PaaS, URLs, MinLZ, SQL Server

1. PaaS (@ Wikipedia) in the EU - Finding Quality European PaaS Providers - It would be so interesting to find out about good European PaaS providers. I skimmed a few options but didn't even bother to try one. The summary from the options covered [Clever Cloud, Scaleway, Stackhero, Platform.sh, Gcore, Hidora, Sliplane, Scalingo, Koyeb] was that all of those are quite limited, mostly container-based (or similar stack where some other code is just run in base PaaS containers provided by them). In the situation where certain companies are doing their business with US IT companies' breakfast cereals, it might be a great idea to improve the European PaaS platform. My requirements for the PaaS were extraordinarily low: just "serverless" Python with managed SQL (or similar) DBaaS database (cloud native database), meaning multiple indexes allowing at least finding documents without implementing soft indexing over pure key-value storage and ACID storage + blob (and/or) file storage, whichever provides reliable persistence for key (seekable / streamable) value blobs. On this kind of stack, I can basically build most of the stuff I'm doing, so it really doesn't matter what the tech "under the hood" is, as long as it's reliable and reasonably priced. Global CDN and a few locations globally would be preferred but not mandatory, like Europe, USA, Singapore, maybe India/Arabia region, and that's pretty much it. Yet that CDN part can of course be added from providers like [Bunny CDN, Gcore, or BlazingCDN]. "Global cloud native multi master database" architectural approaches may not be as critical as they seem, because EU regulatory focus already mandates data regionality.

2. URL (@ Wikipedia) handling complexities and top engineering. IT seems that BlueSky got the same challenges as many other apps and X (Twitter). If I've got 100% exact post URL, and I try to search for the post, it still says that the post doesn't exist. Same issue is on both platforms. I've never understood what's so hard about that. But it seems that it's just way too challenging for those companies involving non-technical people. But as pro, at least SimpleX Chat works perfectly with links now. - At least our local mail (Posti) managed to fix that very complex challenge on their website search. If you go to mail page, and enter tracking code to the search box, it finds the shipment if it exists. Yet this ultimate feat took several years for them to implement. Earlier it said that no shipment found. You had to first search for shipment tracking, and then click link and then enter the shipment code that it found the shipment. - I assume that the reason for that was similar to the earlier companies. The completely uniform shipment code was just too complex for their web search team to understand what it could mean. - Complete lack of general understanding, customer usage patterns and user friendliness. - This is tiring topic, shit UX. - Sure in the case of BS and X, I can open browser, open the link there, and then select and confirm that I really want to open the link in 3rd party application. And now the message IS found with the exact link. - Bleep.

3. MinLZ data compression - When you need fast (real-time) data compression:
   mz-binary   6295736 bytes (100.00% of "mz-amd64-binary")
   mz-comp     3138203 bytes ( 49.88% of "mz-amd64-binary")
   zstd        2646331 bytes ( 42.07% of "mz-amd64-binary")
   7-zip       1984793 bytes ( 31.55% of "mz-amd64-binary")
   7-zip max   1953316 bytes ( 31.02% of "mz-amd64-binary")
   Yet of course this chart is quite useless, without (speed) performance comparison. But gives you general impression what you should expect. This test was about MinLZ compressing about it's own binary, and it compared to the other alternatives. As we all know mz is instant, zstd is super fast and well 7-zip max, hmm, not yet ready, ok soon maybe... That's not ultra compression, with it, we would be still wondering what takes so long.

4. Friend had huge problems with SQL Server and it didn't work, they asked for my help. After wondering for a while what have they done. I found out that they had invalid firewall configuration, as well as they used BOTH, dynamic ports on server side and STATIC port number on connection strings WITH instance name. Uh oh, that's now how it works. Sure you CAN use instance name and port number, but generally that doesn't make too much sense. Either use dynamic ports and instance name and or use static ports and port number.

2025-10-26