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Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

students.googleblog.com

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Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#111

Post by hathawsh »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #64

The amount of negativity in the comments section here is astounding. How could you not be excited and happy for this promising young woman's achievement? No, her work will not put her on the shortlist for a Turing Award. But it is something any engineer should be proud of, and has real impact for millions of users. You have a right to be unimpressed, but if you're taking the time to say "So what?" or "This is just a…

In fact, this was not posted to the main Google blog, but rather a special "student" blog that's obviously designed for recruiting interns. Had I seen this post when I was going to school, I certainly would have seriously considered a Google internship.

So bravo, Anamaria, for completing important work for Google, and bravo, Google, for highlighting her work in an appropriate place. Not every good work needs to be earth shattering.

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#112

Post by skybrian »

djrogers wrote: post #72
dajohnson89 wrote: post #64

The amount of negativity in the comments section here is astounding. How could you not be excited and happy for this promising young woman's achievement? No, her work will not put her on the shortlist for a Turing Award. But it is something any engineer should be proud of, and has real impact for millions of users. You have a right to be unimpressed, but if you're taking the time to say "So what?" or "This is just a…

> a senior engineer at Google could have implemented this compression and it would still be HN worthy, No, I doubt it would be. How many of the hundreds of little features in the google play store have been posted on HN with an article about the person who implemented them? Also, I find it more than a little presumptuous of you to assume that any scoffing is due to sexism. I see the exact same cynicism and lack of aw…

I think you're asking the wrong hypothetical: if this were another Google intern who was male, would the article even be discussed here? I think if people weren't impressed they'd ignore it (as they do so many other blog posts), not criticize it. The decision to debunk versus ignore is not applied evenly.

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#113

Post by NetStrikeForce »

painted wrote: post #19

So she used a compression algorithm developed by other googlers? So what? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she did a lot of work for it, but looks like a lot of people would have been able to do that, there is nothing innovative in what she did, right?

> So she used a compression algorithm developed by other googlers?

Yes.

> So what?

So she saved 1.5PB per day - which no other Googler did. Nor you or me. She did.

> Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she did a lot of work for it, but looks like a lot of people would have been able to do that, there is nothing innovative in what she did, right?

If it was that easy, why wasn't done already? Why did she have to come along to do it?

You are confusing easy to implement with easy to come up with the idea. In hindsight it is a no-brainer, but somehow the almighty Google didn't do in years of Play Store.

Go figure, right?

P.S.: Please support your downvotes with a reply.

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#114

Post by tonmoy »

whatshisface wrote: post #66
dajohnson89 wrote: post #64

The amount of negativity in the comments section here is astounding. How could you not be excited and happy for this promising young woman's achievement? No, her work will not put her on the shortlist for a Turing Award. But it is something any engineer should be proud of, and has real impact for millions of users. You have a right to be unimpressed, but if you're taking the time to say "So what?" or "This is just a…

I wouldn't call this discrimination - I don't think HN has ever treated early-career projects with a light touch. There's a curmudgeonly atmosphere in nearly all of these threads!

On the contrary, I have seen projects that change desktop wallpapers get LOTS of praise

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#115

Post by nitrogen »

jontro wrote: post #65
rdtsc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you worried at all about their patents stance. I currently I think it says if you litigate with Facebook you lose the license. Otherwise I agree zstd is looking like a very nice improvement in an area where most people think nothing happens. I especially dictionary compression bit.

Looks like they're using the BSD license in this project, https://github.com/facebook/zstd/blob/dev/LICENSE So no need to worry about the patent clause in this case right?

AIUI BSD only covers copyright, unlike Apache and GPL3 for example.

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#117

Post by arenaninja »

orliesaurus wrote: post #25

So wait, if I understand this article correctly she applied the compression because someone told her to? Or did she research herself and apllied the whole thing? I agree this is a bit like a "we re hiring interns" post

I would be excited if I had taken an internship and someone had told me to do this :)

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#118

Post by ygaf »

astrodust wrote: post #98
sp332 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says 1.5M GB == 1,5000,000 GB == 1.5 PB

That really is the worst possible way to put it. Why not express it in nanobytes? PB is a unit everyone is more familiar with than MGB.

*M GB

M is well-known in headlines as million. A GB is something people appreciate the size of, TB not as much, and PB is definitely not in most people's vocab.

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#119

Post by amichal »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #64

The amount of negativity in the comments section here is astounding. How could you not be excited and happy for this promising young woman's achievement? No, her work will not put her on the shortlist for a Turing Award. But it is something any engineer should be proud of, and has real impact for millions of users. You have a right to be unimpressed, but if you're taking the time to say "So what?" or "This is just a…

I agree, even if all she did was comment out one line of config and enable another line, doing it at scale, in production, is not to be done lightly. I suspect as a student intern she learned a lot about doing that and contributed a fair amount to making sure it was done carefully and correctly. I'm jealous actually and I change config lines like that every day.

Re: Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

#120

Post by ng12 »

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #113
painted wrote: post #19

So she used a compression algorithm developed by other googlers? So what? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she did a lot of work for it, but looks like a lot of people would have been able to do that, there is nothing innovative in what she did, right?

> So she used a compression algorithm developed by other googlers? Yes. > So what? So she saved 1.5PB per day - which no other Googler did. Nor you or me. She did. > Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she did a lot of work for it, but looks like a lot of people would have been able to do that, there is nothing innovative in what she did, right? If it was that easy, why wasn't done already? Why did she have to come along to…

What makes you think she came up with the idea? Read the article -- it's clear that it was her "project". She's an intern at Google, they're generally on a short leash.
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