I have 100% failed interviews by giving that answer when their definition of scale was 10,000!!!! req/sec. Like sorry dude in 2026 that's not much different than 10 req/sec and my original design would work just fine... But that's what happens when your interviewer is a "senior" 24 year old just reading off the prompt.
Well, it depends what those requests are doing surely? I always thought it was weird to treat "request" as a unit of measurement. Are you requesting a static help page, or a GraphQL search query?
The answer to this is almost always "NO" in my experience, because no one ever actually has good suggestions when it comes up. It's never "should we choose a scalable compute/database platform?" It's always "should we build a complex abstraction layer in case we want to use multiple blob storage systems that will only contain the lowest common denominator of features of both AND require constant maintenance AND have weird bugs and performance issues because I think I'm smarter than AWS/Google AND ALSO we have no plans to actually DO that?"
Iran is on “death ground” as Sarah Paine would say. It’s a TERRIBLE idea to put your enemy on death ground because all they can do is fight now. We’re going to keep bombing them until there’s nothing left. Iran is going to end up looking like Afghanistan (a broken country of small feudal states) at the end of this.
Edit: By Iran, I'm referring to what's left of the current Iranian administration and military, not the entirety of the Iranian people.
You’re overlooking the fundamental difference between Iranian society and Afghan society. In Afghanistan, the U.S. was trying to bomb a place that was always a collection of small feudal states into being a functioning country. In Iran, it’s trying to dislodge a theocracy that’s taken over a country that’s had orderly, centralized administration for almost two thousand years.
I wouldn’t bet on either approach working. But a good outcome in Afghanistan was always completely hopeless. A good outcome in Iran is merely unlikely.
I agree with you that Afghanistan is a much different country. My fear is that once the entire centralized theocracy is bombed out of existence it will open the door for localize warlords to begin carving up territory. The alternative is a Khamenei 2.0 character stepping in. But then the question is, will Israel/the US not just assassinate them too? I don't know but there's no way this ends well.
I hate the idea of nation building. But I’ve long thought that if there was any Muslim country where we could pull off the feat we did in Germany and Japan—turning it into a stable democracy—it’s Iran. But that would take boots on the ground, which I don’t support. (I don’t support the assassination either to be clear.)
That’s my point. Germany already had a developed state with burgeoning democratic government. So it wasn’t a tall order to reboot it as a stable democracy. Japan likewise had already developed a modern state under Emperor Meiji.
> In Iran, it’s trying to dislodge a theocracy that’s taken over a country that’s had orderly, centralized administration for almost two thousand years.
You don't actually know anything about Iran's history, do you. Sure, back in the pre-Islamic days, Persia had two empires that pretty much set the standard for "centralized administration". After Arab invasion, it's a mixed record. The Safavid's (possibly) can be considered a "centrally administered" kingdom. To wit, Reza Shah Pahlavi's feather in his cap was that he managed to (finally after centuries) put the various provincial grandees and nomadic tribes in a box. That's basically 100 years.
A good primer background (on modern Iran at least) is "Iranian Nationalism" by Richard Cottam, 1963.
I am sure they are trying to "dislodge theocracy". We know USA and Israel are always hypertruthful about their real goals in Middle eastern adventurism. One country "doesn't" have any nukes and the other attacked Iraq because they "had" nukes. So tou should understand if different people have different levels of trust in the stated motivations.
The objective of the mission is clearly to dislodge the theocracy. The motivation for doing so is clearly US and Israeli security, not concern for the welfare of Iranians. Which is as it should be. Countries should act in their own interest, not in the interests of other countries.
The objective is bs, most probably oil and Israeli interests. After all there have been many stated "objectives" of all their past middle eastern campaigns. I literally cited an example where false lie of nukes was used to invade Iraq while the actual country lying about nukes sits scot free and is again directing another misadventure. If the USA hated theocracies so much it won't be allying with arab countries or have been propping up the "Mujahideen".
No, this isn't what Paine means by death ground. Paine used that to refer to Soviet citizens/soldiers that knew they would be erased/eliminated if they lost. The Iranians don't think that their opponents want to eliminate their entire civilization.
I can't help but think the 'death to America' chants going away plus the end of Iranian funding for Islamic terror/Islamic based violence will help fight Islamophobic perceptions in the US. My entire life it's seemed like a very visible section of Islam wanted my country/the West destroyed which by extension has influenced my opinion of Islam. I think a secular Iran is going to improve the perception of Islam in the West. I feel like the US and Iran have been at low level war my entire life and that Iran by their actions/words have felt the same.
Who knows. This is all pointless idiocy extending from again what I feel has been Iran waging low level war against my country my entire life. I hate it all. What did Iran think would be the outcome if their attempt to assassinate Trump would have succeeded?
and sadly Iranian schoolgirls have long been the victims of this low level war the Islamic theocracy has been waging in the name of Islam/Islamic morals:
People in the west who talk about “Islamophobia” are often just ignorant about what Muslim countries themselves do to control political Islam. In my home country, where Islam is the official religion, the government banned Islam-associated parties until recently and went around killing Islamists without due process. In majority-Muslim Turkey, political Islam was suppressed—e.g. hijabs were banned until Erdogan came to power. Singapore bans the hijab for certain civil servants. None of that is “Islamophobia”—it’s an effort to make sure that what happened in Iran doesn’t happen in their country.
We talk about Mosques shooting, women and girls wearing the hijab attacked/assaulted in the streets (being a woman in the streets after the sun is down always is a risk, if you're wearing anything Muslim-looking, you multiply that risk,), and a lot of aggression here.
The shah of Iran heavily suppressed Islam as well…and It led directly to the Islamic revolution. Suppression of normal political and religious expression leads to more extremists, not less.
When i talk about Islamophobia, I think about the time when my mom was run off the road by a couple of guys in a truck yelling slurs, or the woman who was stabbed walking home from our mosque, or the bulletholes in our mosque windows, or the weekly bomb/death threats.
You wield your ethnicity like a bludgeon to “win” these types of arguments but you are quite remote from the actual experience of others who look like you.
You understand that Egypt is a Muslim country and El Sisi is a Muslim, right? This is a discussion about what moderate Muslims must do in countries like Egypt and Bangladesh to keep their countries from ending up like Iran.
That comparison is ignorant. We’re not talking about Mitt Romney, okay? We’re talking about a hypothetical where polygamists overthrow the government of Utah, stone Mitt Romney to death, and threaten to do the same in Idaho. That’s the equivalent of what happened in Iran, what happened in Egypt recently, and the threat across the Muslim world.
The last time we faced a similar risk from Christianity, it resulted in a military occupation of Utah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF3UqUH6y-M&vl=en. If that was happening now, we’d be having a serious conversation about military responses to “political Christianity.” But it’s not.
> We’re talking about a hypothetical where polygamists overthrow the government of Utah, stone Mitt Romney to death, and threaten to do the same in Idaho.
I’m morbidly interested in hearing your rationalizations, if any, for the Jan 6th protests.
Christian psychos are already at the forefront of the government, its not the end, its barely even the beginning of their insanity. And this batch doesn't yet need to engage in militantism, because...the entire government apparatus is already there for doing their bidding, but that's hardly any reason to see they aren't escalating with their insanity. I mean, Israel itself has even more of religious extremism in their government and society than present day America.
All of that is also quite irrelevant to the fact that Iran wasn't attacking the USA or Israel, Israel and America attacked them unprovoked while making a pretense of negotiating peace deals with them. I hate religion and I hate theocracies, while these are shitty countries they haven't been shitty to me, only to their internal populace. Iran also isn't the country that "doesn't have" nukes and refuses to get their nuclear facilities inspected. There is only one country in the middle east that does. Iran is far more trustworthy in the nuclear department than Israel. Israel, if it hadn't already shown how much of a reprobate traitorous liar they already are, shows yet another iteration of their old colors to the new generation. The same Israel that did the USS Liberty and so on.
edit: Holy shit and to say nothing of the reports coming that soldiers are being told this is a Holy war for Armageddon. That's literal theocratic extremism right under our noses.
It’s not even remotely similar. We’re talking about countries where (almost) everyone is Muslim and Muslims control the political system, police, etc. Moderate Muslims who can’t reasonably be accused of “Islamophobia” understand that political Islam is a danger and often take extreme measures to keep it in check.
Projecting American racial politics onto other countries is an extremely bad (and bizarrely ethnocentric) way to try to understand how the world works.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945758 - He dismisses someone who opposed a fascist dictatorship as being "antisocial" and says she was harming society by opposing said dictatorship. The most generous interpretation of that position is a tacit, rather than explicit, endorsement of fascism.
Democracies don’t arise from thin air. Every successful democracy arose from an authoritarian regime that developed the institutions of state and government. E.g. Taiwan: https://ketagalanmedia.com/2017/09/30/what-motivated-kmt-tai.... Over and over, the pattern that leads to success of an authoritarian regime that develops the country first, with democracy following when people are ready for it. Attempting to skip the authoritarian regime and jump state to democracy has usually been a failure. It results in corrupt and dysfunctional democracies, like in India or Bangladesh.
Developmental dictatorships are preferable to dysfunctional democracies, because the former at least has some hope of transitioning into a functioning democracy.
I was, but my dad was active in politics in a third world country, and worked in international development. Also, I still have family in Bangladesh so I can watch third-world people overthrowing their government again in real time on Facebook. My views on democracy and culture are directly borrowed from my dad’s crushing disillusionment with third world people and their attempts at running a democracy.
If I had to rely on my American K-12 education I’d be completely unprepared to understand what life is like for the majority of the world that wasn’t born on “socio-cultural third base.”
It is good proof the mods lie about moderation though. Regardless of what you think of this particular user, I’ve seen dang jump down even long time user’s throats for much less.
I’m on the naughty list because I pushed back on nonsense like he posts and also questioned dang’s moderating ability as a result. Blatant sexism and racism are perfectly fine here as long as it’s “polite”. Pushing back on people spouting it will get you a timeout and a lecture.
> Iran is going to end up looking like Afghanistan (a broken country of small feudal states) at the end of this.
Soooo, lateral move from 1999 with the benefit of the theocratic regime that rules over those states having a bit of hindsight this time and being keenly aware that they ought not to let themselves be exploited puppet or proxy for larger international conflict? I'm not saying Afghanistan on track to be a shining beacon of modernity in an otherwise backwards region but things are looking pretty up for them and I wish them the best.
An equivalent for Iran would be what? Next guy shows up in charge, promises a few token reforms. Bombs stop falling, protestors go home, business as usual resumes but with a little more normalcy toward the rest of the world.
It often feels like Apple hires the best hardware and marketing people in the world and holds them to the highest standards, but the software design and engineering people are left to just kind of screw around, redesign stuff for shits and giggles, and laugh as people fill their forums with bug reports and (very obvious) feature requests.
The use of "him" by GP is extremely unusual IMO, and I suspect is odd for anyone with English as their native language. The current convention among normal people seems to me to be to avoid pronouns other than "it" with these tools, and generally just use the name. The name is not really relevant: like, sure, in some contexts we think of ships as "she/her", and may prefer feminine names for them, but if you used e.g. "she" rather than "it" to refer to the Titanic or any other ship with a female name, this is going to cause some double-takes / disfluent comprehension in the vast majority of native speakers in most cases.
Only if you imagine e.g. some stereotypical pirate with an eyepatch slapping the hull and saying something like "Aye, but she weathered the storm, as she always does" might this feel normal. Or, maybe if you are a Redditor and trying to make it your AI boyfriend / girlfriend, you can use he/him or some other neo-pronoun, but this is currently abnormal and not the general context.
And the fact that you can make the model act as any gender again shows why choosing "him" as some default here is strange. Absent any specific context, the choice of "him" here is poorly justified.
I find they are extremely rarely useful - they just break my own chain of thought by having to constantly read and ignore this stuff. The same goes for the excessively verbose responses too - a human has a limited "context window" and a shorter response is therefore much more useful/valuable than a long token-maxxed one.
Sure the computer won't get mad, and that is all I do - just ignore what Gemini is suggesting and pretend it never said it - but it certainly makes me mad. The main reason I stick with Gemini is because of the generous free usage limits, but I know this annoying "next step" behavior (which was a relatively recent change) is going to push me back to Claude, even if I need to pay for it.
When everyone got into baking early covid I couldn’t understand why no one was baking anything, like, good. No pizza or pie or cake or muffins or banana bread or even a damn focaccia. The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.
Sourdough is fantastic, I have two loaves finishing their overnight chill in my fridge right now, will bake them after dinner.
I was baking sourdough since before the pandemic, and will continue baking in the future. It's a bit of work, but it's not too much work and the results are pretty damn fantastic.
Focaccia though, if I baked that regularly I'd have to go back on a GLP-1. Focaccia taught me to read the seals on olive oil in the supermarket and actually pick the right one for the break.
Just got a loaf out of the oven. The smell, the crust, the whole feel of something very much tangible and enjoyable . I'm very much considering opening a small bakery.
I know what you mean (I also love to bake and have had the same thought). Just remember that running a bakery is more about running a business than it is baking. If you love baking and business, great! But if you just love baking, it may kill the enjoyment.
I love sourdough, have starters in the fridge but haven't baked in a while, should do it.
Problem is, for some reason it never tastes sour enough, or like the commercial sourdough. I have done slow rise in the fridge over 24+ hours etc. Made sourdough starter from scratch several times, same result.
Bread tastes good, just not sour, or rather sour enough to tell it's sourdough.
Starters are a mix of bacteria that produce either lactic acid or acetic acid. If yours is never turning out sour enough you might be: using too much commercial yeast, not using enough starter, or having a starter culture biased towards lactic acid.
The first two are easy to fix. The third one is saying you need to keep your starter culture a little bit cooler. I keep my downstairs where the starter is between 62-67 during the winter and its plenty sour. I think dryer starters might be less sour, but I'm not sure. I run mine 100% hydration.
I'm currently baking this recipe: 300g bread flour, 300g whole wheat flour, 227g starter (100%), 541g water, 18g salt, 1/8tsp of commercial yeast. All the usual baking steps, over night retard. Two loaves
Great video that talks about selecting the olive oil for your use case and which seals aren't just self granted. I personally have been using colavita. Its fantastic.
I hate it but it's taught me that freshness actually matters. I bought some for focaccia and it was amazing. Saved it in the pantry for special occasions. Went back six months later and it had zero flavor. Just tasted like generic oil. Flat.
It ruined me.
Also if you're an engineer and like cooking, check out that guy's YouTube channel, He's very analytical in explaining cooking
Yes it's a common misconception that you can only make wide crumbed hipster crusty loaves. Those are great but if you want plain white bread, buns, croissants, etc etc it's all possible to do.
As others have said it’d wreck the flavour but you can go the other way and use spent grain from the mash in making bread which adds some pretty interesting texture and flavour.
IMO it's because it's more challenging. I've baked everything you've listed and apart from pizza (which is also bread) it's all trivial to do. You just follow a recipe.
Bread is a totally different thing. Only four ingredients: a ground up grass seed, a mineral, a single celled fungus that lives in the dough, and water. The results range from complete disaster to the best thing you've ever eaten. It all depends on your technique.
That's why it has captivated so many and in particular men, as you can get really deep and geeky. There's only so far you can go with banana bread.
> The results range from complete disaster to the best thing you've ever eaten. It all depends on your technique.
Hear hear. I'm at a local optimum where my bread tastes good, but it's a bit crumbly. When I change anything, it's nope nope backpedal. Trying to find the next step that'll improve my home baked bread
It wasn't for no reason at all though. There were concerns about availability of yeast, which isn't used in sourdough. (Valid concerns or not, I have no idea.)
I do find it kind of wild how intimidating most people I know find baking. Get a food scale and follow the directions and you're good to go and will have something respectable and delicious. As with anything, you can dive deep and go extreme with it. But baking delicious food is not rocket science.
It is fun but it's also not universal. While every house and apartment I've lived in in the USA had an oven, the default in Japan is no oven. 1 to 3 burners, and possibly a broiler is the norm.
Those people are dead wrong on both counts. Cooking meals benefits more from precision than they claim (if you want reproducible results you best be measuring!), and baking does not require as much precision as they claim (I estimate ingredients all the time when baking and my bakes come out great).
There's a lot of mysticism around baking online, but in truth it's very easy. Just follow the recipe and you'll be ok. You don't need to carefully weigh ingredients and stuff like people say.
It depends, I guess. When I make pizza dough, I use around .1% yeast. Using .4g instead of .8g would make a huge difference, and getting that right without carefully weighing it is neigh impossible.
Cooking is art, baking is a very easy science (weight things and check the temperature), pastry is another thing. That requires talent, experience and a lucky star.
Because while the recipes are easy to follow, you can't fix a baked dough. If you messed up the salt, the yeast, etc. that's it. Cooking is more forgiving in that sense.
Baking bread is not like that unless you have strict control of the environment; it is sensitive to temperature, and nature of the water and flour. It's an art; you have to read the signs. And mastering that is rewarding.
> The world collectively just decided the end-all be-all of baking was… sourdough.
I can't speak for the world, but:
1. Good bread is really hard to come by in the United States. Unless you're going to a bakery twice a week[1], or your local grocery has a contract with one [2]... Your idea of 'bread' is probably mushy garbage that I would describe as more similar to 'cake'.
2. Sourdough is relatively easy to make. Flour, salt, water, starter, time[3].
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[1] Going anywhere to buy one item that is eaten or goes bad in three days is a big ask... Which is why this isn't a great option.
[2] The overwhelming majority don't, and when they do, they want $7 a loaf.
There are, and most of them don't have good bread. (Baguettes are about the only good bread that you can reliably expect to find in them. Sometimes they have San Francisco-style sourdough, which in my experience, tastes like someone dumped a shot of lemon vinegar into it. Just because a bread uses sourdough starter doesn't mean it needs to taste sour. I feel much the same way about hops and beer.)
Regularly visiting the bakery is, for reasons I've mentioned, a lot of friction for one purchase.
My closest one carries... Weird specialty hipster breads (because it is more focused on tarts and pastries and sweets - bread is just an afterthought for it).
The one I'd go to, if my closest grocery weren't stocking them is way out of my way. I would not be making that trip twice a week.
> Regularly visiting the bakery is, for reasons I've mentioned, a lot of friction for one purchase.
That is still not "really hard to come by" as per your original claim. It's very common (not just in large cities!) to have a local bakery where you can get good bread. Whether you choose to go or not, it is available to you.
I mean, let’s at least discuss this in good faith.
“Good” bread according to the majority and bread that is specifically up to your standards are probably two very different things.
My grocery store’s bakery sells many types of fresh bread: sourdough, white, rye, croissants, ciabatta, buns, rolls, bagels, and so on. Many grocery stores in my city have a bakery section with a selection of fresh bread like this. (Even Walmart I think, but I don’t shop there).
It’s not the best bread I’ve ever eaten, but it’s fresh, good, tasty bread. It’s not “mushy garbage” and it’s not “cake” like you described in your original comment. It’s not “weird specialty hipster” bread. It’s just simple, real, fresh bread.
if it makes you feel better, we got into baking during covid and never baked sourdough once. we made pizza, cake, muffins, banana bread, regular bread, cornbread, etc. we just didn't post about it online ...
Google is doing a much better job integrating AI into existing products. Gemini CLI and such seem just like a way to keep the leading competitors humble (a la iOS vs android). They're also building AI tooling tailored to specific companies (like the Goldman thing just announced) and have the cloud infra to back it up. I really only see Anthropic and Google surviving in 10 years.
We need to tax personal vehicals by the ton. And I mean like, punitively. Pickup trucks should cost $500K if they're not registered to licensed business.
It was 2 days, and they thought it was a different ship because they thought the Yorktown was sunk in the previous battle, not because they didn't think it could be repaired that fast (although that's probably also true).
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