OpenAI fires back at Gemini

Welcome back!

This week we’re gearing up to solve a timeless problem, asked by all FAANGs.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll cover:

• Container with most water problem

• How to design YouTube

Read time: under 4 minutes

CODING CHALLENGE

Container With Most Water

You are given an integer array height of length n. There are n vertical lines drawn such that the two endpoints of the ith line are (i, 0) and (i, height[i]).

Find two lines that together with the x-axis form a container, such that the container contains the most water.

Return the maximum amount of water a container can store.

Notice that you may not slant the container.

Example:

Input: height = [1,8,6,2,5,4,8,3,7]
Output: 49
Explanation: The above vertical lines are represented by array [1,8,6,2,5,4,8,3,7]. In this case, the max area of water (blue section) the container can contain is 49.

Solve the problem here before reading the solution.

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SOLUTION

To solve this problem, we will use a two-pointer approach. Two pointers represent the current walls of the container. Initially, we put the first pointer at the beginning and the second pointer at the end of the array.

If you look closely, the shorter wall decides how much water a container can hold. To calculate the water that the current container can hold, we multiply the height of the shorter wall by the distance between the two walls.

Then, we move the pointer at the shorter wall inwards hoping to find a taller wall and increase water that can be stored.

We will update the maximum area as we do this. This process continues until the two walls come together.

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SYSTEM DESIGN

How to design YouTube?

Let’s dive into the high-level design for a simplified Youtube system.

The key requirements include fast video uploads and smooth streaming. We also want the system to be highly available.

The system mainly consists of a content delivery network (CDN), transcoding servers, and databases for video and metadata storage.

Videos are uploaded in chunks and transcoded into multiple formats for different devices and bandwidths. Metadata like titles and descriptions are stored in a sharded and replicated database. CDNs deliver videos and cache the popular ones. Check out this article for more details.

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NEWS

This Week in the Tech World

Google vs OpenAI intensifies: Google launched its Gemini Deep Research agent on the same day OpenAI dropped GPT-5.2, escalating the AI race. Both companies claim benchmark superiority in this ongoing competition.

Nvidia Unveils Nemotron 3 Family: Nvidia has launched the Nemotron 3 family of open models, including Nano, Super, and Ultra sizes. This release provides developers with specialized libraries and datasets to build highly efficient AI agents.

Amazon eyes $10B OpenAI investment: Amazon is in talks to invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI, which could value the company over $500 billion and include use of Amazon's AI chips.

Databricks raises $4B at $134B valuation: Databricks raised over $4 billion at a $134 billion valuation. The data analytics company hit $4.8 billion revenue run rate, up 55% YoY.

Tesla ruled deceptive on Autopilot: California judge ruled Tesla's "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" marketing deceptive. Tesla has 60 days to comply or face sales ban.

Waymo seeks $15B at $100B valuation: Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo is in discussions to raise over $15 billion at a valuation approaching $100 billion.

OpenAI ends new hire vesting cliff: OpenAI eliminated the six-month vesting cliff for new employees in response to intense AI talent competition among major tech companies.

BONUS

Just for laughs 😏

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Until next time, take care! 🚀

Cheers,

Sahil + Sarra