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Randy Au

@randyau.com
7K followers 4.7K following 7K posts

Hobby consultant, 💎🪚🎮🖥️🎙️🎹🎧👨‍🍳📷🪛➕ Quant UX Researcher Writes a data newsletter: www.counting-stuff.com linktr.ee/randy_au Languages: EN/JP/CN

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Reposted by Randy Au
Marco @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!
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 18h
ugh 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 =_=
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 29/09/2026
This 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.com
Feedback mechanisms are terrible data sources
Reflecting on how we collect a ton of data that doesn't get used.
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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 😭
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 28/09/2026
Slightly better katsuramaki today, this is one single continuous cut of cucumber, though the thickness is stupidly uneven
Photo of a cutting board with a mostly cut cucumber on it, and a chef knife resting on the side. A wide long mostly translucent piece of thinly shaved cucumber lays flat and takes up about 2/3rds of the length of the board
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 28/09/2026
😭
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Reposted by Randy Au
DiscoStarslayer @disco.camp · 28/09/2026
If you thought Final Fantasy's localized naming was confusing, may I introduce you to Crazy Castle
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 27/09/2026
Still need to work on katsuramaki cutting skills... This run was lucky but usually I can't get it this long
A hand holding a cucumber with a chef knife cutting a translucent sheet off the cucumber
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026
Had 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026
omg ace combat 8 is coming out soon... why did I buy FF7R and R2
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026
urgh 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
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Reposted by Randy Au
Iris/アイリス 🏳️‍⚧️ @irisdescentbird.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
funniest rom hack reasoning of all time
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026
probably 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
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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 <_<
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 25/09/2026
There'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
Two small blue trim potentiometers sit on a brown proto board close together, a pair of golden rca jacks sit above them and are as t less double the width, then two rca cable plugs are below them and are much bigger than anything else
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 25/09/2026
Ugh woke up and the heat was running already .. winter is sneaking up
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026
Ok 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026
ugh 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026
wtf it's thursday already?
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026
finally 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026
My 9 games image showing: Starcraft, Nier Automata, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Aardwolf MUD, Warcraft 2, Unreal Tournament, Gran Turismo 5, Naricssu 10th anniversary project
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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,
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 22/09/2026
This 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.com
How 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 22/09/2026
7yo 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026
ok against better judgement I think I'll give the FF7 remake another try.... the battle system continues to be godawful tho
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026
ugh 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026
grrr where did I put my headphone amps...
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 19/09/2026
Oh 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 🤔🤔🤔🤔
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 17/09/2026
I just remembered I had the final fantasy pixel remaster soundtrack buried in all my music files
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026
Wao, 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026
This 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.com
We're almost done with leap seconds for our lifetimes
I'm gonna lose one of my favorite topics =(
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026
We'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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026
... The cat just started licking the cheeto i had in my hand =\
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026
Stupid 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026
Me: 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: ...
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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 =(
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Reposted by Randy Au
Robin Hawkes @robhawkes.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Can you recreate a 3D wind turbine from public satellite imagery? …
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026
🤔🤔🤔 what to write about today ><
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026
Ugh, 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?
Hand holding a black aluminum leg with a  silver aluminum L bracket to a piece of wood, the wood has a rabbet cut out to allow the wood to hide the bracket from viewA black aluminum extrusion with two silver L brackets held by two black t-nuts and bolts each. The brackets show four screw holes on the free sideThe rectangular table frame is complete, four black aluminum extrusions for legs, four aprons held by brackets and screws connecting everything, the top has not been placed on it yetThe completed rectangular table stands in a corner, it has a black quartz stone top with white/grey veins on it, the legs are black, the wood on the apron matches the color and species of the hardwood floor
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 13/09/2026
ugh 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 13/09/2026
Ugh 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 12/09/2026
Lol 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?
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 12/09/2026
had 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
a brass lock cylinder sits on top of a closed mac laptop, a black leather pouch that says "Southord" , a bronze colored follower, tweezers, pliers, and a couple of lock picks are also on the laptop.
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026
uh 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026
I support this effort😍
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026
It's wild that my starting salary when I first started working after MS is $80k now when converted to 2026 dollars...
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Reposted by Randy Au
Jeff “Now I am become AI Slop” Weir @insightsmachine.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Hey #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?
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 10/09/2026
The 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 🤣
Two violins and bows leaning up against a dark grey sofa. The right violin is a traditional full sized wood one with a wood bow, the left one is 3d printed in green and grey plastic with a carbon fiber bow
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 09/09/2026
changed 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
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Randy Au @randyau.com · 09/09/2026
Urgh 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
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