jshchnz

If you're looking for a deep dive into the Threads apps, can check out this non-Meta written post: https://www.emergetools.com/deep-dives/threads

time is a flat circle - RSS feeds come back bb, I missed you

Emerge Tools | Full-Time | Senior Software Engineer (Frontend Lead) | Remote (USA preferred) | $140k-210k + 0.1%-0.5% equity

Emerge (https://www.emergetools.com/) is a suite of developer tools designed to supercharge mobile apps and the teams that build them.

In less than three years, Emerge has already been adopted by many of the best mobile teams in the world such as: DoorDash, Square, Airbnb, Duolingo, Dropbox, Bumble and Stripe.

Emerge is backed by top VCs like Y Combinator, Matrix Partners, Haystack Fund and Liquid 2 Ventures.

Our whole team likes to contribute to the frontend, but none of us are experts. We're looking for someone to lead Emerge's frontend development and design.

An ideal candidate

- Thrives in a fast moving, self-starter environment (we strive for a culture similar to Gitlab, but adapted for a small team)

- A strong eye for design with the ability to balance practicality, functionality & aesthetics (Figma experience is a plus)

- Extensive experience with React, Next.js, Tailwind, Vercel, Typescript

Job posting: https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/61922/

would love to hear if anyone from Apple can confirm

For all those curious about what is in the ChatGPT iOS app, this thread does a deep dive: https://twitter.com/emergetools/status/1659283367710322702

reminded me of this article that talks about the environmental cost of bloated mobile apps: https://www.emergetools.com/blog/posts/CostOfAByte

Because some people actually talk to other people in person?

looks like they're restored now, good call

thanks for all your hard work keeping HN alive and well!

Only seems to be slow when I'm logged in...

I'm honestly not sure there could be a more unreliable source for this

crazy how this makes it all the way to production, I wonder how long this vulnerability was exposed...

App size is really tough to solve and bloat is way more common than you might think. The reason for this is usually that teams are focused on getting out features ASAP, but have no insight into how their changes affect the app's performance.

Our company, Emerge Tools (YC backed) is focused on trying to help devs solve the root cause of performance problems (size, startup time, etc.) by providing continuous monitoring and alerting for regressions directly on pull requests. We already work with some of the best mobile teams in the world (Dropbox, Faire, Life360).

If you have interest in mobile performance we're hiring! shoot me an email josh@emergetools.com

Here's Emerge Tools' size analysis of United's Android app: https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/united-android

As you can see from the breakdown: 34% of the app is native libraries, another 34% is dex, 23% is resources, and another 8% is assets.

Unfortunately they're still not using AABs, have about 4 MB of download size savings from just image optimization, have 1.1 MB of Emoji gif files , and are not optimizing their Native libraries for the specific architecture (using AABs would solve this)

Used Emerge Tools size analysis to analyze the binaries, here's some quick findings to answer some questions:

[0] Fastmail: smallest of the apps but still could have room for improvement, could save almost 20% of the app size by optimizing their audio files. 71% of the app is the binary. Check out the X-ray here: https://emergeassets.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen+Shot+...

[1] Gmail: looks like most of their bloat is coming from localizations. Only 60% of the app is binary, while 24% is localization files. Check out the X-ray here: https://emergeassets.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen+Shot+...

[2] Outlook: could be stripping binary symbols to save significant space. 65% of the app is binary, while 14% is localizations. Check out the X-ray here: https://emergeassets.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen+Shot+...

[3] Hey: could save about 15% of the size of the app just by removing duplicates and optimizing their images. 45% of the app is binary, 27% of the app is assets, this is definitely higher than it should be. Check out the X-ray here: https://emergeassets.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen+Shot+...

[4] Protonmail: could save almost 30% just from image optimization and duplicate removal. 58% of the app is binary, 14% is assets, and 7% is localizations. Check out the X-ray here: https://emergeassets.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Screen+Shot+...

Unfortunately this is a very common problem as many teams don't have any monitoring in place. Here's another example of a popular email app Spark, automated insights show over 100 MB of easy savings: https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/spark?buildContent=i...

For pretty much every app here, Emerge's insights found at least 20% in easy size reduction. FYI, in the X-ray visualizations, red indicates duplicates and we can breakdown apps even further using builds with dSYMS!

This is awesome to hear! I'm actually one of the founders of Emerge Tools (mentioned in the blog post), we work on helping teams just like United fix problems like this. I had actually tweeted at United in April of last year letting them know about these issues: https://twitter.com/jshchnz/status/1379154466872549377

If anyone at United wants help, happy to chat! josh@emergetools.com

Really interesting idea, just signed up for a demo!

couple reasons...

1) this lets you do actions async. one of my biggest peeves is that I usually remember to set the temperature right when I'm leaving, but as I'm heading out the door I have to keep the app open waiting for the car to wake up before I can turn on the AC (for example). now I just text my car "temp 68" as I'm heading out and it's nice when I get inside

2) there are some special actions like texting "marco", which will flash your lights and honk your horn to help find your car in a crowded lot, or texting "where are you" will send a google maps pin of the cars location

3) why not?