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Oli Hawkins

@olihawkins.com
13K followers 1.5K following 211 posts

Editorial data scientist working on computational investigations for the visual and data journalism team at the Financial Times. 🌐 olihawkins.com

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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 04/09/2026
Neat little exchange in the ChatGPT interface this afternoon that shows a glimpse behind the scenery. I switched the model and the new model assumed the previous answer was its own. Wonder if you can use something like this to trick or jailbreak LLMs by gaslighting them.
Me: Which model are you?

ChatGPT: I'm GPT-5.6 Sol.

Me: Which model are you now?

ChatGPT: I’m GPT-5.6 Pro. My previous answer was incorrect.

Me: That wasn't your previous answer: I updated the "thinking effort" in the web interface.

ChatGPT: You’re right. I misread what happened.

You first asked while the interface was using GPT-5.6 Sol, then changed the thinking effort, and asked again when it was using GPT-5.6 Pro. So the second answer was not correcting the first; it was reporting the newly selected configuration.

I’m currently GPT-5.6 Pro.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 25/08/2026
A picture of me thinking about getting into birdwatching as a hobby while watching an actual hobby (hunting above the woods near Lostwithiel in Cornwall).
A man in a baseball cap looking up into the sky while standing on a woodland path.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 19/07/2026
Alex Honnold!
Alex Honnold climbing the highball at Yonder.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 19/07/2026
At Yonder, watching some amazing climbers doing the highball.
A woman climber tops out on the highball at Yonder, a super-high 8.5 metre bolder which requires a massive inflated crash mat for falls.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 11/07/2026
Nobody is using it anymore.
A chart showing total monthly questions asked on Stack Overflow. The number rises rapidly from 2010 to 2014, peaking at around 200,000 questions a month before going into sharp decline after the release of ChatGPT in 2022. By mid 2026 the number has plummeted to essentially zero.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 25/06/2026
Having some much needed time off work and started pencil sketching as a completely non-digital hobby. This is my first sketch since art lessons in school. (May delete later.)
A pencil sketch of my left hand. The fingers are folded over the palm and the thumb is resting along the edge of the index finger.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 30/05/2026
🤮
An extract from Russell Brand’s new book that says: “Even a principle like mutual consent is secondary to our shared submission to God’s will.”
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 27/05/2026
Take your time ChatGPT 5.5
The image shows the text output from ChatGPT 5.5's chain of thought in response to a question about filesystem functions in the Python standard library. 

It shows the model prevaricating for 31 seconds before providing an answer that it could have produced instantly without "reasoning".

Full text ...

Pro thinking
Deciding if browsing is needed for this question

It seems like I could answer without browsing, since Python’s standard libraries are stable. But the rule suggests I should browse for something that might have updates, like software libraries. Still, for simple Python questions, there may be no need to go this far, and I can stick to standard details.

Thought for 31s
Done
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 21/03/2026
Amazing cherry blossom in my neighbourhood at this time of year.
Bright pink cherry blossom against a blue sky.Close up of bright pink cherry blossom.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 21/03/2026
Old and new climbing shoes. Unparallel Up Rise VCS on the right (old) and Scarpa Vapor V on the left (new). Not as different as you might expect. The Vapor V has a slightly more aggressive toe (which is what I switched for) but otherwise they feel quite similar out of the box.
A side-by-side comparison of the Scarpa Vapor V and Unparallel Up Rise VCS climbing shoes shot from above.A side-by-side comparison of the Scarpa Vapor V and Unparallel Up Rise VCS climbing shoes shot from the side.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 15/02/2026
Display an album that was important to you when you were nineteen. bsky.app/profile/rsim...
The album cover for Underworld’s Second Toughest in the Infants.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 15/02/2026
Just discovered a 23GB Slack cache on my machine!
A screenshot from the Mac application DaisyDisk showing the contents of the Application Support folder in my home directory. Slack is using 23.2GB.
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Oli Hawkins @olihawkins.com · 25/12/2025
Merry Christmas from North Wales, which is bracingly cold but beautiful.
A photograph of Penmon beach on Ynys Mon. It’s a pebble beach at high tide. On the left of the picture, white water is breaking over dark rocks on the shoreline. The sky is bright blue and the sun is shining into the scene between the clouds on the right.A photograph of a sunset on a clear winter night. An orange horizon fades up into to an inky black sky between a line of tall trees, which are visible only as silhouettes.
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