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Josh Blake

@joshuablake.co.uk
94 followers 248 following 55 posts

Professionally: civil servant, science advice for emergencies, previously infectious disease statistics PhD Interests: Effective Altruism, politics, nerds

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Josh Blake @joshuablake.co.uk · 23/03/2025
The 80/20 Rule: if you've solved 80% of the problem, you've spent 20% of the resources required.
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Josh Blake @joshuablake.co.uk · 31/01/2025
Omg I've never been so excited by a Substack
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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 04/01/2025
Here's a question I have NEVER managed to get a straight answer to: if I paste an internal company strategy document into ChatGPT or similar to ask for a summary, what are the chances that a competitor in six months time can ask the model about my strategy and get it to leak internal secrets?
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Josh Blake @joshuablake.co.uk · 23/12/2024
If you're not obsessively following AI, strong recommend below for implications of the latest models focusing on a new type of training and compute paradigm. Clearly explains what's different and the implications. Worth the subscription just for this article IMO. open.substack.com/pub/understa...
open.substack.com
It's the end of pretraining as we know it
LLM training techniques are evolving, and that has huge implications.
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Infectious Disease Tracker @hmpxvt.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
WHO declares Rwanda’s Marburg virus outbreak over. 65 cases and 15 deaths were reported.
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steve the skeptic @policyskeptic.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Maybe the much fretted about UK worklessness problem is a statistical glitch and not real: on.ft.com/4io5NM3
on.ft.com
What if the UK isn’t actually the sick man of Europe?
Britain’s illness-related inactivity crisis looks increasingly like a mirage
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Paul Novosad @novosad.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Fascinating paper on where 6000 global elites went to college. Billionaires, CEOs, heads of state, central bankers, etc. In a word: Harvard. Fully 10% of global elites went to Harvard. Elite US schools are over-represented (23% IvyPlus), but nobody comes close to Harvard. 🧵
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Meaghan Kall @kallmemeg.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
I spoke to @gavinfreeguard.bsky.social for a little glimpse behind the (imperfect but real-life) data that informed the UK pandemic response. Have we improved our infectious disease data systems since March 2020? Yes and no…
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Josh Blake @joshuablake.co.uk · 02/12/2024
@andymatuschak.org big fan of your work and ideas! I was wondering if you've ever written what tools you use for reading and writing inbox, including incorporating spaced repetition? I love the ideas in your working notes but struggling to see how to implement them.
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Josh Blake @joshuablake.co.uk · 02/12/2024
I want to keep better track of frontier AI from a range of perspectives. Recommendations for Substacks (preferred), blogs, or people to follow (preferred not) which provides news in a shortish and accesible form, without ridiculous hype, ideally with a focus on putting developments into context.
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Did you know? Black Friday is named in honor of Rebecca Black, who invented Friday in 2011.
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
UKHSA hiring a Deputy Director of Modelling: www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...
civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk
Deputy Director of Modelling - Civil Service Jobs - GOV.UKGOV.UK
Search and apply for jobs in the UK Civil Service
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Josh Blake @joshuablake.co.uk · 24/11/2024
A Tweet is to Twitter as ?? is to Blue sky
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