Relevance vs. similarity in retrieval systems

News includes Elixir v1.20.0-rc.1 with important type system improvements, not one but two new Elixir-native Bash interpreters for seamless interop, LiveCapture bringing zero-boilerplate storybooks to LiveView components, Christian Alexander's DurableObject library for persistent actors inspired by Cloudflare, Postgres getting a game-changing BM25 text search extension that rivals Elasticsearch, a breakthrough RAG approach that eliminates vector databases entirely while achieving 98.7% accuracy, and more!

Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/290

Elixir Community News

• https://paraxial.io/ – Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.
• https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.20.0-rc.1 – Elixir v1.20.0-rc.1 released with bug fixes including improved type system performance and bitstring type handling
• https://elixirforum.com/t/elixir-v1-20-0-rc-0-and-rc-1-released-type-inference-of-all-constructs/73927/31 – Discussion of Credo warning issue with missing @moduledoc when using Elixir 1.20 RCs - fix is to upgrade Credo
• http://github.com/tv-labs/bash – New Elixir-native Bash interpreter with complete implementation of Bash built-ins and quirks
• https://github.com/elixir-ai-tools/just_bash – Second Elixir-native Bash interpreter implementation
• https://github.com/achempion/live_capture – LiveCapture - zero-boilerplate storybook for LiveView components requiring only single line capture_all()
• https://elixirforum.com/t/livecapture-zero-boilerplate-storybook-for-liveview-components-by-waffle-creator/74028 – ElixirForum post with more details about LiveCapture by Boris Kuznetsov
• https://captures.captureui.com/phoenix_live_dashboard/components/Elixir.Phoenix.LiveDashboard.HomePage/render – Example LiveCapture storybook showing all components from LiveDashboard
• https://github.com/leandrocp/autumn/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md – Autumn has been renamed to Lumis - v0.1.0 has same API as autumn v0.6.0
• https://github.com/leandrocp/mdex – MDEx project that uses Lumis for syntax highlighting
• https://x.com/swmansionElixir/status/2014378959962567078 – SoftwareMansion announcement of updated Elixir Language Tour
• https://elixir-language-tour.swmansion.com/introduction – Updated Elixir Language Tour using Popcorn to run Elixir in browser via AtomVM
• https://github.com/software-mansion/popcorn – Popcorn project that executes Elixir code in WebAssembly using AtomVM
• https://github.com/ChristianAlexander/durable_object – DurableObject library for Elixir - persistent, single-instance objects accessed by ID
• https://hexdocs.pm/durable_object/readme.html – DurableObject documentation explaining stateful, persistent actors using GenServer, Ecto, and Spark DSL
• https://developers.cloudflare.com/durable-objects/concepts/what-are-durable-objects/ – Cloudflare documentation describing Durable Objects and the Actor programming model
• https://x.com/akshay_pachaar/status/2014314783391298019 – Announcement about Postgres getting advanced text searching extension with BM25 ranking
• https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearch – pg_textsearch extension bringing BM25 relevance ranking to Postgres (v0.5.0-dev, GA expected Feb 2026)
• https://hexdocs.pm/torus – Torus library for making search easier in Postgres for Elixir projects
• https://x.com/_avichawla/status/2014586815714664698 – New RAG approach that doesn't need vector DB, embedding, chunking, or similarity search - hits 98.7% accuracy
• https://huggingface.co/blog/daya-shankar/sota-ai-models – Explanation of SOTA (State of the Art) in AI models
• https://github.com/VectifyAI/PageIndex – PageIndex - vectorless, reasoning-based RAG system using hierarchical tree index for long professional documents

Do you have some Elixir news to share? Tell us at @ThinkingElixir or email at show@thinkingelixir.com

Find us online

• Message the show - Bluesky
• Message the show - X
• Message the show on Fediverse - @ThinkingElixir@genserver.social
• Email the show - show@thinkingelixir.com
• Mark Ericksen on X - @brainlid
• Mark Ericksen on Bluesky - @brainlid.bsky.social
• Mark Ericksen on Fediverse - @brainlid@genserver.social
• David Bernheisel on Bluesky - @david.bernheisel.com
• David Bernheisel on Fediverse - @dbern@genserver.social

Sponsored By:

• Paraxial.io: Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.