TL;DR
Two contributors on the January 2026 Ask HN thread describe active projects: one has resumed a lightweight bitemporal data system and plans extensive testing and a follow-up blog post; another is prototyping a post‑UNIX, capability‑based, message‑passing platform targeting Linux and bare‑metal RISC‑V. Both efforts remain experimental and work-in-progress.
What happened
On the January Ask HN thread a developer reported restarting work on a project they call the "Poor Man's Bitemporal Data System." After a holiday break erased some mental context, they say the core idea is functional but significant testing and benchmarking remain to prove it won't lose data or be vulnerable to denial-of-service due to large object-to-facts fan‑out. The comment includes short REPL-style examples showing fact assertions, redactions and reads and notes an upcoming long blog post. Separately, another contributor outlined a prototype for a post‑UNIX software platform designed around capabilities and message passing, with a stackless scheduler running on a flat address space and lightweight processes to lower messaging latency. That person has also built a RISC‑V emulator to run sandboxed native binaries and says they plan preemption without per‑process stacks and eventual use of a high‑performance serialization layer to enable distributed, typed object‑capabilities.
Why it matters
- Bitemporal systems track data across both valid and transaction time, which can matter for auditing and historical queries.
- Thorough testing and benchmarking are needed to confirm new data systems do not lose information or accidentally enable denial-of-service vectors.
- A capability-oriented, message‑passing OS model could change how isolation and interprocess communication are structured, especially on open architectures like RISC‑V.
- A RISC‑V emulator tied to the platform could facilitate running diverse native code in sandboxed environments for research and prototyping.
Key facts
- Project restarted: 'Poor Man's Bitemporal Data System' after a holiday pause.
- Developer reports core idea currently works but requires extensive testing and benchmarking to validate safety and performance.
- Concerns include potential data loss and denial-of-service from object-map to facts fan‑out.
- Commenter plans a second, lengthy blog post to explain progress and accumulated notes.
- REPL-style snippets in the thread reference actions like asserting facts, redacting facts and reading state.
- A separate poster is prototyping a post‑UNIX platform built around capabilities and message passing for Linux and bare‑metal RISC‑V.
- That platform uses a stackless scheduler, flat address space and lightweight processes to reduce messaging latency.
- A RISC‑V emulator has been developed to run native binaries within the proposed sandboxed, message‑passing environment.
- The RISC‑V project includes a plan for preemption without giving each process its own stack, and aims to layer high-performance serialization (e.g., Cap'n Proto) later.
- Fallback options mentioned for the bitemporal project include established systems such as Datomic and XTDB.
What to watch next
- Publication of the promised second, detailed blog post explaining the bitemporal system's design and trade-offs.
- Results of planned testing and benchmarking that address data durability and potential denial‑of‑service risks.
- Progress on the stackless scheduler and the proposed preemption mechanism for the capability/message‑passing platform.
- not confirmed in the source: whether either project will release source code or a public repository in the near term.
Quick glossary
- Bitemporal data: A data model that records both the time a fact is true in the real world and the time the fact was recorded in the database, enabling queries across both timelines.
- Capability: A unforgeable token or reference that grants the holder permission to perform operations on an object or resource; used to enforce fine-grained access control.
- Message passing: A communication paradigm where components interact by sending and receiving messages, often used to avoid shared mutable state.
- Stackless scheduler: A scheduling approach that avoids allocating a separate call stack for each lightweight process, aiming to reduce memory overhead and context-switch cost.
- RISC‑V: An open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) that is modular and extensible, used for research and commercial processors.
Reader FAQ
Is the bitemporal project production-ready?
Not confirmed in the source; the author says much testing and benchmarking remain.
Will the capability/message‑passing OS run native binaries?
The commenter says they built a RISC‑V emulator to run native binaries in the sandboxed environment, but wider readiness is not confirmed.
Are the projects open source or available in a repo?
Not confirmed in the source.
What are Datomic and XTDB mentioned as fallbacks?
They are existing database systems that provide immutable, history-aware or bitemporal features and are referenced as alternatives by the author.
Just got started again on my "Poor Man's Bitemporal Data System" (discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118585 ). Holidays nuked all the hot-cached context in my head. I spent a few days just…
Sources
- Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)
- Cybersecurity Threats January 2026: Attackers Shift to …
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