Austin Federa has a non-traditional path into the blockchain world. In college, he studied political & environmental science, and economics. Interestingly enough, those studies map a lot to the blockchain first principles. He was seriously looking to do his PhD, but fell out of love with that space, and joined NPR as a journalist for a while. Then, of course, he got bit by the startup bug. Outside of tech, he enjoys living in Brooklyn, photography, and engaging in some form of learning at all times. He enjoys reading, mention the Children of Time series, as though it was fiction, it had a lot of interwoven psychology and communal themes.
Austin acknowledges that though we all love the internet, it's actually not very good... for high performant systems. And though companies are trying to build dedicated networks in the world, there hasn't been one created for blockchain - IE, not centralized around single party.
Ryan and Ben welcome Alex Malcoci, CEO and founder of MiniProto, to talk innovations in hardware prototyping, the evolving complexities of the global supply chain, the impact of the US-China trade war on manufacturing, and how automation in production could lead to new training programs for future engineers.
Episode notes:
MiniProto is a US-based prototyping manufacturer revolutionizing the way we develop and interact with hardware.
Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.
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“Python properties work well with type checkers such Mypy and friends. … The type of your property is taken from the getter only. Even if your setter accepts different types, the type checker will complain on assignment.”
Will describes a way to get around this and make type checkers happy.
He replaces @property with a descriptor. It’s a cool technique.
I also like the way Will is allowing different ways to use a property such that it’s more convenient for the user. This is a cool deverloper usability trick.
Calculates the cognitive complexity of Python files, written in Rust.
Based on the cognitive complexity measurement described in a white paper by Sonar
Cognitive complexity builds on the idea of cyclomatic complexity.
Cyclomatic complexity was intended to measure the “testability and maintainability” of the control flow of a module. Sonar argues that it’s fine for testability, but doesn’t do well with measuring the “maintainability” part. So they came up with a new measure.
Cognitive complexity is intended to reflects the relative difficulty of understanding, and therefore of maintaining methods, classes, and applications.
complexipy essentially does that, but also has a really nice color output.
Note: at the very least, you should be using “cyclomatic complexity”
try with ruff check --select C901
But also try complexipy.
Great for understanding which functions might be ripe for refactoring, adding more documentation, surrounding with more tests, etc.
⚙️ Automatic Environment Setup: When the notebook is opened, Juvio installs the dependencies automatically in an ephemeral virtual environment (using uv), ensuring that the notebook runs with the correct versions of the packages and Python
📁 Git-Friendly Format: Notebooks are converted on the fly to a script-style format using # %% markers, making diffs and version control painless
Why Use Juvio?
No additional lock or requirements files are needed
Guaranteed reproducibility
Cleaner Git diffs
Powered By
uv – ultra-fast Python package management
PEP 723 – Python inline dependency standards
Extras
Brian:
Test & Code in slow mode currently. But will be back with some awesome interviews.
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAI and Microsoft's tension boils as business relationship grows complex 2) Is Microsoft being anticompetitive? 3) How much money OpenAI owes Microsoft 4) Who holds the power in the relationship? 5) OpenAI discounts ChatGPT enterprise 6) New study shows using ChatGPT leads to eroding critical thinking skills 7) Does ChatGPT help or hurt education? 8) Andy Jassy says AI will replace Amazon workers 9) Is this really just a ploy to get workers using AI tools? 10) Zuck hires more AI execs 11) Waymo arrives in NYC.... kinda
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Tim Eades grew up poor, but forced himself into college. He is a 4 time CEO, an investor, and on the boards of several different companies - but more interestingly, he is an old punk. He saw the Sex Pistols live back in the day, which he mentioned had great sound quality. He's been married for 25 years, and is on the board of a charity that his wife runs. That charity delivery 20,000 birthday cakes to underprivileged children a year.
Being a multi-time CEO, Tim has some experience around starting companies. He interviewed many cybersecurity leaders, asking about identity and why vulnerabilities around it was still a problem. During a Liverpool game, he downloaded a powerpoint template and put together a pitch to build a company and solve this problem.
Dane shares his excitement about the Model Context Protocol (MCP), exploring its potential impact on the future of technology. The discussion turns to the growing need for sustainable content monetization and fair compensation for creators in an AI-driven world, and how this connects to Cloudflare’s mission to build a better internet.
The conversation also:
Explores how Cloudflare leverages AI internally to enhance developer productivity and improve code quality while keeping developers as owners of their work.
Covers Cloudflare’s innovative organizational structure and their journey toward becoming an AI-first company.
Dwarkesh Patel is the host of the Dwarkesh Podcast. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the frontiers of AI research, sharing why his timeline for AGI is a bit longer than the most enthusiastic researchers. Tune in for a candid discussion of the limitations of current methods, why continuous AI improvement might help the technology reach AGI, and what an intelligence explosion looks like. We also cover the race between AI labs, the dangers of AI deception, and AI sycophancy. Tune in for a deep discussion about the state of artificial intelligence, and where it’s going.
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Are you using Polars for your data science work? Maybe you've been sticking with the tried-and-true Pandas? There are many benefits to Polars directly of course. But you might not be aware of all the excellent tools and libraries that make Polars even better. Examples include Patito which combines Pydantic and Polars for data validation and polars_encryption which adds AES encryption to selected columns. We have Christopher Trudeau back on Talk Python To Me to tell us about his list of excellent libraries to power up your Polars game and we also talk a bit about his new Polars course.
Episode overview:
Guidione Machava has a confession: he's tired of being called an "African designer." The Mozambican product designer, now based in France and fresh from stints at Shopify and Paris-based 23point5, reckons that geographic qualifiers automatically strip away a third of your professional value before you've even started.
It's a provocative stance from someone who's built his career bridging African markets and global tech giants. Since launching- MozDevz - Mozambique's largest developer community - over a decade ago, Machava has been methodically executing what he calls his "Maria Sharapova strategy": a systematic approach to becoming world-class that he lifted from a Tim Ferriss podcast.
The strategy worked. From building communities across six African countries to creating a business directory that attracted 300,000 SMEs, to founding Kabum Digital (Mozambique's leading tech publication), Machava has consistently punched above his weight class. His secret? "Piggybacking" on successful people and refusing to let his environment dictate his ambitions.
Andile Masuku probes Machava on the realities of designing for African versus Western markets, why physical product development taught him to appreciate software's forgiving nature, and his mission to prove that world-class design talent can emerge from anywhere, provided you're strategic about how you position it.
Key insights:
- On strategic positioning: Despite building African communities and solving African problems, Machava deliberately brands himself as a "world-class designer" rather than a "world-class African designer." His reasoning? International clients and collaborators unconsciously devalue geography-qualified talent, even when they won't admit it.
- On market realities: Designing for Western markets versus African markets isn't just about different user needs, it's about fundamentally different quality bars. "In Africa, designing a product that works well is a plus. In France, it's the bare minimum," he observes.
- On the intersection economy: His time at 23.5—building design tools for made-to-order, sustainable fashion—taught him that the intersection of digital and physical economies is where the hardest, most rewarding innovation happens. Unlike software, physical products offer no "rollback to previous version" option.
- On manufactured serendipity: Rather than waiting for opportunities, Machava systematically identified people in positions he wanted to occupy, then found ways to provide value to them. The approach landed him interviews with executives from IDEO, Google, and Facebook for his World Class Designer podcast.
Notable moments:
1. How a Tim Ferriss interview with tennis champion Maria Sharapova became Machava's career template for achieving world-class performance in design
2. Why Shopify's hierarchy of priorities—solve merchants' problems first, make money second, never reverse that order—fundamentally changed how he approaches product design
3. The brutal economics lesson he learned at 23point5: physical product margins are tiny, error tolerance is minimal, and mistakes literally end up in landfills
4. His unconventional path from economics degree to postgraduate design studies, convincing Open Window Institute for Creative Arts & Technologies to let him skip three years of undergraduate work
The contrarian take:
Machava's most provocative insight centres on geographic positioning. Whilst celebrating African innovation has become fashionable, he argues that leading with continental identity in global markets is a strategic error. "If you say just 'world-class designer,' it's a completely different perspective," he notes, drawing from conversations with international colleagues who've confirmed his suspicions about unconscious bias.
