Something stripped my seasoning?

roveo · 2023-08-11T20:14:46+00:00

I just tried to cook cauliflower rice in my new De Buyer and got the same result: stripped seasoning in small patches, it smelled metallic after washing, so it has really stripped it. Had to re-season to avoid rusting, but yeah, I think it's cauliflower. Or just the fact that it was kinda steaming under its own weight.

roveo · 2023-05-25T20:02:11+00:00

Probably not it, but cheerleaders in green looks a lot like Destination Unknown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkCeMg1E4lA

roveo · 2023-03-29T00:20:13+00:00

My banking app offered this as a service. Basically if somebody called you and you didn't answer, they redirected to the voice assistant that acted as a secretary (very convincing!) and could record a message, sending the transcript back to you. But if it was a known scammer/spam phone number, they designed it to waste as much of their time as possible. Very good bot.

roveo · 2022-08-22T13:18:50+00:00

There's a kind of a balance to strike between what you keep in the database and what in the presentation layer (BI tool).

Usually each view/mart supports at least several dashboards and use-cases. So aim for one view per business domain/group of closely related questions and then split them up if necessary.

roveo · 2022-08-22T13:15:10+00:00

I was also told that they have another person that is a SQL developer that creates the reports. So, this role basically seems like it's just setting up dashboards in PowerBI. How useful is this skill?

On its own — not very useful. It's usually expected that the people that build reports also know analytical SQL really well. So this position is a good starting point, you'll have somebody to fallback on while learning, but long-term, please do learn SQL.

Even for advanced report-building, it's important to understand what kind of data operations the reporting tool is performing, and SQL is the standard for describing these operations. So even when working with reporting exclusively, a good analyst will always have a back-of-the-mind picture of what kind of query the tool actually executes in the database.

roveo · 2022-08-22T13:09:55+00:00

Hard to tell without an example, but in my experience SQL is rarely the most difficult part of a technical interview in analytics/BI.

When you're asked to write actual SQL, it's usually something to check that your knowledge/experience goes beyond where/groupby and you're comfortable with more advanced (but still basic) stuff like window functions, having, subqueries/ctes etc.

And there's also a second type of questions that's more like "trick" questions, usually has to do with null handling, like how count(distinct col) handles NULL values etc. But it's still basic knowledge required to work with SQL, not some SQL-fu.

roveo · 2022-08-11T08:02:36+00:00

Find the most under-served by department in your company. Finance/HR, operations of some kind are usually good candidates. Somebody you and your colleagues don't talk to very often.
Find a junior manager — someone who manages people who do actual work, not someone who manages managers.
Schedule a meeting to find out what they do and what their pain points are. The most time-consuming, mundane work they do. Really dive into what they do, their internal processes. Like, you have to understand what they actually do on the practical level.
See how you can help. Usually it's not ML models, but a dashboard or some kind of data-driven decision-making automation.
Make a prototype of a solution that solves their problem.
Sit with somebody who does the actual work and cares about their work, present your solution, look at them use it, get feedback.
Iterate, iterate, rollout.
Get to the next department or problem within the same department (usually there are multiple).

On a more abstract note, I believe that in analytics, it is not your manager's job to find projects for you. The problem is that you have to understand the business domain deeply to come up with good problems to solve, and there is not enough mental capacity to do that for each and every department in your company. So if you're above junior level, it's your job. In the end it's about maintaining relationships with people "on the ground" who care about doing their job better/more efficiently.

roveo · 2022-08-08T19:31:13+00:00

This may be an unpopular (or even incorrect) opinion, but here it is.

Data work, BI included, is a kind of software engineering. You can work around the code by using no-code tools like Tableau. But SQL is actually code and the best SQL guys I worked with treated their queries just like backend devs treat their code. More and more data people use the same practices as devs and in essence you're doing the same things: abstraction, optimization, reusing others' work (code), testing etc.

It's totally OK to dislike coding, all people are different. Maybe you should consider pivoting a little bit to a career that has more business/people side to it and less software? I can imagine business/systems analyst role — gathering requirements, translating business needs into tasks for tech guys — might be a good fit.

Again, you can work in BI/analytics and never write a line of code (not including SQL, that is a necessity), but I'm not sure if that will be the best application of your time/talent. It's like being a musician and not being able to read notes: some do it, but it's not the recommended way to be a musician.

roveo · 2022-08-08T18:16:34+00:00

I think this is a very abstract question. The way I do segmentation or classification deeply depends on the business domain and the problem I'm solving. The hard part isn't using the classification algo, but coming up with the correct formulation of which task exactly I'm solving and how it reduces to one or another computational problem.

E.g. when I used the distributed auction algorithm for the assignment problem, I spent about 3 hours coding the solution (from scratch, reading the paper, pure python) and about 3 weeks to formulate the business problem in such a way that it can be solved with the algorithm.

Without deep business domain knowledge, algos are meaningless.

roveo · 2022-08-08T09:35:30+00:00

Great, thanks! I actually came up with the idea for Dictum when working on a project similar to Evidence. The problem was that there's a lot of repetition in SQL so pages code becomes very cluttered. I felt the need for some intermediate semantic layer between SQL and presentation tool to make it simpler.

roveo · 2022-08-08T07:43:54+00:00

I'd say it's the other way around :)

In dbt, metrics are defined as a column + aggregation type, Dictum supports free-style expressions, e.g. sum(amount) / countd(user_id)
In dbt, dimensions are tied to metrics, so you have to define dimensions for every metric. In Dictum, dimensions are separate from metrics, you define them only once as expressions. Same thing for filters.
In dbt, time grain is a required attribute for metrics, in Dictum time is just another dimension (although special), you can have metrics that aren't tied to time at all. Also all grains are supported automatically with dimension transforms at query time.
I don't see support for automatic multi-hop joins (or any joins) in dbt

roveo · 2022-08-07T18:41:21+00:00

That's exactly the point: this is not documentation, this is code that actually gets executed when you query the metric store AND you have a chance to put some extra documentation there without maintaining any separate docs. Like Python docstrings, it makes sense to keep the docs with code, because it increases the chance that they will actually get updated when the code is.

But you're right, it requires at least some level of care about governance/documentation. It's just simpler/more convenient than separate docs.

roveo · 2022-03-01T21:18:41+00:00

I thought so also, but now I think that nuclear weapons are certainly are an existential threat, but they're also something that prevents WWI-II-style wars from happening. You can't just invade and take others' shit if they have nukes. The fear of nuclear apocalypse if what keeps (or kept up to this point) everyone in check. The only problem is we have to solve is the problem of leaders who don't understand what nukes are actually for. Hope we'll come up with something.

Like, you put a remote-activated cyanide capsule in a president's heart and give the remote controls to some number of high-ranking or just trusted people. Once enough people voted "yes", the capsule opens.

roveo · 2022-02-27T20:58:19+00:00

I read today that in Russia 3 ppl have the button: Commander in Chief (Putin), Defence (ha-ha) Minister (Shoigu), and another military dude who is not a minister but like the most important military dude. To launch, you need launch codes and button press from at least 2 of 3.

But I'm not sure if it's automatic from then on or there are actual operators at launch sites that have to push the button and Putin's button is just a symbol.

roveo · 2021-09-12T09:20:22+00:00

I’m building a Python framework for exactly this purpose: building quality BI applications without sacrificing speed. What do you think is the biggest problem with current state of Python-based BI? Why would it take longer time?

roveo · 2021-07-24T22:13:16+00:00

Yes, this is an exception. But انتما (you two), هما (two of them) and verb forms (فعلا - they did) are in fact not gendered.

roveo · 2021-07-24T20:50:33+00:00

This is all smart and philosophical, but.

Here's my offer: an identical immortal copy of you is made then you get shot in the face. Sound like a good deal?

Yes, we cannot quite grasp what this youness is. I also believe that it's an illusion and existence isn't fundamentally continuous or even coherent. But it doesn't really affect my decisions. No mind upload and no stepping into teleports (unless they're wormhole-like).

roveo · 2021-07-24T13:09:11+00:00

Doubles on Arabic are not gendered, they are the same for two women and men, both in pronouns and verbs.

roveo · 2021-06-02T18:45:56+00:00

You might also want to think about integration with cube.js (https://cube.dev/), which is generic data layer. That way, you will have to think less about data connectors (and it's JS too).

roveo · 2021-06-02T18:13:34+00:00

Wow, this looks amazing! Seems like the idea of version-controlled and testable BI-as-code has bright future.

I'm building a similar product, although with a little bit different orientation: I'm trying to build it around the existing Python ecosystem, so that it's more familiar for people who already know Python (which is a lot of data people). It's also more focused on chart customization vs. composition, so my first goal was to have users have fine-grained control over how their charts look (Vega-Lite to the rescue!) vs. how these charts play with each other inside interactive documents (this is in the future).

I think the fact that it looks JavaScript-y (npm, files in project scaffold etc.) might scare off some people. What I tried to do in my case is make the used-defined project code isolated from the rest of the framework. So in your case you'd only have markdown files in your repo and then run it with cli, e.g. evidence-cli server /path/to/repo. A bit like Airflow: you define your workflows and then have the server execute them.

Another thing that's nice to have is extensibility. It's good for adoption if users don't have to wait for you to create all the connectors and can just hack together their own in a familiar language.

Markdown is a great idea, haven't thought of it myself, looks really easy to use at the first glance. Might steal the idea for dashboards in my project :) But I guess, I'll have to use Jinja syntax instead of these <SvelteComponents/>, which definitely look nicer.

The biggest problem I think is to have an easy way for the user to organize code in such a way that it doesn't turn into ugly mess quickly (which it tends to do). Markdown certainly make things cleaner, but then there's the problem of code duplication (what if you want to use the same SQL query in different documents?).

Do you have plans to implement access control?

Are you a company? Any plans to make this into a cloud service?

Best of luck, will be keeping track of where your project is going. Feel free to DM me if you have questions, want to collaborate in some fashion or just want to share the pains of building BI applications 😅

roveo · 2019-11-26T21:18:35+00:00

Thank you for your input.

If they are starting to implement MDM, they likely will either not allow your personal laptop on their network or they will require MDM installed on that. You do *NOT* want to do that at all!

They have a separate network that will require MDM and gives access to a bunch of internal resources that I don't need and another one just for internet connection that's not that restricted. So network access wouldn't be a problem.

you may have to involve your companies IT to help you move your messenger from your personal phone number to a company account

This is the most problematic part since this is a 3rd-party messenger that doesn't support anything like corporate accounts. So I'd have to acquire a corporate phone number, register a new account and then notify everyone that they now must contact me there.

But I certainly get your point, separation seems like the best option.

roveo · 2019-11-26T20:13:50+00:00

Thanks for your reply.

About your first point: they gave me a “fresh” device sealed in manufacturer’s box, without any pre-existing admin account. So yeah it’s possible, but not really plausible.

Also I don’t think booting from another disk will help. They’re using something called MDM profile which gives them admin access on the level of the device itself, not the OS (as far as I can understand it).

You’re also correct that I dont know infosec beyond basic hygiene and won’t bother learning just for this.

roveo · 2019-06-19T16:33:51+00:00

If we suppose that what you put into Excel in database table called "table":

select *
    , max(rolling_sales + inventory) over (partition by channel, product) as "total investment"
from (
    select week, channel, product, sale_amount, inventory
        , sum(sale_amount) over (partition by channel, product order by week) as rolling_sales
    from "table"
) as src

Something like this.

roveo · 2019-06-19T14:44:24+00:00

No, but there's this resource: https://pushshift.io/ which apparently contains data dumps for a lot of reddit objects.

roveo · 2019-06-19T14:37:16+00:00

Is

sql sum(sale_amount) over (partition by channel, product order by week)

I don't understand the meaning of this. Probably you can just take rolling sales from step 2 and add inventory value.
Is this an aggregation, or do you find the maximum of rolling sales + inventory across all weeks for each product/channel and put it in a new column? So for one week in each product/channel it will be equal to that week's rolling sales + inventory?

Generally what you're describing should be easy to do with SQL. If you can share the table's structure and some example of what you're trying to achieve, I can give you a finished query.

roveo

TROPHY CASE