Alex Nichol
@unixpickle.bsky.social
Code, AI, and 3D printing. Opinions are my own, not my computer's...for now. Co-creator of DALL-E 2. Researcher @openai.
Today I've been trying out a new concept for a programming language. Everything is an object; there's no separate notion of "functions". All fields of an object are lazy, and you can patch fields arbitrarily. A "function call" is just overriding "argument" fields.
November 11, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Today I've been trying out a new concept for a programming language. Everything is an object; there's no separate notion of "functions". All fields of an object are lazy, and you can patch fields arbitrarily. A "function call" is just overriding "argument" fields.
Alexa+ is nice, but it did hallucinate almost immediately.
October 8, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Alexa+ is nice, but it did hallucinate almost immediately.
Did I beat the game? I got it to admit it was wrong.
September 27, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Did I beat the game? I got it to admit it was wrong.
Made an agent that generates 3D models by writing Go code (which uses my model3d package as a foundation).
September 27, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Made an agent that generates 3D models by writing Go code (which uses my model3d package as a foundation).
To benchmark the agent, I made a few "simulations" of unsubscribe websites. The results are far from perfect! There's still a lot of room for improvement here.
September 20, 2025 at 11:14 PM
To benchmark the agent, I made a few "simulations" of unsubscribe websites. The results are far from perfect! There's still a lot of room for improvement here.
Apps like Gmail try to give you automated "unsubscribe" buttons, but companies have clever ways of making this not actually do what you want. The most common trick is having many "mailing lists". By default you are removed from only one. This is also a trick on unsubscribe pages.
September 20, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Apps like Gmail try to give you automated "unsubscribe" buttons, but companies have clever ways of making this not actually do what you want. The most common trick is having many "mailing lists". By default you are removed from only one. This is also a trick on unsubscribe pages.
I made an agent that unsubscribes you from spam. It controls a web browser to navigate an unsubscribe page. The agent runs JavaScript to perform actions on the page, and gets to see a screenshot after each action it takes.
Blog post: blog.aqnichol.com/2025/09/20/u...
Blog post: blog.aqnichol.com/2025/09/20/u...
September 20, 2025 at 11:14 PM
I made an agent that unsubscribes you from spam. It controls a web browser to navigate an unsubscribe page. The agent runs JavaScript to perform actions on the page, and gets to see a screenshot after each action it takes.
Blog post: blog.aqnichol.com/2025/09/20/u...
Blog post: blog.aqnichol.com/2025/09/20/u...
Don't use floats for money.
September 16, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Don't use floats for money.
Damn birds are striking again?
September 11, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Damn birds are striking again?
Why don't we have a programming language for deep learning where dtypes and shapes are part of the type system?
September 7, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Why don't we have a programming language for deep learning where dtypes and shapes are part of the type system?
Pure evil: "you just checked out, you have exactly two minutes to get 20% off something else"
September 6, 2025 at 2:42 AM
Pure evil: "you just checked out, you have exactly two minutes to get 20% off something else"
Apparently I am anonymous.
September 1, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Apparently I am anonymous.
Just saw an ad for Claude for the first time.
August 18, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Just saw an ad for Claude for the first time.
Sudoku is just a graph coloring problem. The sudoku board is a graph where rows, columns, and 3x3 blocks are fully connected.
August 17, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Sudoku is just a graph coloring problem. The sudoku board is a graph where rows, columns, and 3x3 blocks are fully connected.
Here's a nice optimal tree decomposition.
August 10, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Here's a nice optimal tree decomposition.
I implemented graph coloring using dynamic programming on a tree decomposition.
The US map is quite "tree-like", with a treewidth of 6. This makes it really easy to compute colorings and other (typically NP-hard) problems on it.
The US map is quite "tree-like", with a treewidth of 6. This makes it really easy to compute colorings and other (typically NP-hard) problems on it.
August 10, 2025 at 5:29 PM
I implemented graph coloring using dynamic programming on a tree decomposition.
The US map is quite "tree-like", with a treewidth of 6. This makes it really easy to compute colorings and other (typically NP-hard) problems on it.
The US map is quite "tree-like", with a treewidth of 6. This makes it really easy to compute colorings and other (typically NP-hard) problems on it.
I mean idk if I think it's truly bad. But there are so many more rough edges than with Go, so I was confused why Go was getting all the twitter hate.
Stuff like this is going around now, showcasing instances where you need more type info than actual code.
Stuff like this is going around now, showcasing instances where you need more type info than actual code.
July 25, 2025 at 6:35 AM
I mean idk if I think it's truly bad. But there are so many more rough edges than with Go, so I was confused why Go was getting all the twitter hate.
Stuff like this is going around now, showcasing instances where you need more type info than actual code.
Stuff like this is going around now, showcasing instances where you need more type info than actual code.
Implemented a little LP-based solver for the traveling salesman problem. It can solve a 52 city problem optimally in a few seconds. I also implemented the LP solver itself.
July 23, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Implemented a little LP-based solver for the traveling salesman problem. It can solve a 52 city problem optimally in a few seconds. I also implemented the LP solver itself.
Fun little exercise: take a graph that happens to be planar, and find valid 2D coordinates for all of the points to turn it into a straight-line drawing.
July 23, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Fun little exercise: take a graph that happens to be planar, and find valid 2D coordinates for all of the points to turn it into a straight-line drawing.
A new argument for air conditioning in Europe just dropped.
July 17, 2025 at 3:59 AM
A new argument for air conditioning in Europe just dropped.
