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spez

615 karma · joined October 10, 2006

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spez··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2019)
Reddit | Machine Learning Engineer | Full-Time | Onsite | New York

Reddit is hiring engineers in ads ML for our brand-new NYC office. We’re looking for both junior and senior ML engineers.

The ads ML team is responsible for all the machine learning that powers our ads backend, as well as the inference and ML serving infrastructure.

Our backend is in flux, but we’re using: Spark and Scala on AWS for machine learning, as well as BigQuery on GCP for analysis.

Our ads serving stack is written in go and runs on AWS, and our ML includes logistic regression, GBDT, NLP embeddings, recommender systems, and more.

If you’re interested, shoot us an email at jobs+hn@reddit.com

spez··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2019)
Reddit | Multiple Position | Full-Time | New York

Reddit is hiring engineers in ads quality for our brand-new NYC office! We’re looking for machine learning and backend engineers, both junior and senior.

The ads quality team is responsible for all the machine learning that powers our ads backend, as well as the inference and ML serving infrastructure.

Our backend is in flux, but we’re using: Spark and Scala on AWS for machine learning, as well as BigQuery on GCP for analysis. Our ads serving stack is written in go and runs on AWS.

If you’re interested shoot us an email at jobs+hn@reddit.com

spez··on Travel Search Site Hipmunk (YC S10) Cuts Yahoo Deal
Hmm, that shouldn't be the case. If you try again and feel like helping us out, feel free to email the discrepancy to support@hipmunk.com.

Sometimes there is an explanation (e.g. the flight doesn't exist, or has a 30hr layover), and other times we don't have the flight, in which case we want to alert our providers to fix it.

spez··on Travel Search Site Hipmunk (YC S10) Cuts Yahoo Deal
Yes, I often muse about this
spez··on The new VirginAmerica.com
I don't know... maybe because it's 2014?
spez··on Show HN: A sequence of online courses to learn web development from scratch
Sure, in the right hands Django (and Rails) and yield major productivity boosts.

I personally don't like working in frameworks of that size because I find myself fighting them to do what I want.

For the course itself, I really wanted the students to get as close to the server as possible. Then, when some of them switch to the heavier frameworks, they'll have a better idea of what the framework is doing and what is possible. The course had a time constraint on it as well.

All in all, your anecdote reenforces my feelings on the topic :)

spez··on Show HN: A sequence of online courses to learn web development from scratch
Steve, the Udacity instructor, here.

I actually deliberately didn't use Django specifically because it's so complicated for beginners (and for pros, IMHO). I was trying to avoid magic. Webapp2, which is the web framework GAE users, and what we used in the course, is about as simple as you can get without starting from scratch.

spez··on Why HN Should Use Randomized Algorithms
At reddit we had two tactics for the frontpage problem.

The first thing we added was the "rising" page, which used to be reddit's default "new" page. The rising page was a weighted new page. It was a little hacky, but worked for a while. I see they've changed this, which I think may have been a mistake, but I haven't thought about it in forever.

The second thing we did, which worked really well, was to have an up-and-coming link placed at the top of the list on the frontpage. This helped those borderline posts get more visibility. I had a reddit simulator I used to use to test things like this. That space appears to be a subreddit search box for me, so it seems they've moved onto another solution.

Randomness is an interesting idea, though it might be a bit difficult to fit into the way we cached things.

spez··on Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B
Hipmunk does have EasyJet, in fact.

For example: http://www.hipmunk.com/flights/BCN-to-CDG#!dates=Dec31

spez··on Priceline.com acquires Kayak for $1.8B
FYI - you can access most of ITA's routing language on Hipmunk, if you type :: after an airport code. The advantage of using us is we can make you a booking link to actually purchase the itinerary.
spez··on Patent troll stalks travel site Hipmunk
It's a stupid claim, and we're taking the most agressive action we can against it, which in this case means suing them first.
spez··on Chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions, 2011 edition
reddit uses AWS
spez··on Puppet vs Chef, Fight
I would argue that Puppet is also not suited to configuration management.
spez··on Puppet vs Chef, Fight
Our experience with puppet at Hipmunk was dreadful. The configuration language is clearly designed to cause maximum pain.

We have since switch to Fabric http://fabfile.org, and are much happier.

spez··on Hipmunk comes to Android with a surprisingly slick app
That was probably a pricing update. It's one of the really annoying things that plagues everyone in this space. I see the fare on us for $434 now (which is $423 after taxes).

http://www.hipmunk.com/#!JFK.AUS,Sep30

spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
I've seen this ORD -> HNL flight come up a couple times on this thread. So far, the prices that are better than ours seem to be flights with two connections, in a sea of results that only require one. I don't recall that exact algorithm off the top of my head, but that's the heart of the issue. This particular route seems to be a bit of an edge-case.
spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
Also, our $398 is after taxes.
spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
For hotels, we do get Orbitz inventory, but we also have a number of direct relationships. As you know, hotels are much happier to do business with people like us because they're not perpetually going out of business.

We've experimented with SEM, but it's not really cost effective for us. Everyone else in the business runs their own ads, giving them an ad-arbitrage business model we simply don't have. The upside to our customers is that the site is cleaner, the downside is our margins are skinnier.

spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
1) Not sure what you're basing this claim on, but it's false.

2) To each his own, I suppose, but I have conflicting anecdotal evidence. Hipmunk passes the "parents test" with all of our parents :) And as for "people who spend big bucks booking travel," I can point to the huge amount of email we receive from assistants who use us exclusively. Maybe we're not everything to everyone, but we're at least making some people very happy.

3) We do re-target quite a bit, and that's probably what you're seeing. Most of our growth has come organically, which again speaks to the fact that we actually do help people find planes / hotels in far less time than our competitors, including Expedia.

spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
Price increases? We should have the same fares as everyone else online.
spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
Have an example? We should have the same fares as pretty much everyone else. There are some holes, but none in the US to my knowledge.
spez··on 1 year on, Hipmunk (YC S10) hits 1 million flight + hotel searches a month
#1 We do our best to mitigate this. Unfortunately, it's also the nature of the business. Availability is constantly changing. What's really mindblowing is that Orbitz will often have flights in their own results that will error out. This isn't specific to Orbitz either, everyone has to deal with this.

#2 This is a big priority for us. We already have many direct deals, and more are on the way.

spez··on Hipmunk now indicates which flights have Wi-Fi
Yeah, well, who are we to turn down great coverage?
spez··on Hipmunk wants you (to run our Android development)
We'd prefer someone locally, but we realize we can't always have everything we want.
spez··on Hipmunk wants you (to run our Android development)
Basically, we want someone who actually has Android experience. If that person does not exist, we'll have to manufacture our own Android experience, which will take longer.
spez··on From reddit to Hipmunk: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If anything, it's the opposite. The first time around I felt I had nothing to lose, but this time there is a lot more pressure.

The main difference is I don't feel I have to force myself to work as much. If I'm going to be sitting in front of a computer but not actually getting much done, I may as well do something else. It's really just an acknowledgment that motivation comes and goes and there's not much to be gained by fighting it.

Of course, there is a big difference between procrastinating and being burned out for the day.

Everyone is different, of course, that's just me.

spez··on PagerDuty (YC S10) Pivot - Fixing the Public Transportation System
They cannot keep me logged in for more than a few minutes.

They charge a ridiculous fee for texts.

You can't give multiple people access to your account, which is really important given we use Pingdom to notify multiple people... If someone wants to change their contact info, I have to do it.

You can't set individual notifications. For example, I want to receive push notifications to my iPhone. David would prefer to receive emails. We can't enable one style for one person. Instead, I have to receive his emails and he has to receive my iPhone chirps.

The iPhone app is amazingly buggy.

So, why do we use it? Someone recommended them to me, and we've already paid for it. I just assumed something that expensive and oft-recommended would be better.

spez··on PagerDuty (YC S10) Pivot - Fixing the Public Transportation System
Dammit! Pingdom is so bad it hurts. Please, somebody, replace them.

The only thing worse than public transit in SF is Pingdom.

spez··on Steve Huffman on Lessons Learned at Reddit
That's a bit of a stretch... That "reddit is under heavy load" page is an abomination.
spez··on Steve Huffman on Lessons Learned at Reddit
Maybe? There's something to be said for memcache's simplicity, however.
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