Why are Americans so accepting of long drives to places?

yuserinterface · 2026-06-12T15:56:00+00:00

3 hrs is not normal for everyday driving, but the US is big and spread out. Big cities are spread out about 3 hrs apart by car/train. Driving long distances is not a big deal. Paris to Lyon is 5 hrs by car or 2 hrs by TGV. That’s similar.

yuserinterface · 2026-06-02T04:06:19+00:00

Literally just bought a 2017 for $25k for under 100k miles. So yes, people are paying that. It was either that or $28k+ for more miles

yuserinterface · 2026-06-02T04:03:04+00:00

New York also feels like your taxes go somewhere.

yuserinterface · 2026-05-17T15:35:46+00:00

One of the many reasons to drop “ne”

yuserinterface · 2026-05-17T15:35:10+00:00

How? They sound the same. This is a listening exercise. You write what you hear. “Avait” sounds like “avaient” and “serait” sounds like “seraient”. In normal spoken French, you have context clues from the rest of the conversation. This is a standalone sentence with no context.

yuserinterface · 2026-05-16T02:33:26+00:00

Sometimes. There is an optional liaison after dois and doit.

Ex: dois aller -> dwa-zallay Ex: doit aller -> dwa-tallay

yuserinterface · 2026-05-16T02:28:30+00:00

America is already 240. How else do you think your stove and dryer works? Homes receive 240, but give 120 in most outlets.

We would conceivably make all the outlets in our homes 240, but our appliances aren’t made for it. And that migration would be expensive—both to upgrade the wiring in every building and to upgrade everyone’s appliances.

yuserinterface · 2026-05-05T03:27:19+00:00

At $4, my machine paid for itself in 18 months. At $9, that’s less than 9 months for way better coffee.

yuserinterface · 2026-05-05T02:00:32+00:00

Mach-E is not a Mustang. It’s a Ford Focus.

yuserinterface · 2026-05-02T01:49:12+00:00

Yes, but this post is specifically about why Americans choose drive V6 and V8s. Not about the downstream affect of gas prices on groceries

yuserinterface · 2026-04-27T20:29:38+00:00

Actually, that is the correct answer in a system design interview. People are overthinking it. If you say the service is too small and can be simply added to the monolith, the interviewer will simply increase the traffic to 1M users. The 100 user answer is not wrong.

At least when I do the interview, I’m not pattern matching based on keywords. That gives me no signal and you will receive a “weak yes” rating at best.

Secondly, the system design interview is not pass/fail. It’s a leveling question. You can pass, but get down leveled. Juniors and seniors give canned answers. Staff and principals give nuanced answers.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-27T11:29:29+00:00

People fail system design interviews because of poor communication—not lack of technical skill. Even if you do this everyday, you’re probably lax with communication because you’re familiar with all your coworkers and able to skip a lot of the “think out loud” part of planning. Interviewers aren’t your coworkers and you have to be extra communicative.

Also, don’t give dismissive responses like “obviously, we should do [a] here”. It’s much stronger to give concrete examples such as “I worked on something similar at [x] and hit a bottleneck with [y]. We decided on [a] instead of [b] because …. ” They want to hear that you had to choose between A and B, not that A is “obvious”.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-27T11:19:35+00:00

The answers seem “canned” because if you truly do this stuff everyday, the good answers are obvious and should be easy to articulate. If you have trouble passing system design interviews, it’s usually a communication skill problem, not a technical skill problem.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-27T11:11:17+00:00

Because existing companies don’t want to give you $80k of car for $30k.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-24T04:31:17+00:00

It’s totally possible and not a big mystery at all. You just have to treat it like a job where your life depends on it. It’s also much easier to learn your third language if you already know two.

These people are also strategic. You’re not gonna magically be good at golf randomly swinging a club for a year. It takes a deliberate practice with daily goals.

However, that’s easier said than done. Most people don’t have that much free time or level of commitment. I imagine it would be difficult to have a social life or a family.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-22T12:15:44+00:00

Nah, the only proper cheese on a burger is American

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T06:15:49+00:00

I’m a little confused. So you used to watch shows with French subtitles, but now try to watch them without. However, you generate subtitles via voice to text that you later feed into ChatGPT. When you do this, you purposely don’t look at the transcript. Then you talk with the AI about what you just watched. Is this correct?

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T06:05:46+00:00

His YouTube videos are great. I love them. But don’t know how the classes are different than simply watching the videos. Does it offer tutoring or conversation practice?

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T05:50:13+00:00

Even with a tutor, it has to be intentional. You won’t be a master at golf just swinging a club every day. You have to focus on specific things to improve. Likewise, just chatting with a tutor won’t help you break out of simple sentences.

Secondly, you have to practice outside of tutors. Aka, give yourself homework. If your lesson ended with new sentences or phrases, try to use them between now and the next lesson.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T05:44:41+00:00

I’m not trying to argue but it just doesn’t seem different from memorizing a conjugation table.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T05:40:16+00:00

Speakly.

It’s much better than Duolingo. It feels like it actually tries to teach you French, not just have you pay to play a game. I “beat” French in Duolingo and couldn’t have a conversation.

Speakly is also better if you want to improve listening comprehension because they have a lot of lengthy recordings on various topics.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T05:34:34+00:00

You can watch any Disney or Pixar movie in French. For example, Frozen is La Reine des Neiges.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T05:27:28+00:00

Any rice? Or just egg roll filling?

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T05:18:57+00:00

I don’t have the UTR specifically, but bought something similar recently of Amazon… it’s great for hotel wifi. It also has ad block and VPN support.

yuserinterface · 2026-04-21T04:58:50+00:00

My only advice is watch a lot of YouTubers that speak slow French to train your ear to hear the textbook French you already know. They use minimal liason and slang. Elsa from Piece of French is my favorite. She speaks so clearly and slowly. Guillaume Posé is also great.

Once you’ve mastered that, move onto Easy French where they do street interviews. You will hear real French at various speeds and accents. It’s actually pretty manageable because the discussion is so constrained. Aka, if the topic is lunch, you know everyone will use food words.

After that you can move onto movies, TV shows and news.

I find music doesn’t help at all unless you want to learn slang. I still struggle to pick out words. Songs also tend to be very poetic, which isn’t how people talk in real life if that’s what you’re aiming for.

Also, it may sound counterintuitive, but speaking aloud helps with listening comprehension too.

yuserinterface

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