Meta Tech Podcast
Brought to you by Meta. In addition to remaining active in the open source community and conference circuit, this podcast offers another channel that allows us to highlight the technical work of our engineers who will discuss everything from low-level frameworks to end-user features. Throughout the podcast, Meta engineer Pascal Hartig (@passy) will interview developers in the company.
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82: CSS at Scale with StyleX
01/08/2026
82: CSS at Scale with StyleX
It’s not just Not Invented Here Syndrome. Some technologies like CSS simply don’t scale if you’re building some of the largest websites on the planet with thousands of engineers committing to the same code base every day. StyleX is Meta’s open-source solution for CSS at scale and allows atomic styling of components while deduplicating definitions for bundle size and exposing a delightfully simple API for developers. Tune in to learn from Melissa, one of the StyleX maintainers how Open Source has acted as a force multiplier for the project, how interacting with other large companies adopting StyleX has been, and much more! Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links How AI Is Transforming the Adoption of Secure-by-Default Mobile Frameworks: StyleX: MTP 67: Measuring Developer Productivity with Diff Authoring Time: Timestamps Intro and news 0:06 Introduction Melissa 1:47 Why did we build our own styling system? 4:07 StyleX API 5:36 cx vs StyleX 7:37 Component styling and priorities 10:38 How StyleX evolved in the past seven years 15:20 Community influence 19:33 Open Source 24:07 Challenges of OSS 27:02 Managed breaking changes in OSS 29:48 Measuring success for StyleX 32:04 Packaging challenges 34:34 StyleX competition 38:42 Creating the StyleX roadmap 40:24 Outro 43:15
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81: From Zero to Polish: Building Meta Ray-Ban Display
12/12/2025
81: From Zero to Polish: Building Meta Ray-Ban Display
You’ve likely heard of Meta Ray-Ban Display by now — but what’s it actually like to work on it? In this episode, Pascal talks to Kenan and Emanuel about the exciting features of Meta’s First-Gen Display Glasses and Neural Wristband, the engineering and product challenges they encountered during development, and their vision for future generations of these devices. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Pyrefly Beta: Pyrefly and Pydantic: Meta Ray-Ban Display: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Kenan 1:35 Introduction Emanuel 5:03 Roles and responsibilities 8:07 What is Meta Ray-Ban Display? 11:13 Memorable challenges: Clasps 15:52 Memorable challenges: Display 19:24 Celebrating incremental wins 23:51 The feedback cycle in hardware engineering 26:29 Open culture and dogfooding 31:39 One-way doors 32:44 Striving for quality and polish in fast-moving environments 36:25 UI principles for AI glasses 40:15 Future Plans 44:04 Outro 46:53 Blooper 47:49
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80: Lowering emissions with the Open Compute Project
11/14/2025
80: Lowering emissions with the Open Compute Project
In this episode, Pascal talks to Dharmesh J. (DJ) and Lisa about the vision for the open, scalable future of networking hardware for AI and to break down Meta’s big announcements from the 2025 Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit. We dive into the OCP ecosystem, explore how AI is used to enhance our carbon modeling, and share our progress toward achieving Net Zero emissions across all scopes by 2030. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links OCP: OCP Summit 2025: How Meta Is Leveraging AI To Improve the Quality of Scope 3 Emission Estimates for IT Hardware: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Lisa 1:49 Introduction DJ 3:16 What is OCP? 4:04 OCP's scale 5:24 Open vs closed hardware ecosystems 9:26 Examples of OCP projects 11:33 Sustainability in OCP 14:08 How did you get into OCP? 15:59 Marrying infrastructure growth with sustainability 19:05 Emissions scopes and tracking 25:07 Measuring scope 3 26:06 What components embed the most carbon? 30:47 DFE vs DFS 32:34 Hardware reuse 33:39 Outro 37:48
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79: Building Android apps in Meta’s monorepository with Buck2
10/10/2025
79: Building Android apps in Meta’s monorepository with Buck2
How do you keep Android build times under control when your codebase spans tens of thousands of modules and millions of lines of Kotlin? In this episode, Pascal talks with Iveta, Navid, and Joshua from Meta’s Android Developer Experience team about the technical strategies that help Meta’s engineers stay productive at scale. We discuss approaches like source-only ABIs and incremental compilation – clever solutions that have helped us tackle the challenges of building fast in a monorepo, as well as what you can do to keep your builds fast with Buck2. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introducing Iveta 2:09 Introducing Joshua 3:29 Introducing Navid 4:00 Android DevX Team 4:36 The challenges of build speed 6:28 Buck2 and Android 7:34 How to add new language support to Buck2 9:01 What's new in Open Source? 11:02 Optimising Kotlin builds 12:55 Source-only ABI 14:25 Developer restrictions 17:33 From Jasabi to Kosabi 20:33 Strategies for keeping builds fast 22:08 Working with big modules 23:00 Bringing incremental Kotlin compilation to Buck2 24:48 Speed improvements 28:52 Third-party library upgrades 30:54 What's next? 33:56 Outro 36:14 Links Meta Connect 2025 Developer Talks: Buck2: Incremental Kotlin compilation at Meta: Blog post about Jasabi (the Java counterpart to Kosabi): Kotlin Conf talk about source-only ABI compilation: Meta Connect 2025 Developer Talks: Buck2: Incremental Kotlin compilation at Meta: Blog post about Jasabi (the Java counterpart to Kosabi): Kotlin Conf talk about source-only ABI compilation:
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78: Generating 3D Worlds with AI
09/19/2025
78: Generating 3D Worlds with AI
Creating 3D assets can be daunting, but does it have to be? Mahima and Rakesh are on a quest to democratize 3D content creation with AssetGen, a foundation model for 3D. They discuss the challenges of training such a model given the scarcity of available data and how large language models have unlocked key solutions. As if that weren't enough, they're also tackling the ambitious goal of generating entire worlds from a simple prompt. Tune in to learn more! Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, , @passy.bsky.social). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Horizon Worlds Desktop Editor: Horizon Worlds Studio: Meta Ray-Ban Display: MTP 77 - How to build a human-computer interface for everyone: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Mahima 1:39 Introduction Rakesh 2:57 Team mission 3:26 Why is 3D content hard to create? 5:15 The Metaverse 7:49 Tooling vision in Horizon Worlds 10:31 AssetGen Architecture 15:27 Consolidating models 18:25 From assets to worlds 19:22 Time to generate 24:46 Feedback loop 26:41 What's the market for AssetGen 29:49 What's available today? 31:26 What's next? 32:11 Outro 35:24
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ARCHIVE: What it's like to write code at Meta
09/01/2025
ARCHIVE: What it's like to write code at Meta
To not leave you without an episode for August, Pascal brings you an episode from the Archive. Back in August 2023 for Episode 55, Pascal spoke with Katherine and returning guest Dustin, two software engineers at Meta about how to ship code at Meta. Why do we have a monorepo? Why and how do we do pre-commit code review? What does our CI infrastructure look like? Get the answers to these questions and many more in this episode of the Meta Tech Podcast. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (https://threads.net/@metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (https://mastodon.social/@passy, https://threads.net/@passy_). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/. Links The evolution of Facebook’s iOS app architecture - Engineering At Meta: Episode 47: Source control at Meta - Timestamps Intro 0:06 Intro Katherine 1:55 Dustin's Origin Story 4:38 Topic Intro 6:28 Why Monorepo(s) 7:18 What Makes Monorepos Hard? 12:15 Why do we Have so Many Files? 17:31 Who Owns Stuff? 25:29 Life of a Diff 28:58 Writing Bots Writing Code Writing Bots 34:16 Finding Reviewers 38:46 Why Are Things Not Constantly on Fire? 41:43 Outro 47:47 Outtakes 48:46
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77: How to build a generic neuromotor interface
07/30/2025
77: How to build a generic neuromotor interface
Join Pascal as he explores the groundbreaking world of generic neuromotor interfaces with Jesse, Lauren, and Sean. Discover how these technologies enable control of devices with just a flick of the wrist or even a simple intention to move. We'll discuss the role of AI in eliminating the need for personalised training, the differences between non-invasive interfaces and their predecessors, and the exciting implications for accessibility. Don't miss this deep dive into the future of human-computer interaction. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Timestamps Intro 0:06 Jesse introduction 1:29 Lauren introduction 2:42 Sean introduction 3:29 Team's mission statement 3:49 What's a neuromotor interface? 4:24 Paper overview 5:29 Non-invasive interfaces 7:50 How to make it generic 9:42 Design tradeoffs 11:29 Real-world model performance 14:21 Feedback cycle 16:22 LLMs and EMG 17:22 Handwriting vision 18:39 Working with product 20:55 EMG for accessibility 22:25 How Meta helps 25:53 Open-source repos 28:02 What's next? 28:45 Outro 30:51 Links A generic non-invasive neuromotor interface for human-computer interaction - Nature - How the low-vision community embraced AI smart glasses - The Verge - MKBHD on Orion -
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76: From C to Rust on Mobile
06/27/2025
76: From C to Rust on Mobile
What happens when decades-old C code, powering billions of daily messages, starts to slow down innovation? In this episode, we talk to Meta engineers Elaine and Buping, who are in the midst of a bold, incremental rewrite of one of our core messaging libraries—in Rust. Neither came into the project as Rust experts, but both saw a chance to improve not just performance, but developer experience across the board. We dig into the technical and human sides of the project: why they took it on, how they’re approaching it without a guaranteed finish line, and what it means to optimise for something as intangible (yet vital) as developer happiness. If you’ve ever wrestled with legacy code or wondered what it takes to modernise systems at massive scale, this one’s for you. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Elaine 1:54 Introduction Buping 2:49 Team mission 3:15 Scale of messaging at Meta 3:40 State of native code on Mobile 4:40 Why C, not C++? 7:13 Challenges of working with C 10:09 State of Rust on Mobile 18:10 Why choose Rust? 23:36 Prior Rust experience 28:55 Learning Rust at Meta 34:14 Challenges of the migration 37:47 Measuring success 42:09 Hobbies 45:15 Outro 46:41
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75: Open-sourcing Pyrefly - A faster Python type checker written in Rust
05/15/2025
75: Open-sourcing Pyrefly - A faster Python type checker written in Rust
Pyrefly is a faster, open-source Python type checker written in Rust, succeeding Pyre. But what prompted the rewrite and what besides the language choice ended up making it faster? Host Pascal talks to Maggie, Rebecca and returning guest Neil about the unexpected complexities of building an incremental type checker that scales to mono repositories in episode 75. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Pyrefly: Pyre: Ruff: PEP 484: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Rebecca Introduction 1:45 Maggie Introduction 2:45 Neil (Re-)Introduction 3:12 Team Mission 3:56 History of Typing in Python 4:29 The State of Typed Python at Meta 5:32 fbcode 6:02 Original Motivation for building Pyre 6:19 Justifying the Rewrite 7:48 Pyrefly vs the Rest 9:41 Why Rust? 10:45 Fearless Concurrency 12:02 Why is it faster? 12:37 Python community and Rust 14:57 Pyrefly wasm crate 15:46 Upgrade experience 17:34 Type checking differences 19:12 IDE experience 21:31 State of Pyrefly at Meta 22:27 Being open-source-first 23:36 Open-source challenges 25:06 Unexpected challenges 26:39 Outro 31:05
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74: Taking the plunge - The engineering journey of building a Subsea Cable
04/29/2025
74: Taking the plunge - The engineering journey of building a Subsea Cable
To ensure that everyone has access to resilient, high-speed and low-latency connections to Meta services, no matter where in the world they are, Meta makes large-scale investments into subsea cable infrastructure. The recently announced Project Water worth will, Once complete, reach five major continents and span over 50,000 km (longer than the Earth’s circumference), making it the world’s longest subsea cable project using the highest-capacity technology available. In this episode, host Pascal talks with another Pascal and his colleague Andy who are involved at every stage of these projects and share the surprising challenges one has to deal with when working on the largest subsea cable project in the world. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Project Waterworth: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Andy 2:14 Introduction Pascal 3:21 Why do we build our own subsea cable infrastructure? 4:15 Current state of Meta-owned subsea cables 6:20 Project Waterworth 7:40 Why invest in more subsea cables? 9:00 What does a cable look like? 11:14 The process of laying subsea cable 16:39 Unexpected findings on the ocean floor 19:25 Shallow vs deep ocean 21:12 Merging different cable types 24:00 What happens when a cable breaks? 25:04 Memorable challenges 27:42 Cable capacity 29:51 The long history of subsea cables 33:07 What's next? 36:27 Outro 39:02
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73: Mobile GraphQL at Meta in 2025
03/28/2025
73: Mobile GraphQL at Meta in 2025
Join Pascal and Sabrina on the latest Meta Tech Podcast episode as they discuss the evolution and future of GraphQL. From client-side consistency to innovative APIs, learn how GraphQL is making developers' lives easier and enhancing user experiences. Discover surprising insights into the challenges of building a mobile GraphQL platform and how it's transforming product development at Meta. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links GraphQL: Relay: Sabrina at GraphQL Conf 2024: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Sabrina 1:42 Sabrina's team 2:47 What's GraphQL? 3:18 Relay and Mobile GraphQL Clients 4:01 GraphQL Consistency Engine 4:54 Pando Mobile GraphQL Client 7:16 Interfacing with Pando 8:03 Code generation 9:14 Inventing new features 10:43 The hidden complexity behind pagination 11:52 Working inside the GraphQL spec 16:00 Complexity tradeoffs 18:30 State of GraphQL at Meta 21:16 Measuring success 24:58 Optimistic Mutations 27:31 Collaboration model 31:42 Preventing early adoption 34:43 The challenge of migrating FBApp 37:10 What's next for mobile GraphQL? 40:22 Outro 41:54
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72: Multimodal AI for Ray-Ban Meta glasses
02/28/2025
72: Multimodal AI for Ray-Ban Meta glasses
In this episode of the Meta Tech Podcast, host Pascal sits down with Shane, a research scientist at Meta, to explore the cutting-edge research behind Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Shane shares insights from his seven-year journey at Meta, where he focuses on computer vision and multimodal AI within the Wearables AI organization. Tune in to learn how Shane's team is pioneering foundational models for Ray-Ban Meta glasses, tackling unique challenges, and pushing the boundaries of AI-driven innovation. Discover how multimodal AI is transforming user experiences and get a glimpse into the future of wearable technology. Whether you're an engineer, a tech enthusiast, or simply curious about the latest advancements, there is something for everyone in this episode. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links AnyMAL: An Efficient and Scalable Any-Modality Augmented Language Model - Be My Eyes Programme: Meta Open Source on Threads: CacheLib: Meta’s AI-Powered Ray-Bans Are Life-Enhancing for the Blind - Wall Street Journal: Timestamps Intro 0:06 OSS News 0:56 Introduction Shane 1:30 The role of research scientist over time 3:03 What's Multimodal AI? 5:45 Applying Multimodal AI in Meta's products 7:21 Acoustic modalities beyond speech 9:17 AnyMAL 12:23 Encoder zoos 13:53 0-shot performance 16:25 Iterating on models 17:28 LLM parameter size 19:29 How do we process a request from the glasses? 21:53 Processing moving images 23:44 Scaling to billions of users 26:01 Where lies the optimisation potential? 28:12 Incorporating feedback 29:08 Open-source influence 31:30 Be My Eyes Programme 33:57 Working with industry experts at Meta 36:18 Outro 38:55
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71: Translating Java to Kotlin at Scale
01/31/2025
71: Translating Java to Kotlin at Scale
How do you translate roughly ten million lines of Java code to Kotlin? Clicking in your the IDE gets pretty repetitive after a while and doesn’t work if you have custom APIs and requirements for null safety. Eve and Jocelyn, two software engineers on the Mobile Infra Codebases Team have taken on this challenge and talk host Pascal through the unexpected difficulties when embarking on the journey to (close to) 100% Kotlin in our Android codebase. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Meta Engineering Blog - Translating Java to Kotlin at Scale: Open-source transformations: Mobile @Scale Conference recordings: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Introduction Eve 1:11 Introduction Jocelyn 2:15 Team mission 2:44 The scale of Meta's codebase 3:40 Why is there so much code? 4:34 Why migrate to Kotlin? 5:45 Isn't Kotlin slow to compile? 7:51 Why not use Android Studio's converter? 8:28 Nullability differences 10:04 Meta Codemod Service 14:50 Kotlin codemod stages 17:07 Headless J2K 20:14 Open-source transformations 23:14 Java Nullsafe 24:47 Leveraging Linters 26:01 Fixing build errors 27:24 Unexpected challenges 29:33 State of the union 33:44 Outro 36:10 Outtakes 37:08
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70: Jetpack Compose at Meta
12/24/2024
70: Jetpack Compose at Meta
Introducing a new Android UI Framework like Jetpack Compose into an existing app is easy right? Import some AARs and code away. But what if your app has specific performance goals to meet, has existing design components, integrations with navigation and logging frameworks? That is where Summer and her team come in who handle large-scale migrations for Instagram. They aim to provide developers with the best possible experience when working on our code bases, even if that requires some temporary pain on the side of infrastructure teams that have to maintain multiple implementations at once. Why Summer thinks it is worth it, how they approach the rollout of a new framework and so much more is all discussed in episode 70. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (, ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Jetpack Compose: Litho: Google Showcase: Meta built threads in only 5 months using Jetpack Compose: Flipper: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Intro Summer 1:29 Notable differences moving from FB to IG 2:26 The Instagram Data & UI Architecture team 2:58 Why modernise? 3:44 Where has the risk paid off? 6:08 What does Compose look like? 7:49 Compose v Litho 11:15 Where does Litho still have the upper hand? 14:53 Meta contributions to Compose 16:38 Compose pitfalls 19:10 Rolling Compose out across the company 20:13 Design systems 22:12 Downsides of establishing another UI framework? 24:22 Rollout stages 28:43 Experimentation stage 32:32 Closed enrollment phase 38:15 Graduation criteria 39:38 Outro 42:20 Bants 44:04
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69: To type or not to type — measuring productivity impact with DAT
11/29/2024
69: To type or not to type — measuring productivity impact with DAT
Do types actually make you more productive or is it just more typing for you to do on the keyboard? That's just one of the questions we managed to answer at least on a small scale with Diff Authoring Time or DAT, here at Meta. Want to know how we leverage metrics to run experiments on productivity in our internal codebase? Tune in to episode 69. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Hack language: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Henri Intro 1:45 Ian Intro 3:13 Moritz Re-Intro 3:28 DAT Recap 3:48 What is Hack? 4:20 Inner and outer loop 14:13 Experimenting with language features 17:47 Code sharing frameworks at Meta 27:43 Measuring framework productivity 29:01 Will we see more experiments? 34:23 Time savings from code sharing 37:28 Outro 39:03 Blooper 39:52
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68: How to Build a Mixed Reality Headset
10/30/2024
68: How to Build a Mixed Reality Headset
How do you build your own mixed reality headset from sketch to scale? That's exactly what Alfred Jones, VP of hardware engineering at Meta Reality Labs, discussed with host Pascal. From choosing the right display technology, battery, thermal budget and of course hitting the right price point. How he manages to not fall victim to choice paralysis and so much more in episode 68. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads () or Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host Pascal (). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Caddy: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Alfred Introduction 1:40 Who do you work with? 3:23 Decision making frameworks 5:20 Is MR the final destination? 7:19 What makes good passthrough such a challenge? 10:18 How to build your own MR headset 13:51 Hardware design constraints 19:00 Prototype phases 22:34 Durability testing 26:23 Dogfooding at Meta 28:55 Magic wand for technical limitations 31:56 Outro 34:26
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67: Measuring Developer Productivity with Diff Authoring Time
09/30/2024
67: Measuring Developer Productivity with Diff Authoring Time
At Meta, engineers are our biggest asset which is why we have an entire org tasked with making them as productive as possible. But how do you know if your projects for improving developer experience are actually successful? For any other product, you would run an A/B test but that requires metrics and how do you measure developer productivity? Sarita and Moritz have been working on exactly that with Diff Authoring Time which measures how long it took to submit a change to our codebase. Host Pascal talks to them about the way this is implemented, the challenges and abilities this unlocks. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . You can follow our guest Moritz on X ( or check out his website on . Links Meta Connect 2024: Timestamps Episode intro 0:05 Sarita Intro 2:33 Moritz Intro 3:44 DevInfra as an Engineer 4:25 DevInfra as a Data Scientist 5:12 Why DevEx Metrics? 6:04 Average Diff Authoring Time at Meta 9:55 Events for calculating DAT 10:55 Edge cases 13:15 DAT for Performance Evaluation? 20:29 Analyses on DAT data 22:29 Onboarding to DAT 23:23 Stat-sig data 25:06 Validating the metric 26:34 Versioning metrics 28:09 Detecting and handling biases 29:19 Diff coverage 30:30 Do we need DevX metrics in an AI software engineering world? 31:23 Measuring the impact of AI tools 32:23 What's next for DAT? 33:40 Outtakes 36:22
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66: Inside Bento - Serverless Jupyter Notebooks at Meta
08/30/2024
66: Inside Bento - Serverless Jupyter Notebooks at Meta
Bento is Meta’s internal distribution of Jupyter Notebooks, an open-source web-based computing platform. Host Pascal is joined by Steve who worked with his team on building many features on top of Jupyter, including scheduled notebooks, sharing with colleagues and running notebooks without a remote server component by leveraging Webassembly in the browser. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Scheduling Jupyter Notebooks at Meta: Serverless Jupyter Notebooks at Meta: Jupyter Notebooks: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Who is Steve? 1:49 What are Jupyter and Bento? 2:48 Who is Bento for? 3:40 Internal-only Bento features 4:42 Scheduled notebooks 11:39 Integrating with existing batch jobs 17:10 The case for serverless notebooks 20:59 Enter wasm 24:29 Upgrade paths from serverless to server 26:29 Bringing more Python libraries to the browser 30:21 Adding magick(s) 31:52 DataFrame magic and AI 36:41 What's next? 38:29 Outro 43:17
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65: Getting Ready for Post-Quantum Cryptography
07/29/2024
65: Getting Ready for Post-Quantum Cryptography
We don’t know when but at some point in the future we will face what researchers call a "Quantum Apocalypse". This is when quantum computers will be able to break many of our existing encryption algorithms. To keep Meta’a users safe even from attacks that don’t even exist today, Sheran and Rafael are working on post-quantum-ready encryption. Tune in to learn about the various challenges and trade offs that this work brings with it. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Post-quantum readiness for TLS at Meta: Fizz TLS implementation: liboqs: NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Submissions: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Meta Open Source 101 1:10 Intros 1:49 Sheran Intro 2:31 Rafael Intro 3:37 Then Quantum Apocalypse 5:24 Why symmetric and asymmetric algos behave differently 8:10 Why invest in tomorrow's problems? 9:21 First deployment target 14:17 Choosing an algorithm 18:06 Choosing the right parameters 19:51 Performance costs and wins 21:28 Stack 23:33 Challenges 25:26 What's next for PQC? 30:38 Working with NIST 32:59 Outro 34:30 Outtakes 35:43
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64: Caddy - Building the next generation of CAD software for Mixed Reality
07/04/2024
64: Caddy - Building the next generation of CAD software for Mixed Reality
After sitting in one too many Zoom meetings looking at flat images of 3D models, mechanical engineers Ed, Jason, Fan, and Raghavan decided that they could do better, taught themselves how to code and started to build Caddy - a CAD app for mixed reality. Tune in to episode 64 to hear their story. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Caddy video: Caddy on the Quest Store: @Scale conference on YouTube: MLow @Scale talk: MLow blog post: Faster Incident Response with GenAI @Scale talk: Llama 3: Meta Unity SDKs: Prisms VR: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Ed Intro 2:12 Raghavan Intro 3:15 Fan Intro 3:44 Jason Intro 4:16 What is Caddy? 4:49 Why build Caddy? 6:52 Discovery of hand-based interactions 11:46 Supported import formats 14:09 Learning to code 18:09 Time to Caddy MVP 27:48 Off-the-shelf components 29:04 Outgrowing the initial vision 32:48 AI in Caddy 43:25 Challenges building Caddy 52:38 What's next? 55:40 How to get in touch? 56:56 Excitement in MR 57:38 Outro 1:03:35
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63: The key to a happy Rust/C++ relationship
05/30/2024
63: The key to a happy Rust/C++ relationship
Aida was part of one of the first Rust teams here at Meta. One of the biggest challenges was interacting with the large amount of existing C++. With the release of cxx, safe interop between C++ and even async Rust has become a lot easier. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Aida’s talk at Rust Nation: cxx: Sapling: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Aida Intro 2:06 Rust in Meta Source Control 2:50 State of Rust at Meta 10:11 bindgen 13:25 cxx vs bindgen 17:49 async Rust and C++ 19:04 Dealing with Lifetimes 28:19 Fixing Memory Leaks 31:25 Thread safety with Send and Sync 33:48 A Magic Wand for Async Rust 39:52 Outro 43:04 Outtakes 43:50
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62: Building Threads for Web
04/26/2024
62: Building Threads for Web
The basic version of Threads for web was built in just under three months by two engineers, mirroring the nimble engineering practices we talked about on this podcast before when it came to launching Threads for Android and iOS. In this episode, Pascal is joined by Ally and Kevin, two engineers on the Threads Web team. They talk about how shared infrastructure with other Meta web properties allows them to move fast and how they manage to balance the need to ship new features with the desire to craft delightful experiences for their users. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Threads: StyleX: FlowJS: Introducing Meta Llama 3: Building custom silicon for the future of AI: Building Meta’s GenAI Infrastructure: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Intro Ally and Kevin 1:44 Why focus on Web? 2:48 Kevin's contributions 4:42 Focus on craft 6:18 Editing Threads 7:34 Ally's contributions 10:40 Prioritising delight and shipping features 12:02 Launching Threads Web 13:30 Shared Infra 16:13 Tech Stack 19:15 The DevX of Meta www 23:51 Challenges 30:57 Favourite bit of polish 34:32 Outtakes 39:18
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61: Image Quality Improvements at Scale
03/11/2024
61: Image Quality Improvements at Scale
Every day, trillions of image download requests are made from Meta’s family of apps. Zuzanna works on the Media Platform Team that owns the entire flow from serving images from the CDN to displaying the pixels on your phone. One of the project she and her team recently worked on was rolling out HDR images to Instagram and Threads and in this episode’s interview, Zuzanna tells show host Pascal how they partnered with large phone manufacturers to develop and roll out the new feature. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Fresco: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Intro Zuza 1:44 Image Infra Team 3:23 The scale of images at Meta 5:10 Measuring quality 10:01 HDR photos 12:13 HDR file formats 19:02 HDR photo availability today 22:34 Partnering with phone vendors 30:40 Why photos after videos? 32:27 Outro 36:22
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60: Simplified Executable Deployment with DotSlash
02/16/2024
60: Simplified Executable Deployment with DotSlash
Distributing binaries and toolchains to developers is a pain but DotSlash makes it a breeze. Instead of committing large, platform-specific executables to your repository, DotSlash combines a fast Rust program with a JSON manifest prefixed with a #! to transparently fetch and execute the binary you need. Tune in to our interview with Andres and Michael to learn more. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Simple Precision Time Protocol at Meta: Meta Time libraries on GitHub: DotSlash - Simplified executable deployment: DotSlash website: DotSlash on GitHub: Timestamps Intro 0:05 Intro Andres 2:30 Intro Michael 3:39 Andres's Projects at Meta 3:54 Michael's Projects at Meta 5:00 What is DotSlash? 5:30 DotSlash vs LFS 6:04 DotSlash vs buck2 run 7:08 Where is DotSlash used at Meta? 8:45 How does DotSlash work? 9:37 DotSlash on Windows 13:15 How DotSlash is built 16:21 Bundling the rust toolchain 17:14 Automated DotSlash file generation 20:33 DotSlash and remote execution 24:53 Storage providers 26:27 Why open-source? 30:05 Limitations 34:17 Cache Eviction 36:59 Outro 39:22 Bloopers 40:15
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59: Meta ❤️ Python 3.12
01/31/2024
59: Meta ❤️ Python 3.12
For the second time in just a few months, we are talking Python on the Meta Tech Podcast. Python 3.12 features a whole range of new features, many of which were contributed by Meta. Carl and Itamar join Pascal to talk about their contributions to the latest release, including new hooks that allow for custom JITs like Cinder, Immortal Objects, improvements to the type system, faster comprehensions and much more. In their discussion, they talk not just about how and why those features were built but also the process of upstreaming and engaging with the community. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links “Lazy is the new fast: How Lazy Imports and Cinder accelerate machine learning at Meta” - “How Meta built the infrastructure for Threads” - Cinder on GitHub - “Meta contributes new features to Python 3.12” - Timestamps Intro 0:06 Carl Intro 2:09 Itamar Intro 3:27 Teams and Missions 5:10 Python 3 Faster Coroutines 8:57 Code Watchers and JIT Hooks 12:10 When to upstream 13:53 How to upstream to CPython 16:19 History of Cinder 21:35 Why not upstream Cinder? 25:48 Cinder hooks in CPython 29:34 Free Threading 34:10 Outro 37:08
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58: Advancing GenAI at Meta
12/21/2023
58: Advancing GenAI at Meta
For this last episode of 2024, Pascal talks with Devi, an AI research director at Meta. They talk about the history of AI at Meta, some of the basic terms, how Meta's approach to developing and using AI differs notably from other companies and what the future has in store. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Meta AI Blog: Purple Llama: AI Alliance: Audiobox: Emu Video and Emu Edit: Meta AI Agents: Timestamps Intro 0:00 Introduction Devi 2:27 AI vs ML 4:00 History of AI at Meta 6:03 Deep learning and LLMs 9:32 LLMs vs GenAI 11:42 Multi-modal models 12:21 Meta's AI agents 14:33 Meta's open approach to AI 16:53 Image and video generation and editing 22:28 Most exciting future AI developments 27:17 Outro 28:57
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ARCHIVE: From Facebook Home to Instagram Stories
11/30/2023
ARCHIVE: From Facebook Home to Instagram Stories
We’re jumping into our time machine and going back to 2018 for an interview with Will B. about the various twists and turns that led to the creation of Instagram Stories. We will be back with a fresh interview next month. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Rebound: Origami Studio: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Will Bailey 1:14 Early FB iOS app 7:16 Release Trains 11:52 The End of HTML5 13:29 Migration to Native 16:05 Facebook Home 17:02 Design Collaboration 22:03 Instagram 26:33 Slingshot 27:57 Instagram for Android 29:54 Instagram Stories 35:37 Rebound 41:25 Outro 44:41
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57: Writing and linting Python at scale
10/30/2023
57: Writing and linting Python at scale
Python at Meta is huge. Not only does it famously power Instagram's backend, but it underpins our configuration systems, much of our AI work and many services. Amethyst joins Pascal for this episode of the Meta Tech Podcast to talk about how the Python Foundation Team works to improve the developer experience of everyone working with Python at Meta and Fixit 2, the freshly open-sourced linter framework built on top of libcst. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Fixit 2 announcement post: Fixit: µfmt: µsort: LibCST: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Buck2: Scheduling Jupyter Notebooks at Meta: Timestamps Intro 0:06 Intro Amethyst 1:57 Production vs Software Engineering 3:41 PE for language teams 5:40 Python at Meta 6:58 Python3 migration 10:15 Projects on the Python Foundation Team 16:30 libcst and codemods 21:55 What Python looks like at Meta 25:53 Meta's involvement in the Python community 30:30 The importance of lints at Meta 35:13 Why another linter? 39:11 Favourite lint 46:26 Outro 48:17 Bloopers 48:54
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56: How Threads was built in 5 months
09/29/2023
56: How Threads was built in 5 months
Threads went from idea to 100M users in just about five months. This would not have been possible without building on top of Meta's existing systems and infrastructure. Join Pascal as he speaks with Joy, Cameron and Richard, three engineers from the Threads team who worked on backend, iOS and Android, respectively to learn about the challenges they faced along the way. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links Threads: Threads: The inside story of Meta’s newest social app - Litho: Timestamps Intro 0:00 Introductions 0:56 Intro: Cameron 1:42 Intro: Joy 2:06 Intro: Richard 2:30 Early Days at Threads 3:03 Specialisations 6:52 Why built on top of IG? 7:18 iOS and Android approaches 10:17 UI Frameworks 12:00 Code sharing on server 15:36 What broke? 20:04 How has the team changed? 23:02 Favourite moments 25:30 Outro 29:45 Outtakes 31:03
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55: What it's like to ship code at Meta
08/30/2023
55: What it's like to ship code at Meta
For episode 55, Pascal speaks with Katherine and returning guest Dustin, two software engineers at Meta about how to ship code at Meta. Why do we have a monorepo? Why and how do we do pre-commit code review? What does our CI infrastructure look like? Get the answers to these questions and many more in this episode of the Meta Tech Podcast. Got feedback? Send it to us on Threads (), Twitter (), Instagram () and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (, , and ). Fancy working with us? Check out . Links The evolution of Facebook’s iOS app architecture - Engineering At Meta: Episode 47: Source control at Meta - Timestamps Intro 0:06 Intro Katherine 1:55 Dustin's Origin Story 4:38 Topic Intro 6:28 Why Monorepo(s) 7:18 What Makes Monorepos Hard? 12:15 Why do we Have so Many Files? 17:31 Who Owns Stuff? 25:29 Life of a Diff 28:58 Writing Bots Writing Code Writing Bots 34:16 Finding Reviewers 38:46 Why Are Things Not Constantly on Fire? 41:43 Outro 47:47 Outtakes 48:46
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