sigmoid.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A social space for people researching, working with, or just interested in AI!

Server stats:

596
active users

#Scalability

1 post1 participant0 posts today

@maikel basically, it boils down to the few key features of #Monero:

1. #Anonymity & #Privacy: Unlike with any other #cryptocurrency (aka. #Shitcoins) it's not just pseudonymous in that there is no mandatory linkage between individuals & their wallets, but the entire transaction history and balance is hidden. Unlike say #Bitcoin or #Ethereum one cannot track the coins from the moment of mining to their destination.

2. Speed: Monero's network does mine one block every 2 minutes. After 10 blocks any transfered balance gets unlocked for spending. That means that a transfer is completed at worst within 6 minutes and the balance is being unlocked at worst after 24 minutes. This makes it faster than Instant-#SEPA which only has a 1 hour SLA.

3. #Fungibility: Like #cash all it's coins are equal, since they cannot be tracked. This makes Monero the digital equivalent of cash.

4. #Scalability & #Stability: Monero adaptively self-adjusts block sizes and mining difficulty based upon demand (transactions in it's mempool aka. requested transactions that have to be added to the blockchain) and supply (total blockchain hashrate). Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum it has a fixed Tail Emission Rate of at least 0,6 #XMR (Monero) per block, so the miners solving it get at least 0,6 XMR (+ transaction fees), which is a longterm stable rate. Bitcoin and Ethereum will necessitate huge transfer fees once their last coins are mined to make sense, which will result in the crash of said cryptocurrencies as they'll be too expensive to trade!

5. Anti-#ASIC and focussed on #CPU|s of general-purpose machines: Whilst it does run on #ProofOfWork, it's specifically designed to run poorly on #GPU|s and not on #ASICs as the latter one are not just manufactured #eWaste but also inherently increase the centralization (with less than a dozen big miners controlling >50% of Bitcoin and Ethereum's hashrate respectably). Thus it's the "least worst" in that regard. #ProofOfStake is not possible due to it's privacy-based setup (#Staking necessitates a public balance) and unlike a #Shitcoin like #FileCoin it doesn't incentivize #hoarding components. (in this case: #HDD|s)

6. Accepted & Convertable: Whilst there is a concerted effort to ban Monero, there are payment processors like #NowPayments that accept Monero. It's low transaction fees and good speed make it useable in settings like Restaurants and Online Stores (sadly not retail, because it would need to be like 60x faster)... And even then it's easy to convert to/from Shitcoins.

That's the #TLDW of Whiteboard Crypto, Mental Outlaw and The Hated One

And finally:

7. Monero gets continously developed and enhanced, whereas Bitcoin, #Litecoin and Ethereum don't even do proper #upgrades via #HardForks (see #EthereumClassic)...

Is Node.js the future of backend development, or just a beautifully wrapped grenade?

Lately, I see more and more backend systems, yes, even monoliths, built entirely in Node.js, sometimes with server-side rendering layered on top. These are not toy projects. These are services touching sensitive PII data, sometimes in regulated industries.

When I first used Node.js years ago, I remember:
• Security concepts were… let’s say aspirational.
• Licensing hell due to questionable npm dependencies.
• Tests were flaky, with mocking turning into dark rituals.
• Behavior of libraries changed weekly like socks, but more dangerous.
• Internet required to run a “local” build. How comforting.

Even with TypeScript, it all melts back into JavaScript at runtime, a language so flexible it can hang itself.

Sure, SSR and monoliths can simplify architecture. But they also widen the attack surface, especially when:
• The backend is non-compiled.
• Every endpoint is a potential open door.
• The system needs Node + a fleet of dependencies + a container + prayer just to run.

Compare that to a compiled, stateless binary that:
• Runs in a scratch container.
• Requires zero runtime dependencies.
• Has encryption at rest, in transit, and ideally per-user.
• Can be observed, scaled, audited, stateless and destroyed with precision.

I’ve shipped frontends that are static, CDN-delivered, secure by design, and light enough to fit on a floppy disk. By running them with Node, I’m loading gigabytes of unknown tooling to render “Hello, user”.

So I wonder:
Is this the future? Or am I just… old?

Are we replacing mature, scalable architectures with serverless spaghetti and 12-factor mayhem because “it works on Vercel”?

Tell me how you build secure, observable, compliant systems in Node.js.
Genuinely curious.
Mildly terrified and maybe old.

First change since #swad 0.2 will actually be a (huge?) improvement to my #poser lib. So far, it was hardwired to use the good old #POSIX #select call. This is perfectly fine for handling around up to 100 (or at least less than 1000, YMMV) clients.

Some #select implementations offer defining the upper limit for checked file descriptors. Added support for that.

POSIX also specifies #poll, which has very similar #scalability issues, but slightly different. Added support for this as well.

And then, I went on to add support for the #Linux-specific #epoll and #BSD-specific #kqueue (#FreeBSD, #NetBSD, #OpenBSD, ...) which are both designed to *solve* any scalability issues 🥳

A little thing that slightly annoyed me about kqueue was that there's no support for temporarily changing the signal mask, so I had to do the silly dance shown in the screenshot. OTOH, it offers changing event filters and getting events in a single call, which I might try to even further optimize ... 😎