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  • 🍔🧠 Scaling Caching: Meta's Secret to 10 Nines of Cache Consistency

🍔🧠 Scaling Caching: Meta's Secret to 10 Nines of Cache Consistency

PLUS: What Really Happened With Crowdstrike 🤫, 15 Patterns to Crush Leetcode 💻, LLM-Powered Knowledge Curation System 🤖

Author

Alex Zajac
July 22nd, 2024

In partnership with

Happy Monday! ☀️

Welcome to the 630 new hungry minds who have joined us since last Monday!
If you aren’t subscribed yet, join smart, curious, and hungry folks by subscribing here.

🍔 THIS WEEK’S MENU 🥗

  • 📚 Optimize database searches, master LeetCode patterns, achieve 99.99999999% cache consistency

  • 🗞️ What really happened in CrowdStrike bug, Meta withholds multimodal AI model from EU, GPT4-o Mini is here

  • 👨🏻‍💻 Quick byte: Kotlin coroutines simplify asynchronous code, ideal for network operations

Reading time: 5 minutes

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Food for Thought
A mindset, an example, and an action item to start the week
❝

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Albert Einstein

Mindset: Persistence trumps raw intelligence; tenacity is the key to solving complex problems.

Example: SpaceX's iterative approach to rocket development embodies Einstein's philosophy of sustained problem-solving.

Action item: Identify your most challenging problem and commit to working on it for an extra 15 minutes today.

The Rabbit Hole
Deep dives, trends, and resources curated to stay ahead

How Meta Achieves 99.99999999% Cache Consistency 🎯

#52: Break Into Meta Engineering (4 minutes)

LeetCode was HARD until I Learned these 15 Patterns

#21 - Patterns to master LeetCode

LUC #59: Optimize Your Searches with Effective Database Indexing

Plus, how chaos engineering works, blue-green deployment explained, and what is Terraform and how does it work

How a Single Line of Code Brought Down a Billion Dollar Rocket

When we talk about software today, we should know that its importance is now at the very end of the spectrum of different technologies used. For example, in the aerospace world, the stakes are incredibly high, and software glitches can lead to catastrophic outcomes

3 Steps to Developing a Strong Network

Few things are as important throughout your career as developing a network. Building a strong network allows you to tap into other like-minded individuals in your field and often gives you access to ample opportunities.

Ten Years and Counting: My Affair with Microservices

In early 2024, I hit ten years at Allegro, which also happens to be how long I’ve been working with microservices.

Browser fingerprinting explained (+7 top techniques) | Fingerprint Pro

Understand how browser fingerprinting is changing visitor identification and fraud prevention without compromising privacy.

💾 SIDE DISHES 💾

ARTICLE (SQL inner workings)
How SQL Query works?

ESSENTIAL (CSS as a function)
Embracing Functional CSS: Have we moved on?

ARTICLE (Java vThreads)
Java Virtual Threads: a Case Study

The Weekly Digest
Software, AI, and startup news worth your time

Brief: Windows systems worldwide face Blue Screen of Death due to a CrowdStrike outage, disrupting businesses like banks, airlines, and emergency services.

Brief: U.S. shoppers propel Amazon's Prime Day to a record-breaking $14.2 billion in online sales, with consumer electronics and back-to-school items leading the surge.

Brief: Meta opts out of launching its advanced multimodal AI model in the EU due to regulatory uncertainties, impacting the availability of the model for European firms under an open license.

Brief: Eureka Labs pioneers an AI-driven teaching approach with LLM101n, combining subject matter expertise with AI Teaching Assistant guidance for optimal learning experiences.

Brief: OpenAI introduces the cost-effective GPT-4o Mini, expanding access to advanced generative AI models for developers and ChatGPT users, possibly phasing out GPT-3.5 usage.

Brief: Anthropic partners with Menlo Ventures to launch the Anthology Fund, providing AI startups with investments starting at $100k, access to AI models, and support in various sectors like healthcare and education.

The Quick Byte
One coding tip because you’re technical after all

This week’s coding challenge:

Coding Challenge #69 Notion Clone

This challenge is to build your own version of the note taking app Notion.

This week’s tip:

Kotlin coroutines provide a way to write asynchronous, non-blocking code in a sequential style.

Wen?

  • Network Operations: Ideal for making API calls or other network-related tasks.

  • Database Interactions: For performing database operations without blocking the main thread.

  • Long-Running Computations: To execute CPU-intensive tasks off the main thread.

Why?

  • Simplified Asynchronous Code: Allows writing asynchronous code in a more natural, sequential style.

  • Lightweight: Coroutines are more resource-efficient than threads for handling concurrent operations.

  • Cancellation Support: Provides built-in support for canceling long-running operations.

Burp-A-Laugh
The most important meal of your day

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Thanks for spending part of your Monday morning with Hungry Minds.
See you in a week — Alex.

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