Google Spanner Serves Trillions of Rows with 99.999% Reliability

Welcome to the first week of February! 

Today we’re looking into how Google Spanner is managing trillions of transactions with 5-nines availability, along with tips from Addy Osmani, a Senior Staff Engineering Manager at Google Chrome, for making 2025 our best year yet.

We also consider the need for AI regulation, the news of DeepSeek’s database leak, and ISR on Vercel becoming 65% cheaper. And don’t miss the latest from OpenAI, especially if you're looking to streamline your research tasks!

Grab your coffee, and enjoy this edition of Frictionless!

In the Queue

• Estate Planning Platform Saved 500 Hours of Development with Next.js

• New Breed of Sync Engines Is Solving Frontend Problems

• The Secret Costs of Multiple Service Catalogs

• Is Engineering Strategy Actually Helping You?

Reduce Friction

Make 2025 Your Most Impactful Year Yet

Addy Osmani, a Senior Staff Engineering Manager at Google Chrome and front-end expert, shares strategies for those looking to make a real impact in 2025. He touches on his secrets for improving focus, productivity, and leadership growth.

Is Engineering Strategy Useful?

Have you ever asked yourself if your engineering strategy is helping or holding you back? When it’s unclear, teams make inconsistent decisions, waste time on misaligned priorities, and repeat past mistakes. Luckily, the solution might be simpler than you think - just write it down.

Cross-Discipline Approaches

A team stuck in an engineering bubble might be a liability to your efforts. The best teams pull in insights from design, business, and psychology to solve problems from every angle. Cross-functional collaboration builds adaptable organizations that stay ahead.

Deepen Your Expertise

ISR on Vercel Is Now Faster and More Cost-Efficient

Vercel’s Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) is now up to 65% cheaper and a lot faster. Regionalized caching speeds up content regeneration for global users, reducing latency outside North America. 

How a New Breed of Sync Engines Solves Frontend Problems

Most frontend slowdowns aren’t about rendering but how data syncs. A new type of sync engines is changing that, cutting complexity and improving performance. Instead of custom logic, developers can now sync data with SQL queries, reducing backend load and speeding up apps.

The Hidden Complexity of Scaling WebSockets

Real-time apps can’t afford unstable WebSockets. As connections scale, downtime risks, reconnection surges, and performance bottlenecks become real problems. Smart strategies like graceful deployments and fallback mechanisms can keep things running without surprises.

Cross-Platform Mobile Development with Expo

React Native is powerful, but scaling and shipping cross-platform mobile apps can get messy. Expo is changing that. Explore how Expo evolved into a production-grade framework, its developer tools, and what’s next for the platform.

Increase Scalability

How Google Spanner Powers Trillions of Rows with 5 Nines Availability

Managing trillions of transactions across a global network is no small feat. Google Spanner achieves this by combining SQL reliability with NoSQL scalability, using TrueTime (atomic clocks + GPS) to ensure global consistency and high availability at scale.

How an Estate Planning Platform Saved 500 Hours of Development with Next.js

Just in Case Estates needed a fast, cost-effective way to simplify estate planning. With the help of Pagepro, they launched an MVP that reduced development time by 500 hours and cut costs in half. The MVP included a customizable quiz and Stripe integration, helping the company get user feedback and attract partners.

Introducing Deep Research

OpenAI has introduced Deep Research, an AI tool that can autonomously conduct multi-step research tasks and generate detailed reports in as little as 30 minutes. It uses the upcoming o3 model to gather and analyze data from various sources, including text, images, and PDFs.

The Hidden Costs of Multiple Service Catalogs in Development

Multiple service catalogs might be costing you more than you think. Managing separate catalogs leads to duplicated efforts, increased complexity, and slower development cycles. Find out how centralizing service catalogs can make your development more efficient. 

Regulate AI Use, Not AI Development

The debate around AI regulation continues, but some believe the focus should be on how AI is used, not how it’s built. Over-regulating AI models could hurt startups and favor big companies. Instead, we need laws that protect consumers from harmful AI applications, similar to how tech has been regulated before.

Just Cool

DeepSeek Database Leaked – Full Control Over DB Secret keys, Logs & Chat History Exposed

DeepSeek has made headlines again, but not for a good reason. Sensitive data from the Chinese AI startup was exposed in a major security breach when a publicly accessible database revealed chat logs, API keys, and internal data.

Let’s Stay in Touch! 📨 

Do you have any comments about this newsletter issue or questions you want to ask? Drop me a message or book a meeting.