David Smith
LightNews LightNews
nonfamous.bsky.social
David Smith
@nonfamous.bsky.social
770 followers 420 following 95 posts
AI Developer Relations at Microsoft. he/him
Posts Replies Media Videos
nonfamous.bsky.social
It’ll be back soon, if only as a static site so the links don’t break. TypePad, the blog host shut down with only a few weeks warning. Read the story of the rescue operation here: medium.com/@gcordidoa/m...
October 24, 2025 at 3:06 AM
nonfamous.bsky.social
Devs: looking to up your GitHub Copilot game? In 60 mins, I'll be hosting an AMA with Aaron Powell, maintainer of the Awesome Copilot repo, your source of prompts, chat modes and more!
September 23, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Reposted by David Smith
clairegiordano.bsky.social
🎙️ New @talkingpostgres.com #podcast Ep30 just published!

Guest @simonwillison.net talked about AI for data engineers. We skipped hype & boosterism to chat about Postgres permissions, alt text, 150-line SQL queries, & pelicans on 🚲

🎧 talkingpostgres.com/episodes/ai-...
📺 youtu.be/8SAqeJHsmRM?...
Bio pic of Simon Willison, wearing glasses and standing against pale brick wall, with his name in big letters and the Talking Postgres podcast square thumbnail in bottom left.
August 8, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by David Smith
simonwillison.net
You can try that out yourself by launching a Codespace using this link:

codespaces.new/simonw/codes...

Notes on how I got this working: simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/13/... - plus a detailed TIL on using devcontainer.json to configure Codespaces: til.simonwillison.net/github/codes...
simonw/codespaces-llm
I found out today that GitHub Codespaces come with a GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable... and that token works as an API key for accessing LLMs in the GitHub Models collection, which …
simonwillison.net
August 13, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Reposted by David Smith
astrokatie.com
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by David Smith
jtemple.bsky.social
This @kashhill.bsky.social piece is wild and disturbing:
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.
www.nytimes.com
June 13, 2025 at 1:46 PM
nonfamous.bsky.social
Consciousness exists in the observer’s mind
May 30, 2025 at 3:52 AM
Reposted by David Smith
niema.net
HMMER is literally *the* go-to tool for profile HMMs in bioinformatics. I've used it countless times on a wide range of projects spanning viruses, retrotransposons, etc. Absolute insanity! hmmer.org
May 28, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by David Smith
nhannahjones.bsky.social
I wish journalists would stop framing political news as wins or losses for politicians or political parties. It’s an abrogation of our mission. Why do we keep doing this? Is the spending bill a win or loss for the American people? Who does it help? Who does it hurt? Is it sound policy? Fiscally?
May 22, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by David Smith
gergely.pragmaticengineer.com
It’s humbling to realize how many innovative/novel things in tech are actually often triggered by existing, proven ideas or practices: and using them in a practical setting.

Latest discovery: MCP in-part inspired by LSP (Microsoft’s Language Server Protocol)
April 7, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by David Smith
ashley.dev
Did you know that if you put hot chocolate in a thermos and forget about it, it turns into a bomb?
March 28, 2025 at 11:53 PM
nonfamous.bsky.social
My new hobby is asking ChatGPT to name the new cocktail my partner creates each evening. It did a good job with this one.
March 19, 2025 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by David Smith
brandonrohrer.com
Life hack: write down stuff you’ve already done on your to-do list and slam a checkmark on it
March 18, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by David Smith
georgetakei.bsky.social
I know this first hand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and sabateurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.
X post by Timothy Snyder (@TimothyD ...), posted 6 hours ago. The post reads, "The people Attorney General Bondi is calling 'terrorists' have had no trial and no chance to defend them. We do not know they are. Ignoring the Constitution does not make us safe. It puts us all in peril."
March 17, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by David Smith
swilua.bsky.social
I’m crying, this is so funny

WEAPONIZED MANSPLAINING FOR ESPIONAGE ☠️☠️
garius.bsky.social John Bull @garius.bsky.social · Mar 17
“If she wants to know something specific, but doesn’t want people to notice her asking questions, she should simply make incorrect statements while in the company of experts. Her companions will correct her, especially if they're men.”

- Advice for female agents in WW2, provided during SOE training
March 17, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by David Smith
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Well worth a watch if you're feeling helpless and confused these days.
March 17, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by David Smith
mpopov.com
Coincidentally, 65536 is the maximum number of rows for the Excel 97-2003 file format
molly.wiki Molly White @molly.wiki · Mar 14
Elon Musk's favorite supposed data expert, who he's retweeted at least a dozen times, claims she can only process 60,000 rows of data before her "hard drive overheats"
Tweet by @DataRepublican: "In my initial run, which processed the first 60,000 rows, I did not find these awards—my hard drive overheated long before I could complete a full pass through the database. In a later run, which I referenced in another post, I did identify two such awards. That discrepancy is a matter of sampling size, not an issue with the query itself. I’ll now attempt a full run, which should capture the awards you found."
March 14, 2025 at 12:36 PM
nonfamous.bsky.social
GPT-4o? GPT-o3? Llama 3.3? Command-R? Phi-4?

If you're not sure what Generative AI model to use (and when!) you're not alone — there are thousands to choose from. Tune in to Model Mondays at 10:30AM to learn now. First episode streams live in a couple of hours! github.com/microsoft/mo...
GitHub - microsoft/model-mondays: Model Mondays is a weekly livestream with Discord office hours - to help you navigate the fast-moving ecosystem of generative AI models with 5-minute roundups and 15-...
Model Mondays is a weekly livestream with Discord office hours - to help you navigate the fast-moving ecosystem of generative AI models with 5-minute roundups and 15-minute spotlight sessions. Buil...
github.com
March 10, 2025 at 3:14 PM
nonfamous.bsky.social
Global AI Bootcamp 2025 is officially underway! It's organized by Global AI Community, an independent network of AI enthusiasts who will be hosting local AI-focused meetups in 40+ countries worldwide through April 15. youtu.be/W8b6wf19ppU?...
Global AI Bootcamp - Keynote 2025 - Teaser 1
YouTube video by Global AI Community
youtu.be
March 5, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by David Smith
jeffsharlet.bsky.social
No, Democrats, these little auction signs aren't it. You're acting like Wes Anderson characters who don't understand that they're in a Tarantino movie.
March 5, 2025 at 2:30 AM
nonfamous.bsky.social
Check out those camouflage videos - cuttlefish really are amazing creatures. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/s...
What a Crab Sees Before It Gets Eaten by a Cuttlefish (Gift Article)
Cuttlefish use visual tricks to avoid being eaten. New research shows how they deploy similar camouflage to bamboozle their prey.
www.nytimes.com
March 4, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by David Smith
brookejarvis.bsky.social
ProPublica looked into science grants that Ted Cruz's team flagged as "radical" and "neo-Marxist" and, uh.

This would be good comedy if it didn't matter so much www.propublica.org/article/ted-...
"Developing a device that could treat severe bleeding. It seems to have caught the committee’s attention for using the words “victims” — as in gunshot victims — and “trauma.” Creating biosensors to detect infectious diseases. The grant appears to have been tagged for the repeated use of “POC,” an acronym often used for “people of color” but in this context meaning “point of care” — that is, the place where people receive medical treatment — and “barrier,” referring to a part of the biosensor itself. Designing eye-tracking technology for diagnosing and treating concussions. It appears to have gotten flagged for referencing “traumatic” brain injuries and the “status,” meaning the condition, of patients."
March 3, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Reposted by David Smith
posit.co
We are delighted to announce the release of ellmer, an R package for accessing the power of LLMs in R!

ellmer supports a variety of model providers. Chat, tool call, stream API calls, extract structured data, and more!

Learn about it here: posit.co/blog/announc...

#RStats #AI #LLM
ellmer hex, consisting of a colorful cartoon elephant
February 26, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by David Smith
erininthemorning.com
1. Today, the NYT has reported that 100 members of an ERG-adjacent LGBTQ+ chat in the intelligence community have been fired.

This is a new McCarthyism, a new lavender scare meant to remove LGBTQ+ in government, and the way this was done should shake us all.

Subscribe to support my journalism.
The New McCarthyism: LGBTQ+ Purges In Government Begin
After Chris Rufo leaked LGBTQ+ chatlogs from the intelligence community, Gabbard has announced that all those who participated in the chats will be fired.
www.erininthemorning.com
February 26, 2025 at 5:09 PM