Understanding Smallpond and 3FS

Notice the “IMO pretty” before the word “obvious”

IMO means “in my opinion.” I used that phrase to express how the following statement is my opinion and not a universal truth. My “audience” in this case is myself.

I do that because otherwise there’s always a comment saying how things like “obvious” can be subjective.

I also used the word “pretty” to, again, soften the word “obvious” so that readers don’t think that it’s a universal truth.

I updated the post. In this case, I meant "exotic" infra... e.g. 3FS isn't like adding more EC2 instances.

Adding ec2 instances is trivial, setting up 3FS is hard.

You’ve been wanting to get this off your chest for a while haven’t you.

I had a Chinese co-worker and something like this was actually his style of writing, no use of AI, because I was sitting next to him few times when he was writing documents.

Not judging you for using AI for a post like this!

Don’t feel bad. I just didn’t think AI generated bullet points were as impressive as the comment I was replying to did.

It was, but people here prioritise lexixal inambiguity rather than fun.

I was surprised because I thought the title meant they dropped support or something. Weird because I'd never heard of distributed DuckDB.

In denotation, "dropped" can be used equivalently to "released", yes; but in connotation, using "dropped" instead of "released" implies either that:

1. the particular release was sudden, unexpected, and not highly pre-advertised or post-advertised — as in an album being "dropped" by a band (where the band more often "releases" albums.) Usage of "dropped" here evokes the feeling that the releaser is casually "dropping" the thing in the public square and walking away, leaving it there to be studied. A band would release an album by going on tour selling it; or they might just drop an album on Spotify one day.

2. the particular release was a single limited production run / limited-time event — where people were anticipating something would be released at a certain specific time, but there was no advance statement from the releaser of exactly what people would be getting. Strong analogy with the NYE "ball drop" — the release is an event that people count down to or line up for. (Think: dropping a new limited-edition colorway of a product people ravenously collect — sneakers, Stanley cups, etc.)

3. the particular release was a bounded-in-size batch or "tranch" of production, all put out to be purchased at once where "once they sell out, they sell out" for now — but with the expectation that the releaser is producing more, but where this will take time, during which the item will remain sold out. (Often, the item has actually been produced in quantity, and this limited dribbling-out and repeated fast selling-out is purely a marketing technique to induce hype and demand.) This usage isn't a figurative extension of the literal verb "drop" — but rather a shortening of the word "airdrop", as in military resupply and/or NFTs. You would be more likely to see this phrased as "[X] dropped another [Y]" or "[X] dropped more [Y]"; or perhaps "there was a drop of [Y] today."

Yes, most young people would say an artist “dropped” new music instead of saying that they released new music. Still a bad title though

I think to be clearer it would have been written "DeepSeek Drops Distributed version of DuckDB". Otherwise it looks like they used DuckDB (the distributed one?) and they have something new or better they're using now.

Dropped could also mean they used to use it but stopped, that's also pretty common parlance in software...

You seriously don't what it means to "drop" something? Fuck. I forgot that a lot of you are social retards.