This is not really Veblen situation. A lot of these are primarily money laundering outfits, the artificially high prices, are simply a means of converting cash into bank deposits. Similar schemes exist in art, sculptures, and jewelry. There are some mom and pop type stores that are legit and some of the money goes to actual artists who make these but the ones in Palo Alto (or similarly unattainable rent neighborhood rug shops), are not that.
Readit Newsfarazbabar commented on What went wrong for Yahoo dfarq.homeip.net/what-wen... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico
I interviewed at yahoo during the tenure of Marissa Meyer and decided not to join after noticing a strange lack of diversity in my interviewers (I saw a similar lack of diversity at Apple Pay much more recently), anytime top level organizations become infested by monocultures, it becomes impossible for progress, new ideas and innovation to take foot. It doesn’t matter which clique or group has infected the organization by giving priority to conformity over diversity, it all ends the same way. This is not a call for institutional DEI, this is about being on the lookout for monocultures in innovative organizations.
farazbabar commented on LLMs should not replace therapists arxiv.org/abs/2504.18412... · Posted by u/layer8
Rather than here a bunch of emotional/theoretical arguments, I'd love to hear the preferences of people here who have both been to therapy and talked to an LLM about their frustrations and how those experiences stack up.
My limited personal experience is that LLMs are better than the average therapsit.
They were trained in a large and not insignificant part on reddit content. You only need to look at the kind of advice reddit gives for any kind of relationship questions to know this is asking for trouble.
I am a software engineer in his 50s, with stints in big tech, big bank and fintech with domain expertise in payments, risk, performance engineering, and data. In addition I have led global teams of hundreds of engineers with outcomes that have transformed multiple Fortune 500. I have been unemployed for a year and a half with no light at the end of the tunnel. Most of my network of similarly older professionals and C level executives has either retired or suffering similarly. Thankfully I am rich and still getting deferred executive compensation checks from multiple Fortune 500 companies but I am bored and think I have more to offer. I am working on a couple things to allay my boredom, we shall see if something comes of it.
PostgreSQL uses heap files for the primary table storage, not B-trees. In PostgreSQL table data is primarily stored in heap files (unordered collections of pages/blocks). Indexes (including primary key indexes) use B-trees (specifically B+ trees). When you query a table via an index, the B-tree index points to locations in the heap file
InnoDB uses a clustered index approach. The primary key index is a B-tree. The actual table data is stored in the leaf nodes of this B-tree. Secondary indexes point to the primary key.
One is not better than the other in general terms. InnoDB's clustered B-tree approach shines when:
You frequently access data in primary key order
Your workload has many range scans on the primary key
You need predictable performance for primary key lookups
Your data naturally has a meaningful ordering that matches your access patterns
PostgreSQL's heap approach excels when:
You frequently update non-key columns (less page splits/reorganization)
You have many secondary indexes (they're smaller without primary keys)
Your access patterns vary widely and don't follow one particular field
You need faster table scans when indexes aren't applicable
I personally find PostgreSQL's approach more flexible for complex analytical workloads with unpredictable access patterns, while InnoDB's clustered approach feels more optimized for OLTP workloads with predictable key-based access patterns. The "better" system depends entirely on your specific workload, data characteristics, and access patterns.
Don't forget high speed committed writes to append only tables (the opposite of scans), postgres approach is better here as well.
farazbabar commented on Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends · Posted by u/MITthrow123
I am seeing this in my community as well, it has become nearly impossible for early career folks to find opportunities and it is due to a number of factors. In addition to economy, the fast ramp up of hiring in covid and of course AI, we now have geo-political headwinds in the mix. If you are in this situation, or if you would like to help make a difference, please reach out to me, email is in profile. @Dang, if this is not appropriate, please let me know.
farazbabar commented on War story: the hardest bug I ever debugged clientserver.dev/p/war-st... · Posted by u/jakevoytko
One of the interesting ones we encountered was in the JDBC driver of our chosen database at the time. Under load, the application core dumped. Mind you this is java, running a native jdbc driver, no JNI in sight. It took some gdb stepping to figure out that under load, the JIT compiler got a little aggressive and inlined a little more code than there was room in the JIT buffer - result? a completely random core dump. Once I did find it, it was a simple matter of increasing JIT buffer size and adding more heap and ram. Tracing assembler generated from byte code generated from java was just part of the issue, the fact that the code itself had nothing to do with the issue is what made it interesting as the buffer size is set in a completely different area by the jvm. Fun times.
farazbabar commented on Purely Functional Sliding Window Aggregation Algorithm byorgey.github.io/blog/po... · Posted by u/agnishom
This is similar to an approach I use but instead of a queue, I accomplish this using a ring buffer that wraps around and overwrites entries older than window size. We maintain a global window aggregate, subtract ring buffer slot aggregate for entries dropping out and accumulate new entries into new slot aggregate while adding it to the global aggregate. Everything is o(1) including reads, which just returns the global window aggregate.
farazbabar commented on A reawakening of systems programming meetups notes.eatonphil.com/2024-... · Posted by u/paulgb
I am in phoenix, it is summer right now so things are double dead but even in fall to spring months, I have tried to find tech meetups (my interests are c++, c99, java, distributed systems, data engineering and non generative AIML/infra) and I can’t find any activity in the 5th largest city in US. I have tried to host things myself but only my friends or coworkers showed up, where are my fellow passionates?
There’s a market for these types of businesses. In my area there’s a dude with a company that sells and maintains $50-150k+ Christmas light and decoration displays. He has ~100 customers. The men’s clothing place I go to is a group of guys hanging out having a good time - it doesn’t look busy, but their 4-5 customers a day are dropping $3-10k/visit.
Stores like that are “laundering” money like the rest of the commercial real estate world… by playing games with various (legal) tax schemes. They are no more illegal than a Hampton Inn or AirBnb guy.
Real money laundering places are restaurant/bar, laundromats, arcades, and low income residential.