handles pub/sub and queueing efficiently enough to replace Kafka in many scenarios and SQLite concurrency.
Sponsor Spotlight: QCon San Francisco — Enterprise AI Architecture Architecting AI systems? Evaluating LLM infra or planning migrations? QCon San Francisco (Nov 17–21) dives deep into real-world AI architecture, platforms, and patterns—before they go mainstream. Learn from early adopters. Make smarter decisions. Learn more at qconsf.com →
Enjoy this week's round-up!
— Mahdi Yusuf (@myusuf3) or LinkedIn
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Articles
Lessons from a Startup’s Tech Architecture Disaster
Dive into the chaotic journey of building a startup’s tech architecture from scratch, where a young Deloitte graduate with an AWS certification took on the challenge of creating a mobile app and backend systems with little experience. Discover the pitfalls and lessons learned from relying on AWS Amplify, the struggles with GraphQL, and the costly serverless infrastructure that followed.How Silent Disagreements Can Stall Your Engineering Team
Silent disagreements in the workplace can quietly erode trust, hurt credibility, and stall promotions. Discover how to spot these hidden career killers and learn strategies to ensure alignment and trust within your team.Why Tinkering Is Essential for Developing Taste
Discover how tinkering can transform your learning process and help you develop a unique sense of taste. The author shares personal insights on how experimenting with different skills and technologies has enriched their life and programming career.Why Postgres Might Be Your Best Bet Over Kafka
In a world where tech buzzwords often overshadow practicality, this article makes a compelling case for choosing Postgres over Kafka for many use cases. With benchmarks showing Postgres handling pub/sub messaging and queueing efficiently, it challenges the notion that complex distributed systems are always necessary.Enterprise AI Architecture at QCon San Francisco (Nov 17-21)
Whether you’re designing AI platforms, scaling LLM serving, or building GenAI infrastructure, QCon San Francisco 2025 connects you with senior architects, engineers, and technical leaders who’ve done it at scale.
Sessions explore balancing deterministic systems with probabilistic agents, autoscaling multi-model serving, vector stores and RAG pipelines at scale, and evolving data access patterns for AI workloads.
Hear what worked, what failed, and what to avoid from 60+ seasoned practitioners—so you can adopt emerging trends with confidence.
MacBook Pro M4: A User’s Honest Impressions
After six months with the MacBook Pro M4, Michael Stapelberg shares his thoughts on its nano-textured display, impressive battery life, and the subtle benefits of a 120 Hz screen. Discover why he chose the Pro over the Air and how the M4 chip keeps things cool and quiet!You Are How You Act
I personally a don't agree with the adage of fake it till you make it, but this was an interesting take on it. Why SQLite Concurrency Matters and How Jellyfin Tackles It
Discover how Jellyfin navigates the tricky waters of SQLite concurrency issues with innovative locking strategies, ensuring smoother database operations and offering a potential solution for developers facing similar challenges.Claude Code Debugs Complex Cryptography Bugs
Discover how Claude Code, an AI tool, impressively debugged a complex low-level cryptography bug in a new Go implementation of ML-DSA, a post-quantum signature algorithm. The AI rapidly identified a bug that had stumped the developer, showcasing its potential in tackling intricate coding challenges.Projects
seaweedfs
SeaweedFS is a fast distributed storage system for blobs, objects, files, and data lake, for billions of files! jan
Discover Jan, the open-source AI that lets you run ChatGPT-like capabilities entirely offline on your computer! With 39k stars on GitHub, it’s a popular choice for those seeking privacy and control.
Two Years After AWS: The Bare Metal Journey
Two years after ditching AWS for bare metal, OneUptime shares how they saved over $1.2M annually, improved latency, and maintained 99.993% availability. Dive into their detailed analysis and see why they still use cloud services for specific needs!