iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

As of right now, there are 4 examples, each in their own subdirectory: 1. sinc: optimizes a 2D variant of the sinc function, sin(x)/x codeberg.org/brohrer/reds... 2. perf: tests the execution time bottleneck in redsho and helps to streamline it codeberg.org/brohrer/reds...

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3. Call the optimizer from redsho.optimizer import optimize error, params = optimize(evaluate, values) where error is the lowest error achieved, and params is the parameter values that achieved it.

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Usage 1. Start with an evaluation function def evaluate(*, a, b, c): return a * b**3 % c (The leading * tells Python that everything that follows is a required keyword argument) 2. Build a collection of values to try for each parameter values = {"a": [4, 7, 9], "b": [2, 5, 6], "c": [5, 8, 11]}

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I recently published the redsho package for hyperparameter optimization. More than anything, I want it to be useful. I find it helpful to start with a working example. To this end I created a second repo called redsho-examples that walks through how to do it. codeberg.org/brohrer/reds...

codeberg.org

redsho-examples

Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 6h

AWS is fighting hard to keep up with GPU demand on the West Coast today, and they are losing.

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 6h

jeez claude, rein it in a bit. I don't get paid by the line.

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You can still put positional and optional keywords before the asterisk. `def estimate(a, b, verbose=False, *, method=None, n_iter=None):` It doesn't matter what default value these required kwargs get because it will always be overwritten.

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This means that now when I write ``` def sum(*, a=None, b=None): return a + b ``` I no longer have to check that `a` and `b` are not `None` in the function, and I can call it with ``` arg_dict = {'a': 4, 'b': 9} print(sum(**arg_dict)) ```

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I always did this by setting all the parameter keyword defaults to `None`, then checking for any `None` values in the function. But there's a better way: using the bare `*` in the argument list. Everything after the `*` will be a required keyword argument.

Cool Python trick: Sometimes you want functions to have keyword arguments, but you also want them to be required. This is especially useful when you're passing required arguments using dictionary expansion, like `function(**arg_dict)`.

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Robust Evolutionary Direction Set Hyperparameter Optimizer

Available on pypi uv add redsho or pip install redsho Or you can check out the repo and dig into the guts. (It's very small - about 1kloc for the whole project) codeberg.org/brohrer/redsho

codeberg.org

redsho

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It looks through the parameter combinations it has tried already and picks one randomly, leaning heavily toward the best performers. Then it chooses one of those parameters and tries a few random values that it hasn't before. how it works explainer: brandonrohrer.at/evopowell.html

brandonrohrer.at

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redsho takes a middle ground approach for when the effects of parameters and options can be wildly non-linear and exhaustive grid search would take longer than we want to spend. Its distinguishing feature is that it is evolutionary in nature.

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All of these options kind of suck. I couldn't find a solution I liked to this problem so I built one: redsho, a robust evolutionary direction set hyperparameter optimizer.

Optimizing models with lots of hyperparameters and options is a slog that usually requires a combination community wisdom, obscure blog posts, and tedious trial and error. Automated methods tend to rely on strong assumptions of smoothness or brute force their way through every permutation.

danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Reposted by Brandon Rohrer

Today is Pub Day for "Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census"!!! ::bounce:: Please support me by buying a copy of the book or asking your library for a copy! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 16/09/2026

Hey US eng friends, if you want to give Patreon a shot: Staff SWE, Data Infrastructure jobs.ashbyhq.com/patreon/e8f0... Senior MLE, Infrastructure (on my team) jobs.ashbyhq.com/patreon/722d... Staff SWE, Backend Platform jobs.ashbyhq.com/patreon/c277...

jobs.ashbyhq.com

Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans an...

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 15/09/2026

Three days of automated parameter sweeps saved me 15 minutes of Internet searches!

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In general, I pick up more on the second read, when I'm not consumed by curiosity about how they are going to escape their latest predicament. But Jeff's interpretations add another layer of richness (like the evolution of Katia) and it's all worth it just to hear Princess Donut. Princess Posse FTW

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Dungeon Crawler Carl - Soundbooth Theater

Also, the Soundbooth Theater version takes it up another level yet. Still Jeff Hays, but with a whole team of other writers, voices, composers, and sound folk. soundbooththeater.com/series/dunge...

soundbooththeater.com

Dungeon Crawler Carl is the lastest audiobook series from author Matt Dinniman. Narration provided by Jeff Hays.

I enjoy these so much! Caught up on the books. Re-read is via audiobook, which is a whole extra dimension. Jeff Hays is a wizard. Zero pretension and a boatload of fun.

Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 31/08/2026

added type hints and ran mypy on some code I considered tight. It was like shining a black light in a hotel room.

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Diving in to Python typechecking and stumbled on this @vickiboykis.com post vickiboykis.com/2023/12/11/w... The tldr: "The result of the deep dive is that I now no longer trust anything in the Python typing ecosystem." I'm now confused as ever, but on a higher level and about more important things

vickiboykis.com

Why if TYPE_CHECKING?

Typechecking is brittle yet important

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 26/08/2026

the energy i bring to agile standups

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 22/08/2026

Josh, Luis, and I had a great time chatting the other day and recorded in case you'd like to listen in www.youtube.com/live/Yx-ZkLf...

youtube.com

TRIPLE BAM!!! With Josh, Luis and special guest Brandon Rohrer

YouTube video by StatQuest with Josh Starmer

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 20/08/2026

If you’re into such things, I’m going to be chatting with Josh Starmer and Luis Serrano (two of the best ML educators I know) in a YouTube livestream, answering viewer questions, at 11:00am EDT Thursday (tomorrow/today). 8am PDT, 3pm UTC, 5pm CEST m.youtube.com/live/Yx-ZkLf...

m.youtube.com

TRIPLE BAM!!! With Josh, Luis and special guest Brandon Rohrer

YouTube video by StatQuest with Josh Starmer

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 10/08/2026

I steer them away from false positives with a variation of additive smoothing that includes a strong upward bias. P(AB|A) = count(AB) + beta / count(A) + beta Whether this is a "hack" or a "method" will depend on how important it ends up being in the proofreader's performance.

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 10/08/2026

My Artisanal Language Model for proofreading continues to evolve. Pairing forward and backward first-order Markov models is proving to be just good enough to merit further exploration. brandonrohrer.com/alms_composi...

five plots showing five different proofreading evaluation scores: capitalization, grammar, missing words, punctuation, spelling. In each case, as the error threshold for identifying a proofreading error increases from 1e-5 to 1e-2, precision drops from 100% to very small and recall rises from very small to 100%. The crossover point tends to be in the 30-40% range at around 0.0002

Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 09/08/2026

I wish I did! Leaving this thread open in case anyone else has a rec

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 09/08/2026

I can't put my finger on what exactly causes it, but I breathe deeper and my shoulders relax when I use it

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 08/08/2026

Perfect for sitting down with a hot beverage for a few minutes a day and letting the current flow around you. (No promotional consideration here. I paid full price and I regret nothing.)

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 08/08/2026

RSS is the vinyl records of the web. And the Current RSS reader is the $5000 turntable whose clean design matches the medium. Except it’s only $10. www.currentreader.app Built by one designer with a vision ( @terrygodier.com ), Current shows what the web can be.

currentreader.app

Current - A River of Reading

Current rethinks RSS for the modern reader. Your feeds flow like a river. No inbox anxiety, no unread counts. Just beautiful reading.

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 04/08/2026

Find and replace all occurrences of a string in a directory's Python files sed -i '.bak' -e 's/old string/new string/g' *.py To drill deeper on any of these run man <command>. I find the examples section at the end most helpful. I'm compiling a list of these here brandonrohrer.org/shell_tricks...

brandonrohrer.org

There are several command line incantations that I have had to look up at least a dozen times. I'm compiling a handy cheat sheet of them here.

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Brandon Rohrer @brandonrohrer.com · 04/08/2026

There are several command line incantations that I have had to look up at least a dozen times. Finding a string in Python files grep -r --include \*.py 'string I am looking for' . Find files by name find . -name '*partial_name*'