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
@xeiaso.net that this is in service of Slack kind of ruins it
Simon
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- assuming that individual effects will predict collective effects on a totally different timeframe, the underlying assumption being that those collective effects we're genuinely interested in are just the additive result of many individual effects measured on a completely different timeframe
- timeframe choices in general which have no correspondence to the real question's timeframe
Simon
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@mitsuhiko
The article you linked illustrates the issue well: countries defending their narrow interests and their formal sovereignty at the cost of the interests of the block and of actual power on the world stage. This is simply short-sighted, no matter what the orientation to growth is. Harmonization and simplification would already achieve sustained growth, without needing "net deregulation", as in an overall loss on worker's rights, environmental protection, etc.
The issue is that the 27 won't agree on how to achieve these, even if they agree that they are important.
Regarding growth: Europe will not become libertarian (and it should not do so in my opinion).
I agree with you that the general attitude towards progress is overly conservative. I do think it is more justified than in the past, as we have achieved a lot in many respects, and have more at stake as a result. It may well be that a more powerful Europe has the effect of slowing growth globally, and that may not be a bad thing overall (I would expect any kind of decentralization of power away from the US will have that effect in the short to medium term).
Simon
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This week, you can get the ebook of The Terraformers for just $2.99 wherever ebooks are sold -- including indie bookseller platform Bookshop.org, along with the usual places. If you can't wait for Automatic Noodle, this will tide you over!
@kevinrothrock very entertaining essay! I believe we're in the process of relearning that that quote is dangerously wrong (it happens every time a new communication technology is successful).
Simon
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Sam Kriss's latest essay on utilitarianism, among other things, is an enormously enjoyable read. I'm always jealous of his writing. Delightful stuff. "[H]aving a broad diversity of utterly insane ideas in common circulation is a good in and of itself."
Simon
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I'm an IT professional and I:
Simon
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Surprising result from OpenAI: one of their research models achieved a gold medal performance in this year's International Mathematical Olympiad /without/ using tools
Just a classic next-token-predicting LLM with a bunch of reinforcement learning layered on top
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/19/openai-gold-medal-math-olympiad/
Simon
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It is tempting to view the capability of current AI technology as a singular quantity: either a given task X is within the ability of current tools, or it is not. However, there is in fact a very wide spread in capability (several orders of magnitude) depending on what resources and assistance gives the tool, and how one reports their results.
One can illustrate this with a human metaphor. I will use the recently concluded International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) as an example. Here, the format is that each country fields a team of six human contestants (high school students), led by a team leader (often a professional mathematician). Over the course of two days, each contestant is given four and a half hours on each day to solve three difficult mathematical problems, given only pen and paper. No communication between contestants (or with the team leader) during this period is permitted, although the contestants can ask the invigilators for clarification on the wording of the problems. The team leader advocates for the students in front of the IMO jury during the grading process, but is not involved in the IMO examination directly.
The IMO is widely regarded as a highly selective measure of mathematical achievement for a high school student to be able to score well enough to receive a medal, particularly a gold medal or a perfect score; this year the threshold for the gold was 35/42, which corresponds to answering five of the six questions perfectly. Even answering one question perfectly merits an "honorable mention". (1/3)
Simon
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https://halone.within.lgbt need to test something, thanks!
Boost for reach!
Simon
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I scraped the schedule for Open Sauce 2025 this morning and built an alternative schedule interface with the option to add everything to your calendar (via ICS)... working entirely on my iPhone, using OpenAI Codex and Claude Artifacts
I guess you could call this "vibe scraping"? OpenAI Codex turns out to be great at writing custom scrapers if you give it internet access and tell it to download and install Playwright
Prompts + transcripts: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/17/vibe-scraping/
@timkellogg.me love the golang burn 😈
Simon
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Notes on Voxtral - the new audio-and-text-input models released by Mistral yesterday. They're open weight (Apache 2) and also available via Mistral's API, so I added support for them to my llm-mistral plugin https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/16/voxtral/
Simon
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Simon
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I've been thinking about this comment from Ted a lot since he posted it. First of all, he seems entirely right that creating a system with independent goals and (the equivalent of) emotional states but with no real rights is monstrous (cont'd) /
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3ltq3xtqtjc2s
I think what people underestimate is that, at some point, it’s going to be unethical to give these things what they’re missing — if what they’re m...
@rtyler @bert_hubert I do think a lot of people fail to grasp the potential implication of performance at scale (Dan Luu has written on this, e.g. https://danluu.com/algorithms-interviews/#appendix-misaligned-incentive-hedgehog-defense-part-3. then again, most people (me included, I expect*) do not work on code that runs at scale.
*at least that was not meant to run at scale 🤞
@timkellogg.me add overflow so True +True = False 😈
- Country
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code / data wrangler in Switzerland.
Recovering reply guy. Posts random photos once in a while.
Joined Jul 2023
