Tom Walder

E-commerce, Google Cloud, Application Development, PHP, Beer, Cycling. Occasional speaker. Technical Consultant & Advisor @gear4music @g4mtech

[Nat Friedman @natfriedman]

Ten months ago, we launched the Vesuvius Challenge to solve the ancient problem of the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of scrolls that were flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2000 years, we can finally read the scrolls:
This image was produced by @Youssef_M_Nader, @LukeFarritor, and @JuliSchillij, who have now won the Vesuvius Challenge Grand Prize of $700,000. Congratulations!!

These fifteen columns come from the very end of the first scroll we have been able to read and contain new text from the ancient world that has never been seen before. The author – probably Epicurean philosopher Philodemus – writes here about music, food, and how to enjoy life's pleasures. In the closing section, he throws shade at unnamed ideological adversaries – perhaps the stoics? – who "have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular."

This year, the Vesuvius Challenge continues. The text that we revealed so far represents just 5% of one scroll.

In 2024, our goal is to from reading a few passages of text to entire scrolls, and we're announcing a new $100,000 grand prize for the first team that is able to read at least 90% of all four scrolls that we have scanned.

The scrolls stored in Naples that remain to be read represent more than 16 megabytes of ancient text. But the villa where the scrolls were found was only partially excavated, and scholars tell us that there may be thousands more scrolls underground. Our hope is that the success of the Vesuvius Challenge catalyzes the excavation of the villa, that the main library is discovered, and that whatever we find there rewrites history and inspires all of us.

It's been a great joy to work on this strange and amazing project. Thanks to Brent Seales for laying the foundation for this work over so many years, thanks to the friends and Twitter users whose donations powered our effort, and thanks to the many contestants whose contributions have made the Vesuvius Challenge successful!

Read more in our announcement: https://t.co/rUlrdGXBMs

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

Software engineering isn't just about keystrokes; it's fundamentally about problem-solving and critical thinking.

[Richard Seroter @rseroter]

We just GA-ed support for @googlecloud Run in Cloud Deploy, our CD service.

Now you can stage your rollouts, add approvals, perform rollbacks, and more with serverless deployments. I just tried it out. Works great.

https://t.co/zhmgtpjeYt

[Mira @StanimiraVlaeva]

well... that's something new. Google Docs supports code blocks now.

[Tom Walder @tom_walder]

@haxor Snapchat was always an interesting example IIRC. They scaled quite fat on App Engine with a very small team. E&OE.

[Alex Xu @alexxubyte]

/1 How will you design the Stack Overflow website? If your answer is on-premise servers and monolith (bottom), you would likely fail the interview, but that's how it is built in reality!

[Firebase @Firebase]

🕵🏻‍♀️ Looking for that one piece of information might feel like searching for a needle in a haystack!

The Search with Elastic App Search Extension makes implementing full-text search a lot easier for your apps using Cloud Firestore.

Get this Extension 🧩 → https://t.co/PhDPCRHj5v

[Rasmus Lerdorf @rasmus]

Biked most of today's TdF stage this morning.

[Thomas Kurian @ThomasOrTK]

Today at #GoogleIO, we’re thrilled to announce AlloyDB for PostgreSQL. Based on our decades of experience designing and managing database systems, it provides superior performance and scale for the most demanding enterprise workloads. https://t.co/yVTkQPSY5b

[Steren @steren]

✅ You can now define service-level objectives (SLOs) for your Cloud Run services https://t.co/jDJGQQAmGN

[Tom Walder @tom_walder]

Phenomenal resource. We’ll worth the read.

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

The "Software Engineering at Google" book is now free to read online: https://t.co/cqX79uZNFK. Great insights on improving code quality & scaling engineering teams.

[Google Cloud Tech @GoogleCloudTech]

The new Insights for MySQL allows you to move from detection to diagnosis seamlessly—using a single interface.

Similar to Cloud SQL Insights for PostgreSQL, identify query performance problems early with pre-built dashboards. An example ⬇️

Read more → https://t.co/JMSAQysKxY

[Tom Walder @tom_walder]

@FredItaFe Hey. I’ve not updated that package in a while. It may be because the GAE dev environment does not have the expected Environkent variables. Raise an issue against the project on GitHub and I’ll try to help.

[Leaning Technologies @leaningtech]

We have made a server-less virtual Linux environment that runs unmodified Debian binaries in the browser.

This is powered by CheerpX, a WebAssembly virtualization platform. Feel free to play with it and report bugs:

https://t.co/1j9kA1ZaQb

[Brett Slatkin @haxor]

Developers: Build and use pencils, not space pens!

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

"What nobody tells you about software documentation": https://t.co/LsFmM8brbe

[@norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com on Bluesky @norootcause]

As a software developer, you may be called upon to perform some of these tasks in your career.

How well a CS degree prepares you for these tasks (and whether it even should prepare you for these) is left as an exercise to the reader.

🧵
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[Google Cloud @googlecloud]

We’re excited to announce the general availability of Cloud IDS. This core network security offering helps detect network-based threats and helps organizations meet compliance standards that call for the use of an intrusion detection system. Learn more ↓
https://t.co/Kg9f16hZQG

[Tom Walder @tom_walder]

@martindownton @idlehandscoffee Never a bad time of day for breakfast.