---
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

### [Updates for Supabase Functions](https://yomu.fyi/post/updates-for-supabase-functions.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Paul Copplestone
- Published: Jul 30, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase has announced an Alpha release of Database Webhooks alongside dashboard management tools for native PostgreSQL Functions and Triggers. Database Webhooks act as a wrapper around PostgreSQL triggers, asynchronously emitting HTTP GET and POST requests whenever table data is inserted, updated, or deleted. The networking layer relies on a new PostgreSQL extension called pg\_net, which pairs a PostgreSQL background worker queue with libcurl to handle multiple concurrent outbound requests without blocking SQL queries. Although pg\_net currently processes over 300 requests per second, Supabase plans to expand capabilities to include direct triggers for AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Run before launching dedicated Supabase Functions.


### [Supabase Swag Store](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-swag-store.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Rory Wilding
- Published: Jul 30, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase has officially launched the Supabase Swag Store to meet ongoing community demand for branded merchandise. The company built the online storefront using Shopify to go live quickly during launch week rather than dogfooding internal systems for e-commerce. Gifting remains the primary goal of the swag program, prioritizing contributors who create content, report bugs, answer community questions, or submit pull requests. All items are designed, packed, and dispatched directly by the internal team from Singapore in limited production batches of around one hundred items per run. Due to hands-on fulfillment and ongoing international shipping disruptions, inventory is scarce, and some small-batch designs will remain permanently limited editions.


### [Better Business Intelligence in Elixir with Livebook](https://yomu.fyi/post/better-business-intelligence-in-elixir-with-livebook.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Jul 30, 2021
- Type: Problem & solution

The post argues that Elixir developers already perform business intelligence when they use iex or a Rails console to query application data, calculate figures, and produce CSV rows for managers. It presents Livebook as a more capable alternative for young projects that need analysis without adopting a large, continuously running BI application such as Metabase. Because notebooks execute Elixir code and can communicate with running applications through BEAM/OTP clustering, they can reuse business logic, Ecto schemas, associations, and external integrations such as Stripe while avoiding direct database access. Livebook also supplies charts, graphs, tables, Markdown-based sharing, and reproducible reruns, with WireGuard enabling secure connections to apps on Fly.io. The resulting notebooks can answer onboarding, sales, and integration questions while preserving work that may later support an admin dashboard.


### [Connecting with Mob Programming](https://yomu.fyi/post/connecting-with-mob-programming.md)
- Company: [Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify.md)
- Author: 2023-10-18
- Published: Jul 30, 2021
- Type: Explainer

A six-person team drawn from three teams had six weeks to complete an ambitious Shipping project, while several members were new to the domain or company and had not worked together. Pairing was uncommon, and pull requests received little substantive feedback, creating uncertainty about whether the team was growing, connecting, and learning. After Sheldon Nunes introduced mob programming, the team used a shared screen and ten-minute driver rotations, with each driver pushing changes before the next person pulled them. This kept everyone engaged, accelerated reversible decisions, limited context dumps, and made most code review back-and-forth unnecessary. Across nearly daily sessions for three months, the team reported stronger relationships, easier feedback, restored remote learning, and better support for newcomers, while identifying drawing, public discoverable calls, simple environments, cross-disciplinary participation, and breaks as important practices; tests and documentation were considered poor fits for mobbing.


### [Supabase Reports and Metrics](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-reports-and-metrics.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Div Arora
- Published: Jul 29, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase introduced a dedicated Reports section and updated project home pages to deliver observability across hosted Postgres projects and complementary services. Because developers can run unconstrained database queries and custom workloads, monitoring both project-level service usage and underlying infrastructure metrics is essential. The new dashboard displays one month of historical data, including CPU and memory usage alongside request volumes for Database, Auth, and Storage APIs. To collect metrics across hundreds of thousands of targets without high latency, Supabase implemented a federated monitoring architecture running regional Prometheus instances that scrape local exporters and aggregate subsets into a central VictoriaMetrics instance. All project databases now also launch with the pg\_stat\_statements extension enabled for future query statistics.


### [How We Cut GrabFood.com’s Page JavaScript Asset Sizes by 3x](https://yomu.fyi/post/how-we-cut-grabfood-com-s-page-javascript-asset-sizes-by-3x.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Gibson Cheng
- Published: Jul 29, 2021
- Type: Problem & solution

GrabFood.com faced high cloud costs while serving over 1 TB of weekly network egress across 175 million requests. To minimize egress and improve page performance, the engineering team audited and reduced their webpack dependencies using tools such as webpack-bundle-analyzer and dependency-cruiser. Their strategies included lazy loading rarely used libraries, unifying duplicate modules under single entry points, and substituting utility libraries like axios with native browser Web APIs. Additionally, altering implementation approaches, such as replacing client-side signed JWT cookie encoding with plain JSON strings, eliminated heavy Node dependencies like crypto. These optimizations reduced JavaScript static assets from 750 KB to 250 KB, decreased CloudFront costs by 20%, and accelerated build times by 3.6x.


### [Mobbin uses Supabase to authenticate 200,000 users](https://yomu.fyi/post/mobbin-uses-supabase-to-authenticate-200-000-users.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Published: Jul 28, 2021
- Type: Problem & solution

Mobbin originally launched its mobile design search platform using Firebase, quickly growing to hundreds of thousands of registered users. As the platform scaled, the team faced user friction because Firebase Authentication did not merge accounts sharing the same email address across different providers. Furthermore, mutative Firebase Function failures threatened document data integrity, and multi-round-trip document queries drove high monthly costs across five million API requests. To resolve these challenges, Mobbin migrated its backend to Supabase, adopting its GoTrue authentication service and underlying Postgres relational database. This migration resolved authentication conflicts, safeguarded data consistency, and reduced monthly infrastructure expenses since Supabase does not charge on a per-API-request basis.


### [Supabase Auth v2: Phone Auth now available](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-auth-v2-phone-auth-now-available.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Kang Ming Tay
- Published: Jul 28, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase has released an update to its authentication server, a fork of Netlify's GoTrue, introducing phone-based authentication with SMS one-time passwords. Developers can now configure Twilio credentials in the Supabase Dashboard to support passwordless SMS logins or combine phone numbers with passwords for user authentication. The release also expands third-party login options by adding Twitch alongside existing integrations, bringing the total number of supported OAuth providers to ten. To assist teams needing dynamic or internationalized messaging, a new API endpoint exposed through supabase-js allows backend services using admin keys to generate confirmation, recovery, invite, and magic links directly. These features build on Supabase Auth's architecture, which stores credentials directly in PostgreSQL databases to enable granular Row Level Security policies across database tables and storage buckets.


### [Spot: a video sharing app built with Flutter](https://yomu.fyi/post/spot-a-video-sharing-app-built-with-flutter.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Published: Jul 27, 2021
- Type: Explainer

Supabase compiles a broad index of case studies documenting how organizations deploy its platform for infrastructure, authentication, and database workloads across diverse industries. Multiple companies report significant operational efficiencies, including Quilia reducing development time by seventy-five percent through Data API and row-level security capabilities. Infrastructure migrations are highlighted prominently, with Shotgun achieving an eighty-three percent reduction in data infrastructure costs and Good Tape cutting expenses by sixty percent. Several teams also adopt the platform specifically for artificial intelligence workflows, such as Quivr deploying thousands of vector databases and Firecrawl transitioning from Pinecone to Supabase Vector. Other organizations, including Mobbin and Replenysh, use the platform to migrate hundreds of thousands of user accounts and implement one-time password systems within twenty-four hours.


### [Supabase Storage now in Beta](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-storage-now-in-beta.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Inian Parameshwaran
- Published: Jul 27, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase released Storage Beta with several functional and architectural improvements three months after its alpha launch. The storage service now supports the Content-Range HTTP header for streaming audio and video, alongside entirely public buckets configured with dashboard safeguards and standard authorization policies. Directory uploads are enabled via the File and Directory entries API, while self-hosted instances can use a new local filesystem backend rather than requiring AWS S3 configuration. To support Node.js without adding polyfills or bundling complexity, the storage server was updated to accept binary data and streams directly. Additionally, the dashboard storage explorer simulates filesystem directories using hidden placeholder files and implements list virtualization.


### [FYI: Phoenix drops webpack and npm for esbuild](https://yomu.fyi/post/fyi-phoenix-drops-webpack-and-npm-for-esbuild.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Jul 27, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Phoenix is replacing its use of Node, npm, and webpack with esbuild, a Go-written JavaScript bundler, in the upcoming Phoenix 1.6 release. The change responds to support burden and reliability problems: the post says npm, webpack, or brunch were involved in roughly 30% of Phoenix’s reported issues, while node-sass and npm v7 had recently broken phx.new. esbuild compiles to native code, handles common asset-pipeline tasks, and is intended to provide newcomers with a seamless setup and long-term users with more reproducible JavaScript and CSS builds. Teams doing substantial frontend JavaScript can still use customized webpack or other tooling, while esbuild remains an opt-in path for complex client-side work. Existing projects can use Phoenix 1.6, although the post notes possible zombie processes and says migration snags remain to be assessed.


### [Epsilon3 Self-Host Supabase To Revolutionize Space Operations](https://yomu.fyi/post/epsilon3-self-host-supabase-to-revolutionize-space-operations.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Published: Jul 26, 2021
- Type: Problem & solution

Epsilon3 digitizes paper procedures and telemetry data for high-stakes space missions and complex operational testing. Operating in heavily regulated environments requires strict security, ITAR compliance, and flexible deployment options ranging from AWS GovCloud to on-premises installations. To meet these demands without sacrificing developer velocity, Epsilon3 deployed a self-hosted Supabase configuration running against an Amazon RDS Postgres instance on AWS. This architecture gives the team real-time data streaming capabilities over Postgres so operators can track live procedure changes as they happen. In addition to reducing DevOps complexity, self-hosting Supabase enables Epsilon3 to leverage Postgres Row Level Security while ensuring full compliance across diverse deployment environments.


### [Supabase Community Day](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-community-day.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Steve Chavez
- Published: Jul 26, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase announced a series of platform upgrades and open-source contributions centered around PostgreSQL and its broader tooling ecosystem. Every new project on the platform now deploys on PostgreSQL version 13.3, accompanied by marketplace images on Digital Ocean and AWS. PostgREST version 8.0 incorporates upstreamed performance enhancements, achieving up to 50% more throughput on GET requests by adopting prepared statements for SELECT queries and decreasing log verbosity. The release eliminates downtime during schema cache reloads and replaces the pg\_listen requirement with standard NOTIFY commands for dynamic in-database configuration updates. Additionally, community-led efforts introduced beta releases of Flutter and Dart client libraries alongside a dedicated Discord server for developer discussions.


### [Supabase is now on Postgres 13.3](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-is-now-on-postgres-13-3.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Angelico de los Reyes
- Published: Jul 26, 2021
- Type: Announcement

New Supabase projects now run on Supabase Postgres 13.3, transitioning the database platform forward from PostgreSQL 12.0. This release introduces features such as native UUID generation with gen\_random\_uuid, parallel index vacuuming, incremental sorting, smaller btree indexes, and extended statistics improvements. The underlying PostgreSQL binary was built from the ground up to enable Large System Extensions on AWS Graviton2 ARM instances, optimizing locking and synchronization performance. Alongside upgrading the underlying operating system to Ubuntu 20.04 for long-term support through 2025, the team integrated fail2ban to protect direct database connections on ports 5432 and 6543 against brute-force attacks. Finally, Supabase Postgres version numbering now mirrors upstream PostgreSQL major and minor versions to make tracking installed releases easier.


### [Protecting Personal Data in Grab's Imagery](https://yomu.fyi/post/protecting-personal-data-in-grab-s-imagery.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Adrian Popovici
- Published: Jul 26, 2021
- Type: Problem & solution

Grab's KartaView platform collects geotagged street imagery across over 100 countries, requiring automated obfuscation of faces and licence plates to protect personal privacy. Because off-the-shelf solutions struggled with diverse global environments and equirectangular 360-degree camera formats, Grab built a custom machine learning pipeline. The system projects varied image formats into standardized planar views, applies a YOLOv4 object detection model to locate target regions, and transforms bounding coordinates back to the original imagery for blurring. Training the detector required iterative dataset updates to accommodate edge cases like face masks and mirror reflections, paired with offline view splitting and oversampling of scarce large bounding boxes. Assessments confirmed that obfuscating these regions had minimal negative impact on downstream map feature extraction services.


### [Supabase Launch Week II: The SQL](https://yomu.fyi/post/supabase-launch-week-ii-the-sql.md)
- Company: [Supabase](https://yomu.fyi/company/supabase.md)
- Author: Paul Copplestone
- Published: Jul 22, 2021
- Type: Announcement

Supabase scheduled Launch Week II: The SQL for the week of Monday 26 July 2021, occurring four months after its initial launch week held in March. The five-day schedule opens by spotlighting the latest developments from the community alongside core ecosystem tools including Postgres and PostgREST. Tuesday introduces Storage Reloaded, representing four months of further engineering work following the Version 1 storage release. Wednesday focuses on authentication capabilities, specifically passwordless login features that build upon existing platform support for eight distinct OAuth providers. The week concludes with platform dashboard improvements alongside announcements regarding Supabase Functions updates, a community hackathon, and the official Supabase Swag Store.


### [A Guide to Running an Engineering Program](https://yomu.fyi/post/a-guide-to-running-an-engineering-program.md)
- Company: [Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify.md)
- Author: 2023-10-18
- Published: Jul 21, 2021
- Type: Explainer

Shopify describes a playbook for running large engineering programs as platform complexity grows across products, tooling, and architecture. The framework begins with a Program Plan covering the problem statement, objectives, guiding principles, definition of done, risks, mitigation, staffing, scope, and a path to completion. Execution uses six-week cycles that revisit unfinished goals, regressions, emerging risks, and the planned route to completion; the described program spans 200 people, nine sub-organizations, and 92 projects. Supporting rituals include weekly updates, status checks, risk and escalation triage, cycle reviews, retrospectives, RFCs, and performance testing with Lua scripts orchestrated by Genghis. The post concludes that engineering program management must adapt to each organization and that a combination of scheduled and ad hoc rituals helped Shopify pursue its goals.


### [Processing ETL tasks with Ratchet](https://yomu.fyi/post/processing-etl-tasks-with-ratchet.md)
- Company: [Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab.md)
- Author: Amar Prakash
- Published: Jul 19, 2021
- Type: Explainer

Grab's Lending team relies on multiple microservices to finance various user segments, requiring automated pipelines for operational tasks like loan rescheduling and merchant whitelisting. To execute these workflows, the team uses Ratchet, a Go library that organizes data pipelines into concurrent stages connected by Go channels and JSON payloads. In the Azkaban service, each ETL task is structured as a Job Processor that configures custom Data Processors for extraction, transformation, and loading. For merchant whitelisting, a custom processor pulls uploaded CSV files from Amazon S3, validates the rows to prevent manual errors, calls microservice APIs, and passes the output to an empty load stage. This pipeline architecture allows the team to isolate failures quickly, eliminate manual data validation, and automate routine operational tasks.


### [Last Mile Redis](https://yomu.fyi/post/last-mile-redis.md)
- Company: [Fly.io](https://yomu.fyi/company/fly-io.md)
- Published: Jul 16, 2021
- Type: Problem & solution

Last Mile Redis presents a globally distributed caching design aimed at keeping backend responses under the 100-millisecond threshold by placing Redis near users. It argues that regional datasets overlap less than expected, making one Redis server per region a practical alternative to centralized sharding. The design combines standalone regional caches with a Dallas primary Redis and writable replicas configured with replica-read-only no, allowing local writes while replication distributes global changes. A DEL issued at the primary can therefore purge bad cache data across regions, while timestamped keys and expiration handle ordinary freshness; the same mechanism can also broadcast content or fan out queue messages.


### [Perspectives on React Native from Three Shopify Developers](https://yomu.fyi/post/perspectives-on-react-native-from-three-shopify-developers.md)
- Company: [Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify.md)
- Author: 2023-10-18
- Published: Jul 16, 2021
- Type: Explainer

Three Shopify developers—web developer AJ Robidas, Android developer Michelle Fernandez, and iOS developer Ash Furrow—describe how React Native changes mobile development for people from different backgrounds. They say its React-based model lets web developers build for iOS and Android, helps native developers create interfaces faster and reach a wider audience, and supports collaboration across web, Android, and iOS teams. The developers discuss surprises including React Native’s small set of building blocks, fast UI feedback, native bridge modules, existing SDK integration, and apps that can be difficult to distinguish from Swift or Objective-C software. They also identify challenges such as mobile-specific performance concerns across the RN Bridge, the Metro and Node ecosystem, and the large dependency stack. At Shopify, Visual Studio Code, command-line tooling, internal foundations, workshops, and cross-disciplinary teams support adoption.


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