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Archagon Was Here
Personal blog · archagon.net/blog · on HN as archagonprogramminghardwareculture
Archagon Was Here is a personal blog at archagon.net about programming, hardware and culture. Since 2014, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “Show HN: Domain-tailored CRDTs for collaboration without server involvement”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this long 2018 post, "Data laced with history", which compares approaches to collaborative editing (OT, CRDTs, diff sync) and explains CRDT conflict resolution and op logs.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Alexei's pile o'stuff, featuring writing on software development, travel, photography, and more.
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: Domain-tailored CRDTs for collaboration without server involvement19 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2018-03-24
What Hacker News says?
I devoted some time to Differential Synchronization in my article on CRDTs, if you're interested: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/... My sense is that it's not a particularly flexible approach, and falters under adverse network conditions, even though it feels very tempting.
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “CRDTs are the future”Submitted Show HN: Domain-tailored CRDTs for collaboration without server involvement as a story · 158 points
HN discussionIn the case of a text document, concurrent edits form branches of a tree in many string CRDTs: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ So yes, hundreds of people can edit a string and produce a coherent result at the end. Contiguous runs of characters will stick together and interleave with concurrent edits.
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “CRDTs are the future”Submitted Show HN: A Native Art Gallery for the Mac as a story · 146 points
HN discussion> my range tree is just a slightly modified b-tree. But usually when people talk about b-trees they mean a BTreeMap. Thats not what I'm doing here. Instead of storing keys, each internal node of the b-tree stores the total number of characters (recursively) in that item's children. So we can look up any item in the document by character position, or insert or delete anywhere in the document in log(n) time. Cool! Thi…
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “Faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization”Submitted “Stateless” sync using version vectors as a story · 141 points
HN discussionAlso: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “Open source collaborative text editors”Submitted Macbook eGPU Redux: Sticking a GTX 1080 in an AKiTiO Thunder2 as a story · 125 points
HN discussionI'll recommend this link too. Saw it on HN a long time ago. It's quite long but very well explained. http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “Open source collaborative text editors”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs (2018) as a story · 103 points
HN discussionI started with the glimmer of a hope that perhaps network sync could be made stateless, went down a months-long rabbit-hole of research, and ended up writing a novella-length article about CRDTs: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ So many days spent thinking, sketching, trying to swallow a concept that seemed far to big for my jaws—only to suddenly find myself on the other side, with this a…
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs (2018) as a story · 59 points
HN discussionI wonder how long it'll take to get these cards into a "Nano"/ITX/small form factor? Is it even going to be possible after a certain point? IMO, it's the ideal size for eGPU builds, but so far, you can only go as high as a 1080. (Here's my hacky 1080 eGPU build over TB2: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/07/25/egpu-redux/ And just to assuage any fears, there are attractive, pre-built options of the same size for TB3! I…
Comment linking /blog/2018/07/25/egpu-redux/
on “Nvidia announces RTX 2000 GPU series with ‘6x more performance’ and ray-tracing”Submitted Building Real-Time Collaboration over CloudKit: Causal Trees & Operational CRDTs as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYou both may enjoy http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ if you haven't seen it already, it's an absolute gem, and touches on exactly this.
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “Lessons learned from creating a real-time collaborative rich-text editor”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs as a story · 3 points
HN discussion"Data laced with history" (2018) [1] is very relevant here. Interestingly, that extensive post obsessively vivisects RON 1.0 (Replicated Object Notation [2] as of 2017) which was based on columnar compression techniques Automerge recently implemented (53:24 in the talk). Columnar formats have their upsides and downsides, though. [1]: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ [2]: http://replicated…
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “CRDTs: The Hard Parts [video]”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs (2018) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf anyone's interested, I made a set of apps that turns your macOS desktop into a rotating art gallery, given an existing directory of images. It's all done in a completely native way, so you don't have to worry about weird software interactions or future compatibility: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/05/02/a-native-art-gallery-for... Anyway, I'm looking forward to throwing this batch in there. Hope somebody sticks th…
Comment linking /blog/2018/05/02/a-native-art-gallery-for-your-mac/
on “Nearly 1,000 Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Digitized and Put Online”Submitted 2013 Macbook eGPU Redux: Sticking a GTX 1080 in an AKiTiO Thunder2 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI sketched out what a performant pixel-based CRDT might look like in my big CRDT article: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/... Never tried building it, though. And I’m not sure it would actually be practical, but it would at least preserve the full history of the document.
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “Movable tree CRDTs and Loro's implementation”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI built a simple, no-hacks-needed TB2 eGPU for Bootcamp use. The caveat is that an external monitor is required, but other than that it's basically 100% reliable: http://archagon.net/blog/2016/12/31/cheap-and-painless-egpu-... This thing must have extended the life of my laptop by 2-3 years.
Comment linking /blog/2016/12/31/cheap-and-painless-egpu-thrills-on-a-2013-macbook-pro/
on “Blackmagic eGPU – Thunderbolt 3 external graphics processor”Submitted Bluetooth Headphone Sound-Off: Audio-Technica, Sony, Bowers and Wilkins, V-MODA as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs of 2013, at least, the Intel chips were pretty good. Not top-of-the-line by any stretch, but 1/2 to 2/3 as fast as the discrete chip in my Macbook: http://archagon.net/blog/2013/12/19/late-2013-15-macbook-pro... Still, I'd want as much power as humanly possible for gaming on the go. 15-20 extra frames per second matters a lot .
Comment linking /blog/2013/12/19/late-2013-15-macbook-pro-intel-iris-pro-5200-vs-nvidia-750m-and-other-stories/
on “Perhaps it is simpler to say that Intel was disrupted”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf anyone’s interested, I wrote a long article a few months ago on (what I believe to be) the ultimate string CRDT, among other things: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/ I really, really love the work that Levien and Hume have put into the Xi CRDT, and how open they’ve been with their research. IMHO, though, it’s a bit too “academic” and clever for any sort of general purpose use, though i…
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “The Xi Text Engine CRDT”Submitted Data Laced with History: Causal Trees and Operational CRDTs (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionDirectly discussed here: http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/...
Comment linking /blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/
on “CRDT: Conflict-free replicated data type”Submitted Stress-Free eGPU: AORUS 1080 Gaming Box & USB BootCamp on a 2018 13“ MacBook Pro as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
