Ned Letcher

Heard the good word about #DuckDB? Wondering how to use it to accelerate your data science/analytics & data/software engineering projects? Getting Started with DuckDB might be for you! Simon & I have made a practical guide full of hands-on examples, incl both #python & #rstats packt.link/byKYt

Just a few hours left to submit to PyCon AU! If you have a #python and/or #Data and #AI idea you're keen to share with the community, why not consider a cheeky last minute submission? 🐍

Hey #python, #data and AI peeps! #pyconau 2026 is in Brisbane this year and the CFP is open! Are you a (wrangler | engineer | curator | researcher) doing things with data or AI/ML? Consider sharing with the community--submit to the Data and AI specialist track! 2026.pycon.org.au/cfp/speciali...

I'm headed to San Diego this afternoon to attend the mech interp workshop at #NeurIPS! Really excited to give a lightning talk and catch up with everyone. 🌴

I'm in town for NeurlPS all week. Wow this conference is biiiig. Anyone I know (or don't know!) up for a drink? #NeurIPS #NeurIPS2025 #mlsky

I like to think that this map of all the regional names for woodlice in the UK could also be a map illustrating the new tribes of humans to be found on the same landmass after The Great Digital Crash and ensuing breakdown of society.

The videos from the #DataBS Conference have made it to YouTube! Over the coming days, we'll highlight sessisons from the event -- one post per talk. You can also sneak ahead by going straight to the YouTube playlist, here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

I got introduced to @randyau.com's 'Data Cleaning IS Analysis, Not Grunt Work' post during the #dataBS Conf this week: www.counting-stuff.com/data-cleanin... . I just finished--it was a great read. Here are some quotes and thoughts I'm walking away with 👇 1/9 #RStats

Launch day 🚀 We’ve just released @chartlecc.bsky.social - a daily chart game! Your job is to guess which country is represented by the red line in today's chart. You get 5 tries, no other clues! Play today, come back tomorrow for a different chart with new data and share with your chart friends 📈

It's been a week since we launched @chartle.cc with @adnaanj.bsky.social and we had an amazing start! - Average of 700 users/day - Record 1.2K users yesterday - From 78 countries - 66% win overall - 2m 18s average engagement Thank you to all who played + shared the game Any feedback, send our way!

📈 DuckDB 1.4.0 is out! This is our first LTS release which comes with *one year of community support*. It also supports database encryption, the MERGE SQL statement and Iceberg writes. For more details, read the announcement blog post at duckdb.org/2025/09/16/a...

Behold my latest keyboard, the JuggleKeyboard! Just click the letters as they're juggled, it's an easy* way to type. * it's not easy

Does anyone want beautiful historical depictions of celestial phenomena? Anyone? Well, here you go publicdomainreview.org/collection/f...

"AI" is going great! blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/mac-app...

If AI and workers were strong complements, what would we see?, by @joshgans open.substack.com/pub/joshuaga... Does the latest data tell us AI is a substitute for human work? Nope. Is that comforting? Also nope. My comments on @erikbryn and co. (and @Noahpinion

debugging new pretrain like

There is a reason why the introduction and first three chapters are required reading in weeks two and three of my law and technology course Essential for understanding where we are

DuckDB is awesome and it’s a great tool to explore and transform data. But DuckDB doesn’t help you visualize and share data with others. That's why I built Shaper: taleshape.com/blog/turn-yo... #duckdb #databs #dataengineering

Data Behind the Scenes Conference free registration is open! Wed Sept 24, ~10am-5pm EDT. Online-only, single track. Join data folks as they share experiences with how data work is done in production, thorns & disturbing hacks and all! (Pls help get the word out 📈) ti.to/databsconf/d... #dataBS

I got my #DataBS Conf ticket todayyy! Come hangout with us! ti.to/databsconf/d...

Mythical agent month

🚀 We've just open-sourced Embedding Atlas – a tool for exploring large embedding spaces through rich, interactive visualizations 📊.

I’ve been working on an experimental, multiplayer, open-world AI chat system called Numinex. 1. Uses branching comment trees 2. Multiplayer/multimodel 3. Explicit context curation 4. Built on ATProto 5. Open observation of model behaviors

LOL, @beyer.house.gov ftw

Anyone got a good alternative to Pocket as a read later / stash a copy of an article tool?

The AI Con book tour is headed abroad! @alexhanna.bsky.social and I aren't traveling together but check out thecon.ai/events for our upcoming events, starting with Edinburgh (Alex), Sydney (Emily) and Melbourne (Emily)

A great post from Dr Marco Motta on the pursuit of objectivity in data storytelling #dataviz #dataBS. Marco is both an expert in data viz and has a PhD in philosophy - so he has some unique perspectives that are worth engaging with www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-d...

I have an opportunity to hire a staff scientist for my lab. Looking for someone with outstanding skillset in ML/statistics, genomics applications; interest in mentoring, strong publication record, PD experience required. Email CV to me+cc my assistant (see 'contact' on my website). Ad to follow.

the peak moment of my career was co-inventing (with Roman Garnett) Bayesian optimisation, only to discover just before we submitted that someone had already invented it a few decades before

our priority is to invest in the systems that prevent your stuff from being covered in poop in the first place

DuckDB Labs is looking for software engineer interns: duckdblabs.com/jobs/Softwar... Apply until June 15 and join us in Amsterdam!

After all the discourse over whether super-intelligent, ultra-powerful AI is coming, we now have a prime example of exactly how AI is massively disruptive, today: When it is used by lazy, reckless, and malicious people in power. Welcome to the age of AI-generated economic collapse, everyone

Thoughtworks have published their latest #TWTechRadar. A few 'blips' (as they call them) of note in the data space: 🟢 Adopt: Data product thinking 🟢 Adopt: Trino 👍 Trial: Databricks Delta Live Tables 👍 Trial: @metabase.com ✋ Hold: Reverse ETL www.thoughtworks.com/radar #dataBS

This is a thing that seems to keep recurring for me too. Any #databs peeps have any ideas?

If you're using duckdb in a python script or jupyter notebook, you can run con.execute('CALL start_ui()') at any point, and the ui will pop right up in your web browser with the current database automatically available. (I knew about the UI, but I had missed this trick!)

Are you training self-supervised/foundation models, and worried if they are learning good representations? We got you covered! 💪 🦖Introducing Reptrix, a #Python library to evaluate representation quality metrics for neural nets: github.com/BARL-SSL/rep... 🧵👇[1/6] #DeepLearning

My latest article explores vector databases, their differences from vector engines, and how to integrate them into your existing Data Engineering Landscape.

New post, in which I indulge in exploring categorisation of text with open LLMs, and along the way incidentally develop an R package to facilitate relevant workflows. Analysing Russian news via Telegram, processing them with open LLMs - tadadit.xyz/posts/2025-0...

🌟 The new @duckdb.org UI is awesome! But what about the all the SQL you write in it? I cobbled together a script that dumps the SQL out of notebooks to files, from where I can then easily upload them to gist : 🔗 rmoff.net/2025/03/19/e... #databs

Book Club is tomorrow at 7pm ET We’re discussing Data & Reality Chapter 5: Attributes Join us for fun philosophical discussions about data modeling! jennajordan.me/book-club/ #datasky #databs

I was interviewed by @attacus.net for last night's broadcast of Byte into IT on RRR Melbourne Independent Radio. This is such a great conversation about my new book! Honestly one of my favorites so far. Huge thanks to @attacus.net. Listen to the episode here. www.rrr.org.au/explore/prog...

Sometimes some #DataBS thoughts just have to come out: open.substack.com/pub/agiledat...