joshuamorton (u/joshuamorton)

joshuamorton commented on Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT meyerweb.com/eric/thought... · Posted by u/bkardell

th0ma5 · 3 days ago

I have personally witnessed web technology related components in the critical path of complex enterprise insurance systems. Setting aside things like the whole of .NET being steeped in web browser components, and the added complexity of being forced to isolated these components by the court, things like Selenium are used for getting around integration and licensing problems. It isn't right, it isn't efficient, it will be a year long project to change them... We've already seen outages caused by XML engines dereferencing domains that aren't available anymore causing subtle and hard to find bugs. People don't realize that we built a lot of cool stuff on XML and semantic web stuff that all works and is all needed in various ways! It would not surprise me if web browser automation is not central to a ton of backend integration and automation for absolute sure.

joshuamorton · 3 days ago

You understand that XSLT isn't xml, right? This change will probably have a 0% impact on selenium or similar browser automation.

joshuamorton commented on Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org giuliomagnifico.blog/post... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

charles_f · 4 days ago

> That's not a Gmail problem, and no reason to migrate.

It is a problem with Gmail, because they're helping themselves into your email, as was explained by the author in the sentence immediately after the one you quoted:

> Technically, Google can store every message you receive and know everything, and U.S. agencies can request access to that data

joshuamorton · 4 days ago

> because they're helping themselves into your email

What, specifically do you mean by this?

joshuamorton commented on Google did not unilaterally decide to kill XSLT meyerweb.com/eric/thought... · Posted by u/bkardell

th0ma5 · 4 days ago

XSLT specifics? Yes, ubernerd ... Person who can't get a doctor's appointment because the interactive voice menu which is somehow now based on a browser engine and has a subtle bug caused by this change could be anyone.

joshuamorton · 4 days ago

Is there some specific reason you think xslt removal is likely to cause this (because it is used in interactive voice menus)?

Or is your complaint here reducible to "changes in browsers can cause bugs, and bugs can harm consumers" for which the solution is "browsers must never change anything", which is of course also harmful to consumers (like when an xslt parser bug is used to steal my bank details)

joshuamorton commented on An Update on Pytype github.com/google/pytype... · Posted by u/mxmlnkn

jdlyga · 6 days ago

I'm surprised Google still maintained their own solution for this for so long. The standard for statically type checking Python nowadays is mypy.

joshuamorton · 6 days ago

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all maintain(ed) independent non-mypy typecheckers for internal and external uses that aren't served by mypy.

The various features mypy didn't support include speed, type inference/graduality, and partial checking in the presence of syntax errors (for linter/interactive usecases and code completion).

joshuamorton commented on Writing a good design document grantslatton.com/how-to-d... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

mtlynch · 22 days ago

I agree you should document the decisions and discussions around them. I never said you shouldn't, just that the discussion shouldn't be entirely written. But you can discuss live and summarize the discussion in the doc after.

Relatedly, I don't think full discussions about the design doc should live forever in the design doc. When I was at Google, I hated reading design docs where every line had a convoluted, 20-message comment thread attached to it in the margins. When I owned a doc, I'd drive those comment threads to a resolution, write up a concise summary of the debate in the appendix, then resolve the thread.

joshuamorton · 22 days ago

> Relatedly, I don't think full discussions about the design doc should live forever in the design doc. When I was at Google, I hated reading design docs where every line had a convoluted, 20-message comment thread attached to it in the margins. When I owned a doc, I'd drive those comment threads to a resolution, write up a concise summary of the debate in the appendix, then resolve the thread.

Yes exactly, you don't need the entire back-and-forth, but the relevant information should be written down somewhere.

joshuamorton commented on Writing a good design document grantslatton.com/how-to-d... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

mtlynch · 22 days ago

I disagree. I think companies that have meetings like this have an immature meeting culture.

Meetings are for low-latency collaboration, not information transfer.

For example, reading a design doc is obviously more efficient asynchronously because everyone has different reading speeds and doesn't need everyone else in the room while they read.

Arguing about tradeoffs in a design doc is usually more efficient in a meeting than an email because the low latency communication and additional signals from live communication make the discussion more efficient. For example, if the design doc says we should do X but you think it should do Y, in an email I maybe have to enumerate all the advantages and disadvantages, but in a meeting, maybe you're convinced after seeing just 20% of my rationale.

joshuamorton · 22 days ago

> For example, if the design doc says we should do X but you think it should do Y, in an email I maybe have to enumerate all the advantages and disadvantages, but in a meeting, maybe you're convinced after seeing just 20% of my rationale.

This is organizationally inefficient. You should write these reasons down in the design document so that you do not need to rely on both of us still being employed 5 years from now to explain to someone who is evaluating the state of the system on why the decision was made. A design document must include justification, not just the final decision, -- that's obvious from the code.

What you're describing as "immature meeting culture" I would instead describe as "mature documentation culture". Different companies work differently of course, and if you're absolutely optimizing for latency and have relatively small groups of stakeholders, meetings are super efficient since you can make all decisions now. But if you're optimizing for throughput and have larger groups of stakeholders, more asynchronous (or entirely asynchronous), document/slack/email driven approaches.

I think the amazon approach is weird and somewhat childish, but I stand by "meeting is only necessary if the stakeholders haven't approved your design offline/async". For such meetings you can use the amazon approach, or you can assume folks have already reviewed and left open comments, and only address outstanding comments during the meeting.

joshuamorton commented on Writing a good design document grantslatton.com/how-to-d... · Posted by u/kiyanwang

mtlynch · 23 days ago

>Amazon’s practice is a reaction to the fact that nobody actually does this.

But isn't that bizarre? I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it.

joshuamorton · 23 days ago

> But isn't that bizarre? I can't think of anything else where we need engineers to do something by a deadline, and we just resign to the fact that they won't do it unless we sit them in a room and babysit them while they do it.

This is practically the point of meetings. Meetings exist as a forcing function to achieve communication that likely could have happened asynchronously but for some reason didn't.

joshuamorton commented on Linda Yaccarino is leaving X nytimes.com/2025/07/09/te... · Posted by u/donohoe

joshuamorton · 2 months ago

2 years and one month almost to the day makes it seem like she waited the minimum time to avoid some bonus clawback and then got out.

joshuamorton commented on Volvo delivers 5,000th electric semi electrek.co/2025/06/29/vo... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

sandworm101 · 2 months ago

I have trouble calling these "semi". The do good work and are an environmental boon to short hauls, but "up to" ranges of 500km arent really semi territory imho. A better measurment imho is time. These things are good for four or five hours of highway driving, much much less when fully loaded or in mountains. So they cannot sustain a full day of driving without recharge. That is a delivery truck duty cycle, not semi.

(A typical diesel semi does 3500km between fillups, long enough for a few days of driving and about as long as the longest hauls in north america.)

And there is a big push for much larger trucks (net safety, less manpower/maintenance etc). Trucks that haul two 40-foot teus are comming. We need far better battery capacities to electrify such loads.

joshuamorton · 2 months ago

Lots of semi trucking is not "long-haul". In many European countries, you don't have need for long-haul routes for port to city or city to port transit.

Paris to Rotterdamn is under 500km, and Paris to Le Havre is much shorter (although these also have train routes).

Similarly, they could serve basically any route in the UK or Ireland.

joshuamorton commented on IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites haaretz.com/israel-news/2... · Posted by u/ahmetcadirci25

neepi · 2 months ago

I haven’t made a point either way. Please don’t quote me on things I haven’t said. That is morally and intellectually dishonest.

joshuamorton · 2 months ago

There is a point at which pleas to wait for "better" evidence can be construed as denials.

"There is ample evidence and this is not a new accusation, so your request to wait and see rings hollow and appears to be a de facto request to not pass judgement on Israeli crimes" is neither morally nor intellectually dishonest.