Data scientist/engineer.
Blog: robinlinacre.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobinLinacre
Lead author of Splink, for record linkage at scale:
https://github.com/moj-analytical-services/splink
Submissions
Optimising DuckDB performance on large EC2 instances
robinlinacre.com
2 points·by RobinL··0 comments
AI, open code and vulnerability risk in the public sector (UK)
gov.uk
5 points·by RobinL··0 comments
Letterpaths – free software for teaching cursive writing
robinlinacre.com
2 points·by RobinL··0 comments
Country Quiz
rupertlinacre.com
1 points·by RobinL··0 comments
Earth's heat to power 10k homes in renewable energy first for UK
bbc.co.uk
10 points·by RobinL··1 comments
GB Renewables Map
renewables-map.robinhawkes.com
146 points·by RobinL··49 comments
Matchbox: A record matching and entity resolution orchestration tool
github.com
1 points·by RobinL··0 comments
Respectful use of AI in software development teams
robinlinacre.com
2 points·by RobinL··0 comments
Respectful use of AI in software development teams
I see it more as a way for relatively well off people to do a little bit for the environment rather than any sort of solution of high energy prices for the poor. The nice thing, of course, is that the more people buy them, the cheaper electricity is for everyone else, so you're doing everyone else a small favour by having one.
I'll certainly be buying one, not because of the ROI/payback calculation, but just because it's fun to talk about with my kids and a nice thing to do.
Similarly, plug in batteries are on the way (see recently Octopus announcement). I'll probably buy one for the same reasons.
That said, the payback time also looks very favourable, especially relative to a full rooftop install, so you don't even need to be alturistic!
It works fairly well empirically: my 7yo likes to watch trains and we regularly use this map to know when to expect one to pass. Not perfect, but pretty good
I get them occasionally - maybe every couple of months or so - and I have nothing like that sort of following.
But I do have a 'say thanks' page on my blog rather than the more usual 'buy me a coffee'. Perhaps people feel less awkward doing it when it's invited! Anyway, I recommend it because the emails are always nice to receive.
Nice, I recently found something like this was possible too. Gpt-5.5 one shotted the basic game, but then I added some ai generated graphics/sounds/music and asked it to write then up.
It kind of blows my mind I can go from: 'I want a fun way to help him learn vocabulary, and I loved total annihilation as a kid' to 'heres a game that's he finds genuinely fun that helps him learn something ' in a few prompts.
Yes, but it's important to note that just because a lot of aid is ineffective doesn't mean it all is. If you want to give to very poor people and be confident most (85%+) actually gets to them I encourage you to take a look at https://www.givedirectly.org/. Full disclosure, I'm an unpaid trustee of the UK sister charity
Interesting. I don't have to use PowerPoint much, but I hate it when I do. I don't want the llm to write the words but I do want it to make things look nice. So does this work well now?
I'm been impressed when testing this model today, but it still can't consistently adhere to the following prompt: make me an image of a pizza split into 10 equal slices with space in between the them, to help teach fractions to a child.
It doesn't reliably give you 10 slices, even if you ask it to number them. None of the frontier models seem to be able to get this right
Please retain vega lite speech as an option! It's incredible useful because you can tweak the chart or change it completely at a later date using e.g. the vega lite editor.
Thanks, interesting. Does this make it more surprising that the other benchmarks have improved? I'm not sure I understand the benchmarks well enough - but I'm wondering whether with agentic workflows it's possible to get away with a smaller more focussed context (and hence lower cost) whilst achieving the same or better performance, because of agentic model's ability to decide what the put in context as they work
Could this be because they've found the 1m context uneconomical (ie costs too much to serve, or burns through users quota too quickly causing complaints), and so they're no longer targeting it as a goal
The letters are based on how they're formed in the UK primary school curriculum.
Each letter is a json that defines the bezier curves according to a schema.
They were created by starting by drawing the letters freehand, yielding essentially a dot to dot, and then (2) using an approximation/smoothing algorithm to convert that into beziers. Finally,I went through touching up/fixing each letter by hand, using a purpose built editor.
So I would say overall it's more time consuming than challenging.
That stills leaves the problem of joining letters together. For that I heavily lent on AI to propose an algorithm, although it required a lot of back and forth to get something even semi decent. At the moment it's probably 'good enough' but there's still lots of room for improvement.
On the countries quiz, you should be able to move and zoom on the bloge using click and drag (or pinch and drag on mobile). Letter constellations uses shaders. Both of those are only tested on Chrome, so that might be the issue.
Thank you! Noticed you're interested in similar areas. I've also previously done some work on maths problem generation. Similar to letterpaths, the core lib can then be used to power games/other educational apps. As I'm sure you've found as well, It's surprisingly difficult to generate random maths problems aligned to a curriculum!
Core lib is UK-focussed:
https://github.com/RobinL/maths-game-problem-generator
I work on an open source record linkage library called Splink. The list of features I want to add has always been far larger than the time I have. I enjoy working with LLMs because they have enabled me to work through my backlog much faster.
I think the primary reason I enjoy working with them is that coding, for me, has always been a means to and end. I like the product of it more than the process. This quote sums it up quite well for me:
> People are really worried about their jobs. And I just want to remind them that the purpose of your job and the tasks and tools that you use to do your job are related, not the same. I've been doing my job for 33 years. I'm the longest running tech CEO in the world, 34 years. And the tools that I've used to do my job has changed continuously in the last 34 years, and sometimes quite dramatically, you know, over the course of a couple, two, three years.
5.4 is great. I use it for python professionally and for typescript/front-end games and educational apps recreationally. In my experience it's roughly as good as opus, just a lot cheaper. It's amazing how much usage you get for $20/mo