Inspired by Simon Willison, and because I’m starting as Newspeak House faculty this year, I’m starting to write weekly notes… let’s see how they get on!
- I’ve been on holiday this week, which probably explains why I’ve done all the things. Nothing makes me productive more than throwing me into the middle of nowhere with no meetings and nothing to do… hence I’ve started these notes, and done a bunch of random side-projects.
- There’s probably a future blog post in this: holidays are bloody important, and in this world ever more knowledge work, we should probably all be taking more. Maybe the French are onto something.
What I’ve done
- I’ve written my first post about Copbot Online, an online tool I built to compare human and AI risk perception, with some interesting notes about bias in LLM models
- Speaking of CopBot, I wrote it using FastHTML, which I’m really enjoying building with. I promise I’m not just a Jeremy Howard shill, though his other projects like FastAI and nbdev are all bloody excellent.
- I also made an Obsidian plugin! I write my notes using Obsidian, but my site is managed with Quarto, and swapping one to the other was a pain. Now it’s magical and automated! Thank god for LLMs.
- It is a teeeeeny bit janky, so apologies for formatting weirdness on this page. Thanks for beta testing?
What I’ve found
- UV, the rust-based Python package manager and all around pip replacement, has a new version out. I was previously bundling it with Rye, and found it didn’t quite work in every scenario… but this looks like it might just be perfect?
- Zed, the AI coding IDE. Programming was probably the first industry to be meaningfully disrupted by AI, but I do think co-pilot is probably the very fist pass at a bespoke tool… Like most revolutions, building the infrastructure into our daily practice will take longer than the “core” discovery.
What I’ve Read
Papers
The Llama 3 Herd of Models
This thing is disgustingly long, but worth a browse. Some headline thoughts:
- Training LLMs isn’t an exploratory science anymore, it’s now an industry. The amount of thought that goes into scaling and optimising the learning process is faintly terrifying
- Architecture wise, we’re still surprisingly… old school? No mixture of experts, no fancy new rethink, it’s still a big transformer.
Articles
The Death of “Deliverism”
It turns out that government just getting stuff done might not be enough to convince people it’s great. This feels linked to a bunch of articles I’ve been seeing about how the “West” needs to rediscover it’s passion and ability to tell stories and really inspire people again. I’m yet to be convinced - it feels like pushing back against the enlightenment, and people who feel inspired can do very stupid things.
Books
How to Take Smart Notes
God, I wish I could take good note. I can’t, and maybe this will inspire me. I’ve at least bought a tiny notebook, so that’s something.
Metadata
- Author: [[Sönke Ahrens]]
- Full Title: How to Take Smart Notes
Quit
I’ve been pondering when and how you should dump projects recently…if anybody has figured it out, let me know!
Metadata
- Author: [[Annie Duke]]
- Full Title: Quit