Andrew Weeks

PyData London - 101st Meetup, Tue, Nov 4, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup **Venue**: Riverbank House, 2 Swan Ln, London EC4R 3AD **Please note**: 1. 🚨🚨🚨A valid photo ID is required by building security. 🚨🚨🚨 2. This event follows the **[Nu

It's nearly that time again! Join us on Tue 4 Nov for the 101st PyData London meetup.

Using Hugging Face's smolagents framework to create a Fantasy Premier League AI Agent - @geirfreysson.bsky.social

No More Boilerplate: Data-Driven Testing Made Easy - @feregri.no

www.meetup.com/pydata-londo...

Close up of pink aster flowers leaning out of a vertical garden plant box. The flowers are new: some have emerged but many are still buds.

Another close up of pink aster flowers a few days later, now bathed in late afternoon sunlight. More flowers have emerged giving a beautiful crowded display of daisy-like pink flowers with yellow centres.

Seeing flowers from my new aster for the first time is a real autumn treat!

I recommend this post from @simonwillison.net: simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/v...

He lists the engineering skills required to use AI-generation most effectively to build quality software, based on his experience using AI on his projects. In short, we can't replace software engineers with vibe coding

Liberalism’s answer would probably be the harm principle: community moderation strives for that at least.

Also reflecting that we tend to give states a monopoly on violence for a reason…

It’s nearly time for our 100th Meetup! 🥳

Looking forward to a full roster of lightning talks, reflections from organisers past and present (including many of the OG crew!) and of course well-deserved celebrations--maybe even with cake! 🎂

*deep breath* the fact that these models produce plausible output and also hallucinate (e.g. produce completely novel but reasonable output) has always been why they're so exciting for computational social scientists

Incidentally, my personal favorite interpretation of advancements in computer science is that most of the progress we've made has been in defining the problems themselves. Many successes correlate to clearer definitions of what "good" means or abstracting the task away from weak definitions.

Great to hear Customs House will be redeveloped!

Such a grand building in an amazing location by the Thames, but today you have to follow a rickety walkway and peer at it through railings. Big improvement for the Thames Path there.

customhouse2024.co.uk

www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/his...

YouTube video by CultRepo Python: The Documentary | An origin story

Python: The Documentary | An origin story

What began as a side project in the 1990s now powers AI, data science and some of the world's biggest companies. But Python almost disappeared at one point.

Featuring Guido van Rossum, Travis Oliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more!

youtu.be/GfH4QL4VqJ0?...

I was particularly pleased to hear Ruby Waller tell us about apprenticeships in data. I had no idea this was a possible route into DS until she told me at the conference this year. So glad she agreed to share her journey!

Had a great PyData London tonight! Was a real treat to hear from @gaelvaroquaux.bsky.social on @skrub-data.bsky.social and the real world data pains its solving. (Try it if you haven’t already; super easy to get going!)

YouTube video by PyData Keynote- Tony Mears | PyData London 25

PyData London 2025 keynote: Tony Mears -- Innovation is Dead

Innovation gets stifled in the public sector by risk aversion and punishment for failure.

But there is hope: Tony shares a way forward, drawing on his experience directing operations in the NHS and UK Space Agency.

youtu.be/XMLbJYM46xo

My day trip to medieval England At the ‘Wimbledon of jousting’, Simon Usborne finds historical re-enactment is becoming big business — and meets the knights and tourists partying like it’s 1499

on.ft.com/4oVBaBe My day trip to medieval England

Jousting is back in vogue after a 500 year absence. Fantastic pictures too!

This Is What Happens When a Startup Dies Podcast Episode · Odd Lots · 20/08/2025 · 47m

Fascinating interview from Odd Lots on what happens when a startup dies. Not often formal bankruptcy.

Finding buyers for some company assets can be challenging—like human skulls!

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...

Excited about this one!

Today at #EuroScipy2025, @glemaitre58.bsky.social and I presented a tutorial on pitfalls of machine learning for imbalanced classification problems.

We discussed what (not) to do when fitting a classifier and obtaining degenerate precision or recall values.

probabl-ai.github.io/calibration-...

Google's Gemini AI tells a Redditor it's 'cautiously optimistic' about fixing a coding bug, fails repeatedly, calls itself an embarrassment to 'all possible and impossible universes' before repeating 'I am a disgrace' 86 times in succession

I'll admit, I was skeptical when they said Gemini was just like a bunch of PhDs. But I gotta admit they nailed it.

Fusion energy start-up claims to have cracked alchemy San Francisco start-up says modified fusion process could be used to produce gold from mercury

Fusion energy start-up claims to have cracked alchemy

This is really cool: modifying the fusion process could produce gold from mercury almost as a side effect, worth almost as much as the electricity produced each year.

on.ft.com/3IXXlWD

It's a good reminder that these models are great for problems that have already been solved and well documented many times, but much riskier for those that haven't.

And that matters because a huge advantage LLMs have over traditional search is solving the "I don't know what I don't know" problem.

Whisper bug report: 'Complete silence is always hallucinated as "ترجمة نانسي قنقر" in Arabic which translates as "Translation by Nancy Qunqar"'

social.coop/@brainwane/1...

It's fun, but as the thread points out not a new problem, e.g. fanfare -> "subscribe"—and would be fixed in English already.

Looping Loop by Andrew Sabin Looping Loop was made in an evolving mould made entirely of pastry margarine. The sculpture’s material is stone aggregate, put into the mould dry and then bonded with a liquid plastic (bonded stone).

Roots: Palace by Ai Weiwei Iron sculpture modelling elements of endangered Brazilian tree roots and branches.

Visited a few Sculpture in the City exhibits on my afternoon cycle today. Will see if I can find the rest over the next few weeks!

www.sculptureinthecity.org.uk

Looking out at the Thames from Blackfriars Bridge just after the sun has set. The Sea Containers building is lit up in rainbow coloured lights and reflected in the water below.

Lovely evening for a cycle yesterday.

Nice! I have a couple of slot Pentium IIs from the same time I’d love to get out again.

From memory most things ran with dual CPUs on NT/Win2000 but I did have to return a modem as it crashed the computer.

Great panel on driving meaningful change to developer experience.

"We need better measures than satisfaction that connect directly to things *under our responsibility*, like are people able to access their best problem solving selves, is wellbeing being protected, and quality of problem solving"

Excited the videos are coming out so I can catch up on the talks I wanted to see at the time (like this one) but missed!

5-panel comic. (1) [teacher with long hair next to whiteboard] TEACHER: I’m supposed to give you the tools to do good science. (2) [teacher addressing students] But what *are* those tools? Methodology is hard and there are so many ways to get incorrect results. What is the magic ingredient that makes for good science? (3) TEACHER: To figure it out, I ran a regression with all the factors people say are important: [embedded list in sub-panel, cut off at end] Outcome variable: correct scientific results. Predictors: collaboration; skepticism of others’ claims; questioning your own beliefs; trying to falsify hypotheses; checking citations; statistical rigor; blinded analysis; financial disclosure; open data (4) TEACHER: The regression says two ingredients are the most crucial: 1) genuine curiosity about the answer to a question, and 2) ammonium hydroxide. (5) STUDENT: Wait, why did *ammonia* score so high? How did it even get on the list? LONG HAIR: ...And now you’re doing good science!

Good Science

xkcd.com/3101/

Poundlands all the way down.

Screenshot of FT article. Poundland sold for less than a pound. Investment firm Gordon Brothers plans to restructure struggling UK discount retailer after sealing acquisition. UK discount retailer Poundland has been sold for less than £1 to Gordon Brothers, an investor that specialises in acquiring distressed assets, after a series of costly mis-steps by its Warsaw-listed parent.

Poundland sold for less than a pound

on.ft.com/4kWnJOy

The article doesn’t say if they went into a shop to complete the transaction, but I choose to believe they did.

Data practitioners are still rare in the workforce.

There are a lot of steps and checks to what they do to convert data into real business value.