I've only read up to Part Two so far but find the guide is extremely helpful and resonates with other resources (i.e Grokking the System Design Interview) and with my own experiences for what I believe is the very broken interview process that we face today.
Highly recommend. Interviewing.io is one of the best resources for those doing prep today and the team behind it is awesome.
I haven't used Heroku's free product plan myself, but I personally use Fly for my personal blog and website and thoroughly enjoy its pain free deployment process. They also have built in secrets management which I was happy to see. There is GitHub Actions for automating things too.
They supposedly also decrease latency for your application if you migrate your Heroku app there (again, I haven't used this myself so YMMV): https://fly.io/launch/heroku
You do need to enter credit card information as mentioned in this thread.
Backbone routers don't usually deal with hostnames or DNS. This is pretty much saying they done broke BGP. And it sounds like they're saying that they broke it in a way that prevented accessing their data centers from the PoPs, and we know from the long downtime that it prevented accessing the BGP configuration system from darn near anywhere.
It happened to also kill the announcements for anycast DNS.
There seems to be nothing uncertain about the immediate cause of the issue - Facebook revoked all of their BGP routes, and all of their IP addresses couldn't receive packets until they were restored.
I had question: This is what we can only perceive through internet/routing table entries right?
Internal to FB, we don't know what had caused issues that led to the BGP UPDATE.
That's kind of what has been confusing me - there's a lot of speculation around FB's data center design and what actually happened, but we actually don't know for sure until they post an RCA - please correct me if I'm wrong here.
You are on the right path. It's entirely possible the BGP routing updates that we witnessed 'out here' on the Internet were simply a side effect of the actual network problem that impacted the company. As toast0 mentioned above it is less likely to be DNS-related just because most of the related services don't tend to build dependencies on DNS (in part for this reason).
What I don't understand is why, when a route is revoked, if there is no other route announced the routing table gets updated? It seems like either it's a black hole or it still works and there was a BGP error (or the route works but the resources aren't present, so traffic would be dropped). What's the reason for designing the system to revoke routes when no new route is announced?
It strikes me it's like DNS when you get a SERVFAIL, why not try the prior IP address. The similarity in the design here suggests there may be common reasoning??
BGP operates on the principle of using the 'most specific prefix', basically if all else is equal, a route covering fewer IPs is more specific and should be used.
When the announcement is revoked, you fall back to a less specific prefix if present, or your default route.
If you've got a full BGP table, then you tend not to have a useful default route (you should have specific routes for everything) and it might be useful to fallback to the last known value. But many participants have an intentional default route and then get announcements for special traffic --- dropping the announcement would mean to send it on the default route instead. It's hard to know what the right thing to do is, so better to do what you were told by the authority.
DNS is a bit different, but again, the authority told you to use some data and how long to keep it (ttl), if they're not there to tell you a value again later, what else can you do but report an error? Some DNS servers have configurable behavior to continue using old data while fetching new data or when new data is unavailable.
But the expectation is if you can't keep your BGP up and your DNS up, your server probably isn't up either. Note that in this case, bypassing DNS and going to the FB Edge PoPs that were still network available (because of different BGP announcements, that weren't withdrawn) resulted in errors, because they weren't able to connect to the upstream data centers. (Or so it seems)
Withdrawing the last route covering an IP range is a legitimate change, indicating that those IP addresses are no longer in use by the ASN. This needs to be supported so that one ASN can withdraw an IP block and transfer it to another ASN.
I find it extremely ironic that the game touches upon themes of corporate greed and climbing the corporate ladder (I've only played it until I got a soft lock during the 3rd tutorial). How else do you get themes of technology being a boon to society? Isn't it these companies who indirectly dictate this (e.g by using your public data)?
CD Projekt Red is a great example of why publicly owned companies and creating expectations for unreasonable deadlines for any software is going to cause your employees to deal with crunch and release something that doesn't work that great. Unfortunately I'm sure that this game will entertain more than it will highlight horrible industry practices.
I actually had really low expectations for this game precisely because of how much hype and marketing there had been surrounding it over the past couple of years. IMO anything in this world that requires that much in-your-face-evangelism is probably shady beneath the surface.
Therefore, I'm pleasantly surprised, it's actually a playable game with a decent looking world.
Same for fight club, that movie had a dumb title, kept being advertised on TV as a Cassette you could buy. Who advertise for a movie when you can’t watch it in theaters anymore? Then I watched the movie and... oh.
I have always been a patient gamer. I don't have much patience for jank and I don't usually go through multiple play throughs of a game like this.
And since, I haven't been able to get my hands on one of the new GPUs at an acceptable price, I would probably wait for at least a few months before purchasing this.
Looking at the bad press coverage CDPR got for handling their staff, I am tempted to think that they haven't handled their success with the Witcher series very well. Video Games production, in general, seems to rely a lot on careful management and highly organized work. So mishandling developer issues, like they have seemingly done, is very short sighted.
I hope they learn their lessons, as far as management is concerned and settle in for the long haul on this. If they can demonstrate good faith as they fix this game's issues, the real Rockstar type money would come pouring in for the sequel of this game.
I have heard a lot of murmurs about "horrible industry practices" regarding CD Projekt Red, but nothing concrete. Is this just a smear campaign, or a half-truth being thoughtlessly repeated because it fits preexisting narratives?
Or more to the point, were they violating Polish or EU labor laws?
Combine that with the unoptimized, buggy state the game is in. Many streamers had the game crash, forcing them to redo the combat encounter because you can't save in combat.
I have a beefy pc setup that I purchased recently specifically for Cyberpunk 2077 and some other demanding PC games still in development (wink wink Star Citizen) and I have had one non-gameplay bug in my couple of hours of play where elevator doors didn't open for my partner but did for me. The situation is very different for people using the previous gen consoles though, it seems, and I feel bad for them. I have a couple of good friends in this cohort who were very much looking forward to the game.
(not to mention bus drivers in the capital driving under influence of metaamphetamine to keep up with the pressure)
Poland is the China of Europe. But in relations with the real China, Poland is like a colony: exporting raw resources(like copper), importing manufactured goods. And Polish president acts servile towards Xi Jinping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yfjsZujQqc
> I have heard a lot of murmurs about "horrible industry practices" regarding CD Projekt Red, but nothing concrete. Is this just a smear campaign, or a half-truth being thoughtlessly repeated because it fits preexisting narratives?
The crunch is very real, but the silent part is that insane working hours and crunching are a staple of gaming industry. Pretty much every single project ends up in this state and the stories can get pretty horrifying (Blood, Sweat and Pixels is an interesting read on this topic - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34376766-blood-sweat-and... ).
The strange part of this story is the way how it's set to snipe at certain companies - CDProjekt and Rockstar were target of these stories, but other development studios for some reason weren't.
> The strange part of this story is the way how it's set to snipe at certain companies - CDProjekt and Rockstar were target of these stories, but other development studios for some reason weren't.
It seems to be cyclical that the company in the cross-hairs has a bad PR year and people talk about only the one company as if it isn't a systemic problem until memory gets blurry and people forget the last time it came up, and few people connect the dots to the systemic problem. (Almost every major publisher has been in the spotlight at some point in time or another. EA very famously had the "EA Spouse" cycle of bad press. Activision had one a few years later.)
If there is something interestingly strange here it's that CD Projekt Red tried to buck the system and do the right thing and its getting smeared so badly that it tried and failed. The takeaway for a lot of people is going to be subconsciously "it's better not to try at all to do better and stick with the status quo", which is hard not to assume is intentional this cycle from some of the members of the status quo. (It resembles other anti-union bullying tactics.)
I remember when the (then) anonymous EA Spouse posting went up bringing wider attention to the routine practices of the game industry. Long story short, game companies can abuse the enthusiasm of young people of the medium and burn them out, over and over, for little pay. There is always someone behind you to happily take your seat. It's one of the reasons I left that field early in my career.
Yeah, the targeting is the most interesting part of this story for me. All of the best AAA games are the best because a lot of people put a tremendous amount of effort into them. If you want to make a new game that's a serious contender for one of the best games of all time, and you want an ambitious, deep world and story in a realistic setting, you're going to have to match or exceed previous efforts. If you find enough people who are as interested in the concept and want to make it happen, it's possible and it will probably never be a walk in the park.
There's always a market for indie-scale games, 2D platformers, simple but innovative 3D games, etc, where good, simple ideas are more important than huge amounts of effort. But there's also a market for complex games, and if they're well done, people will happily pay for them.
source: over a decade in the modding and gamedev community, never done it professionally (yet) but have made some popular mods/minigames, and a decent grasp of how much work goes into large-scale games and how much you have to want to make it happen for it to happen, and sometimes, you're willing to spend these long days, and sometimes it's even enjoyable before the money and fame start rolling in, or at least enjoyable enough to stick with it.
I hope, and suspect, nobody who is working on AAA games has zero interest or joy in making big, complicated games.
You get the job because you have skills at it. You have skills at it because you were interested enough to learn them. Those skills are worth money. All of the articles criticizing gamedev seem to miss this.
I think that gaming is such a competitive industry that in order to stay relevant, you need to either essentially rip your customers off or overwork your employees. I hear that jobs at EA and King these days are relatively chill, and both are hated for their monetization strategies. While investor pressure certainly doesn't help, I think the same dynamic would exist even if all video game companies were bootstrapped.
I think you are partially right with the cynisism. And those companies are chill now because of scandals and making more money. But it is also a creative industry, many of those are hard to begin with. How do you compete with people/companies enjoying working seven days and sleeping in the office, and possibly at higher skill. Creating games can be extremely fun, and it can burn you out in the process. And people take paycuts to join the industry because it is fun. Every new game project is also like a startup because of all these factors.
I still have memories of writing code in my car with the heater on full blast because the building shut off all heat at midnight (middle of snowy winter) and by 1am you could see your breath in the office.
Polish law specifies that the standard working time is 8 hours every 24 hours but we have reports of employees as early as one year ago who reported night and week-end hours.
Even if you don't believe anonymous employee reports, the studio's chief Adam Badowski announced in September that working time will now involve Saturdays.
To me, too many pointers are highlighting a toxic crunch culture in that studio to be ignored. I will not play Cyberpunk because of that.
Its a mixed bag. They promised no crunch, but there was crunch anyways. IIRC they gave bonuses and other forms of compensation for the extra work. From what I hear they have a very generous payscale relative to regional norms (Poland) and many team members stand to make a small fortune off the release of Cyberpunk 2077.
Of course executives and investors will make much more off the release then the individuals who made the game.
Software industry in general can be exploitative but the corporation itself is not. On the contrary, their commitment to DRM free software says the opposite.
Of course it would all be nicer without crunch in software, but I think many know how realistic that is with such a project. I hope employees get their deserved free time and compensation and I believe they will, even if there is still work to do.
So while CDPR might not be perfect, it behaves better than its competitors on user rights, which affects employees too. And this is not insignificantly better conduct.
> Unfortunately I'm sure that this game will entertain more than it will highlight horrible industry practices.
This statement may still be true, but Cyberpunk 2077 actually did a great job at highlighting the gaming industry's horrible practices due to CD Projekt Red promising to keep away from the status quo of mandatory crunch time. Breaking that promise put mandatory crunch time in social media's limelight.
Heh, maybe you remember Syndicate (1993) [0], "set in a dystopian future in which corporations have replaced governments, Syndicate puts the player in control of a corporation vying for global dominance. "
Ironically, the creators themselves at Bullfrog Productions got a very bitter tasting cookie [1] around that time selling to EA, cut from the same dough...
Thank you for bringing up the issues around racial biases when it comes to mental health. We hope to address this in multiple ways:
1) trying to incorporate objective forms of information such as digital and biological data that theoretically should be less biased
2) giving back to the community by supporting providers who serve underrepresented communities (we provide our software for free or significantly discounted to these community practices and are working with a number of them already)
And yes, we aim to incorporate various types of demographic information including social determinants of health.
Beware the trap of distinguishing "objective" measures/data in a space that almost by definition concerns itself with subjective experience. I also would question any assumption that such data is less prone to racial issues -- see for example volumes of literature on inequities in healthcare access and treatment.
It's great to be using quantitative measures, and almost a necessity, but as someone in this area who has done clinical work as well as research, I can say from personal experience EHR in mental healthcare has fumbled repeatedly with handling the complexities of behavioral information.
This is the exact same thing they said they wouldn't do, and now they're doing it.
This is very unfortunate. I'm not liking how the future is looking here. Fired a bunch of people, then announce a partnership with Google, and now this.
Having been a nerd immersed in nerd culture for a few decades, I would suggest you consider that question in light of the degree to which the referenced trope is popular in our community. Yes, there are individual people who don’t contribute enough but that doesn’t mean that entire fields are useless any more than developers who slack or code for job security are an accurate representation of our field.
This concept itself, is not new. I'd love to see US cities with notorious transit systems (i.e New York City) implement this.
In Toronto, Canada, where I live, allow all children 12 years of age and under to ride the TTC (our transit system here) for free.
This is great, because it enables students to enroll in public (elementary or middle) schools that they normally shouldn't be able to get into (if they win the lottery, or if they apply well in advance and somehow do get in), and gives opportunities to students that they normally wouldn't have access to.
Agreed, I have no idea why racial/cultural homogeneity is an argument against public services. It has always seemed to me to be a roundabout way of saying “We can’t do it in the US because minorities would ruin it”
While I can see why you'd suspect the term might be used as a dogwhistle, I can see why honogenity might be an advantage here.
It's a country with very few different people and viewpoints because there's not that many people to form groups. While I certainly would never see a lack of diversity as a general goal for a country, fewer viewpoints to consider significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get stuff done in governments. The fewer ideals you need to consider, the shorter the debates can be.
A country built up out of immigrants like the USA bring a plethora of viewpoints and cultures, all living inside one general government. This is a valuable source of cultural development and progress but the more groups you have within your borders, the more chances of friction you get and the longer politics should take; there are just more factors to take into account, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
It's not a dog whistle - it's a description of the effects of racism. Areas with homogenous populations consistently have more political support for providing social services. This is because most people have greater empathy for those that look like and act like them. There are examples of this from Japan to Finland to Utah. A significant minority population exposes the racists within a country.
Isn't the whole point of a racist dog whistle that the only people who can hear it are racists. If you are hearing dog whistles everywhere, maybe you're the dog.
Larger countries can, but the political willpower isn't there.
NYC's subway was originally projected (pre-COVID) to take in $3.6 billion in fares in 2020 [0]. Some 8.4 million people live in NYC. $3.6 billion / 8.4 million residents = ~$429/resident/year would suffice to make the subway free of fares.
Note: this would be for _just_ the subway; it does not include buses/commuter rail/MTA HQ expenses. Additionally, replacing just the fares for the subway would not suffice for balancing the budget since a deficit was planned.
Probably somewhat lower than $429/resident/year since transit agencies spend significant resources on labor and maintenance just operating the fare collection.
(Sorry, looked but didn’t fare collection cost numbers in the MTA budget)
The fare recovery of New York City Transit is 47%, so the true cost to the taxpayer would be $912/resident/year using your numbers. The numbers are higher still if you scope to residents over 18.
Yeah, our schools would hand out green/gold metrocards, which were very coveted items (if you found an extra one on a bus that was a huge get). They'd only cover 3-6 trips, plus transfers, so it wasn't quite free, but it was often good enough.
I genuinely laughed at this - I thought the same thing!
If you ever downloaded your own account data, I think OP and other concerned posters would understand how much data companies retain and this wouldn't come off as a surprise.
Snapchat data for example, has chat logs, snap history, what accounts you've added/requested as a friend, and friends that have added you all retained. I bring this up as an example because the idea behind this application was to send a message that would disappear after a variable amount of time :)
Highly recommend. Interviewing.io is one of the best resources for those doing prep today and the team behind it is awesome.