From simonwillison.net
Video scraping: extracting JSON data from a 35 second screen capture for less than 1/10th of a cent
7 9
The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails. I didn’t particularly feel like copying and pasting all of …
#AI #Video #links #simon #tools #scraping
on Thu, 1PM
From simonwillison.net
3 3
This "fun party trick" by Vincent D. Warmerdam is absolutely brilliant and a little horrifying. The following code: <pre><span class="pl-k">from</span> <span class="pl-s1">uvtrick</span> <span class="pl-k">import</span> <span class="pl-v">Env</span> <span class="pl-k">def</span> <span...
on Sep 5
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
1 1
The sheer volume of meticulously reported content in @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io's newsletter is really something else - absolutely no idea how she can churn out that much high quality reporting on a weekly basis, I have enough trouble just finding the time to read...
7h ago
From simonwillison.net
New in NotebookLM: Customizing your Audio Overviews
1 1
The most requested feature for Google's NotebookLM "audio overviews" (aka [automatically generated podcast conversations](https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/29/notebooklm-audio-overview/)) has been the ability to provide direction to those artificial podcast hosts - setting their expertise …
21h ago
From simonwillison.net
Calling LLMs from client-side JavaScript, converting PDFs to HTML + weeknotes
1 1
I’ve been having a bunch of fun taking advantage of CORS-enabled LLM APIs to build client-side JavaScript applications that access LLMs directly. I also span up a new Datasette plugin …
on Sep 6
From simonwillison.net
In defense of prompt engineering
0 0
Prompt engineering as a discipline doesn’t get nearly the respect it deserves. I’ve seen two subtly different meanings for that term: Expert-level knowledge of how to write prompts for language …
5h ago
From simonwillison.net
OpenAI DevDay: Let’s build developer tools, not digital God
0 0
I had a fun time live blogging OpenAI DevDay yesterday—I’ve now shared notes about the live blogging system I threw other in a hurry on the day (with assistance from …
13h ago
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 1
OK, this FAQ appears to explain it (quite a lot of text to wade through though) https://wandering.shop/@kithrup/113313734937314892
13h ago
From simonwillison.net
ChatGPT will happily write you a thinly disguised horoscope
0 5
There’s a meme floating around at the moment where you ask ChatGPT the following and it appears to offer deep insight into your personality: From all of our interactions what …
on Thu, 11AM
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 1
Attached: 1 image Up at 7am for the Half Moon Bay World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off
on Thu, 9AM
From simonwillison.net
0 1
I wanted to feed the [Cloudflare Durable Objects SQLite](https://developers.cloudflare.com/durable-objects/api/storage-api/) documentation into Claude, but I was on my iPhone so copying and pasting was inconvenient. Jina offer a [Reader API](https://jina.ai/reader/) which …
on Thu, 8AM
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 1
Attached: 2 images 977lbs!
on Thu, 8AM
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 1
I'm increasingly finding that "Copy to clipboard" is an essential feature in things that I build, mainly because select all then copy and paste on mobile phones is still pretty inconvenient
on Thu, 8AM
From simonwillison.net
Livestreaming a community election event on YouTube
0 0
I live in El Granada, California. Wikipedia calls us a census designated place - we don't have a mayor or city council. But we do have a Community Services District - originally responsible for our sewers, and since 2014 also responsible for our parks. And we get to vote for the board members in...
on Oct 10
From simonwillison.net
0 0
The big focus of Deno 2 is compatibility with the existing Node.js and npm ecosystem: > Deno 2 takes all of the features developers love about Deno 1.x — zero-config, …
on Oct 10
From simonwillison.net
Upgrading Homebrew and avoiding the failed to verify attestation error
0 6
I managed to get my Homebrew installation back into shape today. The first problem I was having is that it complained that macOS Sequoia was unsupported:
on Oct 10
From simonwillison.net
0 0
I just arrived home from a trip to Durham, North Carolina for DjangoCon US 2024. I’ve already written about my talk where I announced a new plugin system for Django; …
on Oct 9
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
Attached: 1 image I'm trying out this filter mechanism, since they all seem to include links to the same site despite coming from different accounts on different Mastodon servers
on Oct 9
From simonwillison.net
0 0
> Rails 8 takes SQLite from a lightweight development tool to a reliable choice for production use, thanks to extensive work on the SQLite adapter and Ruby driver. > > …
on Oct 8
From simonwillison.net
0 0
It's Python 3.13 release day today. The big signature features are a [better REPL](https://docs.python.org/3.13/whatsnew/3.13.html#whatsnew313-better-interactive-interpreter) with improved error messages, an option to [run Python without the...
on Oct 8
From simonwillison.net
0 0
The latest in my [ongoing series](https://tools.simonwillison.net/) of interactive HTML and JavaScript tools written almost entirely by LLMs. This one lets you paste in (or open-from-file, or drag-onto-page) some SVG and …
on Oct 6
From simonwillison.net
UV with GitHub Actions to run an RSS to README project
0 0
Jeff Triplett demonstrates a very neat pattern for using [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) to run Python scripts with their dependencies inside of GitHub Actions. First, add `uv` to the workflow using the [setup-uv …
on Oct 6
From simonwillison.net
Compiling and running sqlite3-rsync from a branch
0 0
Today I heard about the sqlite3-rsync command, currently available in a branch in the SQLite code repository. It provides a mechanism for efficiently creating or updating a copy of a SQLite database that is running in WAL mode, either locally or via SSH to another server.
on Oct 5
From simonwillison.net
Ask HN: What happens to “.io” TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands?
0 0
This morning on the BBC: [UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98ynejg4l5o). The Chagos Islands include the area that the UK calls [the British Indian Ocean Territory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Indian_Ocean_Territory). The …
on Oct 4
From simonwillison.net
Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B is now production ready
0 1
Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B is "a smaller and faster variant of 1.5 Flash" - and is now released to production, at half the price of the 1.5 Flash model. It's really, …
on Oct 4
From simonwillison.net
Ethical Applications of AI to Public Sector Problems
0 0
Jacob Kaplan-Moss developed this model a few years ago (before the generative AI rush) while working with public-sector startups and is publishing it now. He starts by outright dismissing the …
on Oct 2
From simonwillison.net
0 0
Whether you think coding with AI works today or not doesn’t really matter. But if you think functional AI helping to code will make humans dumber or isn’t real programming …
on Oct 2
From simonwillison.net
Building an automatically updating live blog in Django
0 0
OpenAI's DevDay event yesterday (October 1st 2024) didn’t invite press (as far as I can tell), didn’t livestream the event and didn’t allow audience livestreaming either. I made a last minute decision to live blog the event myself.
on Oct 2
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 1
Attached: 1 image This is what my edit interface looks like - I'm using the Django admin to add new "live update" rows attached to the entry.
on Oct 2
From simonwillison.net
NotebookLM’s automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective
0 0
Audio Overview is a fun new feature of Google’s NotebookLM which is getting a lot of attention right now. It generates a one-off custom podcast against content you provide, where …
on Oct 1
From simonwillison.net
0 0
I’m at OpenAI DevDay in San Francisco, and I’m trying something new: a live blog, where this entry will be updated with new notes during the event.
on Oct 1
From simonwillison.net
0 0
It’s [OpenAI DevDay](https://openai.com/devday/) today. Last year they released a whole stack of new features, including GPT-4 vision and GPTs and their text-to-speech API, so I’m intrigued to see what they …
on Oct 1
From simonwillison.net
0 0
Riley Walz: "I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours …
on Oct 1
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
"But ultimately the conversation has all the flavor of a bowl of unseasoned white rice." - that's such a great way of describing why these automated podcasts feel lacking in comparison to actual humans (and is also the kind of sentence I would never expect an AI host to come up...
on Oct 1
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
I really enjoyed this interview with John Oliver about the process involved in producing Last Week Tonight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kNMJ8SguQ "Those jokes have no structural integrity if the facts underneath them are bullshit"
on Sep 30
From simonwillison.net
Weeknotes: Three podcasts, two trips and a new plugin system
0 0
I fell behind a bit on my weeknotes. Here’s most of what I’ve been doing in September. Lisbon, Portugal and Durham, North Carolina I had two trips this month. The …
on Sep 30
From simonwillison.net
How to succeed in MrBeast production (leaked PDF)
0 0
Whether or not you enjoy MrBeast’s format of YouTube videos (here’s [a 2022 Rolling Stone profile](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mrbeast-youtube-cover-story-interview-1334604/) if you’re unfamiliar), this leaked onboarding document for new members of his production company …
on Sep 30
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
Attached: 1 image Don't miss this example where someone got "the producers" to tell them they were AI, resulting in a weird kind of existential crisis https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooklm/comments/1fr31h8/notebooklm_podcast_hosts_discover_theyre_ai_not/
on Sep 30
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
I put together a whole bunch of notes on the new "Audio Overview" feature of Google's NotebookLM, where you can dump a bunch of source documents in and get a ~10m long utterly weird (and surprisingly convincing) artificial podcast episode generated where two AI characters perform a "deep dive"...
on Sep 30
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
OpenFreeMap looks really neat - I poked around a bit and shared some notes here https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/28/openfreemap/ https://cosocial.ca/@timbray/113216132761896850
on Sep 30
From simonwillison.net
0 0
New free map tile hosting service from Zsolt Ero: > OpenFreeMap lets you display custom maps on your website and apps for free. […] Using our **public instance** is completely …
on Sep 29
From simonwillison.net
0 1
I did some more work on my [DJP plugin mechanism](https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/25/djp-a-plugin-system-for-django/) for Django at the DjangoCon US sprints today. I added a new plugin hook, [asgi_wrapper()](https://djp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/plugin_hooks.html#asgi-wrapper ), released in...
on Sep 26
From simonwillison.net
0 0
I think individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content in the grand scheme of [AI training]. […] We pay for content when it’s valuable …
on Sep 26
From simonwillison.net
0 0
In further evidence that AI labs are terrible at naming things, Llama 3.2 is a _huge_ upgrade to the Llama 3 series - they've released their first multi-modal vision models! …
on Sep 25
From simonwillison.net
DJP: A plugin system for Django
0 0
DJP is a new plugin mechanism for Django, built on top of Pluggy. I announced the first version of DJP during my talk yesterday at DjangoCon US 2024, How to …
on Sep 25
From simonwillison.net
0 0
Richard Terry demonstrated this in a lightning talk at DjangoCon US today. It's the latest in a long line of attempts to get Django to work with a single file …
on Sep 24
From simonwillison.net
XKCD 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today
0 0
One of the all-time great XKCDs. It's amazing that "check whether the photo is of a bird" has gone from PhD-level to trivially easy to solve (with a [vision LLM](https://simonwillison.net/tags/vision-llms/), …
on Sep 24
From simonwillison.net
0 0
I decided to have a poke around and see if I could figure out how the HTTP streaming APIs from the various hosted LLM providers actually worked. Here are my notes so far.
on Sep 22
From simonwillison.net
Simon Willison (@simon@simonwillison.net)
0 0
I'm interviewed in the latest episode of the Software Misadventures podcast. It was a *really fun* conversation - we talked about my past career highlights, my experiences as an independent open source developer, my various processes for working in public, blogging and releasing code and (of...
on Sep 21
From simonwillison.net
Introducing Contextual Retrieval
0 0
Here's an interesting new embedding/RAG technique, described by Anthropic but it should work for any embedding model against any other LLM. One of the big challenges in implementing semantic search …
on Sep 21