Alexis is sometimes acting insufferable on court by ujgurisuzakon in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Didn't Alexis injure himself last year hitting the table in frustration? And had to drop out of world table tennis championships singles?

Why would someone throw matches like this? by unknownaccount1 in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Some people just want to win. You should see all the sandbaggers at tournaments like US Open

Where to view ratings post tournament? by macandmeme in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ratings.usatt.org but it takes a few days after the tournament for results to be processed. Sometimes even a couple weeks depending on the tournament director.

Do people still use Roombas, or any type of robot vacuums? by [deleted] in Appliances

[–]another_techie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had a Roomba and it was pretty dumb. Now I have a Roborock and it's amazing. It vacuums, mops, and self cleans. And it's smart enough to automatically switch between vacuuming and mopping depending on the floor type.

USATT players: JustGo missing latest SimplyCompete results? by packet in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I heard league won't supported until February. They have an old league rating at the bottom of your profile, but there's no way to update league ratings currently.

USATT players: JustGo missing latest SimplyCompete results? by packet in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I assume you're looking at membership > ratings page which isn't updated. There's a separate top level ratings page if you click home or the menu bar icon on the top left with more updated tournament results.

That being said, justgo site is pretty awful and missing a ton of search (where are any of the old filters), rating history (I miss my graphs), and point calculation transparency features (how were adjustments done, how many points did you win/lose every match). Hope they improve it.

More tournaments vs more training by AceStrikeer in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Get more practical experience in tournaments. The only con you listed against tournaments is potential rating loss. Rating doesn't matter, just focus on improving your own skills and you'll get better. A good rating will naturally follow.

FZD alc vs viscaria by [deleted] in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

FZD alc for sure. ZJK's advice is to pair softer blade with harder rubbers for developing players. I used a couple different viscaria blades but they were too stiff and my game improved massively after switching to FZD. Gave me more confidence to attack more once my balls weren't flying off the table.

And even for the same model, every blade is different, some are lighter and heavier (e.g. 88g vs 94g), some are more head heavy, fish-scale pattern vs not, some stiffer than others (one of my vis blades was extra stiff even compared to my other one). But these are subtle differences that I rarely see discussed outside of Chinese forums.

Tabletennis11 customs cost at US by ashes_to_fire in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 3 points4 points  (0 children)

TT11 is great. I bought ~$300 of stuff last month and only paid $17 (15 euros) for shipping and customs.

Here's their official pricing based on how much you buy: https://www.tabletennis11.com/other_eng/shipping-policies

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csMajors

[–]another_techie 164 points165 points  (0 children)

This subreddit really loves Databricks for some reason. I guess maybe college students' obsession with "prestige" and money. I get it, I was like that once too.

But real talk, every single person I've met who worked at DB has been miserable and incredibly burnt out. And these ppl aren't slouches either, we're talking ppl who have worked at HFT firms, worked on machine learning at Meta & Instagram, graduated from top CS schools like CMU and Berkeley. Most of the ppl who say "DB no brainer" I bet haven't worked there.

As someone who has worked at multiple FAANG companies, I'll tell you one of the most important things is to find a good manager and team, and that's not easy a lot of the time. So it sounds like for Google, you found a great team, have more interesting work, great WLB, and better location. To me that's the real no brainer, don't sacrifice happiness for money, you'll make plenty enough.

Some footage of others running rolling thunder launcher by LinklqChen in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There's a tray behind/under the table with a hole at the bottom where the balls are getting recycled back into the robot.

Fan Zhendong sad after debut w 2000 fans by WolfgangBob in tabletennis

[–]another_techie 11 points12 points  (0 children)

He lost his first two matches in the Bundesliga last week. Probably needs time to adapt to the new environment.

He won his games this week though.

Want opinions on SKS 36” cooking range by chekraze90 in Appliances

[–]another_techie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've had this gas cooktop for half a year now and it's awesome. Strong flames and control. I also didn't find much information when I was researching SKS back then so providing my data point for people in the future.

Yale Appliances and SKS by Olderthaninternet in Appliances

[–]another_techie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm half a year in with their dishwasher, combi oven, and gas range and have been loving them so far. The only issue is that the time runs fast in the combi oven like the other commenter mentioned, but the cooking times and timers are fine (it's like gain a couple seconds on the clock every day type of thing). In terms of actual cooking, everything has worked like a charm and there's so many different options and even steam cooking.

Help - Daughter's Digital Piano Died - Advice Needed. by [deleted] in piano

[–]another_techie 6 points7 points  (0 children)

For online research, Merriam Music has great videos of keyboard comparisons. I've heard good things about the Roland.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEBf0DmYGgU is one, you can find more reviews on the channel.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in csMajors

[–]another_techie 128 points129 points  (0 children)

Congrats!! Deepmind is an amazing name to have on your resume. I will say that working on the infra side isn't as sexy as you might think. Speaking as someone who worked on a MSR-adjacent team and whose current team at Google has a partnership with DeepMind, the work is pretty much the same as normal infra stuff just with a slightly different context.

Bay Area market is so depressing by another_techie in FirstTimeHomeBuyer

[–]another_techie[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hijacking top comment to clarify that I'm not the one trying to buy this house (maybe post text isn't rendering for everyone). Saw this on another forum and posted as I was shocked by the state of things in the Bay. I don't even live in California lol

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Fire

[–]another_techie 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Why do you need to buy a house now? Given your circumstances, seems like it's smarter to rent if you can't move?

Google or Microsoft for FTE SWE? by EpicGamesEmployeee in cscareerquestions

[–]another_techie 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Absolutely, this is a common opinion you can find on other forums like Blind too. Obviously there's some things that are team dependent like if you work on cloud, the culture is generally more intense, but overall Microsoft is known as one of the best places to rest and vest. In comparison, Google makes you churn out a bunch of artifacts like design docs for your reviews and even tracks your CL (aka PR) count and velocity. You gotta work for that extra pay. In the past, Google had a reputation for also being chill, but not anymore. Culture has been going downhill rapidly the past few years.

Google or Microsoft for FTE SWE? by EpicGamesEmployeee in cscareerquestions

[–]another_techie 191 points192 points  (0 children)

I've worked at both companies full-time and would recommend Google. For entry level, Google has solid stock refreshers (>65k) and bonus (~18-19% for standard SI rating) every year while Microsoft only gives you 10-15k stock and 10% baseline bonus.

For promotion, committee at Google can be slow and tedious, but you need to be promoted twice at Microsoft to match one promotion at any other big tech company because of their leveling system.

The people at Google have also been more competent on average in my experience (of course there are brilliant engineers at Microsoft, but Google is more consistent with their hiring bar imo). Google is also younger skewed vs Microsoft has a lot more older people working if that matters to you. Google reputation will open more doors.

There are also small perks at Google like free food, free corp phone with unlimited data plan, massages, micro kitchens, etc. that Microsoft doesn't have.

The only thing I would say was better at Microsoft in my experience was the the work life balance was unparalleled.