PostHog hoglake: Petabyte-scale open table format
Comments on “PostHog hoglake: Petabyte-scale open table format”
Claim-checked. Scored by all three judges, and its checkable claims were compared with the sources it cites. How far stories are checked
Hoglake is an open-source table format that keeps snapshots, schema, file lists and statistics as rows in Postgres, with parquet data in object storage.
Why it ranked
No. 21 of 107 with a score of 0.61. The panel rated it highest on new information (0.94) and technical depth (0.92), lowest on audience breadth (0.51). Placed No. 21, No. 46 by score alone: the placement terms moved other stories past it.
- AI judgeJudge 2claude-haiku-5-5
- Technical README for a new open table format with a detailed architecture, benchmarks and design comparisons. Substantive and new, though niche in audience and largely self-describing project documentation with some promotional framing.
- AI judgeJudge 3gpt-5.6-luna
- A highly detailed engineering and data-infrastructure project description with architecture, commit semantics, interoperability, benchmarks, tests, and operational caveats. It is unusually actionable, though petabyte-scale capability is not demonstrated directly.
Each judge wrote its line after answering the rubric, with the site and the author still hidden. Every answer behind this is in the table under Score.
Score
0.61total under rubric v2.3
- Significance0.56
- Reader interest0.72
- Audience breadth0.51
- Practical relevance0.69
- Substantiated0.81
- Technical depth0.92
- New information0.94
- Counts against: Promotional0.14
- Counts against: Overclaim0.32
Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).
| Question | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Mean | Spread | Weight | Contribution (weight times mean) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SignificanceHow much does this change what people in tech know or can do? | 0.55 | 0.40 | 0.72 | 0.56 | 0.32 | +0.24 | +0.134 |
| Reader interestWould a well-informed senior engineer or tech founder want to read this today, and likely pass it on? | 0.69 | 0.60 | 0.88 | 0.72 | 0.28 | +0.26 | +0.188 |
| Audience breadthHow many people who build technology does it concern? | 0.46 | 0.45 | 0.62 | 0.51 | 0.17 | +0.13 | +0.066 |
| Practical relevanceHow useful is it to someone who builds software or tech products? | 0.74 | 0.55 | 0.78 | 0.69 | 0.23 | +0.22 | +0.152 |
| SubstantiatedHow well is it backed? Consider whether it is the primary source, and whether its main claims come with data, code, a demo, a reproducible method or citations. | 0.98 | 0.60 | 0.86 | 0.81 | 0.38 | +0.05 | +0.041 |
| Technical depthHow technically substantive is it? | 0.99 | 0.80 | 0.95 | 0.92 | 0.20 | +0.05 | +0.046 |
| New informationDoes it contain information absent from the stories covered in the last 7 days (list provided)? | 0.93 | 0.90 | 0.98 | 0.94 | 0.08 | +0.05 | +0.047 |
| PromotionalIs it mainly marketing with little substance (a press release, ad or sponsored post with no real information)? A launch post that carries real news is not promotional. | 0.06 | 0.25 | 0.12 | 0.14 | 0.19 | −0.19 | −0.027 |
| OverclaimDo the headline or conclusions claim more than the body supports? | 0.35 | 0.30 | 0.32 | 0.32 | 0.05 | −0.11 | −0.036 |
| Sum of contributions | +0.610 | ||||||
| Claim-check penalty | 0.000 | ||||||
| Total, as published | 0.610 | ||||||
Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.
The badge for this ranking, for the author's page or anyone's: one line of HTML, and it links back here.
<a href="https://rubric.hrih.si/editions/2026-11-03/21/"><img src="https://rubric.hrih.si/badge/2026-11-03/21.svg" alt="Ranked #21 on Rubric, 3 Nov 2026" width="238" height="28"></a>Claim check
Claim check: 1 matches source · 2 no source given · 5 couldn’t check. Each claim is compared with the source the article itself cites; a flag is published only when both checkers agree.
Couldn’t checkBenchmark result
Hoglake commit latency stays flat as catalog size grows, with a p50 ratio of about 1.0 at 10K preseeded snapshots and with 150–500 live tables.
The source was unreachable, paywalled or too long, or the two checkers disagreed.
The article says “Flat — p50 ratio ~1.0 with 10K preseeded snapshots, and with 150–500 live tables”
The source says No passage could be compared.
Source cited by the article: github.com/PostHog/hoglake/blob/main/bench/README.md
Couldn’t checkBenchmark result
Hoglake snapshot expiry runs at 14,462 snapshots/s and 14,885 files queued/s in the benchmark.
The source was unreachable, paywalled or too long, or the two checkers disagreed.
The article says “14,462 snapshots/s; 14,885 files queued/s”
The source says No passage could be compared.
Source cited by the article: github.com/PostHog/hoglake/blob/main/bench/README.md
Couldn’t checkBenchmark result
Hoglake concurrent appends showed 0 conflicts at 1–8 writers, with an aggregate plateau of about 380 commits/s.
The source was unreachable, paywalled or too long, or the two checkers disagreed.
The article says “0 conflicts at 1–8 writers; aggregate plateau ~380 commits/s at the serialized tail”
The source says No passage could be compared.
Source cited by the article: github.com/PostHog/hoglake/blob/main/bench/README.md
Couldn’t checkBenchmark result
The hoglake writer path with real parquet reaches 202K rows/s through table.append.
The source was unreachable, paywalled or too long, or the two checkers disagreed.
The article says “202K rows/s through table.append”
The source says No passage could be compared.
Source cited by the article: github.com/PostHog/hoglake/blob/main/bench/README.md
No source givenNumber
Hoglake is deployed as Gigahog in three environments: dev, prod-us and prod-eu.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “it is deployed as Gigahog in three environments — dev, prod-us and prod-eu”
The source says No source to compare with.
Couldn’t checkBenchmark result
Hoglake changefeed read latency tracks rows returned (r=0.998) rather than catalog size.
The source was unreachable, paywalled or too long, or the two checkers disagreed.
The article says “Latency tracks rows returned (r=0.998), not catalog size”
The source says No passage could be compared.
Source cited by the article: github.com/PostHog/hoglake/blob/main/bench/README.md
No source givenNumber
Hoglake has 27 column wire names, enforced identically by the ColType enum, the hog_column.col_type CHECK and the OpenAPI ColumnDef.type enum.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “The column vocabulary is closed: 27 wire names, enforced identically by the ColType enum, the hog_column.col_type CHECK and the OpenAPI ColumnDef.type enum”
The source says No source to compare with.
Matches sourceGeneralization
DuckLake's commit path loads catalog-wide statistics, whereas hoglake's metadata reads are scoped to the write set.
The cited source says the same thing.
The article says “SQL, but the commit path loads catalog-wide statistics”
The source says “UNIONs the latest-snapshot row with the full `ducklake_table_stats ⟕ ducklake_table_column_stats` join — **no `table_id` filter”
Source cited by the article: github.com/PostHog/hoglake/blob/main/docs/ducklake-defect-ledger.md
Also covered by
No other coverage was clustered with this story.
Elsewhere
Elsewhere: HN 1 pts, not on front page
Recorded for context only, checked 3 Nov 2026, 05:47 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.