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Daniel Bachler

@danielbachler.de
1.4K followers 887 following 92 posts

Head of Engineering at @ourworldindata.org; likes nuanced discourse, weird creatures and programming languages with ADTs

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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
The biohackers subreddit banned all posts about peptides and HRT because peptide companies were spamming + manipulating the sub in order to manipulate Google AI and ChatGPT answers. Very insidious industry that is drastically changing the internet www.404media.co/companies-ar...
404media.co
Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search
Peptide companies have been doing AI-engine optimization by spamming the biohackers subreddit to manipulate ChatGPT and Google.
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
The Longevity Initiative @thelongevityinitiative.org · 19/05/2026
New post: Can longevity save us from a population crisis? We tried out @ourworldindata.org’s new population projection tool to see if increasing life expectancy could save us from demographic decline:
thelongevityinitiative.org
Can longevity save us from a population crisis? – The Longevity Initiative
Everyone’s worried about falling birth rates. Almost no one is talking about the other lever that could reshape our demographic future: longevity.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
Yes, we had it in an earlier prototype but removed it for clarity for now. We might bring it back in a future version :)
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
If you're curious about the internals, we wrote up a technical explainer: docs.owid.io/projects/etl... Feedback is very welcome!
docs.owid.io
Population projection tool: how will populations across the world change in the 21st century? - OWID's Technical Documentation
Learn about the ETL pipeline at Our World in Data.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
Try it yourself for any country and build your own scenarios: ourworldindata.org/population-s...
ourworldindata.org
Population tool: how will populations across the world change in the 21st century?
We created an interactive tool that lets you test how changes in fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration rates will change future populations.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
The tool then plots the population curve and age pyramid through 2100. It's deliberately simple so it can run in real time in your browser — and even so, given the same inputs, it matches UN projections closely for most countries.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
In her piece, Hannah varies the three key inputs to the simulation one by one: Total Fertility Rate: children per woman, on average Life Expectancy: how long the average person lives Net Migration: immigrants minus emigrants
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
My colleague @hannahritchie.bsky.social used it to dig into an interesting question: South Korea's population is projected to fall from 52 million today to 22 million by 2100. What would it take to keep it stable instead? ourworldindata.org/south-koreas...
ourworldindata.org
South Korea’s population is set to shrink: what would it take to stop the decline?
How much would fertility rates, life expectancy, or migration rates need to change to stop the population from shrinking?
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 18/05/2026
There's a lot of interesting discussion about fertility rates lately. At @ourworldindata.org, my colleague @sophiamersmann.bsky.social and I just built a new population simulation tool to help inform the conversation.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 15/10/2025
Great overview of current best practices for agentic coding tools. Recommended reading if you write code. steipete.me/posts/just-t...
steipete.me
Just Talk To It - the no-bs Way of Agentic Engineering | Peter Steinberger
A practical guide to working with AI coding agents without the hype.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 20/09/2025
Things I find surprising about AI in Sept 2025: - lots of progress on coding agents, little on game-playing - really great writing is still beyond LLMs, no real progress since 4o - AI generated videos are really convincing now, but fake AI content is not flooding my timeline yet
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 22/07/2025
Excellent thread on AI by my colleague Esteban - recommended!
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 02/07/2025
h/t @eortizospina.bsky.social for spotting this
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 02/07/2025
Forecasts suggest current steep funding cuts to USAID funding could lead to over 14 million extra deaths (range: 8.5–20 million) by 2030 - including 4.5 million children under 5 (3.1–5.9 million). From a new paper by Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti et al: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
thelancet.com
Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Simon van Teutem @simonvanteutem.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Childhood leukemia used to be a death sentence for the vast majority of patients. Now, most children in rich countries are cured. Cool article from @scientificdiscovery.dev for @ourworldindata.org on crucial progress I was completely unaware of: ourworldindata.org/childhood-le...
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 09/06/2025
So far we’ve been lucky that LLM economics results in almost perfectly egalitarian access to capabilities. It could’ve gone differently - where the richest enjoy far better systems or one lab holds a monopoly. Here’s hoping this stays true.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 05/06/2025
Really nice to see these features in prod! Kudos to my colleague @sophiamersmann.bsky.social for building all of this! 🔥
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina @eortizospina.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
According to SimilarWeb, chatgpt.com had 5.1 billion visits last April (13% increase relative to March), and about 55% of the visitors were younger than 35. For comparison: Wikipedia.org had 3.7 billion visits (down 6%), with ~45% under 35
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 22/04/2025
Palm oil is not as bad as it is often made out to be - it is extremely efficient regarding land use. See ourworldindata.org/palm-oil
ourworldindata.org
Palm Oil
Explore palm oil production across the world and its impacts on the environment.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 22/04/2025
Palm oil is not as bad as it is often perceived to be - yields per land area are extremely high. See ourworldindata.org/palm-oil
ourworldindata.org
Palm Oil
Explore palm oil production across the world and its impacts on the environment.
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 11/04/2025
“…today’s antivirals are so effective that if taken during pregnancy, the risk of passing HIV to the infant is minimal. Without these drugs, around a quarter of babies born to HIV-positive mothers would also contract the virus – and half of them would die before the age of two.”
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 10/04/2025
Leopold Aschenbrenner and Daniel Kokotajlo have both argued that China must not reach AGI first. Have either of them given any update on how they think about US labs reaching AGI while Trump is in the White House?
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 06/04/2025
Yeah that is an interesting theory - but then I’m still surprised that there isn’t more experimentation in that space. Not that I mind of course, I just find it a bit counterintuitive.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 05/04/2025
Maybe but LLMs are pretty cheap nowadays and most spam is really terrible. I’d guess that even just using a cheap, small model could improve the rate of replies a ton.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 05/04/2025
Something pretty strange about where we are with LLMs is how bad the spam in my email inbox still is. I would have guessed we would routinely see super convincing, personalized spam by now.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 03/04/2025
The way the other nations exports are calculated in Trumps "tariff" chart is so incredibly dumb
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 02/04/2025
Someone on x came up with this which seems really dumb and therefore plausible
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 28/03/2025
Tell me your team is entirely comprised of over-confident twenty-somethings without telling me your team is entirely comprised of over-confident twenty-somethings
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 23/03/2025
I find many non-fiction books are more verbose than I would like. I'd often prefer a distilled version with a page count of roughly a quarter. I'd be willing to pay more for the distilled version than the verbose one. Could this be a new revenue stream for writers in the age of AI?
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Roland Pease @peaseroland.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
"Any grants, contracts, or collaborations involving mRNA vaccines be reported up the chain to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s office and the White House" - Lysenkoism at work in the new NIH.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 14/03/2025
Have you tried chatgpt deep research on it? It can be pretty good at stitching together sources
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 13/03/2025
Our latest issue of Works in Progress dropped today! - The steam networks of NYC - Prehistoric violence - Urbanism with Chinese characteristics - Extending the fertility window - The Hanseatic League's rise and fall - The pineapple: the king of fruits - The land value tax worksinprogress.co
Homepage of Works in Progress magazine, with articles: Steam networks, King of fruits, Fertility on demand, The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League, The prehistoric psychopath, The failure of the land value tax, Chinese towers and American blocks.
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Simon van Teutem @simonvanteutem.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Most OECD countries fail to allocate even 0.15% of their national income to aid the world’s poorest countries, despite a commitment to do so. That's just $1 out of every $700. Only Luxembourg, Sweden, and Norway meet this minimal UN target. New cuts will deepen this shortfall.
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Hannah Ritchie @hannahritchie.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
My latest article on Our World in Data, looking at foreign aid and the difference we can make with personal donations: ourworldindata.org/foreign-aid-...
ourworldindata.org
For many of us, it doesn’t cost much to improve someone’s life, and we can do much more of it
Most countries spend less than 1% of their national income on foreign aid; even small increases could make a big difference.
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina @eortizospina.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
South Korea’s under-15 population has halved in two generations. I knew the population was aging quickly, and it’s no surprise that means fewer children—but the absolute numbers are striking. It's easy to look at fertility rates and forget about absolute numbers. That's a lot fewer kids around.
ourworldindata.org
The number of children in South Korea has fallen by 60% since its peak
South Korea is undergoing one of the world’s most rapid demographic transitions. Fertility rates — the number of children a woman has over her lifetime — have fallen rapidly over the last 50 years, an...
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 07/03/2025
I think this is right. There is another interesting dynamic that for AI labs it would be very useful if academic research were freely available and so you have a powerful new force against established, paywalled scientific publishing.
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
THIS IS HUGE! A cancer vaccine developed by Yale University and DFCI shows MAJOR promise. Results of an early-phase trial reveal ALL patients with ADVANCED stage kidney cancer had successful anti-cancer immune responses AND have remained CANCER-FREE approximately THREE years after treatment. 🧪🧵⬇️
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 26/02/2025
Let me know how it goes for you!
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 26/02/2025
OpenAI plus users now have access to the "Deep Research" feature. I just tried it for the first time and asked it for a report on a niche programming topic (comparing computation expressions in F# vs Algebraic Effects in OCaml) and the result was better than any blog post I know of on the topic.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 25/02/2025
This is quite surprising!
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Sophia Mersmann @sophiamersmann.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
How could @ourworldindata.org maps be better? Do you experience any annoyances or pain points when you interact with our maps? Is there something you wish you could do that you currently can’t? What’s the next cool thing we could build on top of our maps? Any notes welcome! Thank you 🙏
ourworldindata.org
GDP per capita
This data is adjusted for inflation and for differences in living costs between countries.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 15/02/2025
Nice disease vector you have there. Would be a shame if a gene drive happened to it...
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 14/02/2025
StopTB has a new report estimating the impact of the foreign aid freeze. It's useful to understand the huge impact that global health efforts have everyday, and worrying. Some highlights... 🧵
stoptb.org
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
AMAZING! A GROUNDBREAKING sickle cell disease treatment has been APPROVED for NHS use. Exagamglogene (exa-cel) SUCCESSFULLY edits the faulty gene in a patient’s OWN stem cells. Researchers concluded there was a functional cure in 97% of trial participants that received it! Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 31/01/2025
Most things in a car
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 30/01/2025
AMFAR has published a report on how the foreign aid freeze affects PEPFAR, which actually still hasn't resumed. They estimate that hundreds of thousands of people lose access to HIV antivirals and 1500 babies are expected to contract HIV — *each day* 🧵
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Ember @ember-energy.org · 23/01/2025
NEW | Solar generates more EU electricity than coal for the first time in 2024 🇪🇺☀️ Renewables made up nearly HALF of the electricity mix last year, while fossil power fell to a historic low ⚡ ember-energy.org/lat...
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Reposted by Daniel Bachler
Esteban Ortiz-Ospina @eortizospina.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, nearly half of all people born in the country emigrated. Most of these emigrants stayed close to home. Two-thirds now live in Turkey, Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia
ourworldindata.org
Almost half of people born in Syria have left. Where have they gone?
Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, many people have left the country. By 2020, around 8.5 millions had emigrated, representing nearly half (48%) of all people born in the country.
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 11/01/2025
Simon is one of the best voices on AI on the internet and his predictions in this post seem very reasonable. I particularly share his scepticism that general purpose AI Agents will work well soon. Interesting times ahead in any case!
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Daniel Bachler @danielbachler.de · 06/01/2025
One potential hope is that AI keeps being different enough that we still need/want a lot of humans in the loop. Much depends on the precise flavour of AI that we'll get in the next few years. It's very hard to predict anything a few years out I feel.
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