Isn't data inserted into basically a normal Postgres table with hypertable extensions? I don't know the details of Timescale but that sounds like it would incur a cost of a normal Postgres insert, plus potentially extra work at insert time, plus extra work in the background to manage the hypertable.
Not entirely. A hypertable is a postgres table chunked over time. There is the assumption that most data and queries are time-relevant, but also that older data is less relevant than new data.
Indexes are per chunk. So if the query analyzer understands you only touch 2023 it can omit looking at any chunk that is from other years and keep those out of memory. Same with the indexes.
