Babak Tourani
@babak-t.bsky.social
Father to Lilly the Ragdoll | a nonbeliever in humans or Gods | Minimalism is my drug, especially in audio form | I deal with databases and data tools for money | former TV/Radio presenter & Basketball coach | have been figuring it out for a very long time
I love the CVs of hyped up Data and Analytics influencers. This person's first job title: "Sr. Project Lead!" Hasn't done anything before that and then **boom** "Senior Project Lead". Also, has been a "Chief AI officer" in 2018! Now, a keynote speaker at a local conference near you!
If you are into streaming and stream processing, today is the best day for finding free data: the unbounded stream of bollocks transmitted by TV commentators on Pope Francis' funeral is one of a kind! One called it a spectacle! None of them seem to have EVER watched footage of UN's general assembly!
This is unbelievable, really. The pace of innovation in this tool is amazing. #dataSky #DuckDB duckdb.org/2025/03/12/d...
The DuckDB Local UI
The DuckDB team and MotherDuck are excited to announce the release of a local UI for DuckDB shipped as part of the ui extension.
duckdb.org
Study for FREE on my online course site. There is already a collection of stuff there to get you started and we are looking to EXPAND on that free learning content this year. Take a look, and stay in the loop for more valuable learning resources ➡️ courses.cd.training
The most heartwarming scene I've come across in a while: coming back from gym in West London, I saw a group of young folks gathered on the side of A40(West) opposite a #Tesla dealership and service center in Park Royal area, carrying "Boycott Tesla" signs! #KickElonMuskInTheBalls #FuckTesla
#Spotify is cancelled and #Tidal is started. Same cost, same catalog, [much] better sound quality, fair to artists. The move was celebrated by "onboarding" a Wiim Ultra which now feeds the capable DAC on my Cambridge Audio CXa81 amp through USB. :) #musicFirstAudiophile #musicAboveAll
Breaking: surge in global productivity now that Slack is down.
Have I been unlucky or the number of competent #software developers who understand software #architecture, system architecture AND database modelling is REALLY low?! So many “Dr Bob”s around that (like the man himself) never realised that #databases are more than a bit bucket…
If one genuinely believed in the power of prayers, one would have refused any medical help and would have left the hospital.
My obsession with #minimalism, #GavinHarrison, and #PorcupineTree aside, there's so much to learn for #software engineers here, as much as musicians: "[It] doesn't have to be complicated for the hell of it!" #musicSky www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDge...
8 (Spotlight) Gavin Harrison - Overriding
YouTube video by DrumsetMag DrumsetMag
youtube.com
Humans are stupid! We look at tiny creatures (in relative terms) and call them cute and associate innocence with them. “Ravens are not innocent but sparrows are.” We are sparrows compared to elephants and we have killers and psychopath criminals in our species. Why would sparrows be different?!
On #Snowflake: The EDA query on a 3.1 TBs table with 19B+ records (200 cols) with a predicate on a very high cardinality column (obviously not used for clustering) takes tens of minutes on Small WH. Rejected Request: S -> X-Large! Enabled Search Optimization on the predicate column => 5 secs!
The #Severance is Ben Stiller's (very successful) attempt to redeem himself. The whole series is more about Arts than TV: The scenery, cinematography, color branding, locations, .... I was so happy to see a decent analysis of the mesmerising opening scene's music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqYo...
Why Is Everyone Talking About This Show’s Music?
YouTube video by Rick Beato
youtube.com
When you have to choose between Elon Musk and Sam Altman... Two men who give zero fucks about society and humanity... #fml
Their unfamiliar sound unearths weird feelings from the soil of my culturally-homeless-middle-eastern-living-in-London brain... VERY weird feelings... #Leenalchi #Music #Korean #alternative www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXWj...
이날치 LEENALCHI - 진흙의 신 God Of Mud [Official M/V]
YouTube video by LEENALCHI
youtube.com
1. Americans don't regurgitate art. They're not competent or talented enough to do that. They eat it and produce shit. #Utopia is a great example. 2. What's the point of #music if it's not different and has no impact?! #CristobalTapiaDeVeer www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTuf...
Utopia Overture
YouTube video by Cristobal Tapia de Veer - Topic
youtube.com
#OpenAI complaining about "its data being misappropriated" reminded me of this very interesting #Freakonomics interview about how @ravenben.bsky.social and his team are trying to defend artists against OpenAI & others "misappropriating" their work and data. #datasky freakonomics.com/podcast/how-...
How to Poison the A.I. Machine - Freakonomics
How to Poison the A.I. Machine - Freakonomics
freakonomics.com
"OpenAI have stated that they believe #DeepSeek may have misappropriated large amounts of data from them." The great thing is that #OpenAI has NEVER "misappropriated large amounts of data" from anyone! #DearSamAltmanPleaseFuckOff #Hypocrisy
Last week in review: optimized performance of two DAGs by converting CTEs to Temp tables in #Snowflake and achieved 7-10X improvement in execution time! In one case SF couldn't do predicate pushdown in joins correctly so we pushed down the predicates for Snowflake through the temp table! #SQL
If you're using an orchestrator like #Airflow or #Dagster and your workload isn't anchored to the concept of "logical date" (or time partitions in Dagster) then why are you even using those?! #DataEngineering #DataPipeline
If you're a #DataEngineer and you're not sure why you should care about #dbt acquiring #SDF: TLDR: - dbt operates on strings - SQL Mesh deals with AST (it understands the SQL structure) - SDF deals with a type-safe AST (data type aware) www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/episodepage/...
Build Your Data Transformations Faster And Safer With SDF
Summary In this episode of the Data Engineering Podcast Lukas Schulte, co-founder and CEO of SDF, explores the development and capabilities of this fast…
dataengineeringpodcast.com
So #dbt admitted eventually that they're only a text parser and need an actual #SQL parser to help them do it correctly! www.prnewswire.com/news-release...
dbt Labs Acquires SDF Labs to Introduce Robust SQL Comprehension into dbt and Supercharge Developer Efficiency
/PRNewswire/ -- dbt Labs, the pioneer in analytics engineering, has acquired SDF Labs, the team of former Meta and Microsoft engineering leaders behind SDF,...
prnewswire.com
#Snowflake UDFs: The query plan highlighted the waste of time in a #Python UDF. After conversion to an immutable #SQL UDF using higher-order functions (Reduce/filter), the execution time improved by 50%. Switched to REGEXP_SUBSTR. Performance gain compared to Python UDF: 90% #SimpleIsBetter
Linear Regression in #SQL is an idea as bad as managing database migrations using a Python library. TJ Murphy reposting a misguided #dbt package for #linearRegression in SQL doesn't make it right or important! Use your brain cells, ffs!
If "the business" regards your department/team/operation as a "cost center" (<cough> #DataTeams </cough>) that's not necessarily a stance against the cost of your operation. In many cases, that's an indication that the business does not understand what you do! Sort out your business communication!
