Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intern Impact: Brotli compression for Play Store app downloads

students.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 184 posts

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

#161

Post by astrodust »

ygaf wrote: post #118
astrodust wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, come on. This is a bullshit argument. Hacker News does not have the same audience as The Daily Mail.

Nobody measures things in megagigabytes.

To be truly pedantic, "M" can also mean "mille" or thousand if you're talking about things like CPM. Mixing units like this introduces needless confusion when there's already a SI unit for the job: P.

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

#162

Post by leephillips »

Someone1234 wrote: post #83
sp332 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's confusing. To use an analogy, imagine if someone wrote: "$1.5M B" instead of 1.5 quadrillion or 1,500,000,000,000,000. You'd be confused, and rightly so. A lot of people would mistakenly read it either as $1.5M or $1.5B, neither of which is right. In this case a lot of people are misreading it as 1.5 GB/Day instead of 1.5 PB/Day. PS - The way Google uses it in the Blog post is pretty clear, they're describing…

I'm sure I'm strange, but I find "$1.5M B" clearer than talk of "quadrillion"s, because I'm not confident I know what power of 10 a quadrillion is, but when I see M B I just add 6+9. Even then, the British sometimes say things like "thousand million", because billion over there used to mean 10^12, but now means 10^9 (which they used to call a milliard); as with other wordy number-words they've succumbed to American usage¹.

¹https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/how-many-is-a-bill...

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

#163

Post by grzm »

whyileft wrote: post #132
bobdole1234 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like Google might be recruiting.

Yup. Voting on HN is very suspect in general and easy to manipulate because the votes are hidden.

If you've got concerns about voting rings or brigades or other irregularities, your best option is to contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer.

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

#164

Post by gambiting »

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #127
gurgus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an intern, that is insanely good. edit: In fact, for a lot of people, that is insanely good! Apologies if I came across as an asshole when I said "for an intern".

No it isn't, especially considering it's 30% that what Google interns earn in the US, even in cheaper places than London (Pittsburgh, Seattle). Also, it's a lot less than what competitors pay interns in London (Bloomberg, Facebook and Palantir pay interns a LOT better, among others).

I don't know, I think you have to look at what is good for a certain area.

In Poland, ~1000EUR/4000PLN/month is more than what an accountant makes. Teachers never reach this salary, even with 30+ years of experience.

You can easily live very comfortably on that salary, if there's two of you making that money you can buy a house and pay it off within 10 years or build one.

Being paid that much as an intern is just unheard of, most people I know would trip over and faint if they heard this.

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

#165

Post by dang »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #129
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…

This is typical HN; a bunch of people who think highly of themselves for not being sheep working for the big companies, and for whom everything that these companies do is easy peasy stuff that they could do in their sleep. If I had done something to save anybody 1.5 Petabytes of bandwidth per day , I would be very content for at least a few months. Congratulations to the intern for having such a lasting impact.

> This is typical HN; a bunch of people who think highly of themselves for not being sheep working for the big companies, and for whom everything that these companies do is easy peasy stuff that they could do in their sleep.

Please don't mar your fine comment with an uncharitable dismissal of your own, and please don't make up generalizations about HN to score rhetorical points. The problem of dismissiveness and snark on the internet is a systemic one that is far from limited to HN. Many more people here are charitable and good-natured than not.

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

#166

Post by sctb »

tempymctempface wrote: post #40
fs111 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newsflash: There are more countries than the US of A and your laws do not apply here.

U mad bro?

Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#167

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

skybrian wrote: post #157
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no other explanation for it (believe me, I want one) Um, the fact that that her work saved that much bandwidth is a happy accident of the fact that she was at Google and assigned on a project that had a high user volume. Other than passing the intern interview loop, that took no absolutely no merit or effort on her part whatsoever. Moreover, the blog post describes the work as "to add support for Brotli for…

It's of course true that at Google you have a chance to make a bigger impact. (Not guaranteed - it depends on what project the intern is given, and that's kind of random.) And interns do get lots of support. But, to say that there is "no merit or effort on her part" is an insult to all the good work interns do while they're here. They're not coasting. Seems like you're so eager to tear this down that you'll say anyth…

Given the fact that your first paragraph says the same thing my first paragraph does, it's unclear to me what point you're trying to make.

The intern in question had no part in making Google the size it is and was most likely not offered much choice in the way of team or project assigned, so no merit or effort was involved in either of the two. Which part would you like to dispute?

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

#168

Post by sametmax »

aasarava wrote: post #92
sametmax wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reaction arose because of the person being put on the spotlight would not have been so if she have been a male. Meritocracy being part of the dev culture, promoting somebody achieving regular stuff because of the gender is ill-perceived. It's like when you go to a conference, and half of the talks are a promoted minority of some sort but they are not that good. You feel cheated. The fact is there are wome…

"The fact is there are women doing great work and talks. Make noise about them." And here is a woman who did great work, and Google is making noise about her. Why is this particular case not valid, when it's doing exactly what you recommend?

Work that would be shown regardless of gender. This would not have been show on HN if the dev were a white CIS male because it is basically regular work. Good work, but nothing to show off about. We all do that everyday. It's not a complain, I'm just explaining: you don't want to hear about the regular stuff, for that you have the coffee machine.

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

#169

Post by sametmax »

1024core wrote: post #85
sametmax wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reaction arose because of the person being put on the spotlight would not have been so if she have been a male. Meritocracy being part of the dev culture, promoting somebody achieving regular stuff because of the gender is ill-perceived. It's like when you go to a conference, and half of the talks are a promoted minority of some sort but they are not that good. You feel cheated. The fact is there are wome…

> Meritocracy being part of the dev culture, That may be true on surface, and it's a good cliche, but ask any woman developer and you'll hear stories you'd never hear from males.

I don't disagree, I'm just giving an explanation on what can motivate people to react this way.

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

#170

Post by skybrian »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #167
skybrian wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's of course true that at Google you have a chance to make a bigger impact. (Not guaranteed - it depends on what project the intern is given, and that's kind of random.) And interns do get lots of support. But, to say that there is "no merit or effort on her part" is an insult to all the good work interns do while they're here. They're not coasting. Seems like you're so eager to tear this down that you'll say anyth…

Given the fact that your first paragraph says the same thing my first paragraph does, it's unclear to me what point you're trying to make. The intern in question had no part in making Google the size it is and was most likely not offered much choice in the way of team or project assigned, so no merit or effort was involved in either of the two. Which part would you like to dispute?

I dispute the part where you say she shouldn't get any credit for her work because she did the work at Google.

If you're going to make that argument, nobody at Google deserves any credit for anything we do. That's not how we normally measure impact. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, but putting those resources to work effectively still counts.

Post reply on HN