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Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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SQLite Query Explainer

Tool: SQLite Query Explainer

Julia Evan's, in Learning a few things about running SQLite:

Maybe one day I’ll learn to read a query plan.

Big same.... which inspired me to have Fable build this interactive explain tool, which runs SQLite in Python in Pyodide in Web Assembly in the browser and adds a layer of explanation to the results of both EXPLAIN and EXPLAIN QUERY PLAN.

Approach with caution, since I don't know enough about SQLite query plans to verify the results myself, but it seems cromulent enough to me.

Tags: sql, sqlite, tools, julia-evans, pyodide, claude-mythos-fable

Jim Nielsen’s Blog Valid
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Make It Work vs. Make It Good

There are two wolves inside of me, lol. Some days I want to be a “designer”. Other days I want to be a “developer”. On the days I find myself wanting to feed the developer, it’s often because making something “work” seems easier (and more impressive) than making something “g...

Max Woolf's Blog
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What's the deal with all the random weekly quota resets for agents lately?

I’m going to be the weirdo who complains about literally getting free stuff.

Andrew Nesbitt Valid
Text • Andrew Nesbitt

This Week in Package Management: 18 July 2026

Releases, advisories, and articles from across the package management world

Construction Physics
Text • Brian Potter

Reading List 07/18/26

Reading List 07/18/26

A setback for California Forever, a $500 million artillery shell plant not producing any shells, the difficulty of recycling EV batteries, manufacturing wire harnesses, and more.

Terence Eden’s Blog
Text • @edent

Book Review: A City on Mars - by Dr. Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith ★★★★⯪

I'm pretty sure this book is a psyop designed to demoralise a generation of starry-eyed dreamers. It is obviously written by the same people who told us not to land on Europa. A malignant energy designed to limit the scope of human ambition and thwart our plans to colonise the universe. The problem is, I can't find fault with any of their logic. The Weinersmiths make a compelling case that…

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Claude make Fable 5 permanent

Claude make Fable 5 permanent An update from the @claudeai account on Twitter: Beginning July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, at 50% of limits. Pro and Team Standard users will continue to have access to Fable via usage credits, and wi...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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nascheme/quixote

nascheme/quixote

A certain vintage if Python web nerd might be delighted to learn that the most recent commit to the Quixote web framework was six hours ago.

The oldest commit in that repo is from 21 years ago, and that was the initial import of Quixote 2.4 from Subversion into Git.

Tags: computer-history, python, web-frameworks

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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LLM cliché highlighter

Tool: LLM cliché highlighter

I got frustrated reading yet another article that was crammed with the clichés of LLM-generated writing - "no fluff, no filler, no jargon" type stuff - so I had Fable 5 vibe code up this app for highlighting ten common patterns that show up in that sort of writing.

Screenshot of a text-analysis web tool. Top summary row: "2 matches", "1 flagged sentence", "0 chain items". Below, a collapsed "▶ Patterns · all 11 on" panel, then a URL input reading "https://example.com/article — fetched via r.jina.ai" with a "Load URL" button. A text area contains "That loss is real and it's worth naming". Below are "Load example" and "Clear" buttons and a checked checkbox "Show just the highlights". A "Highlighted text" section shows "That loss is real and it's worth naming" with "That loss" in pale yellow (flagged sentence) and "is real and" plus "'s worth naming" in darker yellow (pattern match). Legend: "flagged sentence", "pattern match", "3 chain item count". "Matches" section: 1. "is real and" — "Is real … and / not"; 2. "'s worth naming" — "Worth naming".

Tags: tools, ai, generative-ai, llms

Maurycy's Blog
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Regressive JPEGs:

One of the cool features of JPEG files is that there's the option to save low frequency components first. This means that a partially downloaded image will be displayed at low resolution instead of being cut off. In the file, this works by breaking up the compressed data...

seangoedecke.com RSS feed
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Overtraining as the path to human-like AI

The anonymous blogger Gwern recently completed a thirteen thousand word post called Human-like Neural Nets by Catapulting, in which he offers a theory about why LLMs don’t possess truly flexible human-like intelligence, and how we might train LLMs that do. Theories like this...

Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet. Updates instantly via WebSub
Text • Ernie Smith

The Terminus

When a really long road ends, why don’t we do more to celebrate the staggering amount of collective work that went into it? The ancient Romans really outclassed the federal highway system on this front.

Andrew Nesbitt Valid
Text • Andrew Nesbitt

Plumbing Homebrew into the vulnerability ecosystem

One command, six repos, three standards bodies, an advisory database, and a version comparator written in the wrong language.

John D. Cook
Text • John

Visualizing Medical Code Hierarchy

Quick follow up to the previous two posts on ICD-10 codes and HCPCS codes. This post uses Python’s squarify library to create treemaps visualizing how many codes begin with each letter. Here’s the treemap for HCPCS codes. And here’s the treemap for ICD-10 codes. The sizes of the squares are proportional to the number of […]

The post Visualizing Medical Code Hierarchy first appeared on John D. Cook.

The Digital Antiquarian
Text • Jimmy Maher

The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 2: SimWorld

This article tells part of the story of Maxis Software. Maxis came into 1994 riding high on the wings of SimCity 2000, the hit of the previous holiday season. They followed up that success with… SimHealth: The National Health Care Simulation. This may sound like satire, but it was all too real. To be clear, SimHealth was […]

The Old New Thing
Text • Raymond Chen

Why has the display control panel pointer truncation bug gone unfixed for so long?

It's fixed, but the fix isn't getting there.

The post Why has the display control panel pointer truncation bug gone unfixed for so long? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

John D. Cook
Text • John

Regular expressions for HCPCS codes

Since I revisited my old post on ICD code matching, I thought I’d revisit by post on HCPCS codes too. HCPCS stands for Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System, and is pronounced “hick picks.” When most people say HCPCS, they technically mean HCPCS Level II, and that’s what I mean here. The format of a HCPCS […]

The post Regular expressions for HCPCS codes first appeared on John D. Cook.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Quoting Kimi K3

Is there something I can actually help you with today?

Kimi K3, after refusing to leak its system prompt

Tags: kimi, ai-personality, generative-ai, ai, llms

John D. Cook
Text • John

Regular expression speed and error rates

Seven years ago I wrote a post about regular expressions to match diagnosis codes. I wanted to revisit that post looking at speed and error rates. Regular expressions usually do not exactly match what you’re looking for and nothing else. They have error false positives and false negatives. But they also have advantages, and context […]

The post Regular expression speed and error rates first appeared on John D. Cook.

The Silicon Underground
Text • Dave Farquhar

Digital Research’s 1991 merger with Novell

Digital Research’s 1991 merger with Novell
Digital Research’s 1991 merger with Novell

On July 17, 1991, Novell bought Digital Research for $80 million, a merger of a pioneer in desktop computer networking with a pioneer in desktop computer operating systems. Novell saw Microsoft coming after its business on multiple fronts, and saw

The post Digital Research’s 1991 merger with Novell appeared first on The Silicon Underground.