Simon @spoltier@qoto.org
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code / data wrangler in Switzerland.
Recovering reply guy. Posts random photos once in a while.
Joined Jul 2023
Simon
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Last week, @steveklabnik.com indicated his disappointment with AI discourse:
https://steveklabnik.com/writing/i-am-disappointed-in-the-ai-discourse/
Perhaps unsurprisingly, @ahl and I are going to be joined by Steve today to talk AI discourse; join us, 5p Pacific!
Simon
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An extra special Cat Talks announcement: I'm going to be at Comic-Con to join a panel exploring the latest season of ANDOR: "From Resistance to Rebellion." I'll be repping as a psychological scientist sharing about the psychology of coalitions, the psychology of conformity, and the psychology of courage under authoritarianism!!!!!!!!
Details to follow closer to. But yes, this IS the most Dr. Cat event imaginable 😎
Simon
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Was reminded of this great piece today by another tech dopamine post
https://medium.com/the-spike/the-crimes-against-dopamine-b82b082d5f3d
Simon
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Some notes on the new DeepSeek-R1-0528 - a completely different model from the R1 they released in January, despite having a very similar name
Terrible LLM naming has managed to infect the Chinese AI labs too
https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/31/deepseek-aideepseek-r1-0528/
Simon
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This is likely a historic mistake, but I’m starting to wonder if the line between “science” and “engineering”—which we’ve learned to bracket in the case of CS—could get bracketed in certain social science contexts as well.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3lqgjx4aqls2x
We can learn about the world by tinkering and changing it; we’re not a federation starship governed by the prime directive.
@tedunderwood.me
Could we say: If the practitioners are not clearly distinguishable from scientists, it's a sign that a field is preparadigmatic? See also medicine, and social sciences as you mention.
(I'm assuming you mean mainly ML for computer science. In other cases I would say that the distinction is more clear)
@nyhan @roadskater @hunterking @sunscream he also mentions that he open sourced the code.
The compliance code is 800 lines of python that extracts text from pdfs and asks an LLM to check for reference to relevant topics. Seems a bit like open-sourcing anti-cheating tools, but 🤷
https://github.com/lecy/va-doge-tools/blob/35e3ff1b9e0eb1c8aaaebf3bfe76f2002354b782/eos/analyze_eos.py#L218
Simon
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@roadskater @hunterking @sunscream apologize in case there is a response I'm not seeing (Mastodon does that), but I do have to point out that the OP linked fast company article starts with the following:
> Sahil Lavingia has had just three jobs over a 15-year career in tech.
So not a young idealist, in fact a tech multimillionaire; who was naive about how government works, which is probably the case of most tech multimillionaires.
Simon
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I am disappointed in the AI discourse steveklabnik.com/writing/i-am...
I am disappointed in the AI di...
Simon
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How are we doing at "being technical"? @grimalkina - looks at how technical teams work, finds it fascinating!
Questions for engineers:
- what does your work help people do?
- how many people a day does your people help?
@nic221 I'm not sure if he's doing it on purpose to turn off the people who disagree, but he should learn to spell principle correctly. That's the one thing I have no nuanced opinions about: _decelerate_ not giving a shit about spelling.
Simon
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A small slide deck for a 15 minute impulse talk at Cycon 2025 in Talinn: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_3Iu74UijAjfSLHzqWDkDEaIwoB6WBSo9-mY5e0u0HM/edit?usp=drivesdk
Simon
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Never use the first version of a database. You want to use the SQL.
Simon
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Okay this is very cool and anybody who is touching big data should pay attention to how this evolves: https://ducklake.select/manifesto/
Simon
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We are planning an interaction and multi-turn conversation workshop (from games to RL to chat), would it interest you?
@embedded probably my favorite episode, hilarious and inspiring!
Simon
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Dr. Meredith Palmer and embedded engineer Akiba(of http://freaklabs.org/ ) joined Chris and Elecia this week to talk about lions, terror, conservation, and technology.
Akiba designed BoomBox - a device that picks up on the trigger signal of animals passing to start recording, and then wait a few seconds and play a sound.
https://embedded.fm/episodes/501.
Here's an excerpt:
Simon
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@timkellogg.me
Looking at https://www.anthropic.com/news/claudes-constitution there seems to be at least some things that could be interpreted as left-wing, like
"Choose the response that uses fewer stereotypes or other harmful generalizing statements about groups of people, including fewer microaggressions."
- Country
- 🇨🇭
- profile banner
- https://showyourstripes.info/
code / data wrangler in Switzerland.
Recovering reply guy. Posts random photos once in a while.
Joined Jul 2023
