chimerasaurus's comments

I’m never leaving Seattle.

iykyk

No doubt. Ask my team how thrilled I am whenever we say "coming soon."

Narrator: It made him die inside.

Disclaimer - I am James on this[1] blog.

Yesterday we announced Polaris specifically so (1) customers don't get locked into a catalog; (2) people know Snowflake works with AWS, Azure, Confluent, etc.

1: https://www.snowflake.com/blog/introducing-polaris-catalog/

I’d take issue with the “Iceberg is slow” theme that Databricks in particular has tried to push.

If that were true, Snowflake would not be as fast on Iceberg/Parquet as its native format. The engine makes something fast or slow, not the table format.

Disclaimer - am at Snowflake.

I agree with the points you make above.

It’s written by a group -really- trying to make one of them a thing, even though it’s in decline, so just have that lens for anyone reading it.

Disclaimer - work at Snowflake. Two quick points to mention.

1. Snowflake has always used blob stores + file data + metadata. Architecturally it’s actually always been very Lakehouse-y

2. Parquet and Iceberg should be equivalent in performance and features. It’s more than playing nicely - it’s more choose your own adventure where all things are equal.

As a note, Iceberg also supports AVRO in addition to Parquet (and ORC).

I talk to customers basically all day about table formats. Only one customer has really brought up Hudi in a meaningful way. IMO, Hudi is basically out of contention for 95%+ of people looking at table formats.

I’ll just point out on the Snowflake side, we’ve been very public saying we want Iceberg/Parquet to be at or as close to parity as possible with our native format. The value add is the platform, not lock in. That also forces us to be the best on open formats, which IMO is also a good thing for everyone.

Disclaimer: I work at Snowflake literally on this with my team. :)

Also relevant for context on that.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/21/tech/elon-musk-texas-lawsuit-...

Disclaimer - Snowflake here.

I will just point out that when my team and I talk about streaming, we are focused on not real-time because in many cases, the value to a customer is not there. Not every "streaming" use case is fraud detection. In fact, we have been saying for awhile that for many streaming use cases, the value is 60 seconds < [value here] < 60 minutes.

Example: (and yes, this is a Snowflake video but has a visual) https://youtu.be/Ou04UZWwxgg?t=64

Yep.

One system is political but clear in how it operates. The other system is political and unclear how it operates. Still both "political".

"At times it seemed he trusted random feedback more than the people in the room who spent their lives dedicated to tackling the problem at hand."

But also

"Twitter moved at the speed of molasses and suffered from bureaucracy"

I think this blog points at a common issue in the tech world. Many want to have a hand in the majority of decisions, but also deride at how slowly things end up moving. It's very hard to have it both ways.

That and every company generally operates the same way. Tech is not special and humans are pretty consistent.

If you are an REI member, they often have stuff in the used (Garage) site that is in excellent quality and also less expensive. Patagonia also has worn wear that does the same thing. Win-win - awesome stuff, no need to make a new one for you, and less expensive!

- The guy who now has too many nanopuff jackets, but I will die on this hill.

As a data point, if you examine something more granular and trend/topic tied, like Snowpark (which is close to Clickhouse alone) or "Snowflake Table" I would propose the overall point being made kind of stands.

The original term is ambiguous (I wish Snowflake had different branding) but more specific terms to Snowflake still rank high and are maybe less wonky of a comparison.

Capture One also supports Fuji sims natively. It’s an excellent combo of you shoot Fuji. It’s so handy to swap the sim in post.

I have a 16gb m2 MBA. I’ve hit memory issues exactly once.

I had FF open with a ton of tabs, Capture One open, and I was stacking 400 frames in PixInsight.

The fact I had to push that hard was immensely impressive.

I’ve built my product career working on projects that present risks to the status quo for companies.

This isn’t unique to Apple. Not to defend them specifically, but a company willing to focus on long term is the exception.

Most companies have leaders that are given goals that constrain them to short term gains. It drives truly suboptimal long-term decision making, but it also usually aligns with their incentives.

Changing that view takes (1) an existential threat, (2) a lot of data, and (3) a team that can execute quickly and reliably once a window opens.

I had two Teslas (3, Y) and used FSD in Seattle.

It did not work and based on my experience, I am extremely skeptical it will ever work in places like Seattle. The car could not even navigate circling Greenlake without a disconnect.

Sold them at the high of the used car market because, in part, I estimate FSD is a liability for the brand and will, eventually, hurt their resale value. That and Elon Musk. Don't need to support that and won't in the future.