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768 points cyndunlop | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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PaulHoule ◴[] No.43106832[source]
An airline reservation system has to be perfect (no slack in today's skies), a hotel reservation can be 98% perfect so long as there is some slack and you don't mind putting somebody up in a better room than they paid for from time to time.

A social media system doesn't need to be perfect at all. It was clear to me from the beginning that Bluesky's feeds aren't very fast, not like they are crazy slow, but if it saves money or effort it's no problem if notifications are delayed 30s.

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1. rconti ◴[] No.43107181[source]
Especially for a free service!

Think about other ad-supported sites. If you're an engineer working on an ad-supported product, the perfect consistency you strive for in your code is not the product. The product is the sum of all of the content the user sees. And the costs of the tradeoffs you make are paid for by ads.

Am I willing to see 10x more ads for perfect consistency? Definitely not.