1920musicman

As a person who experienced both the symptoms and the treatment in the US I can assure you that it’s better to receive band-aid treatment than nothing at all.

Treatments could be—and should be—better, but comparing US to countries where psychological issues are being ignored and stigmatized is not to the benefit of the latter.

How is audio interface driver/console support on Linux? Would something like UA Apollo work out of the box?

Mentioned in another comment. DAW is an IDE for music production. Calling Prettier extension for VSCode an IDE would be incorrect.

To my knowledge all VST plugins can be used on Linux (via Wine). Is that not the case? Here is a page that describes the process of using a single Wine instance to wrap all VSTs in the system: https://z-uo.medium.com/vst-and-vst3-on-linux-mint-20-with-l...

There could possibly be a clearer name for this effort, since both Reaper and Bitwig run on Linux natively and are top notch DAWs (actual DAWs, not VST plugins). Plus VCV Rack, which is not technically a DAW but close.

Linux native VST plugins is a way more precise description. DAW is a very specific software category. It's like calling Prettier extension for VSCode an IDE.

Edit: seems like both linuxvst.com and linuxvst.org are available.

I am sure what you are describing is being tracked at my company. The concern with misaligned incentives I have is that there is a vast gap between conducting a passable interview in terms of engaging with the candidate and actually investing yourself in the process. So it's not really about being a bad interviewer (as in rude, openly biased, etc) but about having the energy to do the best job you can - which all candidates deserve IMO.

Agreed. I mostly conduct system design interviews which already have a smaller pool of interviewers at my company. This contribution has been included exactly zero times in the countless review cycles I went through.

Honestly, at this point I stopped making strong conclusions about candidates based on a single interview. I won't recommend to hire but also won't judge their abilities overall. Interviews can be very stressful, candidates overthink and often get fixated on a random solution they think the interviewer expects, etc.

I had several odd experiences myself in the past, as a candidate. The funniest one was when I interviewed at a prestigious company I thought was hiring only top talent. I spent an hour trying to come up with the most efficient Sudoku solver, got completely stuck on some arbitrary algorithm that I came up with on the spot. It wasn't a "circle pattern" but close to that. Wanted to impress the interviewer and also did not sleep the night before overthinking the process.

I had a good laugh reading your comment and then found this: https://www.clownr.com/

I have the same experience. Interviews are very time consuming (prep 30 min, interview 1h, fill out the feedback form 30m-1h), and having several interviews each week means I spend ~1 day weekly on something that's not going to benefit me directly in any way (excluding the benefit of potentially working with good engineers I helped hiring).

So unless the incentives change, I don't see this process improving in big tech.

But that's exactly what it is then: a check mark. I can interview dozens of candidates, and then add a total count to my self review. There is no incentive to do a good job (how would that even be evaluated?..).

Ha, it's like saying there are no gay people in Saudi Arabia. If having psychological issues is extremely stigmatized by the society don't expect the stats to reflect reality in any trustworthy sense.

To play devil's advocate: sounds like a "bona fide articulable suspicion of a crime" doesn't necessarily mean there is a documented reason for the release of records that has been authorized by a judge. Wouldn't that leave too much space for abuse?

AFAIK attacks on sufficiently important private infra is also considered an attack on the state. There is no meaningful difference, other than the scale of the attack and the importance of that infra.

The main defining factor in how the state responds to such an attack is whether escalation is in the interest of the victim. E.g. recent attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The category these supplements were listed under is "Sports Nutrition Endurance & Energy Products" with some legitimate products listed under it. I doubt Amazon would delist the entire category. But also, something tells me that sellers would just list products under a different category without any meaningful consequences.

E.g. these or similar tainted supplements could be listed under "Health, Household, and Body Care" (a very broad category that already has products like "stripfast5000 Fire Bullet Capsules with K-CYTRO for Women and Men" listed under it), etc.

Since Amazon removed these products already, here is a link to one of the supplements mentioned in the letter: "X Max Triple Shot Energy Honey" (https://khan-alasal.com/honey-product/3-triple-shot-honey/).

The company looks very shady, with no registered address and no contact details. They list dozens of "male energy" supplements that all apparently have been certified by HAACP (Safe Food Alliance, https://safefoodalliance.com/).

I searched for all products mentioned in the letter - they are all gone. Amazon is quick to react to such public letters to pretend that they are a responsible company.

Saying that, the search returns hundreds of other supplements in the same category, with similar nonsensical names. They are certainly attempting to play wack-a-mole.

Adding restricted ingredients to generally available supplements is a known tactic that supplement producers utilize extensively. In the past, this has been a well-known "secret" that bodybuilders basically relied on: buying tainted pre- and post-workout supplements that contain illegal steroids and such.

It's a better regulated industry now, but with the explosion in supplement popularity over the last decade I doubt there is an easy way to test and punish all manufacturers. If you look at the list of supplements included in that warning letter, they have classic nonsensical names that Chinese companies are known for (WeFun, Genergy, etc). None are on www.amazon.com anymore, but hundreds of other supplements show up with absolutely no way of telling whether any of them are clean (e.g. "Endurance 2Nite").

It's not normal. None of my over 40 friends have the same experience. And in general, I doubt that turning 40 is a clear biological threshold regardless of one's lifestyle, diet, fitness level, etc.

I am not aware of any lawsuits against distributors/retailers but supplement companies have been successfully sued in the past. One famous case is Yoel Romero vs Gold Star Performance Products (https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2838434-ufc-fighter-yoel...).

That's the biggest Amazon scam that Amazon itself allows and encourages (indirectly). In my experience, most inexpensive items from unknown brands have transferred reviews.

Would love to know whether security was a concern at all on those systems (eg industrial espionage, internal program meddling for the purpose of tricking auditors, etc). And if yes, then what are some interesting stories about investigating and resolving security issues.

Thanks for doing this!

The price range really varies. But just for the sake of giving an example: Mad Men season 1 is just $4.99 on Apple TV. Some newer shows on Prime can easily cost $4-5 per episode.

I know almost nothing about cars and so assumed LiDAR sensors are just prohibitively expensive for Tesla to install in every car. But then years later I learned that every modern iPhone has a LiDAR camera.

Still don't know how to think about this - how is it possible for a phone to have LiDAR (barely utilized) but it's too expensive to have them in such a critical setup as an autonomous vehicle.

I don't think this article limits the definition of architecture exclusively to very broad systems, like designing a new graph DB service. Architecture choices happen at all levels, and true systems architects are seldom involved in that.

> the point about being around for longer to see the effects of your mistakes assumes you're not a cog in the wheel.

Ideally—yes. In practice, decisions that should take QARs into account but don't are made by almost any IC level. I have seen systems designed by interns. You could say it's a company culture problem, and I would partially agree. On the other hand, tech companies have a tendency to lean into empowering ICs and so what ends up happening is that inexperienced engineers design systems that are only reviewed by overworked (and maybe not particularly experienced and/or motivated) senior ICs.

That's why I preempt my proposed solution by saying that many apartment buildings already have Luxer One installed. For this type of a setup, optimizing package delivery seems like the next logical step. Buildings like that already have service people who deal with various package-related tasks.

It wouldn't make as much sense to batch deliver to single-family houses, but apartments—and in some cases gated communities—could process a dropped-off container every morning.

When I look into what goes into managing an apartment building, I notice that there are many similar jobs they do regularly. E.g. taking out large containers with trash at a specific time. This could be a similar process: pick up a container, move it to Luxer One, and plug it into the system. With further Luxer One optimization, it would be possible to automate the task of scanning and notifying tenants. So the added job for humans would be just to wheel in the container, plug it into Luxer One and then take the empty container out before the next delivery.

> How many places get enough packages to need a box?

My guess is all apartment buildings (perhaps 50+ apartments).

> Finally, why automate it? The delivery services could send a van with a large box containing packages

Because we are already on this path. Why add even more congestion during the day to accommodate the rapidly expanding delivery industry, when we could batch deliver at night? I agree, that MVP could rely on human-driven vans, but ideally that would also be automated.

That's an interesting point. Can't say I agree based on my experience in both small startups and mega-corps.

Startups are so chaotic and fast-paced that one usually only needs 1-2 years (if not less!) to see how earlier decisions pan out. Very frequently the stack and the codebase undergo monumental changes in that short period of time due to the changes in business requirements and scale.

Mega-corps are vast engineering efforts with hundreds if not thousands of daily contributions. While I could technically go back and try to evaluate my choices from 6-7 years ago, it would be fairly hard to decouple my individual contributions from the changes that happened afterwards (functional/non-functional feature requirements changed since then, the codebase is unrecognizable, etc). 6-7 years is just too long of a time frame for certain eng areas (web/native product is a primary example). Saying that, I can imagine that there are slower-paced areas where this time frame is more relevant, e.g. database engine development.

My understanding is that they meant actual individual projects within large companies never take this long. So "projects" as in "features" that ICs work on. I agree with that point, I hardly ever get to go back an evaluate the decisions I made a year ago. Ownership changes happen all the time, plus refactors, stack upgrades, other code changes... No one I know gets to work on a single self-contained feature/area for 6-7 years straight.

> The Boring Company will get to it eventually, because something like Hyperloop is required for the Mars colony

What does The Boring Company have to do with Hyperloop?

I am not an expert, but seems like building a Maglev track on Mars with its low-pressure atmosphere would be far easier than on Earth. Taking into consideration how far we are from the first manned flight to Mars, this sounds more like wishful thinking than a serious proposition.

Oh, I don't mean reusable containers for individual items, sorry if it wasn't clear. This autonomous vehicle would drop off smaller (than itself) locked reusable metal containers, with all small packages inside.

Instead of this vehicle having to deal with unloading dozens of small packages at each destination. Just a way to optimize delivery further.

> sound like a miserable thing to unleash on the streets, even at night

It's about finding the right balance. At night streets are mostly empty (e.g. 2-5am). What we have now is not optimized at all - hundreds of Amazon trucks moving through the city during the day.

In systems design quality attributes are non-functional requirements that are used for the evaluation of the system itself rather than the intended behavior of the feature being implemented. E.g. system extensibility, scalability are quality attributes.