tsky
@thadk.bsky.social
TIL mechanical sympathy
#pydatabos multiple ways to speed up your code - parallelism is just one!
November 21, 2025 at 6:27 AM
TIL mechanical sympathy
Reposted by tsky
this crossed my desk from @biancawylie.com earlier, on a form of public-sector procurement that not only takes the idiosyncrasies of information infrastructure into account, but would acknowledge the relationships implicit in other procurements as well:
www.digitalpublic.io/intro-to-rel...
www.digitalpublic.io/intro-to-rel...
Introduction to Relational Procurement — Digital Public
www.digitalpublic.io
November 21, 2025 at 3:18 AM
this crossed my desk from @biancawylie.com earlier, on a form of public-sector procurement that not only takes the idiosyncrasies of information infrastructure into account, but would acknowledge the relationships implicit in other procurements as well:
www.digitalpublic.io/intro-to-rel...
www.digitalpublic.io/intro-to-rel...
Reposted by tsky
indeed the kind of output i'm concerned about with raw (ie non-RAG'd) LLM output is gonna look a lot like the reinhart-rogoff debacle: www.newyorker.com/news/john-ca...
by this i mean, data is used to argue (and get) a policy prescription and by the time you find out it's wrong it's a fait accompli
by this i mean, data is used to argue (and get) a policy prescription and by the time you find out it's wrong it's a fait accompli
November 3, 2025 at 3:36 AM
indeed the kind of output i'm concerned about with raw (ie non-RAG'd) LLM output is gonna look a lot like the reinhart-rogoff debacle: www.newyorker.com/news/john-ca...
by this i mean, data is used to argue (and get) a policy prescription and by the time you find out it's wrong it's a fait accompli
by this i mean, data is used to argue (and get) a policy prescription and by the time you find out it's wrong it's a fait accompli
Reposted by tsky
October 31, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Friend just randomly lost most of his hearing in one ear suddenly and his urgent & primary docs didn't know what to do. It turns out recovery right now requires immediate ENT diagnosis with treatment within a couple days. He waited 2 weeks. Possible CVD connection. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiyQ...
Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss | What Happens if You Lose Your Hearing Overnight?
YouTube video by Doctor Cliff, AuD
www.youtube.com
October 25, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Friend just randomly lost most of his hearing in one ear suddenly and his urgent & primary docs didn't know what to do. It turns out recovery right now requires immediate ENT diagnosis with treatment within a couple days. He waited 2 weeks. Possible CVD connection. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiyQ...
Predated Carlota’s great France talk I posted last week or so.
October 4, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Predated Carlota’s great France talk I posted last week or so.
Reposted by tsky
arguably the job of design is to come up with creative ways of exhausting the space of mistakes, and doing it on the cheap
August 10, 2025 at 3:22 PM
arguably the job of design is to come up with creative ways of exhausting the space of mistakes, and doing it on the cheap
Reposted by tsky
the beginning of wisdom is realizing that social media is not real life but after that comes realizing that nothing else is, either, so in that sense, wisdom is sort of a dead end
August 16, 2025 at 11:17 PM
the beginning of wisdom is realizing that social media is not real life but after that comes realizing that nothing else is, either, so in that sense, wisdom is sort of a dead end
Sounds familiar to lots of design actually: “The importance of the *reference interview* is founded on a simple assumption: that patrons rarely start out asking the librarian for the information they actually need.”
A few months ago I published an absurdly long blog post about the librarian's reference interview for data teams. As of today, there is an abridged version available - it's only half as long, with no tangents!
dataintelligenceplatform.substack.com/p/the-librar...
dataintelligenceplatform.substack.com/p/the-librar...
The librarian's reference interview for data teams (abridged)
What data teams can learn from the reference interview librarians perform to identify and serve true information needs
dataintelligenceplatform.substack.com
October 4, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Sounds familiar to lots of design actually: “The importance of the *reference interview* is founded on a simple assumption: that patrons rarely start out asking the librarian for the information they actually need.”
Reposted by tsky
In this talk for Futuroscope 2025 (with French subtitles) I say that populism happens midway along each technological revolution. The way out are policies creating new dynamic demand. Last time it was suburbanisation; this time it's reglobalisation for a North-South win-win game. urls.fr/xo9QKg
Carlota PEREZ au Forum du Futuroscope 2025 (4/15)
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
urls.fr
September 16, 2025 at 5:55 PM
In this talk for Futuroscope 2025 (with French subtitles) I say that populism happens midway along each technological revolution. The way out are policies creating new dynamic demand. Last time it was suburbanisation; this time it's reglobalisation for a North-South win-win game. urls.fr/xo9QKg
Reposted by tsky
Here is @erie.bsky.social's acceptance speech at the EFF awards: www.youtube.com/live/uOYqIT3... Well worth watching.
EFF Awards Honoring Those Who Are EFFecting Change
YouTube video by EFForg
www.youtube.com
September 14, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Here is @erie.bsky.social's acceptance speech at the EFF awards: www.youtube.com/live/uOYqIT3... Well worth watching.
Reposted by tsky
Managed to sort-of-fold a Huffman tower. Origami with curved creases! Designed by famous Mathematician David Huffman, who also gave us Huffman codes for compression. Fun.
September 13, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Managed to sort-of-fold a Huffman tower. Origami with curved creases! Designed by famous Mathematician David Huffman, who also gave us Huffman codes for compression. Fun.
Reposted by tsky
Reposted by tsky
I do think that LLM-assisted coding of open ends is one of the genuinely promising use cases for the technology, so I hope that continues to develop, but also lol
www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/u...
www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/u...
September 5, 2025 at 6:02 PM
I do think that LLM-assisted coding of open ends is one of the genuinely promising use cases for the technology, so I hope that continues to develop, but also lol
www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/u...
www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/u...
Reposted by tsky
It’s been the teams, people working together to figure things out and get things done.
We build in sand. But we are building it together. How lucky we are!
We build in sand. But we are building it together. How lucky we are!
September 5, 2025 at 10:58 PM
It’s been the teams, people working together to figure things out and get things done.
We build in sand. But we are building it together. How lucky we are!
We build in sand. But we are building it together. How lucky we are!
Reposted by tsky
feels sometimes like I exist to make those that are not worried to worry and those that are worried to not worry, I just want everyone to think about it!
August 27, 2025 at 6:46 PM
feels sometimes like I exist to make those that are not worried to worry and those that are worried to not worry, I just want everyone to think about it!
Reposted by tsky
This seems especially questionable because Google has been pushing LLM responses on search that were known to be low quality,likely smaller,lower energy models.
Its search properties are so vast, it seems plausible that these could outstrip all the consumer&API Gemini usage in terms of the median.
Its search properties are so vast, it seems plausible that these could outstrip all the consumer&API Gemini usage in terms of the median.
August 27, 2025 at 3:05 AM
This seems especially questionable because Google has been pushing LLM responses on search that were known to be low quality,likely smaller,lower energy models.
Its search properties are so vast, it seems plausible that these could outstrip all the consumer&API Gemini usage in terms of the median.
Its search properties are so vast, it seems plausible that these could outstrip all the consumer&API Gemini usage in terms of the median.
Reposted by tsky
The submissions for the new Massachusetts seal, flag and motto are up, and my friends, they are a *trip* www.mass.gov/doc/massachu...
August 25, 2025 at 1:57 PM
The submissions for the new Massachusetts seal, flag and motto are up, and my friends, they are a *trip* www.mass.gov/doc/massachu...
Reposted by tsky
Tomorrow, on Live with Tim O'Reilly, I'll be talking with Arvind Narayanan of Princeton about his notion that AI is a "normal technology" rather than the beginning of an unprecedented singularity.
learning.oreilly.com/live-events/...
learning.oreilly.com/live-events/...
Live with Tim O’Reilly: A Conversation with Princeton’s Arvind Narayanan
Is AI unprecedented, or is it a “normal technology”?
learning.oreilly.com
August 12, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Tomorrow, on Live with Tim O'Reilly, I'll be talking with Arvind Narayanan of Princeton about his notion that AI is a "normal technology" rather than the beginning of an unprecedented singularity.
learning.oreilly.com/live-events/...
learning.oreilly.com/live-events/...
at 25m 14s, Strogatz touches on how he encourages talks to center appreciating, even “loving the question,” that motivates you as presenter.
Reminds me of his coverage of Archimedes’ explained intuition in Infinite Powers (2019) underlying the original “power” point en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archime...
Reminds me of his coverage of Archimedes’ explained intuition in Infinite Powers (2019) underlying the original “power” point en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archime...
August 23, 2025 at 3:25 PM
at 25m 14s, Strogatz touches on how he encourages talks to center appreciating, even “loving the question,” that motivates you as presenter.
Reminds me of his coverage of Archimedes’ explained intuition in Infinite Powers (2019) underlying the original “power” point en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archime...
Reminds me of his coverage of Archimedes’ explained intuition in Infinite Powers (2019) underlying the original “power” point en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archime...
Reposted by tsky
Put differently, this is the difference between a movement/architecture that attempts to subvert existing power dynamics and one that probably perpetuates existing power dynamics. Be wary of sync engines being marketed as the face of local-first…
insofar as local first is about caching and syncing data to clients it’s a cool feature among many to weigh as a design tradeoff. insofar as local first is about owning your data… I’m gonzo for local first
August 8, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Put differently, this is the difference between a movement/architecture that attempts to subvert existing power dynamics and one that probably perpetuates existing power dynamics. Be wary of sync engines being marketed as the face of local-first…
@jennajordan.me This new startup civera.com/vision-values/ kinda reminded me of some of your DuckDB gov transparency 2.0 ideas from Data Reality book club.
I know some of the team and they’re on our @codeforboston.bsky.social open slack if you have any q’s or potential sharing.
I know some of the team and they’re on our @codeforboston.bsky.social open slack if you have any q’s or potential sharing.
Vision + Values - Civera
civera.com
August 6, 2025 at 12:37 PM
@jennajordan.me This new startup civera.com/vision-values/ kinda reminded me of some of your DuckDB gov transparency 2.0 ideas from Data Reality book club.
I know some of the team and they’re on our @codeforboston.bsky.social open slack if you have any q’s or potential sharing.
I know some of the team and they’re on our @codeforboston.bsky.social open slack if you have any q’s or potential sharing.
Reposted by tsky
Umberto Eco’s enduringly popular manual “How to Write a Thesis” is more than a guide for undergraduates; the book is a celebration of the magical process of self-realization.
A Guide to Thesis Writing and a Guide to Life
Writing and research manuals like Umberto Eco’s “How to Write a Thesis” offer a vision of our best selves, Hua Hsu wrote, in 2015.
www.newyorker.com
July 5, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Umberto Eco’s enduringly popular manual “How to Write a Thesis” is more than a guide for undergraduates; the book is a celebration of the magical process of self-realization.
Reposted by tsky
epanet-js is a cool as heck hydraulic modeling application - local-first, running complex simulations with webassembly, licensed under the fsl, competing with expensive legacy applications. plus you may notice… it uses some open source code from placemark! macwright.com/2025/07/03/e...
July 3, 2025 at 4:24 PM
epanet-js is a cool as heck hydraulic modeling application - local-first, running complex simulations with webassembly, licensed under the fsl, competing with expensive legacy applications. plus you may notice… it uses some open source code from placemark! macwright.com/2025/07/03/e...
Reposted by tsky
I’m filling in this walkway like a progressive JPEG, making a pass of big stones, then a pass of small stones, then a pass of little stone chunks, then a pass of polymeric sand to fill in the remaining gaps. It’ll be usable after the first pass, and each subsequent one will be polishing.
July 2, 2025 at 6:37 PM
I’m filling in this walkway like a progressive JPEG, making a pass of big stones, then a pass of small stones, then a pass of little stone chunks, then a pass of polymeric sand to fill in the remaining gaps. It’ll be usable after the first pass, and each subsequent one will be polishing.