Randy Au

So on here I talk about hobbies and crack snarky data jokes. But once a week I also write a very long form data science newsletter. at www.counting-stuff.com #DataBS Here's a thread of old posts that people liked [ugh no thread writing interface] (1/n)

This morning I woke up to this dangerous trap... Yesterday I grilled some duck, which was great... But now today I have a pan of duck fat... More specifically, SMOKED duck fat. My arteries....

Dinner (used to) go quack

Wtf with the price of thin sliced hot pot meat going for. 20-30/lb.. I think it's about time I got a deli slicer

<__< since getting the key duplicator i've already had to copy like 4 keys... this thing is gonna pay for itself real quick

Incredible

Aha she's doing it again

it's wild, my office gets afternoon sun and it's blinding, plus over the summer it gets really warm... so out of irritation i took a space blanket and just taped it over the window loosely and it's been insanely helpful in regulating the temp

Okay come ON blogs.oracle.com/security/sec...

NOT NOW NODEJS

CRASH LANDING IS ABORTED, PATCHES ARE OUT, UPDATE NOW UPDATE NOW UPDATE NOW UPDATE NOW www.php.net/archive/2026...

Refreshing change of pace of watching news of shitty things happening get briefly replaced with news of all the shitty php happening

The cat does this thing where I'm at my desk and she will paw and meow at me to bring me to her food bowl.. sometimes it's because it's empty or she doesn't like what's in there... Sometimes it's like she forgets there's food in there and she finds it and just starts eating 🤔

for those only dimly aware of cybersecurity people screaming, "a security certificate which underpins the entire internet used '4' for a private key that is supposed to be 116 digits long" and "a popular web language lets anyone run code on your server" are two different issues from the same day

Why is pixiv down... Ohhhh the php shitshow

I'm a security professional, and I can tell you that security professionals only talk about PHP when they're very distressed

I am devastated that I like soft boiled eggs but the rest of the family are completely in the wrong and want hard boiled eggs 😭

This week on Counting Stuff, a bit of a rant about how good user experience/design is not something you can hill climb to, and so machine learning won't get you there #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/you-cant-hil...

While there's nothing particularly earthshattering about HoreMajo... it's very straightforwardly just... cute? essentially in the same vein as otonari no tenshi-sama. maybe 20% less sugar.

I've always felt that #rstats's ranking in the TIOBE index felt a lot like random noise, but every time it gains or drops significantly TIOBE tells a little story about it. So I extracted all those stories into one place: gist.github.com/hadley/1af6d...

... Somehow the update to AC8 has made it so I can't load mission 27 =\ hopefully reinstalling helps

Somewhere there is an actuary being asked to figure out the risk pricing to insure a stupid car that can apparently become a projectile on demand

someone explain why carrying a giant pressure vessel in a car already loaded with flammable lithium is a good idea? even if compressed air was used as a form of energy storage....

After having to wrangle and deal with shitty vibes coded "prototypes" I want a bigass sign that says "Usability is not a differentiable function you can climb"

the resolution on making UTC not have any more leap seconds as of May 20 2027 has passed! www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2026...

maybe i should replace my victorinox paring knife someday with ... something that doesn't have an annoying plastic handle.... the knife honestly only exists to let the spouse and kid occasionally cut things =x

Huh, looking at my knife collection: wusthof 8" chef misono ux10 240mm moritaka kiritsuke 250mm misono 150mm petty chinese #2 cleaver victorinox sheep's foot paring serrated bread knife ... I barely use paring knives for some reason 🤣

New knife day! I've had my old wusthof w/ the annoying full bolster for close to 15 years, and the kiritsuke for ~5ish. Hopefully this UX10 will outlive me. I don't think I will -need- another knife short of breaking one of these by accident .... tho I'd love an usuba or nakiri for fun

@alldayhell.bsky.social 🐦

Every single time i get tricked by bladder

Today was hypergriph gacha day, but at least got everything i needed =x

I’m obsessed

Financial advisor: "I'm gonna need a list of all your liquid assets before we figure out a plan on managing your money." Me:

the best part about having a pet photo go viral is that it's the purest form of "N people had their day made just a teensy bit brighter" around with zero downsides

Me: "hrmm how much would it cost to get a water jet cutter" Internet: "More than all the fun money you've accumulated the past few years combined" Me: "Oh... =("

This week on Counting Stuff, a lot of the data science job is this touchy-feely vibe-y task of "finding signal" and I tried to make sense of what that actually meant at work #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/how-does-one...

I'm dying laughing at how the cat has conformed to her flower shaped bed today

So after about 2 weeks, the impact driver I dropped into water has fully recovered. I had already bought the hydraulic impact to replace it for home use, but now I can keep using the old one outside as my beater, while the hydraulic stays at home to do all my diy screw driving tasks. perfectttt

Since I had the day off today, took a half hour or so to try carving a violin bridge for the 3d printed violin... I think it sounds louder than the printed bridge, no surprise since wood can transfer vibrations better

I'm probably not the only person who does #AC8's mission 27 like this, but apparently there's a lot fewer of us than I thought youtu.be/f71klJVTySU

SO, yes, this actual $130 rando off amazon key duplicator cuts surprisingly well and is easy to use. and is 5000x better than a shitty 3d printed jig attached to a dremel w/ a diamond wheel... and yes i have to work with keys enough that it'll pay for itself after ~25 keys in a few years

I bought another esoteric tool

Watching a random playthrough video of ac8 in the background and... They are using thebasic flight controls where left/right auto banks the plane and it's so slow and weird compared to my hectic flying

>< The Ace Combat final plane costs 1 million points and now I have to grind that many points to unlock it? Ughhhh

O.o?! they're remaking Rayearth this season?

it's surreal that the sentence "weekend at bernie's was a warning, not a manual' is not only totally valid, but a decent description of reality now

trying to convince myself that I would totally be happy with a Misono 440 240mm gyuto to replace my whustof classic chef knife... instead of the flagship UX10 gyoto... because it'd cost almost 40% less... it's not really working tho