Rikk Hill
@rikkhill.bsky.social
Machine learning and Python, scary stories and pretty pictures
None of this is at odds with finding media behaviour despicable, or with any other analysis of your choosing, but if something killed me, I would like people to understand the story of what happened to me rather than repurpose my death as fodder for their own story which wasn't mine.
August 15, 2026 at 9:05 PM
None of this is at odds with finding media behaviour despicable, or with any other analysis of your choosing, but if something killed me, I would like people to understand the story of what happened to me rather than repurpose my death as fodder for their own story which wasn't mine.
It's obviously ghoulish to think about it in this terms since a man has died, but this human interest angle is what has been providing the "entertainment value" of the coverage. There is obviously a racialised aspect to this, but viewing it exclusively through that lens misses a great deal.
August 15, 2026 at 8:59 PM
It's obviously ghoulish to think about it in this terms since a man has died, but this human interest angle is what has been providing the "entertainment value" of the coverage. There is obviously a racialised aspect to this, but viewing it exclusively through that lens misses a great deal.
Also if you haven't been following the actual coverage, it's possibly not obvious what the character of the coverage has been. The driving narrative isn't about academic misconduct, but of someone who had spun an elaborate web of lies which was publicly unravelling.
August 15, 2026 at 8:55 PM
Also if you haven't been following the actual coverage, it's possibly not obvious what the character of the coverage has been. The driving narrative isn't about academic misconduct, but of someone who had spun an elaborate web of lies which was publicly unravelling.
Some context: it's currently the UK parliamentary summer recess, a time referred to as "silly season" in the media because there's not so much real news to report, so column inches get assigned to spurious topics, which receive baffling amounts of attention.
August 15, 2026 at 8:52 PM
Some context: it's currently the UK parliamentary summer recess, a time referred to as "silly season" in the media because there's not so much real news to report, so column inches get assigned to spurious topics, which receive baffling amounts of attention.
Python package, rust core. Agent-friendly.
August 11, 2026 at 3:07 PM
Python package, rust core. Agent-friendly.
Like, imagine if Colin Powell and Pete Buttigieg started a podcast...
August 11, 2026 at 8:06 AM
Like, imagine if Colin Powell and Pete Buttigieg started a podcast...
Some context for the American readers. Guy in the middle is Alastair Campbell, comms chief for Tony Blair and architect for the justification of the UK entering the Iraq war. Guy on the right is Rory Stewart, former Conservative MP and leadership hopeful, widely believed to have been an MI6 spy
August 11, 2026 at 7:49 AM
Some context for the American readers. Guy in the middle is Alastair Campbell, comms chief for Tony Blair and architect for the justification of the UK entering the Iraq war. Guy on the right is Rory Stewart, former Conservative MP and leadership hopeful, widely believed to have been an MI6 spy
Genuinely surprised you don't personally know him. He is very adjacent to your world.
July 7, 2026 at 6:27 PM
Genuinely surprised you don't personally know him. He is very adjacent to your world.
This is what software engineering was to a significant chunk of the industry
May 25, 2026 at 10:02 AM
This is what software engineering was to a significant chunk of the industry
If she wants more Tiffany Aching, the next one is A Hat Full of Sky. If she wants different Discworld, try The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. If she wants more little people, try Truckers. If she somehow wants British Teenage Boys in the 90s, try Only You Can Save Mankind
April 30, 2026 at 5:31 PM
If she wants more Tiffany Aching, the next one is A Hat Full of Sky. If she wants different Discworld, try The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. If she wants more little people, try Truckers. If she somehow wants British Teenage Boys in the 90s, try Only You Can Save Mankind
Do you actually care about the answer to this question?
November 28, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Do you actually care about the answer to this question?
Better or worse than sharing a name with that actress typecast as an old crone?
September 3, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Better or worse than sharing a name with that actress typecast as an old crone?
Related: your brain (probably) has no native ability to calculate exponents, so *can't* run a physics sim of a projectile, but it still has some internal representation of a parabola because you can throw and catch objects just fine
August 28, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Related: your brain (probably) has no native ability to calculate exponents, so *can't* run a physics sim of a projectile, but it still has some internal representation of a parabola because you can throw and catch objects just fine
We wouldn't run a physics sim for, say, predicting house prices, but we would run a physics sim for calculating the trajectory of a projectile in known conditions. For some tasks, for a while, physics sims were the only game in town. Now we have a technology for arbitrary functional approximation
August 28, 2025 at 3:11 PM
We wouldn't run a physics sim for, say, predicting house prices, but we would run a physics sim for calculating the trajectory of a projectile in known conditions. For some tasks, for a while, physics sims were the only game in town. Now we have a technology for arbitrary functional approximation
Since we live in a physical universe bound by physical laws, you could ask this question for literally any task. Deep learning techniques handle all sorts of optical tasks without any explicit model of the physics of optics, even CGI tasks which previously relied on such explicit physical models
August 28, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Since we live in a physical universe bound by physical laws, you could ask this question for literally any task. Deep learning techniques handle all sorts of optical tasks without any explicit model of the physics of optics, even CGI tasks which previously relied on such explicit physical models
uv is a very, very good attempt to unify the python environment toolchain. It's rapidly developed a wide fanbase because it's actually very good!
August 12, 2025 at 1:34 PM
uv is a very, very good attempt to unify the python environment toolchain. It's rapidly developed a wide fanbase because it's actually very good!
Go back 130 years to the Bloomsbury Set and late Victorian radicals, you have all sorts of strange-bedfellow beliefs: eugenics and birth control, spiritualism and scientific materialism, feminism and fascism. These ideas have had wildly different trajectories but at one point made sense together
August 11, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Go back 130 years to the Bloomsbury Set and late Victorian radicals, you have all sorts of strange-bedfellow beliefs: eugenics and birth control, spiritualism and scientific materialism, feminism and fascism. These ideas have had wildly different trajectories but at one point made sense together
During Covid and lockdown I started watching the 2005 TV show Bones, which has a supporting character who's a left-wing, free speech-obsessed conspiracy theorist in the post-9/11 vein. It surprised me how much less obvious this was as an archetype just 15 years later
August 11, 2025 at 12:54 PM
During Covid and lockdown I started watching the 2005 TV show Bones, which has a supporting character who's a left-wing, free speech-obsessed conspiracy theorist in the post-9/11 vein. It surprised me how much less obvious this was as an archetype just 15 years later
Part of that bullishness seems to come as a reaction to people going on about stochastic parrots and jumped-up autocomplete. Maybe you shouldn't let *these* people break *your* brain.
August 9, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Part of that bullishness seems to come as a reaction to people going on about stochastic parrots and jumped-up autocomplete. Maybe you shouldn't let *these* people break *your* brain.
I don't mean to be rude when I say this. Nobody has a great grasp on this, and most of your comments are certainly from people who are parroting criticism they don't understand. But your takes on AI are naively bullish in a way they don't have to be.
August 9, 2025 at 9:09 PM
I don't mean to be rude when I say this. Nobody has a great grasp on this, and most of your comments are certainly from people who are parroting criticism they don't understand. But your takes on AI are naively bullish in a way they don't have to be.
You are right to suggest that the capabilities of AI rest on technological and economic questions, rather than political or moral ones. Have you considered you may have a shaky grasp of the technological and economic aspects?
August 9, 2025 at 8:55 PM
You are right to suggest that the capabilities of AI rest on technological and economic questions, rather than political or moral ones. Have you considered you may have a shaky grasp of the technological and economic aspects?