skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Data Chaos in BI Reporting

At our core, we work with business intelligence dashboards every day. Companies rely on Looker Studio to visualize data, but connecting multiple sources—Google Analytics 4, Stripe, PostgreSQL, and CRMs—has always been a bottleneck.

Initially, our workflow was like most others:
• Exporting data manually.
• Writing SQL queries to merge datasets.
• Using third-party ETL tools to automate ingestion.
• Waiting for reports to refresh—sometimes hours later.

This process was slow, expensive, and error-prone. Reports would break when an API changed, and debugging data mismatches was a constant headache. The problem was clear: we needed a faster way to unify data without relying on ETLs.

⸻

The Breakthrough: Leveraging Looker Studio’s Built-in Capabilities

Instead of forcing an ETL-heavy approach, we took a step back and asked:

How much of this process can be handled directly inside Looker Studio?

Through a series of optimizations, we found that Looker Studio’s built-in connectors and data blending features could replace most ETL needs—if configured correctly.

1. Direct Connections Over Data Warehousing

We eliminated unnecessary data warehousing steps by using Looker Studio’s native connectors. Instead of pushing everything into BigQuery first, we connected:
• GA4 via the native API (instead of exporting CSVs).
• Stripe directly through its reporting endpoints.
• PostgreSQL using a direct database connector.

This reduced latency and removed an entire layer of data processing.

2. Smarter Data Blending for Multi-Source Analysis

Looker Studio allows blending data across sources, but it has limitations—joins must be pre-aggregated, and performance drops with large datasets.

To work around this, we:
• Pre-aggregated key metrics before blending (e.g., revenue per day, not per transaction).
• Used lookup tables instead of full dataset joins.
• Optimized key fields to ensure one-to-one relationships rather than many-to-many.

This made blending 90% faster and prevented dashboard slowdowns.

3. Parameterized Reports Instead of Static Queries

Traditional BI setups rely on fixed SQL queries. Instead, we leveraged Looker Studio’s parameter fields, allowing reports to dynamically adjust based on user input.
• Instead of preloading a year’s worth of data, reports pull only the necessary timeframe.
• Filtering by product category, customer segment, or campaign became instantaneous.
• Less data processed = faster reports, fewer API calls.

⸻

The Result: 70% Faster Reporting with Zero ETLs

After implementing these optimizations, our reporting workflow transformed:
• Reports update in real-time instead of hours.
• No more third-party ETL dependencies or maintenance.
• Business teams access unified data without waiting for engineering.

This wasn’t just about speed—it was about control. By removing ETL complexity, we made reporting more accessible, maintainable, and resilient.

Would love to hear how others have tackled BI reporting challenges. What’s worked for you?
~70% of the 8 billion people in this world use a smartphone [1]. It is the primary computer for a huge percentage of these people [2].

Comparing mobile phones to toasters, ovens and gaming consoles is disingenuous.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone...

[2] https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mob...
We've been using Wiz at least from Oct22 (And we do things with Wix API too, so the naming creates plenty of confusion). Cloud Engineer with Google Cloud and AWS.

It can scan a lot of stuff and give you pretty interesting insights and alerts.

And do you know what managers like? It creates Jira tickets automatically with all the findings, and they can assign them to people and say they've done their thing. We hate that because tickets appear and disappear magically in hundreds each time Wiz scans, sometimes with no obvious explanations.

But here come some of the bad things:

- UI/UX: Terrible. It's so difficult and confusing reaching from one place to the other and finding stuff that you had open just instants ago. Slow too. I've seen the security people do nice filters and search queries but it's not intuitive at all.
- Doesn't support very basic features. For example, in Docker Hub they don't support scanning full organizations or using organizational tokens for scanning individual repositories. They personally told me in our support channel that they were looking into it... in April 2023. Still waiting. (The API is slightly different than a regular Docker Hub public repo but, come on, an enterprise security tool that doesn't support connecting to a Docker Hub org... that's just silly)
- Closed docs. You can only check the docs if logged in. I hate that and also limits the work with people that's not a Wiz user.
- Terraform provider:
It's quite limited, that means you need A LOT of manual work to integrate stuff with their scanners
It's changelog URL doesn't work, so good luck with knowing when features appear or when you get breaking changes
No source AFAIK, you just get a binary. Good luck.
- Pricing. Can't remember the specifics but I hear a lot of complaints about how expensive they are. Also, no public pricing.
I feel the same way about Farscape.
Tunnelling to the Heart of Cell Communication
https://archive.ph/pnpwA
Does this support time travel queries?

Does it support reading everything from one snapshot to another? (This is missing in Athena)

If yes to both, does it respect row level deletes when it does this?
Learning to Love Dandelions (2021)
The scammer just has to catch the victim at their worst moment. Tired? Drunk? Undergoing a personal crisis? Maybe the scam just hit exactly the right formula to trick you-- you'd just been on the phone with comcast and then a scammer pretending to be comcast just happens to call back at the right time.

Sure, some of their victims would always for it, though I suspect they're a small minority. But everyone can be scammed.
What doesn't work properly?
Felt like a pr piece when the first line said “ultra cheap”. $21,500 is no ultra cheap when you compare it to vehicles like the Chinese made BYD brand some of which are $9700.

Yes it is nice to see prices come down but you are not going to convince me and millions of others that this is ultra cheap.
I've come across this.

I really would like calling too. There's a lot of daylight between I lost my phone and need to call a cab, and send a helicopter.

Right now I have an LTE smart watch, but the battery is optimistically about 24 hours( on a good day ).
It looked like it was not just the oximeter but the arrangement of the sensors and the fact that they fist approached Masimo with a licensing deal but then canceled and hired engineers from Masimo instead....

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34360292
This has more to do with Tesla's being totaled in fender benders than the events of the last two months because the cost associated with replacing and fixing the cameras, electronics, and sensors. I've had two friends who had rear end accidents with their Teslas. One took over a year for his car to be returned in full working order after being rear ended at a stop sign. The other backed into a pole in a parking lot and they totaled out the car. All this cool stuff made these vehicles unrepairable from what are minor issues with less advanced vehicles.
Should/would the government bail out Tesla were it to get into financial difficulties?
It's not that they're cheap, it's just some competitors are even more expensive... :D
Replace MDM administrator with ‘malware author’ or ‘spy software’ to get your answer. There is functionally no difference between a regular company doing MDM wanting to bypass camera permission prompts and a hacker who has tricked/forced the user into enrolling into MDM.

Now, replace ‘Apple’ with ‘malware author’. What’s the difference? Well, for one, a hacker has nothing to lose and everything to gain from snooping on your webcam. Meanwhile, if Apple mishandles this permission or used it to beam video data to HQ, there’s a high likelihood hundreds of millions of dollars of iPhone or Mac customers are lost, resulting in billions of dollars in stock value loss.
FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies
This makes complete sense, we have the system and both itsme and eID readers can be made to only provide age and a uuid. If implemented correctly this would be both secure and privacy preserving.
Funny, I read TFA and came to the comments to share exactly this recent blog post of yours. Big fan of your work, Robin!
America doesn't rescind or invalidate old money from circulation when a new design comes out though. No one is going to bat an eye at a 10 year old $100 bill coming through.
Not explicitly (because that might be too openly anti-competitive even for Apple) but Apple refused to allow f.lux into the App Store, and it had to be sideloaded - and Apple leaned on them to stop offering that.

When Apple did offer Night Shift in iOS 9.3 it made the APIs to do this Apple-only, for ... reasons. As of today, no non-Apple app can modify color temperature of the display.
This seems to have done it: https://unrollnow.com/status/1901772751423373476
Even 350kw (by far the newest batch) is a fraction of what would be needed here.

Regardless, those station numbers are also misleading. As I wrote such chargers are most often in islands of 10-20 poles so you can divide that number. Plus 350kw is almost always shared per two stations - meaning you get half if both sides of the charger is occupied.
I’m not sure I can connect to any particular moment or chain of events (that will probably take some soul searching) to point to as a cause, but I’ve become conscious of a reduced (though not entirely severed) connection to my emotions in recent years. There are times where feelings will come through with strength similar to how they used to, but much of the time sensations are dulled. This has naturally had negative effects on my ability to make choices purely based on personal pleasure, too, which can be a problem when e.g. I’m spending an evening out with a friend and they ask what I’d like to do — sometimes answering is difficult because even if I have a preference, it’s not surfacing itself which makes it seem that the decision makes no difference.

Something that helped was re-connecting with the past version of myself by going through some truly ancient computer backups. To some extent it put me back into my prior mindset, and so now at least I’m doing things explicitly because I want to and find doing them enjoyable.

I can only theorize on what might finish returning me back to how I used to be, but I think probably the most beneficial thing would be a hard break from most of my responsibilities for an extended period of time which I can then dedicate to myself, probably somewhere between 6 months and 2+ years. That’s not exactly practical though because I have a mortgage and bills to pay.
Blender is cheaper than Maya and Autodesk Nuke... and accessible to every artist.

Thus, it is a very common tool choice behind the scenes (targeting OpenEXR frame sequences and post-render compositing layers), but the color profiles are usually still done with professional video editing software. The OpenEXR format offers a few tricks for cleaning up lighting without re-rendering a scene.

Blenders problem is it is perpetually Beta, and plugin ecosystems can be unreliable in a production setting. The film Flow was a miracle to pull off with a tool with dozens of known broken features every "release".

It is like any other tool, in that most of its features take a lot of time to master. For low-poly game assets, it is totally worth a donation. =3
When I read the headline, I assumed the IoT platform and smart light brand, the now Wi-Fi arm of Signify, the smart home people who do (Philips) Hue smart lighting.

https://www.wizconnected.com/en-gb
Isn't that why Tesla exist in the first place? Tax payer dollars.
Levels.fyi Top Pay by Level
Thats also a good point. For the big Milk-V systems I mentioned they use external DRAM-- but cache might still be a die-space issue (I'd assume that it's always shared completely between ARM/RISC-V cores, and would need to be scaled up for true multicore operation).

But I'm still amazed that this is a thing, and you can apparently just throw a full core for a different architecture on a microcontroller at basically no cost :O
I used an apple watch since the first one, updated twice, but stopped using it a few months ago. Siri got slower an more unreliable. Automatic sport detection became annoying. And still having to charge it every single day became pretty old. I miss being able to pay with my watch without having to unlock my phone. But thats about it. Anything else about that product just became annoying.

I'm 100% certain that if 3rd party watches could integrate like apple watch could, that apple watch could be way better. But the lack of alternatives conceals how mediocre of a product it became. I wish apple wasn't such a control freak.
> So where is that 'force' expected to come from...?

On the margin, it probably does annoy some people enough to do something about it. And even though Apple's policy on this isn't enough to move me, if you combine it with my other annoyances about Apple products, eventually the sum will be enough.

And we vocalize stuff like this because switching does have a cost that I'd rather not pay, so hopefully people who can make a change at Apple will see the discontent and fix it so that I don't have to pay the switching cost.
It’s obvious that an executive is behind if their understanding of AI is congruent with fuel additive. With that in mind, I wonder about the 11% who don’t need or have a strategy. Have they left choice-of-AI up to managers? That’s quite interesting; it implies those execs are comfortable seeing departments switch from profit to cost and vice-versa (my idea of “ripped apart”), which is exactly the strategy I’d expect from an AI executive.
Unless regulation is the problem[1], you need the will of the people[2] to see regulation come into force. But if the people had the will, they could just see it through already. No need for regulation.

[1] Which it is in the case of computing. Intellectual property law makes direct competition against the law.

[2] Assuming a democracy.
The insurance in question is more about individual cars rather than stores;

And while Teslas have Sentry mode that could detect things like paint, door dings, tire vandalism to record a criminal act, law enforcement has rarely been able to enforce much except the extreme or flagrant.
I'm slightly baffled by this acquisition but arguing against you actually helps me make some sense of it.

If Google wants to be "the best of the best" at security and some set of potential customers use Wiz as their "best of the best" security, then this is a way to convert those customers to Google.

Consider some org that prioritizes security, like at the board level. They maybe don't really care about the nickel and dime cost of AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP since it comes out to 10s or 100s of millions of opex in the end. What they do care about is the cleanest record possible with respect to security. And Wiz is a key component to their position on security that is communicated to investors - it is a social proof that they are taking security very seriously.

This now becomes a tool for Google when trying to win their business. By degrading the value of Wiz on AWS/Azure/Oracle/Salesforce they are taking away that bullet point on security for a subset of competitors customers. And that may entice some of them to move their entire cloud service to GCP. So whatever revenue they lose on the Wiz side from a dozen or so cancellations they would hope to make up with a few 100 million dollar whales.

I just find it hard to believe that enough whale level cloud compute business will be generated in this way to justify $32b. This is really the best take I have on the acquisition and it feels unsatisfying, as if there is some other decisive information that would provide a justification for such a valuation.

Maybe there is some government mandate coming down the pipeline that isn't very public yet? Some kind of legislation that will force companies to adopt stricter security policies? That could precipitate the kind of changes that would justify this kind of massive valuation.
I would guess that the multiple interstate locations will bump it to the Federal level. Exactly as it would have, with the Apple stores.
Must-Haves for Every Data Security Policy
In today’s digital landscape, a dedicated data security policy isn’t optional—it’s essential. Without one, businesses risk costly cyberattacks, compliance violations, and reputation damage. In Q3 2024 alone, 422 million records were exposed in data breaches, underscoring the growing threats organizations face.

What is a Data Security Policy?
A data security policy is a structured set of controls, practices, and regulations that protect an organization’s data from breaches, ransomware, and misuse. It covers:

Data governance – Ensuring security, availability, and quality
Access control – Defining who can access specific datasets
Threat detection – Implementing real-time monitoring
Compliance – Aligning with regulations like GDPR
Why Your Organization Needs a Data Security Policy
With the rise of cloud computing and SaaS, sensitive business data is often scattered across multiple platforms. Risks include:

Unsecured cloud storage – Employees storing sensitive data on Google Drive
SaaS breaches – High-profile hacks, like the 2023 Microsoft cloud attack
Shadow IT – Unauthorized apps increasing security blind spots
7 Essential Elements of a Data Security Policy
Comprehensive Data Inventory – Identify and classify all structured and unstructured data.
Risk Assessment – Rank data based on sensitivity and potential impact.
Access Control Policies – Implement role-based permissions to limit data exposure.
Real-Time Threat Detection – Identify breaches before they cause harm.
Misconfiguration Management – Secure SaaS settings to prevent accidental leaks.
Third-Party Integration Monitoring – Ensure connected apps don’t introduce vulnerabilities.
Data Encryption Standards – Protect sensitive data with robust encryption.
How to Implement a Strong Data Security Policy
A successful data security policy requires clear roles, accountability, and the right tools. Solutions like Suridata help automate data discovery, detect misconfigurations, and enforce security policies across SaaS ecosystems.

Secure Your Data Now
Protecting business data is non-negotiable. Start building your data security policy today to mitigate risks and ensure compliance.

Visit the Source Website today to get further details about Data Security Policy. https://www.suridata.ai/blog/7-must-haves-for-every-data-security-policy/
some people say agents can help. but still difficult to pull it without robust human in the loop: https://medium.com/thoughts-on-machine-learning/build-a-text...
> I wouldn't want to give up the security to make it work

Android shows that you don't have to.
Absolutely correct. But also there could be other reasons. The Mercedes cars offer SAE Level 3 certification ("you are officially not driving the car or watching the road, but we may demand you take over"), versus the much more dangerous Tesla Level 2 ("you are still responsible for driving and must constantly supervise but also the car will be doing it all for you, please don't stop paying attention at any point").

There have been, what, more than 50 self-driving fatalities in Teslas already? Of course the insurance premium would be higher.
Apple is a poster child for why there should be limits on the power of wealth

Closing your mind to the possibility that Apple is throughly rotton is probably soothing, but the possibility remains that we are right, you are wrong, and each time the conclusion is the same, and correct

Big Tech monopolies sniffle innovation and hord resources
US tech jobs outlook clouded by DOGE cuts, Trump tariffs
Trump did literally say during that event that attacking Tesla showrooms was domestic terrorism.
In most of the country, California unions have largely negotiated for .5x pay while on call making it quite popular.
Berkelium snared in organometallic trap
https://archive.ph/S08HZ
Oh, yeah sorry I figured but perhaps for different reasons. Just trying to clarify that.
Both models have a 6-axis accelerometer, only one has compass reading.
Might effect new buyers decisions I guess, but since about 99% of Tesla's were sold to green, left-leaning buyers, before the Elon hate-fest, I am not sure how targeting that group of people for your hatred is helping any "cause".
Likely a condition from IP holders to make sure the play is counted and paid for.
https://100go.co/ has a great list of Go footguns
I mean the reason is because Apple, the people who made the security boundary, and Apple the people who made Quicktime are the same people.

I'm not saying it's not anti-competitive but it's fine from a security context. Apple knows exactly how Quicktime behaves, that it doesn't act maliciously, and can't be updated to do so.
> It's often said to be about commitment, a sense that they're really "present" and really focused on you. That's certainly something we want actors to do: the more they care about their scene-partners, the more the audience will be drawn to both.

This is an enormously important point. The secret is that charisma is mostly a "pull" (react) process. Does it feel like I'm happy to see you? Am I surfing your energy? Am I empathetic? How do I handle your feedback? Am I really listening, or just waiting until you stop talking to say my piece?

If you mistake it for primarily a "push" (act) process, people will just think you're a wanker. As the author puts it, "Charisma is all about how you make others feel". Charisma is a full-duplex process.
Moving between distros I usually just have files I care about like documents and music on their own drive so I don't need to worry about moving them. As for moving from Ubuntu to Fedora, there are more steps to getting non-free software/codecs/drivers working on Fedora, you will need RPM Fusion for that. There are relevant How-Tos provided by RPM Fusion and other sources for installing NVIDIA drivers, ffmpeg (non-free), and more.
> Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own

Maybe, but something like 90%+ of all Teslas sold were manufactured after Tesla the company was already on my blacklist due to the ethical issues with supporting Musk.

(There are a number of companies on my blacklist, but off the top of my head I can't recall any others that are specifically there because of the singular actions of an owner.)
The ultra only needs to be charged for like 45 mins every couple days. It’s nice for the “find my phone” button and for getting alerts when my phone is in my pocket.
When it seems like the mountain is impossible to climb and it's overwhelming I just look for the next small thing to fix/implement and get it done. Rinse and repeat. Don't think about the bigger picture, just get stuff done. Eventually a lot of stuff gets done and you make progress.
Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?

I think it's more likely they'll start enforcing jaywalking laws against children playing hockey in the street.

Now, I'm not saying anyone should vandalize someone else's car for political reasons but as a campaign to dissuade people from buying Teslas this seems to be quite effective.