4 ms·

I have a friend on the google maps team and we had a brief conversation about this library a few weeks ago while I was helping him out with some projects at hom

I have a friend on the google maps team and we had a brief conversation about this library a few weeks ago while I was helping him out with some projects at home. If I remember him correctly, this project started off as a 20% time project of just one employee. The more amazing part was it sounded like that employee had been working on the problem, largely by himself, for near a decade. And now this project, started by one guy, is in production use for an application hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people use daily. All because he just kept working on it. Inspiring.

puzzle 8y ago
I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe it. That one employee was Eric Veach, who led the creation of this auction system called AdWords. Then he wrote the first version of SmartAss, the ML system that predicts CTR for AdWords and AdSense. S2 comes from his background in graphics. He had joined from Pixar and won a couple of Oscars. (There's actually someone else at Google who has won more.) Yes, it was mostly one employee, but it wasn't an ordinary one. http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/veach_thesis/ http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/veach_thesis/ (I forgot: he was also behind jump consistent hashing)
- Keyframe 8y ago
  His thesis is a landmark in modern computer graphics. It's everywhere!
- ur-whale 8y ago
  Veach is the guy who brought Metropolis sampling from the field of nuclear physics into the field of Computer Graphics. Almost all modern ray-tracing engines (e.g. Indigo) rely on that technique these days. And yeah, all the other things he did at Google. Not your run of the mill engineer, by a very large margin.
  - pixelpoet 8y ago
    Hey cool, someone mentioned Indigo (I'm one of two engine programmers on it). MLT is actually not much used in modern ray tracers, it has some undesirable properties that rule it out for most "final frame" use. However, Veach's thesis still laid the foundation for all modern rendering, in particular MIS and BDPT.
- person_of_color 8y ago
  Is he staff at Google?

puzzle 8y ago

I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe it. That one employee was Eric Veach, who led the creation of this auction system called AdWords. Then he wrote the first version of SmartAss, the ML system that predicts CTR for AdWords and AdSense. S2 comes from his background in graphics. He had joined from Pixar and won a couple of Oscars. (There's actually someone else at Google who has won more.) Yes, it was mostly one employee, but it wasn't an ordinary one. http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/veach_thesis/ http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/veach_thesis/ (I forgot: he was also behind jump consistent hashing)

Keyframe 8y ago
His thesis is a landmark in modern computer graphics. It's everywhere!
ur-whale 8y ago
Veach is the guy who brought Metropolis sampling from the field of nuclear physics into the field of Computer Graphics. Almost all modern ray-tracing engines (e.g. Indigo) rely on that technique these days. And yeah, all the other things he did at Google. Not your run of the mill engineer, by a very large margin.
- pixelpoet 8y ago
  Hey cool, someone mentioned Indigo (I'm one of two engine programmers on it). MLT is actually not much used in modern ray tracers, it has some undesirable properties that rule it out for most "final frame" use. However, Veach's thesis still laid the foundation for all modern rendering, in particular MIS and BDPT.
person_of_color 8y ago
Is he staff at Google?