Adam Marcus
marcua.net
Adam Marcus
@marcua.net
Hummus, people, and data. Co-Founder & CTO of B12. Previously Locu, MIT CSAIL. He/him.

https://marcua.net/

Queens is the future.
Beautiful nostalgic piece by @adityagp.bsky.social! Don't miss the end for some nice reflections. Aditya's just getting started! :)
October 1, 2025 at 10:26 PM
ayb now includes a web frontend! I hope this expands the set of people that can use ayb.

The web interface lets you create databases, share them with collaborators, and query them from anywhere!

More here: blog.marcua.net/2025/09/27/a...
September 27, 2025 at 4:56 PM
There's almost always a surprising nugget, usually multiple, in the acknowledgements section of a book/dissertation.

Here's one from Manning Marable's "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," for which he was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer prize in history.
August 17, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Things you can learn about a place from Google's automatically generated summary...

(Also Less Than Jake is playing there June 17 if you're into that)
May 29, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Here's Rich in action!
May 22, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Heads up to anyone with a public GitHub repo: I got an email an hour ago that looks like "If you didn't attempt this login, click here." It's a phishing attempt that someone created by posting the issue to my GitHub repo, resulting in my getting a somewhat legitimate-looking email from GitHub.
March 16, 2025 at 3:07 PM
I ruff u
March 6, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Well well well, if it isn't my good friend, overthinking brain, poking around not-for-public-consumption writing. Happy Monday @skamille.themanagerswrath.com :D.
March 3, 2025 at 2:42 PM
This POTUSA album cover is more relevant now than ever
January 29, 2025 at 2:40 PM
What if it was easy for a user to create a personal database and authorize an application to access it? The user could maintain control of the database, and the application would gain access to the data for as long as the user wished. The post also covers some challenges to making this a reality.
January 5, 2025 at 7:08 PM
When Ted Codd imagined enterprise databases in the 1970s, storing company-controlled data in a company-controlled database was a reasonable choice. But for consumer applications, sharing your data with an application that then restricts, loses, leaks, or sells it doesn't make as much sense.
January 5, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Thinking about how disrespectfully the traditional application/database stack treats users’ data. (There’s a second diagram, but it will give away a future blog post:)) #databs
December 8, 2024 at 5:03 PM
Oh, the stories I have for you about replication slot lag for databases under heavy load
November 20, 2024 at 12:31 AM
Wat
October 8, 2024 at 5:17 PM
If you evade a fare on a bus, we're going to fine or arrest you (especially if you are a person of color)! But like, if you hide your car's license plate from toll cameras, we'll like, urge third party marketplaces to like, not make that easy.

NYC is doing great at increasing public transit usage.
August 28, 2024 at 1:34 PM
Feeling pretty smug about this one
December 15, 2023 at 5:20 PM
Finally wrapped up adding API keys/endpoint validation to ayb. ~600 lines of code that allows clients to...protect their databases:)

github.com/marcua/ayb#r...

I learned way more than I wanted to about API keys, including how to not actually store them in a database.
November 11, 2023 at 5:11 PM