Richard Watson
@richardwatson.bsky.social
Multi-stack technical/UX/analytics old timer building a thing to celebrate engineers. Serverless, LLM's, knowledge graphs, JGit, NextJS, AWS, BigQuery, behavioural nudging, data, A/B testing, etc. Also MTB, Sydney, water things, photos.
Signal’s marketing team must be loving this. “Don’t use WhatsApp to communicate your war plans. Only Signal Will Do (tm)”
March 28, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Signal’s marketing team must be loving this. “Don’t use WhatsApp to communicate your war plans. Only Signal Will Do (tm)”
I’m not great at cooking, partly because I get annoyed hunting ingredients down for recipes. Yesterday I gave chatgpt some rough advice (fast, Mediterranean, something a 6 year old would enjoy) and ingredients of what we have in the kitchen. I’m amazed at how well it did. That’s my new trick.
March 11, 2025 at 11:15 AM
I’m not great at cooking, partly because I get annoyed hunting ingredients down for recipes. Yesterday I gave chatgpt some rough advice (fast, Mediterranean, something a 6 year old would enjoy) and ingredients of what we have in the kitchen. I’m amazed at how well it did. That’s my new trick.
I'm a bit too online. I reach for my phone first thing and usually check in news, etc. I check in a bunch of times a day, across various apps/sites. But right now I need to focus. About a year ago I installed an app that blocks ~everything, but haven't used it much. Last Friday I turned it on.
March 6, 2025 at 6:52 AM
I'm a bit too online. I reach for my phone first thing and usually check in news, etc. I check in a bunch of times a day, across various apps/sites. But right now I need to focus. About a year ago I installed an app that blocks ~everything, but haven't used it much. Last Friday I turned it on.
Reposted by Richard Watson
Zelensky is a wartime leader watching his people suffer and die under Russian attacks every day. To be lectured and lied to by Trump and Vance, as they defend the war criminal dictator committing these atrocities, is unimaginable agony. An everlasting shame for America.
Trump has not uttered a critical word about Putin but he and his VP publicly belittled the leader of the nation Putin invaded.
February 28, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Zelensky is a wartime leader watching his people suffer and die under Russian attacks every day. To be lectured and lied to by Trump and Vance, as they defend the war criminal dictator committing these atrocities, is unimaginable agony. An everlasting shame for America.
Reposted by Richard Watson
Zelensky is a hero by any sensible measure. A leader inspiring his nation in the midst of an invasion by a powerful, repressive dictatorship. The fact that any American can think of him as the bad guy just demonstrates the triumph of tribalism over principle.
Republicans are lining up to denounce Zelensky because their base was seduced by a cranky old racist with a fondness for dictators. Just wild how the whims, prejudices, and weird obsessions of a senile 78-year-old have completely supplanted the party’s priorities — and reshuffled the world order.
March 1, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Zelensky is a hero by any sensible measure. A leader inspiring his nation in the midst of an invasion by a powerful, repressive dictatorship. The fact that any American can think of him as the bad guy just demonstrates the triumph of tribalism over principle.
Deepseek is essentially a story about high-frequency trading (HFT) engineers being set on a new problem. HFT is all about extreme high performance. They care about nanoseconds, not milliseconds, and they crawl over every aspect of the tech. They train models to inform trades, not generate tokens.
February 28, 2025 at 11:02 PM
Deepseek is essentially a story about high-frequency trading (HFT) engineers being set on a new problem. HFT is all about extreme high performance. They care about nanoseconds, not milliseconds, and they crawl over every aspect of the tech. They train models to inform trades, not generate tokens.
Fun little stretch of the Manly Dam mountain biking track
February 27, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Fun little stretch of the Manly Dam mountain biking track
Being a new-ish transplant to Sydney, I assumed sea air was obviously better than inland, city air. One map surprised me, and if you scroll around you'll definitely be surprised at some of the world hotspots. Note e.g. Oman and everything to the West of it.
www.accuweather.com/en/au/sydney...
www.accuweather.com/en/au/sydney...
February 23, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Being a new-ish transplant to Sydney, I assumed sea air was obviously better than inland, city air. One map surprised me, and if you scroll around you'll definitely be surprised at some of the world hotspots. Note e.g. Oman and everything to the West of it.
www.accuweather.com/en/au/sydney...
www.accuweather.com/en/au/sydney...
Sunrise WNOW crew at Freshie. Join a local chapter! Community, exercise, support, coffee.
February 21, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Sunrise WNOW crew at Freshie. Join a local chapter! Community, exercise, support, coffee.
The AI chat interface is like the command line. It's powerful but it relies on the user exploring the space before they become competent. Many users just want boxes and buttons to click, where options are presented clearly and they can stay focused on their task.
February 17, 2025 at 8:20 PM
The AI chat interface is like the command line. It's powerful but it relies on the user exploring the space before they become competent. Many users just want boxes and buttons to click, where options are presented clearly and they can stay focused on their task.
I find OpenAI's "smarter" models become more and more sure that they're right (when they're definitely wrong) and it can take real, repeated effort to convince them otherwise. I think the reasoning aspect reduces how directly your input is applied.
February 17, 2025 at 2:43 AM
I find OpenAI's "smarter" models become more and more sure that they're right (when they're definitely wrong) and it can take real, repeated effort to convince them otherwise. I think the reasoning aspect reduces how directly your input is applied.
I had an operations lecturer that kept going on about value, which got me to thinking about what value really meant. The answer I was happiest with, was:
The value of something is equal to the cost of its absence.
This isn't universally true but I've found it an excellent lens.
The value of something is equal to the cost of its absence.
This isn't universally true but I've found it an excellent lens.
January 14, 2025 at 12:26 AM
I had an operations lecturer that kept going on about value, which got me to thinking about what value really meant. The answer I was happiest with, was:
The value of something is equal to the cost of its absence.
This isn't universally true but I've found it an excellent lens.
The value of something is equal to the cost of its absence.
This isn't universally true but I've found it an excellent lens.
Busy start to the Sydney to Hobart race yesterday. Crazy winds.
December 26, 2024 at 10:13 PM
Busy start to the Sydney to Hobart race yesterday. Crazy winds.
The move to subs for news is leaving money on the table. I saw a NYT article and wanted to read it. Got paywall. Logged in. Got subscription offer. I live in Sydney, would love to read occasional articles from NYT, FT, etc but more on a sliding scale than binary "all-in or nothing."
December 14, 2024 at 9:42 PM
The move to subs for news is leaving money on the table. I saw a NYT article and wanted to read it. Got paywall. Logged in. Got subscription offer. I live in Sydney, would love to read occasional articles from NYT, FT, etc but more on a sliding scale than binary "all-in or nothing."
Dobroyd head. Just an amazing entrance to the Sydney harbour area
December 12, 2024 at 10:31 PM
Dobroyd head. Just an amazing entrance to the Sydney harbour area
This dog was having an actual ball, playing fetch at Freshwater
December 8, 2024 at 4:33 AM
This dog was having an actual ball, playing fetch at Freshwater
And Wendy’s secret garden. Amazing fairy garden right in the city
December 7, 2024 at 7:23 AM
And Wendy’s secret garden. Amazing fairy garden right in the city
Nice quiet walk
December 7, 2024 at 7:18 AM
Nice quiet walk
So far I’ve been defining an LLM agent as a class, and have it do some local analysis (eg check file size, check for sensitive terms) before it decides to trigger the LLM part. No idea what best practice is here but it’s working as a mental construct.
December 5, 2024 at 11:33 PM
So far I’ve been defining an LLM agent as a class, and have it do some local analysis (eg check file size, check for sensitive terms) before it decides to trigger the LLM part. No idea what best practice is here but it’s working as a mental construct.
This looks like an awesome agentic library from Pydantic. Works with a bunch of models, more to come. I see tokens at OpenAI are cached. Is the library caching them automatically or is OpenAI?
ai.pydantic.dev
ai.pydantic.dev
Introduction
Agent Framework / shim to use Pydantic with LLMs
ai.pydantic.dev
December 4, 2024 at 11:16 PM
This looks like an awesome agentic library from Pydantic. Works with a bunch of models, more to come. I see tokens at OpenAI are cached. Is the library caching them automatically or is OpenAI?
ai.pydantic.dev
ai.pydantic.dev
Any communities/lists of devs working in Australia? Startups/scale-ups? Already subscribed to the general Software Development feed.
November 27, 2024 at 10:42 PM
Any communities/lists of devs working in Australia? Startups/scale-ups? Already subscribed to the general Software Development feed.
Morning run. Love this route
November 21, 2024 at 12:19 AM
Morning run. Love this route
Another sunrise shot
November 17, 2024 at 5:22 AM
Another sunrise shot