jpdaigle (u/jpdaigle)

jpdaigle commented on Google lays off its Python team social.coop/@Yhg1s/112332... · Posted by u/compiler-guy

zem · a year ago

in addition to contributing to upstream python, we

* maintained a stable version of python within google, and made sure that everything in the monorepo worked with it. in my time on the team we moved from 2.7 to 3.6, then incrementally to 3.11, each update taking months to over a year because the rule at google is if you check any code in, you are responsible for every single breakage it causes

* maintained tools to keep thousands of third party packages constantly updated from their open source versions, with patch queues for the ones that needed google-specific changes

* had highly customised versions of tools like pylint and black, targeted to google's style guide and overall codebase

* contributed to pybind11, and maintained tools for c++ integration

* developed and maintained build system rules for python, including a large effort to move python rules to pure starlark code rather than having them entangled in the blaze/bazel core engine

* developed and maintained a typechecker (pytype) that would do inference on code without type annotations, and work over very large projects with a one-file-at-a-time architecture (this was my primary job at google, ama)

* performed automated refactorings across hundreds of millions of lines of code

and that was just the dev portion of our jobs. we also acted as a help desk of sorts for python users at google, helping troubleshoot tricky issues, and point newcomers in the right direction. plus we worked with a lot of other teams, including the machine learning and AI teams, the colaboratory and IDE teams, teams like protobuf that integrated with and generated python bindings, teams like google cloud who wanted to offer python runtimes to their customers, teams like youtube who had an unusually large system built in python and needed to do extraordinary things to keep it performant and maintainable.

and we did all this for years with fewer than 10 people, most of whom loved the work and the team so much that we just stayed on it for years. also, despite the understaffing, we had managers who were extremely good about maintaining work/life balance and the "marathon, not sprint" approach to work. as i said in another comment, it's the best job i've ever had, and i'll miss it deeply.

jpdaigle · a year ago

I’m so sorry.

jpdaigle commented on Feature Flags: Theory vs. Reality bpapillon.com/post/featur... · Posted by u/benpapillon

jbreckmckye · 2 years ago

I've definitely lived with the zombie flags problem. Teams ship experiments that double the size of a piece of code, but never go back to refactor out the unused code branches. In shared codebases this becomes a nightmare of thousands of lines of zombie code and unit tests.

This is a social problem as much as a technical one: even if you have LaunchDarkly, DataDog etc making very clear that a flag isn't used, getting a team to prioritise cleanup is difficult. Especially if their PM leaned on engineers to make the experiment "quick n dirty" and therefore hard to clean up.

At The Guardian we had a pretty direct way to fix this: experiments were associated with expiry dates, and if your team's experiments expired the build system simply wouldn't process your jobs without outside intervention. Seems harsh, but I've found with many orgs the only way to fix negative externalities in a shared codebase is a tool that says "you broke your promises, now we break your builds".

jpdaigle · 2 years ago

The tricky requirement that ends up existing and torpedoing attempts to clean up feature flags is a requirement for long-term holdback.

e.g. "Test was successful so it's rolling out to all users, minus a 0.5% holdback population for the next 2 years"

This then forces the team to maintain the two paths for the long-term, ensuring the team might get re-orged / re-prioritize their projects sometime a year later making the cleanup really hard to eventually enforce.

jpdaigle commented on Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted theverge.com/2023/6/13/23... · Posted by u/tedivm

masklinn · 2 years ago

> Reddit can't force ads on any API users (except through the official app).

They absolutely could make ads part of the API that third party applications have to display.

There's a hundred things they could do if you assume they care about third-party applications, and don't specifically want to kill them.

I do think they want to kill them, actively, but even beyond that it's really clear they don't care.

jpdaigle · 2 years ago

The exact same point applies to Twitter's 3rdparty API getting killed off, and both moves are still a mystery.

It'd be easy to say "as a condition of getting this API key, you agree to display ad elements as they are served in the feed, and on click, open their associated URL in the system browser". All the ad-targeting is done server-side anyways, and attribution via unique links is easy.

jpdaigle commented on Japan Has Millions of Empty Houses. Want to Buy One for $25,000? nytimes.com/2023/04/17/re... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

guessmyname · 2 years ago

> So, 20x less renovation than a $4m house in Palo Alto needs.

While the comparison of renovation costs is interesting, it seems somewhat arbitrary to use Palo Alto as the sole point of comparison.

After all, Palo Alto is widely known as one of the most expensive cities in the United States, so it’s possible that the cost of renovations there could be significantly higher than in other areas. It would be fascinating to see a broader analysis of renovation costs across different cities, regions, or countries, perhaps even taking into account factors such as local labor costs and materials prices.

Only then can we truly understand the economic implications of home renovation and how it varies across the country.

jpdaigle · 2 years ago

Yes, it would be interesting, because you'd expect materials to cost roughly the same wherever you are in the country (modulo shipping costs), and cost of labor to account for much of the city to city difference.

A former landlord of mine, whose house I was renting in Palo Alto at the time (2021), shared that they were planning to kick off a major renovation that would total around 800K$ all-in.

That's an absolutely stunning figure to renovate a 3bdrm home, considering I've also heard anecdotes from outside California, of completely stripping down a similar-sized home to the studs, redoing all plumbing / electricity / walls / flooring / high-end-everything in the kitchen... for under 250K$.

So, where's the extra half-million dollars going? The delta in renovation costs alone between these anecdotes represents 10 years of the average California constructor worker's salary [per the BLS](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472061.htm).

jpdaigle commented on What is the randomart image for? bytes.zone/posts/what-is-... · Posted by u/susam

coldpie · 3 years ago

It is a bit of effort, but you can make the computer do the verification for you by writing (or generating) a simple text file. Using Perl shasum because I'm on a mac at the moment, but Linux sha256sum works the same:

    $ echo hi > some_file
    $ shasum -a 256 some_file > check
    $ cat check
    98ea6e4f216f2fb4b69fff9b3a44842c38686ca685f3f55dc48c5d3fb1107be4  some_file
    $ shasum -a 256 -c check
    some_file: OK
    $ echo $?
    0
    $ echo bye > some_file
    $ shasum -a 256 -c check
    some_file: FAILED
    shasum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
    $ echo $?
    1

Edit: Oh cool, at least perl's shasum allows reading from stdin so you can even skip the file if you're just copying some check file off the software's website:

    $ shasum -a 256 -c - <<EOF
    > 98ea6e4f216f2fb4b69fff9b3a44842c38686ca685f3f55dc48c5d3fb1107be4  some_file
    > EOF
    some_file: OK

jpdaigle · 3 years ago

Any hash calculations using a "read from stdin or a pipe" strategy, in my experience, is fraught with issues caused by an extra newline at the end of the input possibly being there today, and not in later checks, or vice-versa.

When people claim they wrote a prediction at some later date, they always have to document the EXACT command used to avoid this, e.g. `echo "smart prediction" | md5sum`

jpdaigle commented on Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011) lowtechmagazine.com/2011/... · Posted by u/sebg

jpdaigle · 3 years ago

I'm shocked and disappointed at how expensive retrofitting insulation into a minimally insulated 1930s Bay Area house actually is. I estimate gas heating costs at around 2500$ / year (nov-march), while insulating floors, walls and roof would cost a shocking 60K$ for an average size 3bdrm.

If the insulation cuts heating cost in half, that's a 1250$ savings per year, meaning a 48 year break even time assuming zero discount rate. It absolutely doesn't make sense to do the work unless there's a massive tax subsidy or contractor costs come down (which is bad for the environment)

jpdaigle commented on Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022 · Posted by u/Dicey84

StrictDabbler · 3 years ago

Aftershokz OpenComm should be the default on all job sites. True, full ear protection via ear-plugs, hands-free communication, no bulk, and the opportunity to listen to your music without adding noise to the environment. Oh, and magnetic charging.

If you do any work in a noisy industrial or trade setting you owe it to yourself to get these.

I used to buy the 3M connect earmuffs but their connectivity is bad, the ear-cushions break down and the mini-usb charger port snaps off. I had to buy a new set of earmuffs once a year.

jpdaigle · 3 years ago

I thought I’d like the OpenComms but the Bluetooth stuff seems flaky. Not sure if this is everyone or just me, but if you pair them to 2 devices (e.g. a phone and a laptop), then shut down one of those, the Aftershokz will beep every few seconds thereafter to let you know you lost the connection, even while you’re using the other audio source.

It’s crazy: shut the laptop and walk away to listen to a podcast on your phone and they just beep beep beep.

jpdaigle commented on “Skimpflation” is hitting everything from food to hotels cbsnews.com/news/skimpfla... · Posted by u/lxm

s1artibartfast · 3 years ago

The quality products already exist, I'm guessing you aren't buying them because you want a cheaper option.

jpdaigle · 3 years ago

Some product categories seem to have the middle of the market (quality wise) hollow out and disappear, so all you've got left is the low-end crap and high-end pricy versions, with no middle-range left.

One example: try to buy a nice metal or leather band for an Apple Watch. There's the low-end ones, which are 4$ on alibaba re-sold on Amazon for 12$. There's the X00$ Apple-made first party ones, and that's it. Nobody's making a really nice ~45$ leather band without the Apple name (that's obviously not just the cheap alibaba ones with a better marketing site).

jpdaigle commented on Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips washingtonpost.com/politi... · Posted by u/lettergram

mathattack · 3 years ago

I’m all for healthy free lunches for poor kids. Is it really necessary to give free meals to all Palo Alto kids independent of financial status? https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/06/19/palo-alto-uni...

jpdaigle · 3 years ago

The Palo Alto school meals are by no means healthy. At least at my kindergartner’s school last year, nothing’s really prepared onsite, it’s mostly microwave-in-a-bag fast food (factory made burritos, pizza, 2-ingredient sandwiches). Often this would come with a side of fruit (canned and sweetened) and crackers.

My kid would always bring a lunch from home but often return with it uneaten, because when you pit healthy home cooked food against microwaved pizza and crackers, for a six year old, it’s no contest.

I’m still supportive of the program - if there are starving kids in our community, of course having free options is great, I just wish they’d managed to have a cook onsite so it wouldn’t be so factory-made and artificial.

jpdaigle commented on The speedy downfall of rapid delivery startups wired.com/story/the-speed... · Posted by u/taubek

lm28469 · 3 years ago

> If you have kids, time is worth a lot.

I'm talking about 20 something tech bros, they had plenty of time.

Also, you can call the place in advance and just come to pick it up, no wait time

I understand that time is important but as some point you still have to go through life. Otherwise what's the ultimate goal ? Matrix style pod with automatic feeding, that's what peak efficiency would look like

Making a pizza with your kids can also be quite a nice experience, better than putting them in front of candy crush while you do unpaid extra hours for mega_corp_of_the_day

jpdaigle · 3 years ago

> Also, you can call the place in advance and just come to pick it up, no wait time

I suspect both the orderer and order-taker are both a bit happier to have orders come in online instead of taking calls. It enables a bit more asynchrony and batching, and removes the potential for miscommunication.

Big advantage of moving food ordering online is that it's gotten rid of trying to read off an order through the phone to someone who barely speaks English, standing next to the phone in a loud kitchen with dishes clinking and people yelling in the background.