---
title: "Latest reads"
description: "The engineering internet, summarised so you can actually read it."
---

# Latest reads
> The engineering internet, summarised so you can actually read it.

## Articles

### [What are these "GPUs" really?](https://yomu.fyi/post/what-are-these-gpus-really.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Dec 11, 2023
- Type: Explainer

The post explains how graphics hardware evolved from CPU-offloaded video rendering into modern GPUs and why those devices now matter for AI/ML. It traces the path from the Commodore 64’s VIC-II and 3D accelerator cards through Quake, Tomb Raider, integrated graphics, and increasingly parallel hardware, while describing components such as framebuffers, command processors, shader hardware, memory, and display outputs. It then connects shader and CUDA cores to workloads including GPT-2, Stable Diffusion, and speech or text processing, and presents model chaining as more useful than treating models as isolated tools. A conference-video workflow combines ffmpeg, Whisper, subtitle segmentation, a large language model, Markdown, and human review to produce accessible written material. The conclusion distinguishes graphics-capable cards from A100 accelerators, which the post says cannot process graphics or encode video but are highly effective for AI/ML workloads.


### [Scaling Large Language Models to zero with Ollama](https://yomu.fyi/post/scaling-large-language-models-to-zero-with-ollama.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Dec 6, 2023
- Type: Tutorial

Running GPU nodes for language-model inference can be costly because they often sit idle between requests, so this guide configures Ollama on a Fly.io Machine that scales to zero when idle. Ollama is described as a wrapper around llama.cpp, enabling self-hosted models with GPU acceleration, while about 70 lines of Go add authentication to protect the endpoint from unauthorized use. Deployment uses an A100-40GB GPU, a private Flycast address, automatic start and stop settings, and a 100GB persistent volume mounted at /root/.ollama so downloaded models survive stopped Machines. A stopped Machine no longer incurs GPU charges, but scaling to zero suspends it on the same host and may fail to wake during capacity issues. The setup supports CLI and API requests, WireGuard access, custom Modelfiles, and JSON-mode function-calling workflows.


### [Rethinking Serverless with FLAME](https://yomu.fyi/post/rethinking-serverless-with-flame.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Dec 6, 2023
- Type: Problem & solution

Rethinking Serverless with FLAME presents a pattern for running selected application functions on short-lived copies of the full app instead of moving code into bespoke FaaS services. FLAME, short for Fleeting Lambda Application for Modular Execution, uses FLAME.call to send a function and closed-over values to a runner pool, while retaining access to the application’s database connections and other code. The Elixir flame library includes LocalBackend and FlyBackend adapters, and Fly.io can boot a same-image Machine in the parent’s region in about three seconds. Runners may stay warm, scale to zero, or grow elastically based on configuration. The post also describes process-based streaming with LiveView and supervision and monitoring mechanisms for transient runners.


### [The risks of building apps on ChatGPT](https://yomu.fyi/post/the-risks-of-building-apps-on-chatgpt.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Dec 5, 2023
- Type: Explainer

The post argues that applications with critical AI features should avoid relying on proprietary, externally hosted models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and consider self-hosted open source alternatives. It identifies single-provider, regulation or policy, financial, and governance risks, illustrating the first with a Personal AI Fitness Trainer that failed during an OpenAI outage on November 8, 2023. When the AI is the app’s primary value proposition, an outage, changed behavior, denied usage, price increase, or provider leadership crisis can make the service unusable or threaten the business; less-central integrations may instead cause only degraded experience. Self-hosting a model can insulate an application from provider interruptions, licensing or usage-fee changes, regulator- or company-driven behavior changes, and leadership turmoil, while introducing GPU capital and operating costs with rented cloud GPU access available as an alternative to owning GPUs.


### [Getting Started with React Native Skia](https://yomu.fyi/post/getting-started-with-react-native-skia.md)
- Company: [Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify.md)
- Author: 2023-10-18
- Published: Dec 4, 2023
- Type: Tutorial

React Native Skia exposes Google’s cross-platform Skia 2D graphics engine to React Native, giving developers a canvas for custom shapes, visual effects, and dynamic interactions. The article explains when to choose it over react-native-svg or standard React Native Views: SVG is optimized for static SVGs, while Skia supplies primitives such as shaders, path operations, and image filters for animated experiences. It introduces the Cartesian canvas, basic Circle, Rect, and RoundedRect shapes, and custom paths created with SVG notation or imperative commands including addCircle, lineTo, and addPoly. Examples then combine Skia with react-native-reanimated shared values for UI-thread animation and react-native-gesture-handler for panning, before adding Blur and DashPathEffect; the article also notes web support through React Native Web and points to further examples.


### [Learnings from Building and Scaling Ramp’s Growth Engine](https://yomu.fyi/post/learnings-from-building-and-scaling-ramp-s-growth-engine.md)
- Company: [Ramp](https://yomu.fyi/company/ramp.md)
- Author: Hima Tammineedi
- Published: Nov 30, 2023
- Type: Explainer

Ramp’s growth team explains the principles and systems it used to scale customer acquisition since launching its first product in February 2020. By February 2021, annualized run-rate revenue reached $12 million, crossed $100 million a year later, and was far beyond that figure at the end of 2023. The approach combines first-principles thinking and prioritization with fast, data-driven MVP experiments, then productionizes ideas that show significant impact; it also relies on full-stack capabilities across business operations, engineering, and sales. An AI email overlay that classified and prioritized sales messages helped representatives handle more prospects and increase conversion rates. The team attributes tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales pipeline and real revenue to these practices, while noting that sustainable growth requires a solid product and real addressable market.


### [An elegant platform](https://yomu.fyi/post/an-elegant-platform.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Fabrice Harbulot
- Published: Nov 30, 2023
- Type: Problem & solution

Grab’s Coban real-time data streaming team initially relied on direct Terraform merge requests for managing self-served resources like Kafka topics and CDC pipelines. This pure Infrastructure-as-Code workflow faced challenges with CI pipeline failures from manual errors, security risks from lacking access controls, and platform team review bottlenecks. To resolve this, Coban implemented a three-tier control plane comprising the Coban UI, a Go backend named Heimdall, and a Git storage and provisioner repository named Khone. Heimdall translates user form submissions into validated merge requests containing Terraform and metadata files, polling Khone's CI status and alerting users. This architecture abstracts infrastructure code behind a graphical self-service portal while preserving underlying Git auditing and automation.


### [Print on Demand](https://yomu.fyi/post/print-on-demand.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Nov 29, 2023
- Type: Problem & solution

Print on Demand presents a resource-conscious alternative to scaling an application by separating PDF generation from the main server. The post explains how a Fly.io PDF appliance uses Fly-Replay to route a PDF request to a machine running headless Chrome, which requests the original page without its “.pdf” extension and converts the returned HTML into a PDF. Each machine reuses one Chrome instance across requests, while auto\_stop\_machines allows idle machines to stop and restart on demand. Integration requires cloning the GitHub repository, creating and configuring an app, deploying it, and returning a fly-replay response header for PDF-directed requests. The extracted production code is packaged for deployment with existing applications, supports session, cookies, and basic authentication through passed-back HTTP headers, and can serve applications using different languages and frameworks.


### [Launching to Victory](https://yomu.fyi/post/launching-to-victory.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Nov 28, 2023
- Type: Announcement

Fly.io introduces a streamlined version of its fly launch command for deploying applications near their users. The CLI now infers desired infrastructure from application source code and offers opinionated defaults or alternative options when it cannot apply the same shape. Previously, the launch flow asked a series of questions; the change reduces guesswork by folding varied frameworks, languages, and toolchains into a few basic infrastructure shapes. A Rails application using SQLite is given an example set of defaults that developers can build from, while other applications can be configured through a confirmation webpage. Once settings are accepted, the app is built and deployed unless --no-deploy is supplied, and the CLI provides a link to the running app.


### [Winners of the AI and Identity Okta Hackathon 2023](https://yomu.fyi/post/winners-of-the-ai-and-identity-okta-hackathon-2023.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Michael Palermo
- Published: Nov 21, 2023
- Type: Announcement

The AI and Identity - Okta Hackathon 2023 challenged developers to build applications combining identity standards with AI, drawing 576 registrants, 22 submissions, and nine eligible entries. Judges selected Facets Wellness App for first place and $10,000 plus a future Okta Dev Advocacy Podcast appearance; IHealthHist took second with $5,000, and AITrainsYou.com took third with $3,000. Facets provides snippet-based wellness modules for emotional regulation and intelligence, journaling, values, and goals, while the other winning projects address medical-history storage and AI-powered team learning. converse.ai received the $500 honorable mention for document conversations, with judging comments citing implementations of OIDC, SCIM, and AI across the winners. Separate “most supportive hacker” prizes went to Hong Tran, Monish Basaniwal, and Deependra Gaur for forum support and guidance.


### [Road localisation in GrabMaps](https://yomu.fyi/post/road-localisation-in-grabmaps.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Roxana Crisan
- Published: Nov 17, 2023
- Type: Problem & solution

Grab needed to localise nearly 30 million road segments across more than 10,000 area boundaries in Southeast Asia to attach hyperlocal attributes like language, driving side, and vehicle access rules. Testing direct geometric inclusion between complex road polylines and boundary polygons proved computationally prohibitive for daily map generation pipelines. To optimize this process, Grab introduced geohashes as rectangular proxies, precomputing geohash coverage across borders and road segments before joining the datasets in parallel. To resolve misclassification errors near borders without sacrificing performance, the team evaluated geohash coverage percentages and refined boundary-touching geohashes with polygon clipping. A laptop benchmark on a subset of data reduced runtime from 38 minutes with geometric intersection to 78 seconds using the geohash approximation.


### [How I Fly](https://yomu.fyi/post/how-i-fly.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Nov 17, 2023
- Type: Explainer

This article describes how Xe Iaso uses Fly.io to host a blog, CDN, and experimental personal projects while deploying services near users. The blog backend runs in Toronto, while XeDN runs in 35 datacenters, fetches missing files from Backblaze B2, and uses caching and traffic shifting to tolerate individual node failures. Arsène runs every 12 hours, asking the ChatGPT API for posts, using Stable Diffusion for illustrations through an Automatic1111 API on a private network, then sending images to XeDN for global delivery. The setup emphasizes reusable, interoperable building blocks rather than isolated projects, with Fly.io handling deployment, networking, and scaling concerns. Xe reports that three 256 MB Machines ran XeDN for a year, while Arsène still runs on one, and says applications can scale to zero when idle.


### [How to Use pgvector for Similarity Search on Heroku Postgres](https://yomu.fyi/post/how-to-use-pgvector-for-similarity-search-on-heroku-postgres.md)
- Company: [Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/company/heroku.md)
- Author: Valerie Woolard
- Published: Nov 16, 2023
- Type: Tutorial

Heroku Postgres now supports pgvector on all Standard-tier or higher databases running Postgres 15, adding vector storage and functions for similarity search and machine-learning applications. Older Postgres versions require an upgrade to Postgres 15. The workflow generates embeddings, adds a VECTOR(100) column, and stores values using SQL or Python with psycopg, pgvector-python, and Wikipedia2Vec’s pretrained 100-dimensional model. Queries can rank vectors with Euclidean, cosine, or inner-product distance; the example uses <-> to return five animals nearest to shark, producing crocodile, dolphin, whale, turtle, and alligator. Results depend on the embedding model and corpus, while indexes introduce approximate nearest-neighbor search; pgvector supports IVFFlat and HNSW, with IVFFlat requiring table data for better recall.


### [Transcribing on Fly GPU Machines](https://yomu.fyi/post/transcribing-on-fly-gpu-machines.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Nov 13, 2023
- Type: Tutorial

Fly GPU Machines are used to run Whisper Webservice for audio transcription, with the post noting that Fly GPUs are deprecated and unavailable after August 1. The setup uses a GPU-friendly Docker image, an a100-pcie-40gb Machine, and a Fly Volume mounted at /root/.cache/whisper so model files download and persist outside the image; ASR\_MODEL=large and ASR\_ENGINE=faster\_whisper configure the service. It shows flyctl commands for creating the app, GPU-hosted volume, Machine, public IPs, and HTTPS routes, then verifies GPU availability with nvidia-smi and exposes the web UI and OpenAPI specification. A second path automates volume and Machine creation through the Machines API, requiring cpu\_kind plus valid cpus and memory\_mb values. It also demonstrates a custom Ubuntu 22.04 image with NVIDIA CUDA libraries, FFmpeg, Python, and Whisper, concluding that GPU Machines can support composable AI workloads.


### [Engineering Management](https://yomu.fyi/post/engineering-management.md)
- Company: [Ramp](https://yomu.fyi/company/ramp.md)
- Author: Patrick Anderson
- Published: Nov 11, 2023
- Type: Explainer

The post presents an engineering-leadership perspective on how the author incepted and grew Ramp’s Core Engineering team from zero to 50+ engineers, while noting that the guidance is shaped by a company under Dunbar’s number. It defines an engineering manager’s role as unblocking reports, appreciating their contributions with technical depth, and helping them advance through the leveling deck. The central leadership practice is “pay attention”: build a coherent organizational model, maintain consistent direction, understand motivations, and avoid feedback that misses important tradeoffs. Core Engineering favored hiring individual-contributor engineers and moving some gradually into management after testing their aptitude. The post also presents one-on-ones as a way to build organizational context, and describes slow growth, intern mentorship, and prompt dispute resolution as forms of compounding management quality.


### [Graph modelling guidelines](https://yomu.fyi/post/graph-modelling-guidelines.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Wenxiang Lu
- Published: Nov 8, 2023
- Type: Tutorial

Graph modelling uses graph theory to represent real-world entities, relationships, and properties through nodes and edges, unlocking insights across interconnected datasets. The process begins with defining domain concepts, mapping entities and relationships, and assigning relevant descriptive properties to both nodes and edges. Practitioners choose between graph structures such as property graphs or Resource Description Framework models before optionally developing a structural schema. Data is then imported or generated to populate storage systems such as Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, Azure Cosmos DB, or in-memory data structures. Finally, the graph is visualised and analysed using algorithmic methods like shortest path calculation, centrality measurement, and community detection.


### [Abstraction Engineering](https://yomu.fyi/post/abstraction-engineering.md)
- Company: [Ramp](https://yomu.fyi/company/ramp.md)
- Author: Rodda John, Jared Wasserman
- Published: Oct 31, 2023
- Type: Explainer

Ramp’s early product encoded opinionated limits, but by fall 2022 customers needed configuration based on departments, accounting fields, subsidiaries, budgets, and HRIS fields, making incremental feature work increasingly complex. The team reframed these requests as a generic workflows platform in which Python functions served as actions, boolean logic as conditions, and workflows as graphs persisted in Postgres. After rejecting a dependency-based design, they built a graph-traversal engine, a Postgres-backed queue that retries asynchronous tasks, and an SDK for expressing constructs such as elif and else. The infrastructure now supports customer-facing policies and internal tasks; more than 45 million workflows have run, at over a million per day, while the core engine has not changed since launch. The project took weeks upfront but saved the engineering organization months by turning complex features into applications of broader abstractions.


### [Router 2.0 Common Runtime Router: The Road to Beta](https://yomu.fyi/post/router-2-0-common-runtime-router-the-road-to-beta.md)
- Company: [Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/company/heroku.md)
- Author: Elizabeth Cox
- Published: Oct 30, 2023
- Type: Explainer

Heroku’s Router 2.0 is a beta replacement for the Common Runtime’s Erlang-based “Hermes” router, which is planned to be replaced in 2024. The project addresses the difficulty of safely delivering upgrades from a legacy custom HTTP server and aims to share routing code with the Go-based Private Spaces router; common functionality has been extracted into an internal HTTP library. Architecturally, Router 2.0 is an L7 router running in memory behind the existing L4 proxy, alongside Hermes, allowing app-level traffic to move from the old path without a big-bang cutover. The team added continuous load testing that exercises scaling policies and blocks deployments missing internal service-level objectives, and introduced Network Error Logging to measure browser-observed failures. Feature parity is still incomplete, with HTTP/2 planned next; apps can opt into the beta using a Heroku Labs command.


### [Step](https://yomu.fyi/post/step.md)
- Company: [Okta](https://yomu.fyi/company/okta.md)
- Author: Indranil Jha
- Published: Oct 24, 2023
- Type: Explainer

Step-up authentication lets an application permit access to non-critical resources with basic authentication while requiring additional authentication for sensitive resources. The post describes how Okta Workforce Identity Cloud supports this pattern across modern OIDC applications and legacy integrations. For OIDC, applications use the /authorize endpoint’s acr\_values and max\_age parameters to request a mapped higher assurance level for a limited period, or prompt=login to force re-authentication each time. For non-OIDC applications, privileged Factor API operations can issue and verify challenges through a protected middleware layer using an Okta API token, while Okta Access Gateway can enforce step-up through advanced policies. Transactional MFA is presented as an alternative using OIDC CIBA, but the source defers its detailed treatment.


### [Introducing Ruvy](https://yomu.fyi/post/introducing-ruvy.md)
- Company: [Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify.md)
- Author: 2023-10-18
- Published: Oct 18, 2023
- Type: Announcement

Ruvy is an open-source toolchain that takes Ruby code as input and produces a WebAssembly module whose exported \_start function executes that code. Built on ruby.wasm, it pre-initializes the Ruby virtual machine and includes Ruby files during the build, while avoiding the need to supply a Ruby script path as a WASI argument at runtime. In Wasmtime benchmarks, Ruvy’s instantiation and \_start execution took about 44.4–45.2 ms, compared with 55.8–56.9 ms for ruby.wasm plus wasi-vfs, and its Wasm-to-native compilation took about 440–457 ms versus 1.62–1.68 seconds. These results correspond to roughly 20% faster runtime performance and about 70% less compilation time in the reported tests. Ruvy currently requires users to install build dependencies and compile it because precompiled binaries are not shipped.


[Newer posts](https://yomu.fyi/posts/page/190.md) · [Older posts](https://yomu.fyi/posts/page/192.md)