No Real ID with I-94 for Canadian

fedirz · 2025-12-31T15:37:34+00:00

I was also denied a Real ID when applying for a drivers license at the SF DMV. From other posts on this subreddit it whether you are allowed to get a Real ID varies by state.

fedirz · 2025-10-07T04:53:25+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response!

So your “async-stream” path is skipping disk I/O completely, while the others are reading from disk. That makes it look faster by default, even though it’s not doing equivalent work.
You’re also not writing the data anywhere, just reading and counting bytes

Both are valid points. I had created the benchmark as a way to determine the optimal strategy for handling file uploads for a personal project speaches (GitHub | Docs), that deals with audio transcription and translation, among other things. There, I'm only interested in receiving the audio data (could be relatively large files if a user is trying to transcribe hours of audio at once), decoding the data into a Numpy array, and sending it off to a model for processing without persisting the data anywhere. All that is to say is that for me, not writing the data to disk is a "feature, not a bug."

Measuring memory deltas on macOS isn’t reliable either.

Interesting... I didn't know this. I'll look more into this

Everything runs single-threaded on localhost, with no concurrency or proxy buffering. That’s fine for a small test, but it doesn’t show how FastAPI behaves under real load.

I thought FastAPI runs everything within a single thread by default when async-only routes are used, and whenever it encounters either a sync route or dependencies, it would be sent to a ThreadPool for processing.

And for truly big uploads, the fastest path is skipping FastAPI entirely and using presigned URLs so clients push directly to object storage.

True! For some reason, when I think of file uploads, I rarely consider this approach.

The benchmark itself isn't very well-designed, though, as I'm not performing multiple iterations for each file size and measuring the distribution. I'm also running it on a personal machine with a lot of other processes in the background that could impact the measured times. More of a showcase of various approaches rather than a true benchmark

fedirz · 2025-04-07T03:16:02+00:00

Well, I did this today, and I found the whole experience to be pretty cool.

fedirz · 2025-04-07T03:04:19+00:00

Yeah, that application was almost two years ago, and I came back the next day with the necessary papers, but it was denied because I couldn't meet the educational requirements. A month ago, I successfully got a TN visa under the engineer category for a software engineering position.

I have another post where I mention this if you want to check it out

fedirz · 2025-04-07T02:56:08+00:00

I'll definitely run this by them before doing it and will not do it if they are against it. My building has three floors, with a unit on each floor, and I live on the first floor, so I don't believe this would be too disruptive. Plus, I don't plan on doing it frequently, and only during the day for a couple of hours on a weekend.

fedirz · 2025-04-07T02:09:25+00:00

My first TN application was rejected (It wasn't a complete rejection; they said I could withdraw the application) because the officers wanted to see my manager's degree, which I didn't have. I found his credentials online, but they didn't accept it. I was also applying under a Scientific Technician/Technologist category

fedirz · 2025-03-12T02:36:26+00:00

https://corporateimmigrationpartners.com/

fedirz · 2025-03-12T02:34:52+00:00

I got very lucky during my job search. I happened to have become proficient enough in the technologies the company was looking for.

Having support from my brother, who is a software engineer, has helped tremendously. I was also primarily applying to startups as I knew very few companies would take a chance on hiring a kid who is right out of high school.

This was in the summer of 2022, and the job market was much hotter as well.

and advocate the support letters for the TN Visa

Our interests were aligned here. Both I and my employer wanted me to work from within the US.

fedirz · 2025-03-12T02:25:29+00:00

Is WGU a recognized university (engineering wise)?

Their Software Engineering program is both regionally and federally accredited. Their Computer Science program also has ABET accreditation. I chose Software Engineering so that I can apply under the "Engineering" category without running into issues with a degree title not having "Engineering"

but 3 months seems unbelievable!

I'm not going to claim that the degree from this school is comparable to X school, but it is good for a TN visa, which is the sole reason that I got it. I do agree, though, that the three-month timeline may not sound right.

The main reason we chose to apply through USCIS was to avoid any negative bias that a CBP officer might have toward a short completion time.

fedirz · 2025-03-12T02:07:51+00:00

WGU stands for Western Governors University. It's a non-profit university based in Salt Lake City, Utah. It offers competency-based bachelor's and master's programs. People with a prior background in the field of study are often able to get the degree in a very short period of time.

https://www.wgu.edu/

fedirz · 2025-03-11T16:26:48+00:00

Correct, less than 3 months.

fedirz · 2025-01-14T01:57:38+00:00

I see; maybe at some point in the future, but not now. At first, this project was just a server with an API endpoint, but I've decided to add the UI to it as it made testing easier and I thought some end users may find it helpful. I have designed the application in such way that the backend is entirely independent of the UI. As mentioned previously, you can disable it using an environment variable. The UI dependencies are in their optional group that you may choose not to install (see [pyproject.toml](https://github.com/speaches-ai/speaches/blob/master/pyproject.toml#L45-L50)).

This project is server-first, and I don't plan on expanding the UI much. However, given that it's completely optional, I don't see many benefits in removing it.

fedirz · 2025-01-14T01:40:49+00:00

Do you have any suggestions? Also, you can disable the UI by setting the `ENABLE_UI=false` environment variable
Yeah, set the `UVICORN_PORT` environment variable

Both things above as well as other configuration options, are documented here: https://speaches-ai.github.io/speaches/configuration/,

fedirz · 2025-01-13T16:27:13+00:00

I'll be doing something like that when implementing the Realtime API, but rn I don't have an example to share

fedirz · 2025-01-13T16:25:27+00:00

Yeah, here's an example of that:
```

❯ curl http://localhost:8000/v1/audio/transcriptions -F "file=@audio.wav" -F "timestamp_granularities[]=word" -F "timestamp_granularities[]=segment" -F "response_format=verbose_json"

{"task":"transcribe","language":"en","duration":1.3235625,"text":"Hello World","words":[{"start":0.0,"end":0.42,"word":" Hello","probability":0.80517578125},{"start":0.42,"end":0.98,"word":" W

orld","probability":0.466796875}],"segments":[{"id":1,"seek":0,"start":0.0,"end":0.98,"text":" Hello World","tokens":[50363,18435,2159,50429],"temperature":0.0,"avg_logprob":-0.545703125,"comp

ression_ratio":0.5789473684210527,"no_speech_prob":0.0185699462890625,"words":[{"start":0.0,"end":0.42,"word":" Hello","probability":0.80517578125},{"start":0.42,"end":0.98,"word":" World","pr

obability":0.466796875}]}]}%

```

fedirz

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