While I'll admit that Intel's made several missteps recently and AMD has closed in, the reality is that they pad their numbers using pipeline and microarchitecture tricks to get higher raw stats that don't translate to real-world performance. Intel's tends to be a bit more expensive for the same "tier" with lower listed performance numbers but better performance. That's because AMD has consistently done shit like using shorter pipelines and rampant pipeline flushing. They have used sacrificing cycles to get the raw benchmark numbers to justify someone "saving money for more power". Intel's made a lot of mistakes recently, but I trust their chips to perform at the price point they're sold at. A quality AMD processor or GPU performance-wise is equal in price to their counterparts in Intel and Nvidia.

I'm not anti-AMD at all. I want competition in the marketplace, but their historical approach to this where they cut costs and use tricks to generate raw numbers makes it really hard to support them. "Consoles and gaming computers featuring them are selling like hotcakes!" Yeah because companies are looking to sell units at the highest profit margin.

I think the elite tier of this competition is a solid one, and I'm constantly watching to see what each company's pushing out. That being said, I think it's widely known that Intel's products in their low to mid-tier offerings are superior.

I'm not a hardware engineer so I have to ask, how is using "shorter pipelines" supposed to be illegitimate? Just because Intel may do better at the workloads you have in mind, that doesn't mean that AMD's approach doesn't do better in other (legitimate) workloads.

Pentium 4 and Bulldozer both had (very) long pipelines and look how they turned out. Long pipelines certainly doesn't fundamentally equal better real-world performance, short pipelines != better benchmarks. It depends on the combination of architectural decisions considered together, right?

You're going to have to expand on this concept a bit to convince people that these design decisions are a deliberate attempt to cheat the benchmarks, throwing out lingo doesn't quite suffice.

It's not that I think that shorter pipelines are a bad thing when implemented properly, but historically, AMD used that as a way to match or beat Intel on raw benchmark numbers. A shorter pipeline and pipeline flushing when ops hang or whatever means you get more operations per cycle on paper. If there's an issue, they'd just say "fuck it" and flush the pipeline and run it back, and because it's shorter, the pipeline is full and progressing fairly quick. That leads to higher benchmark scores for inferior hardware or stats that the average casual gamer or enthusiast sees. That leads to sales.

As I said, Intel's not perfect and I don't hate AMD. I want the best possible products. I just feel like market share isn't a great indicator of quality here. Threadripper and top tier AMD products are on the same level as Intel's products, but I personally tend to trust Intel's performance at the price point far more in real world situations. It was the worst kept secret in tech for years that AMD was gaming raw numbers at lower price points to sell units.

Gonna be real. This is all just my take on it, and I could be wrong or biased. I know they're not the same as they were 10 years ago and produce legitimate contenders at the top level. I just don't trust their low to mid-tier products.

I see loads of people saying that we're beyond containment, and they're correct. However, it does slow infection rates to some degree. That allows us the time to try to learn more about how it behaves, how repeated cases impact people who aren't currently affected as much, and find ways to combat it. That's a positive.

Listen, man, this sort of "coverage" of these types of events are the result of being at the top of the field. No one likes to watch people lose their jobs, especially when their name is at the top of the list of people in the company. That being said, you clearly already know that this wasn't anything done without reason.

You guys haven't always nailed it, but overall, all of the points you've listed show that the ship isn't sinking even if it took on some water. It's great that you addressed this and all, but overall, all of this is a sad part of business. As long as it's not taken lightly and everything that can be done to avoid a repeat of this in the future is being done, that's all you can really do.

And people wonder why shit is so hectic right now. If this woman wanted to give someone $20 of her own hard earned money, her generosity shouldn't be punished. The fact that two people were fired over an act of kindness that totaled $20 is absurd.

Think about how much money it'll cost US Bank to replace both the employee and manager they fired. Over $20 that didn't even come out of their pocket? Sounds pretty clear who the assholes are here.

The media's job is not to inform you at this point. Their job is to get eyes on their product. That's no secret. However, the logic behind your approach is flawed.

Why? Money is king in every industry. Sure, hype exists. I had one instance where I felt exactly like you, and guess what hot new flavor of the month that was? React. It didn't take long to realize who the idiot was in that situation (me). It was hot because it was the next logical step, and no amount of being frustrated because I had just gotten comfortable with Angular could change that.

Containers aren't some snake oil racket. It's pretty easy to see why if you take off the tinfoil. They are cost and resource efficient, and they provide a large cushion for less than optimal situations. Containers are smaller than VMs and less resource intensive so they allow you to do more with less hardware. Sudden rush of people because Reddit or HN fell in love with you? Provision a few more with almost zero effort knowing exactly what you'll be getting. Working on bug fixes or improving shit? Cool. There's no difference between the local instances and what hits production.

I mean, it's kind of like the folks who get real passionate about only using basic code editors because all the extra tools are "cheating". Time is money, and it's the only thing we can't get back. If containers significantly reduce cost in terms of resources, man hours, or money for you or the company you work for, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why it'd be pushed so hard.

I understand being cynical in this industry, but let's be realistic. Companies are only pushing what they believe will be good for their bottom line. No one's pushing containers because of some shitty agenda, just as they weren't when Node.js was blowing up to the same screams of "this is all manufactured hype".

There are definitely cons to using containers. You're pushing a bunch of shit with root access all sharing the kernel out there, and if a single one is compromised, they're all compromised by definition. That's a legitimate concern, but if I'm being honest, this sounds more like you haven't been in a situation where containers were the proper solution more than a tech industry scam to push an agenda.

Distro wise, I'd probably go Ubuntu simply because it's the most "mainstream ready" option. There's not much you run into that is not going to play nice with it compared to a lot of distros. It also takes a lot of pain out of the swap out of the switch at times due to that.

Honestly, the best advice I can give is to just use it as you would any other OS. It seems like common sense advice, but you really pick up a lot just by treating as if that's all you have to work with. The most important thing is to master the terminal. Once you know the basics, you're set. At this point, swapping to Linux has never been easier so you won't run into as many compatibility issues and whatnot like you would have a decade or so ago.

Explore. You're trying something new. There's no correct answer here. It's like picking a main in SSB. Tier levels don't mean shit if you hate who you're playing with. Figure out how to survive if you were left with only the terminal, and you'll be fine.

At this second, I'd have to say that Microsoft is incredibly appealing to me.

Why? Microsoft has somehow turned its image around after being loathed by developers and users alike forever. None of it was a fluke either. They became a far more developer friendly, open-source friendly company, and they've also done a ton of things no one would have believed 10-15 years ago.

Linux on Windows? A browser based on Chromium? OSS collaboration and support? Providing the best damn code editor on Earth for the price of 'on the house'? These are all insane when you consider Microsoft of the past, and these are just a few things they've done to win back developers. They're doing the same thing in the Xbox division and Azure.

They're heading in a positive direction while it seems like everyone else is going to the dark side. I hope the trend continues because I'm really enjoying seeing Microsoft using their resources for this sort of thing. Not to mention, they're making cool shit like xCloud and Hololens.

It just seems like a really great place to be currently.

I know I'm late to the party, but I really hope that things get back on track soon.

When I learned Google had acquired Firebase, I was really disappointed because I knew that it would be another instance where a great product or service was crippled by Google's approach.

I came across Firebase fairly early on, and I absolutely loved it. Documentation was solid, the examples were all interesting and straightforward, and support was always great. Now, documentation and site navigation are both downright painful to deal with. I've recently transitioned multiple projects to Deepstream.

Personally, I'm not confident enough in the direction things have headed to commit to Firebase beyond trivial projects. I got in on Fabric in Jan 2015, and again, it was a great experience. I just feel like Google's lead to a decrease in focus on the core of what makes Firebase so appealing.

Like I said, I'm a long time Firebase guy, and I really want to see things improve. At the very least, can I give up my first born for a documentation overhaul? I swear it wasn't always this frustrating and cluttered.

It all goes back to the theory that it's impossible to implement "unbounded nondeterminism", according to Dijkstra.

As mentioned, humans can step out of a system and analyze it objectively. In essence, the rules can be broken and changed at any time, which means the system is constantly evolving. Logic does not always truly need to play a part, either. The system is constantly changing and adjusting.

Because of this limitation due to our inability to implement systems that are truly nondeterministic, we are forced to use the constantly improving resources (such as faster processors, memory, better algorithms) to improve the speed at which we can mimic this behavior. However, these methods still require the data at hand to function, and several of them lead to exponential growth. As you said, it is always limited to what it's given.

What if you have an agent that can understand not only the rules of a generic game, but the metagame as well? I think that would be a good stab at unbounded nondeterminism.