Kartones Blog

On Python 3, Flake8 and mypy

This is a small post just to write about what we use at work and what I'm starting to use at home too for personal experiments. I thought would be interesting to share as at least two friends showed interest about the topic.

First, we're using Python 3.6. I've been using Python for around a year and a half only, and I have almost fully skipped python 2.x, so I am not biased with the "2 is better, don't migrate to 3!" war. I just like a lot all the new features and the way better encoding handling so my ignorance makes me not understand why would people keep with an old and worse version... ¯\(ツ)/¯

Then, we use flake8 as our linter, with every restriction on except the line size rule (which we've upped to a more reasonable 120 characters). But as some people have tendency to drift away from coding standards, to make sure everybody follows it my colleages have setup an integration test that uses flake8.api.legacy to run the checks and make sure there are no violations. It can look silly sometimes, but helps a lot to maintain a uniform codebase.

And finally, again thanks to my colleages we're doing typed Python using mypy. It adds optional type checking both to Python 2 and 3 and provides a linter-check call which reports any error (so can be actually made mandatory). Added to the same battery than the normal linter test, it means all new code must be fully typed or you won't be able to push a build. It is quite robust and you have typing hints for everything, from basic types to optional parameters, callable function handlers, generics and multiple return values (Union type, you still need to specify to it which values are allowed). It stings a bit when you begin using it but after a while it's so nice to forget about weak typing errors (one of my main complaints of scripted languages).

All of this combined with some decent tests (kind-of-TDD-without-being-always-strict) means I can do non-trivial changes and refactors without worrying of breaking unexpected things. If you do python, you should try too, the absence of fear makes you feel really nice.

The truth

Oh, and just in case you want to check it out, I keep a small gist where I from time to time write notes and miscellaneous things regarding Python that I learn and wish to keep for the future.

Posted on 2017-06-20

Encoding JPGs with Google's Guetzli

When I first read about Guetzli I thought that it probably wouldn't be so much, that sounded too good to be true; A 35% size reduction in JPGs, backwards-compatible and with no visible quality loss sounded quite nice. Then, a few days ago we were talking at work about how to optimize our homepage's speed and I reminded about the algorithm, and decided to give it a try over the weekend.

My results can be quickly summarized: It is as great compressing as slow doing it. But recommended if speed is not an issue for you.

Basically, it consumes around 200MB of RAM and takes one minute per source image megapixel. This means that a tiny 150x200 thumbnail takes more than 15 seconds to encode on my laptop, while ImageMagick encodes a FullHD PNG into JPG in around a second. It is indeed extremely slow, making it unfeasible for encoding on the fly blog post images and the like. Nothing that cannot be solved with an asynchronous job that sweeps and optimizes afterwards, but extra work to be done.

Regarding the size, I can confirm I got size reductions between 35% and 50%, sometimes a bit more. Source images were all JPGs with quality between 85% and 95% and sizes between 150x150 and 1900x1280. Overall, the images "block" went from 290 MB to 110 MB. Some of the images probably were not optimally compressed as when I used Windows I had a PowerShell script doing the resize instead of ImageMagick, but still it is a huge win, and I cannot even imagine how well it will reduce images of blogs where non-tech people upload images sometimes as they come without any quality or resolution resize.

I ran the big re-encoding of full folders at 85% quality, with the following exact run params (available here too):

find . -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec guetzli --quality 85 {} {}.jpeg \;
find . -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec rm {} +
find . -type f -name "*.jpeg" | rename "s/\.jpeg$//"

As I was going through hundreds of images coming from years of different sources (phones, cameras, image manipulation applications...), I had a small ratio of failures around 1.7% (if I recall correctly the number of failed images) of almost 2900 JPGs. Guetzli as a commnad-line application is really basic, and the verbosity is too scarce to be of use in batching (if you care about errors, that is), so I decided to add some dumb fprintfs and output failed files, so with some replacements and regular expressions I could easily grab all failed images. My fork can be found here.

And really that's all I had to say regarding it. Clearly the opensourced tool is not the same stuff Google uses, as there is a single test and I refuse to believe they would use that command line tool in production, but the algorithm is there, is as awesome as advertised and I'll definetly optimize my blog post images from now on with it.

Posted on 2017-05-17

Book Review: Thinking Fast and Slow

Finishing this book took me some time, because I've heard it in audio-book format and commuting to my previous job was noisy and distracting to focus on hearing, but with my recent change I now can perfectly listen to voice audios.

Review

Thinking Fast and Slow book cover

Title: Thinking Fast and Slow

Author: Daniel Kahneman

How we think is managed by two systems/fragments/"selfs" of the brain: One is impulsive and quick-thinking but prone to biases and errors in judgement, the other is slower, recalls memories and experience, but is "lazy" and tends to delegate to the "System one". Along this book we're taught how we commit lots of mistakes, misjudgements, wrong decisions, and in general kind of get tricked by ourselves. But also, we learn valuable leasons to become better at handling this situations (spoiler: take your time and think).

There are many chapters, focusing on different aspects, fears, biases, mistakes, choice-making... Full of examples, studies and tips to learn to avoid them. They are useful in most areas, from personal life, well-being and relations to business-related decisions.

To mention something not great, there are quite a few military-related remarks, for example examples of loss adversion with "selling missiles", when there are infinite less belicist examples. I understand that for the author (Hebrew and with a military past) it might be normal, but for me it strikes as a sad way of exemplification. Also, some chapters are a bit of an artificial separation. For example, gambling-related topics take multiple chapters.

Despite my small critics, this book is a must read. The best way to combat biases is to know them, and with so many examples becomes clear we're a bit flawed and should not rush on our decision taking actions.

Notes

Sadly I didn't noted everything as sometimes is hard to take notes and I cannot highlight as with Kindle books, but I think I wrote most of the important topics (for me at least).

Two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, deliberative, logical
Most important mistake our brain takes as the common truth: what you see is all there is
Law of small numbers
Law of averages: belief that the statistical distribution of outcomes among members of a small sample must reflect the distribution of outcomes across the population as a whole
Most of what happens in life is random (most facts in the world are random). causal explanations are dangerous and many times wrong
Anchoring effect
Availability heuristic
Statistics' [base rate])https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_
Conjunction fallacy: The probability that two events will both occur can never be greater than the probability that each will occur individually
success = skill + luck . greater sucess = more skill + lot more luck
Regression to the mean
Intensity matching
When we change our view of the world, we lose or weaken our hability to recall the old view. it is a weakness of our mind
Hindsight bias
Errors of prediction are inevitable because the world is umpredictable
Subjective confidence shouldn't be treated as competence. low confidence can be more confident
Intuition adds but after disciplined objective recollection
Outcomes are gains and loses (utility of wealth): changes of wealth instead of states of wealth
Theory-induced blindness
Human brain gives priority to bad news
Good relations involve more avoiding bad moments than having good moments
Cuantification is much more powerful than mere numbers or percentages. eg. 4 out of 101 ... vs 40% ...
Narrow framing vs broad framing
Sunk cost fallacy
Losses evoke stronger feelings than costs

Posted on 2017-04-29

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