All Things Distributed

OCTOBER 2, 2017

We were pushing the limits of what was a leading commercial database at the time and were unable to sustain the availability, scalability and performance needs that our growing Amazon business demanded. Today, DynamoDB powers the next wave of high-performance, internet-scale applications that would overburden traditional relational databases.

Internet 128

Internet Internet AWS Performance 128

Alex Russell

MARCH 9, 2024

In some sense it's a confidence-management exercise. Examples include Internet Explorer 3-6 as well as Safari on Mac OS X and the first iPhone. If the web is just another fungible application running atop the internet (which the manifesto does center), then it's fine for the web to be frozen in time, or even shrink.

Benchmarking 59

Benchmarking Strategy Internet Internet 59

Alex Russell

AUGUST 30, 2021

Does Apple restrict, in any way, the ability of competing web browsers to deploy their own web browsing engines when running on Apple's operating system? Such features have lingered behind feature flags for years, never to be flagged on by default in Safari or even made available to competing iOS browsers.

Engineering 98

Engineering Open Source Website Operating System 98

Alex Russell

SEPTEMBER 20, 2020

Pre-publication gates were valuable when better answers weren't available, but commentators should update their priors to account for hardware and software progress of the past 13 years. Safety is within our budget, assuming platforms don't make exotic and dangerous APIs available all programs — more on that in a second.

Hardware 64

Hardware Mobile Programming Java 64