Check out our previous episode with Logan, we discussed his unique path from coding to AI to product, the challenges of non-determinism in AI models, and surprising lessons from working at the Apple Store.
Alex Kantrowitz joins live from WWDC, where Apple just announced a number of new design changes including a completely updated operating system with 'Liquid Glass' styling. But in an era of reinvention, where AI is at the center of the technology's evolution, Apple introduced a number of refinements. This short, solo episode looks at Apple's strategy, vision, and execution in a changing moment for the tech industry.
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A small Python module for determining appropriate platform-specific dirs, e.g. a "user data dir".
Why the community moved on fromappdirstoplatformdirs
At AppDirs:
Note: This project has been officially deprecated. You may want to check out pypi.org/project/platformdirs/ which is a more active fork of appdirs. Thanks to everyone who has used appdirs. Shout out to ActiveState for the time they gave their employees to work on this over the years.
Better than AppDirs:
Works today, works tomorrow – new Python releases sometimes change low-level APIs (win32com, pathlib, Apple sandbox rules). platformdirs tracks those changes so your code keeps running.
First-class typing – no more types-appdirs stubs; editors autocomplete paths as Path objects.
Richer directory set – if you need a user’s Downloads folder or a per-session runtime dir, there’s a helper for it.
Cleaner internals – rewritten to use pathlib, caching, and extensive test coverage; all platforms are exercised in CI.
Community stewardship – the project lives in the PyPA orbit and gets security/compatibility patches quickly.
Brian #2:poethepoet-“Poe the Poet is a batteries included task runner that works well with poetry or with uv.”
Pandas 3.0 will significantly boost performance by replacing NumPy with PyArrow as its default engine, enabling faster loading and reading of columnar data.
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) What's coming at Apple's WWDC developer conference 2) Apple may be taking an AI gap year 3) Apple's Upcoming AI bets 4) Airpods enhancements 5) Apple's new operating system 6) Why Apple should buy Perplexity 7) Is Perplexity positioning itself for a sale 8) Elon vs. Trump explodes 9) What the fight means for Tesla, SpaceX, the Tech Right, and Musk's legacy 10) Why Elon needs robotaxis more than ever 11) Problems at DOGE 11) OpenAI forced to preserve our chats to due New York Times lawsuit.
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Emmanuel Straschnov grew up in rural France, which is interestingly enough where he started doing computer stuff (he mentioned there wasn't much else to do in the 90's). He grew up sailing, as he lived next to the shore in Normandy. He never really thought he would end up coding, but after obtaining his MBA, he ended up doing just that. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 children. He mentions that most of his hobby time is devoted to them, but on occasion, he likes to travel, continue sailing, and to sing.
Many years ago, Emmanuel noticed that there were a lot of people searching for technical founders, and using services to find technical founders. He thought this to be wrong, as many people have product ideas and just need a product to help them build it... so, he created something just for them.
If you've heard the phrase "Automate the boring things" for Python, this episode starts with that idea and takes it to another level. We have Glyph back on the podcast to talk about "Programming YOUR computer with Python." We dive into a bunch of tools and frameworks and especially spend some time on integrating with existing platform APIs (e.g. macOS's BrowserKit and Window's COM APIs) to build desktop apps in Python that make you happier and more productive. Let's dive in!
Sundar Pichai is CEO of Google and Alphabet.
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep471-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.
OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(00:07) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(07:55) – Growing up in India
(14:04) – Advice for young people
(15:46) – Styles of leadership
(20:07) – Impact of AI in human history
(32:17) – Veo 3 and future of video
(40:01) – Scaling laws
(43:46) – AGI and ASI
(50:11) – P(doom)
(57:02) – Toughest leadership decisions
(1:08:09) – AI mode vs Google Search
(1:21:00) – Google Chrome
(1:36:30) – Programming
(1:43:14) – Android
(1:48:27) – Questions for AGI
(1:53:42) – Future of humanity
(1:57:04) – Demo: Google Beam
(2:04:46) – Demo: Google XR Glasses
(2:07:31) – Biggest invention in human history
Clayton Gentry has been digitally oriented his whole life. When he was younger, he was into photography and making videos with his friends and for school - either highlight videos for school events or promotional videos for businesses. He's always liked making things look good on a screen, and was attracted to the art of it - which, he attributes to his mother's genes. These days, he lives in Brooklyn, plays guitar, and likes to run in Prospect Park near his home.
Toward the end of 2022, Clayton and his co-founder, Michael, re-connected on starting something new. Given Michael had extensive industry knowledge in the podcast world, Clayton and he combined their super powers to take on the multi-platform nature of podcasting.
Andrew McClanahan, Senior Director at LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government Relations rejoins for Part Three of the conversation around government program integrity and we tackle the urgent "so what" in today’s government assistance landscape — what can agencies actually do to strengthen their fraud, waste, and abuse defenses amid tightening budgets, AI-driven bot attacks, and mounting operational pressures? We also unpack practical, tech-enabled strategies for modernizing fraud prevention frameworks, streamlining verification processes, and improving both customer experience and staff retention.