Reposted by Randy AuMarco @mcognetta.bsky.social · 3h🚨 [Token][ization] Paper Alert 🚨 Tokenization is a wildly understudied area of language modeling despite it having effects across all of NLP. Over the past ~8 months, 32 (!) tokenizer researchers put together the most comprehensive survey of the field. Check it out! 16119
Randy Au @randyau.com · 18hugh this cold has got various muscles in my head extra tight, and that tension eerywhere is making all sorts of things hurt on my face... including my teeth =_= 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 29/09/2026This week on Counting Stuff, probably because I've had to do this work so much over the years, but man, analyzing user feedback mechanism data is a horrid slog #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/feedback-mec...counting-stuff.comFeedback mechanisms are terrible data sourcesReflecting on how we collect a ton of data that doesn't get used. 033
Randy Au @randyau.com · 29/09/2026.... we're not even a month into the school year and the kid has already brought a plague home 😭 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 28/09/2026Slightly better katsuramaki today, this is one single continuous cut of cucumber, though the thickness is stupidly uneven 010
Reposted by Randy AuDiscoStarslayer @disco.camp · 28/09/2026If you thought Final Fantasy's localized naming was confusing, may I introduce you to Crazy Castle 095
Randy Au @randyau.com · 27/09/2026Still need to work on katsuramaki cutting skills... This run was lucky but usually I can't get it this long 110
Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026Had to trim the edge of a door today and knew it was gonna be a pain in the butt with the tools I had.... So bought the cheapest power hand plane for ~35 and it chewed through the job in like 5 minutes 020
Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026omg ace combat 8 is coming out soon... why did I buy FF7R and R2 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026urgh ok. so if I wiggle the cable of the thing I just made a bit,m sometimes the signal gets static-y or has other issues. BUT it's fine if I leave it alone... I don't think it's a soldering connector but instead RCA connector dimension/contact issues? maybe 110
Reposted by Randy AuIris/アイリス 🏳️⚧️ @irisdescentbird.bsky.social · 25/09/2026funniest rom hack reasoning of all time 46100233623
Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026probably one of the ugliest soldering jobs i've done in a very long while.. but whatever, tiny space, but it works and now I can balance the L/R channels on my headphone amp 020
Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026<_< need to make a janky audio cable device and since i have ton of little 3ft cat5e cables i don't use... that'll be good enough for the job <_< 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 25/09/2026There's a subtle L/R unbalance in my headphone amp chain and Im gonna slap together these parts to just trim the signal down but lol the connectors are dominating the siZe constraints 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 25/09/2026Ugh woke up and the heat was running already .. winter is sneaking up 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026Ok screw this, so I'm somewhere in my audio chain there is a slight, but audible channel imbalance, I can tweak it with my speaker gain but headphones it's not easy so now I gotta make a little box with a pair of pots to trim down the offending side 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026ugh had to dismantle and resolder the switches on my volume control box because apparently I overheated the switches the first time around and they got a bit wiggly and/or had bad connections 020
Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026finally unpacked my headphone amp and hooked it up to my desk audio setup... and the left channel was SUPER static-y even while completely unplugged... was about to pop it open when I tried swapping the left/right vacuum tube and... fixed. apparently there was some pin corrosion or something 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026.... traced a weird leak in the basement FROM AN AREA NO PIPES WERE RUNNING.... to... a drippy hose left on the porch in a corner that had somehow started dripping water ... ughhhh, 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 22/09/2026This week on Counting Stuff, since I often default to e-commerce as my "here's a simple database" example, I wondered just how many ways people have done it. It's a lot more than one. #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/how-many-way...counting-stuff.comHow many ways can we database a store?While you'd think there would be one "obvious" way, clearly different people have different opinions about what is obvious 050
Randy Au @randyau.com · 22/09/20267yo is going through probably one of the more dreaded phases of learning to play music... playing to the metronome because eventually they have to grok that music at the minimum is 2 things... correct pitch and timing... we got decently far over 3 years glossing over it tho 140
Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026ok against better judgement I think I'll give the FF7 remake another try.... the battle system continues to be godawful tho 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026ugh swapping my volume control box to 1/4 TRS cables made sure things are connecting firmly over RCA, which is great, but now I have to get all sorts of new cables to match the terminations 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 19/09/2026Oh yeah one time I was driving and a stupidly annoying loud car was coming up behind me... I let it pass expecting a dropped civic... But no, instead a raised truck with a busted exhaust 🤔🤔🤔🤔 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 17/09/2026I just remembered I had the final fantasy pixel remaster soundtrack buried in all my music files 020
Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026Wao, the hydraulic impact driver I got to replace the older impact is awesome because it's got a slower 1st gear, which is what I use the most on top of feathering the trigger, And the hammer is stupidly quiet 030
Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026This week on Counting Stuff, we're likely to say goodbye to leap seconds in October! None of us will live to see another such clock jump. Plus the whole negative leap second risk is all the earth's core's fault. #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/were-almost-...counting-stuff.comWe're almost done with leap seconds for our lifetimesI'm gonna lose one of my favorite topics =( 020
Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026We're celebrating the slow coming of autumn by putting the heating pad out for the cat. it's honestly not cold enough yet to require the pad, but the cat loves the thing 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026... The cat just started licking the cheeto i had in my hand =\ 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026Stupid sustained inflation has apparently changed my shopping habits to where if I can stock extra durable things that I'll eventually consume later, I will 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026Me: what do I write about today 🧠: there's that leap second thing Me: but that's a whole damn worhsop with like 9 decks from literal experts in the field and stuff! 🧠: ... and? Me: ... 020
Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026=\ my trusty impact driver.. which i've had for like 12+ years.. fell into a (clean) toilet for 5 seconds before I grabbed it out and while it works the speed control board stopped working so now it's permanently stuck on the 2nd gearing =( 100
Reposted by Randy AuRobin Hawkes @robhawkes.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Can you recreate a 3D wind turbine from public satellite imagery? … 1256
Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026Ugh, this weekend, phone hard crashed and factory reset lost half my build photos. BUT I FINISHED THE TABLE! Came out within 1mm of what I wanted it to be, and I probably overbuilt it with screws 🤣 And yes I matched the apron to our floors because why not? 040
Randy Au @randyau.com · 13/09/2026ugh this pla filament must be very wet because it's ben snapping in the bowden tube constantly and causing headaches.. to the dryer it goes 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 13/09/2026Ugh phone is somehow shit itself and had to do a factory reset. Luckily most stuff sorta backed up and I had most login info saved 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 12/09/2026Lol on some feed somewhere I saw an ad thing for apparently an expensive titanium plate that's supposed to keep your cooler cold for hours and like... Physics says how? 140
Randy Au @randyau.com · 12/09/2026had to rekey a very old mortise lock today and since lost the original key I finally had to dig out the lockpick set and open it the hard way.. luckily it gave with some raking. I always get a bit lost feeling for the last couple of pins 000
Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026uh oh, so I volunteered to write a paper-like thing at work, which is fine.. but I have't really written paper-like things in so many years that I have completely lost the 'voice' I used to have for it... well deadlines being deadlines, fuckit, i'll just clean up my normal blog voice 240
Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026It's wild that my starting salary when I first started working after MS is $80k now when converted to 2026 dollars... 100
Reposted by Randy AuJeff “Now I am become AI Slop” Weir @insightsmachine.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Hey #Datavis / #Dataviz peeps - Have you ever seen any dashboards presenting stock monitoring data? I just drove past a herd the other day that had monitor collars attached, and I thought "I wonder how this data is being presented in regards to animal health?" Can you amplify? 212
Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026The 7yo is the one taking lessons but mom and dad have found ways to join in on the fun (when time allows). We barely have any idea what we're doing compared to the kid 🤣 050
Randy Au @randyau.com · 09/09/2026changed the strings on the kid's new 1/2 violin since we bought it and of course i'm gonna make tweaks... i have no idea if it has an effect on the sound yet tho the A string sounds subtly scratchy and harsher than the original string... hopefully that's because it hasn't settled in yet 010
Randy Au @randyau.com · 09/09/2026Urgh I need to stop getting scratches on my glasses lenses. And they're inevitably very close to the center of vision because of how the curves work 000