To Whom It May Concern: Pursuant to the California Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records: Any and all available audio recordings of announcements - i.e. RE schedules, health notices, schedule interruptions, promotions, emergencies - and other audio material created to be broadcast to transport patrons on trains, buses, light...
Dashboard: Tools I used Django SQL Dashboard to spin up a dashboard that shows all of the URLs to my tools.simonwillison.net site that I've shared on my blog so far. It uses this (Claude assisted) regular expression in a PostgreSQL SQL query: select distinct on (tool_url) unnest(regexp_matches( body, ...
San Francisco transportation officials moved a step closer this week to modernizing the train control system that runs the Muni Metro system, eventually ridding it of a system that uses outdated technology and runs on floppy disks. I wanna know what’s on the floppy disks The software that runs the system is stored on floppy disks that are loaded...
I’m not sure I have the patience to maintain a fleet of static HTML pages, but I like the initiative behind this! It seems like Alex does some cool archival work. https://alexwlchan.net/2024/static-websites/
Once upon a time, I spent three years writing a blog called Portland Communique. It was well-regarded, well-read, and one of the few examples of what some called “stand-alone journalism” around at the time. For awhile afterward on my personal blog FURIOUS nads!, I continued to stick my nose into local affairs and elections. I don’t really talk...
Every semester, I see a bit more ChatGPT being used in classes. … when my groupmates are proxies for $20/month subscriptions, without even particularly imaginative prompts, I lose all motivation. This is sad and concerning to me - I also saw a thread on Twitter the other day full of similar complaints from university students that their...
how to save the categories in the draft structure when i publish this post it should have a few categories on it. let’s see…
In today’s fast-paced development environment, efficient project management is crucial for the success of any team. While tools like Asana have gained popularity for their ease of use and robust features, they come with limitations such as subscription costs and lack of flexibility. Thankfully, the open source community has stepped up to provide...
Jujutsu is a version control system, an alternative to Git. This blog post is not a tutorial, but practical examples of how I use it.
A tool that packages your code to easily share with LLM models.
The advice might seem dated these days, but I think the stair step approach to bootstrapping is evergreen: It’s much easier to sell an add-on to an existing ecosystem like a WordPress plugin, a Shopify app, a Heroku add-on – they’re usually small things to build, relatively inexpensive for customers to purchase, and you have built in discovery...
The advice might seem dated these days, but I think the stair step approach to bootstrapping is evergreen: It’s much easier to sell an add-on to an existing ecosystem like a WordPress plugin, a Shopify app, a Heroku add-on – they’re usually small things to build, relatively inexpensive for customers to purchase, and you have built in discovery...
Subtyping is a relation between two types. It often comes with a typing rule called “subsumption”, which says that if type B is a subtype of type A (usually shown as B ), then a value of type B can be assumed to have type A. The crucial part is that subsumption is implicit, the programmer doesn’t explicitly cast the value with type B to type A....
My wife's alarm clock has been acting up lately. Sporadic at first but then every day, it wouldn't blare in the morning at the set time. Instead, when it was supposed to go off it would... reset itself. The time would start flashing in that "I'm confused because the power went out" sort of way. Not very useful. You want the alarm to wake you up,...
What Ruby’s top-level methods actually are, who they belong to and how they are namespaced. A few days ago, a curious question was asked on /r/ruby, which can be boiled down to this: How are the methods of the Kernel module available in the top-level scope? The question was dedicated to rand method, but (as the author correctly suggests) it also...
Blog post: 9 Oct 2024 Blog post: 9 Oct 2024Over the last few posts I wrote about things I did to improve font quality, such as Over the last few posts I wrote about things I did to improve font quality, such as antialiasingantialiasing and and combining distance fieldscombining distance fields to merge outlines and halos. But I want to “pop up the stack” a bit and talk about one of the bigger goals for this... to merge outlines and halos. But I want to “pop up the stack” a bit and talk about one of the bigger goals for this...
Knowledge Worker Forrest Brazeal: Last month, I performed a 30-minute show called "Knowledge Worker" for the incredible audience at Gene Kim's ETLS in Las Vegas. The show included 7 songs about the past, present, and future of "knowledge work" - or, more specifically, how it's affecting us, the humans between keyboard and chair. I poured...
The first sentence of this great article is the most important: I don’t mind HTML email, but it really can be overdone. There is a tendency to do too much. We try to keep emails that come from here super simple but we still get a couple of issues with Buttondown. We’re actually looking at going back to using Postmark, so a super simple template...
I really dislike the practice of replacing passwords with email “magic links”. Autofilling a password from my keychain happens instantly; getting a magic link from email can take minutes sometimes, and even in the fastest case, it’s nowhere near instantaneous. Replacing something very fast — password autofill — with something slower is just a...
The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs Drew Breunig introduces an interesting new framework for categorizing use cases of modern AI: Gods refers to the autonomous, human replacement applications - I see that as AGI stuff that's still effectively science fiction. Interns are supervised copilots. This is how I get most of the value out of LLMs...
I’ve written a lot of JavaScript. I like JavaScript. And more importantly, I’ve built up a set of skills in understanding, optimizing, and debugging JavaScript that I’m reluctant to give up on. So maybe it’s natural that I get a worried pit in my stomach over the current mania to rewrite every Node.js tool in … … Continue reading →
Who called it “intellectual property problems around the acquisition of training data for Large Language Models” and not Grand Theft Autocomplete? — Jens Ohlig, on March 8th 2024 Tags: training-data, llms, ai, generative-ai
This was the moment when my productivity hungry brain turned on me. I started thinking about my personal life with a productivity glint in my eye
Winnie has a lot to say on the matter of endurance as informed by her own experience combined with reading a book on the subject, and I don’t have much to say here but I wanted to think out loud a bit about the idea that “being mentally exhausted impacts our physical performance too”. Even before my presumptive ME/CFS diagnosis (my primary care...
like curling meets shuffleboard on a tabletop board #
It feels like we’re at a bit of an inflection point for the Django community. [...] One of the places someone could have the most impact is by serving on the DSF Board. Like the community at large, the DSF is at a transition point: we’re outgrowing the “small nonprofit” status, and have the opportunity to really expand our ambition and reach. In...
Moshe Vardi wrote a short interesting essay “What is theoretical computer science?” (It followed by interesting posts on Facebook.) Moshe argues that Thinking of theoretical computer science (TCS) as a branch of mathematics is harmful to the discipline. I personally … Continue reading →
replaced the broken handle on my screen door yesterday and now I get good feels every time it smoothly latches shutthere is a larger lesson here, I think 😅
Riley Hill: I Bought A Vision Pro After Everyone Said It Was DeadAfter about two weeks of using the Vision Pro,Riley has some interesting thoughts about using the Vision Pro for the first time many months after the hype cycle has cooled off considerably. He’s pretty
Other than my link blog, I usually start writing about stuff weeks (if not months) in advance, but due to all the recent changes my stack of drafts hasn’t been tended to properly. I have a lot on my mind (also about industry and tech), but haven’t yet beefed up my reasoning about a few things or whittled down the salient points to be sharp enough...
This post describes my lessons learned after 10 years running production environments in sizes ranging from "just getting started" to a "Series F" company with 4-9 SLAs. Like any good developer, I'm impatient and expect tasks to be fast, especially if I need to do them often, like deploying. Nothing is worse than hitting "deploy" and having a...
The internet NES fan scene has changed over time. The modern scene I think is a lot more open to Japan-exclusive titles, thanks to the wealth of fan translations, and has different preferences. One game that seems to have fallen through the cracks is Rare’s Wizards and Warriors. It was a hit in its day, but doesn’t seem to get the attention other...
You can use text-wrap: balance; on icons Neat CSS experiment from Terence Eden: the new text-wrap: balance CSS property is intended to help make text like headlines display without ugly wrapped single orphan words, but Terence points out it can be used for icons too: This inspired me to investigate if the same technique could work for text based...
Try to quit making assumptions and quit feeling like you have to live up to them.
[How can you not love the Kagi dog mascot?] One of the small pleasures, for me, about the web in 2024 is the sheer amount of interesting independent and niche products...
I’ve recently started a new job as a documentation engineer. While my work is largely the same as that of a technical writer, the sound and semantics of my new job title gave me some pause and made me think about what it really means to be doing docs-as-code. To say that it’s about writing documentation using the same tools and methods as...
As digital threats evolve at an unprecedented pace, robust cybersecurity measures have become more critical than ever. Open source security projects stand at the forefront of this battle, offering powerful tools that empower organizations to protect their data and infrastructure. These projects promote transparency, encourage collaboration, and...
Examining the Devaluation of Software Engineer Titles and Its Impact on Tech Industry Integrity
It's easy to think of being serious and having fun as opposite sides of a spectrum. The problem is that 'being serious' has many unrelated meanings, for example:It's easy to think of being serious and having fun as opposite sides of a spectrum. The problem is that 'being serious' has many unrelated meanings, for example: Serious as in somber or solemn. "This is a serious event, stop playing around."Serious as in somber or solemn. "This is a serious event, stop playing around." Serious as in actually trying to attain your goals, as opposed to just going through the motions. "This is a serious effort."Serious as in actually trying to attain your goals, as opposed to just going through the motions. "This is a serious effort." Only the first meaning is actually opposed to fun. Fun/playful vs...Only the first meaning is actually opposed to fun. Fun/playful vs...
Introduction In mathematics, a function \( f \) from a set \( X \) to a set \( Y \) is a relation that associates each element of \( X \) with exactly one element of \( Y. \) This page describes the commonly used notation, terminology, and concepts pertaining to functions. Contents Introduction Definition Notation Domain,...
Claude Shannon’s famous paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication [1] includes an example saying that the channel capacity of a telegraph is log2 W where W is the largest real root of the determinant equation Where in the world did that come from? I’ll sketch where the equation above came from, but first let’s find […] The post Channel...
Dario Amodei’s essay is a fascinating dive into the potential upsides of powerful AI, but it feels a bit like a tech utopia wrapped in a cautionary tale. While he rightly emphasizes the need to address risks, the optimism about AI’s ability to solve complex global issues—like health and governance—might be a touch overzealous. Sure, AI could...
Here’s a dilemma. As a (freelance) software developer, should you specialize in one development stack or go wide by learning to be proficient in many different technologies? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and have yet to reach a definitive stance on the matter. I’m a generalist but our society seems to promote specialists. I like...
New feature. When you click on the airplane on an unpublished draft, the sitename part of the status line must change from Draft to the name of the site the post was published to. Next feature. When editing the title, the airplane icon should be enabled when you make a change. Also the draft should […]
mistral.rs Here's an LLM inference library written in Rust. It's not just for that one family of models - like how llama.cpp has grown beyond Llama, mistral.rs has grown beyond Mistral. This is the first time I've been able to run the Llama 3.2 vision model on my own Mac M2 laptop: git clone https://github.com/EricLBuehler/mistral.rs.git cd...
Web excursions brought to you in partnership with NordVPN. Secure your internet browsing effectively and affordably. IndigoStack This is really cool. Bare metal performance for local web development stacks. Run multiple stacks with https, reverse proxies, whatever tech you need — no Docker, no VMs, full terminal integration. Really well...
Yes, he’s the guy from The Elegant Universe book and TV series. Our conversation is 1 hour 40 minutes; as usual I strongly recommend listening at 2x speed. The topics, chosen by Brian, include quantum computing (algorithms, hardware, error-correction … the works), my childhood, the interpretation of quantum mechanics, the current state of AI, the...
Linux has long been celebrated for its commitment to user control and freedom. However, the rise of modern packaging systems like Snaps and Flatpaks, with their mandatory updates, poses a significant challenge to these core principles. This article delves into the implications of forced updates, highlighting how they disrupt user autonomy,...
Discover how text fragments revolutionize web navigation. Learn to link directly to specific text on any web page, surpassing traditional 'Ctrl+F' searches. Explore this powerful, user-friendly feature for precise content sharing and improved web experiences.
Learn how to automatically improve your Astro site's performance using astro-capo
Prescript: I originally started writing this with the intent to send it out to my supporter's newsletter, EYES ONLY, but it got to be long and took basically all day so I feel like it deserves wider circulation. You will have to tolerate that it begins in the more conversational tone I use for the supporters newsletter. I am going to write a bit...
Life begins. An empty page. A hollow echo on an barren stage. We wander through the quiet air, Unsure of what awaits us there. With work and study, I filled the days, But purpose wanes in fading haze. An emptiness remained inside, A restless longing I tried to hide. But then a hand, warm in the night, Turns the dark to softest light. Two souls...
Life begins. An empty page. A hollow echo on an barren stage. We wander through the quiet air, Unsure of what awaits us there. With work and study, I filled the days, But purpose wanes in fading haze. An emptiness remained inside, A restless longing I tried to hide. But then a hand, warm in the night, Turns the dark to softest light. Two souls...
Once upon a time, I wrote a book about debugging in .NET . After some 4 years I decided it was time for the old fellow to become available to everyone. PDF | MOBI | ePub Some topics covered in the book are: Advanced debugging techniques with Visual Studio .NET Core and .NET Framework on Windows, Linux, and Mac Performance issues Memory leaks and...