Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

Contextual AI offers a platform for building RAG agents. Get started with their docs here.

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Congrats to Stack Overflow user Smrutiranjan Sahu, who earned a Stellar Question badge by asking How to define type for a function callback (as any function type, not universal any) used in a method parameter.

Topics covered in this episode:

• git-flight-rules
• Uravelling t-strings
• neohtop
• Introducing Pyrefly: A new type checker and IDE experience for Python
• Extras
• Joke

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About the show

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• Michael: @mkennedy@fosstodon.org / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)
• Brian: @brianokken@fosstodon.org / @brianokken.bsky.social
• Show: @pythonbytes@fosstodon.org / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)

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Michael #1: git-flight-rules

• What are "flight rules"?
  • A guide for astronauts (now, programmers using Git) about what to do when things go wrong.
  • Flight Rules are the hard-earned body of knowledge recorded in manuals that list, step-by-step, what to do if X occurs, and why. Essentially, they are extremely detailed, scenario-specific standard operating procedures. [...]
  • NASA has been capturing our missteps, disasters and solutions since the early 1960s, when Mercury-era ground teams first started gathering "lessons learned" into a compendium that now lists thousands of problematic situations, from engine failure to busted hatch handles to computer glitches, and their solutions.
• Steps for common operations and actions
  • I want to start a local repository
  • What did I just commit?
  • I want to discard specific unstaged changes
  • Restore a deleted file

Brian #2: Uravelling t-strings

• Brett Cannon
• Article walks through
  • Evaluating the Python expression
  • Applying specified conversions
  • Applying format specs
  • Using an Interpolation class to hold details of replacement fields
  • Using Template class to hold parsed data
• Plus, you don’t have to have Python 3.14.0b1 to try this out.
• The end result is very close to an example used in PEP 750, which you do need 3.14.0b1 to try out.
• See also:
  • I’ve written a pytest version, Unravelling t-strings with pytest, if you want to run all the examples with one file.

Michael #3: neohtop

• Blazing-fast system monitoring for your desktop
• Features
  • Real-time process monitoring
  • CPU and Memory usage tracking
  • Beautiful, modern UI with dark/light themes
  • Advanced process search and filtering
  • Pin important processes
  • Process management (kill processes)
  • Sort by any column
  • Auto-refresh system stats

Brian #4: Introducing Pyrefly: A new type checker and IDE experience for Python

• From Facebook / Meta
• Another Python type checker written in Rust
• Built with IDE integration in mind from the beginning
• Principles
  • Performance
  • IDE first
  • Inference (inferring types in untyped code)
  • Open source
• I mistakenly tried this on the project I support with the most horrible abuses of the dynamic nature of Python, pytest-check. It didn’t go well. But perhaps the project is ready for some refactoring. I’d like to try it soon on a more well behaved project.

Extras

Brian:

• Python: The Documentary Official Trailer
• Tim Hopper added Setting up testing with ptyest and uv to his “Python Developer Tooling Handbook”
• For a more thorough intro on pytest, check out courses.pythontest.com
• pocket is closing, I’m switching to Raindrop
  • I got one question about code formatting. It’s not highlighted, but otherwise not bad.

Michael:

• New course! Polars for Power Users: Transform Your Data Analysis Game
• Apache Airflow 3.0 Released
• Paste 5

Joke: Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena, but for programming

Jona provides an AI-powered gut biome test for clinicians and patients alike. 

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Sandy Carter, Author of the new book “AI First, Human Always Author” and the Chief Operating Officer of Unstoppable Domains joins the show to dive into the inspiration behind her latest book and shares why empathy and people-first strategies are essential for the future of artificial intelligence. We also unpack topics like AI trust gaps around the world, the critical role of human oversight in AI implementations, how small businesses and governments alike can embrace emerging tech, and why AI’s real value lies in transforming — not replacing — human jobs.

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Alex's unexpected Sergey Brin interview 2) Jony Ive sells his IO device company to OpenAI 3) What this device could be 4) Is Jony + Sam bad for Apple? 5) Could this device work? 6) What the move to ambient assistants could signal for tech 7) Anthropic's first developer event 8) Is Anthropic's move to code and tools a smart one? 9) Claude will blackmail you 10) Sorting through hype vs. truth in a fun game that everyone loves 11) Google's Veo 3 12) Where Google stands vs. before the week started.

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Get the whole rundown of what’s new in this version of Android Developer’s Studio. 

Google I/O just happened, and the Android team announced a bunch of things. 

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Congrats to Populist badge winner chudo xl for their answer to Android app stuck at "Launching on Devices" or 'device 'DEVICEID' not found' error.

Demis Hassabis is the CEO of Google DeepMind. Sergey Brin is the co-founder of Google. The two leading tech executives join Alex Kantrowitz for a live interview at Google's IO developer conference to discuss the frontiers of AI research. Tune in to hear their perspective on whether scaling is tapped out, how reasoning techniques have performed, what AGI actually means, the potential for an intelligence explosion, and much more. Tune in for a deep look into AI's cutting edge featuring two executives building it.

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Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice.

Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 25% off for the first year: https://www.bigtechnology.com/subscribe?coupon=0843016b

Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

Koray Kavukcuoglu is the Chief Technology Officer of Google DeepMind. Kavukcuoglu joins Big Technology to discuss how his team is pushing the frontier of AI research inside Google as the company's Google IO developer event gets underway. Tune in to hear Kavukcuoglu break down the value of brute scale versus novel techniques and how the new inference-time “DeepThink” mode could supercharge reasoning. We also cover Veo 3’s sound-synced video generation, the open-source-versus-proprietary debate, and what a ten-percent jump in model quality might unlock for users everywhere.