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Randy Au

@randyau.com

6.6K followers 4.4K following 5.5K posts

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

www.counting-stuff.com

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Randy Au @randyau.com · Oct 30

So on here I talk about hobbies and crack snarky data jokes. But once a week I also write a very long form data science newsletter. at www.counting-stuff.com
#DataBS

Here's a thread of old posts that people liked [ugh no thread writing interface] (1/n)

Counting Stuff

A weekly newsletter about the important, mundane, parts of being a data scientist, UX researcher. With some extra fun about tech and hobbies.

www.counting-stuff.com

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 9h

They have a SQL interface in the admin side and the query was simple
Select date, count(distinct comm_name) from detections where confidence > 0.8 group by 1

Then I was supremely lazy and pasted the csv into Gemini for the chart

Randy Au @randyau.com · 12h

being surrounded by awesome people constantly also doesn't help because you lose sight that those folks probably aren't "typically" =\

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 12h

also, caching? parallelization? modular design? even REST? gotta do all that to move useful amounts data around so I can hold my own no problem.

wtf is a lexer =P and if I need an algorithm for anything and somehow it's not in the std lib, I'll go pull out the CLRS I never use or look up SOTA

Randy Au @randyau.com · 12h

thanks! but I'd probably need double that salary to pay my bills and support the kid x__x

Randy Au @randyau.com · 12h

probably the biggest downside to my rabid generalist skillset is how... uneven things can be? I learn what I touch.
I can rant about ETL code and SQL engine behavior for hours, even do O() notation crap but then be completely clueless in how javascript does anything useful because fuck .this()

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 12h

Also I checked on the birdnet instance i've been running at my window since I activated it in May, the count of unique birds has drifted down. I was pecting a bigger rise due to migrations but maybe they haven't stopped by yet? I dunno. can't wait to see a year of data

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 13h

today is wake up and realize that my bitching about stupid race conditions in telemetry and other things probably means I"m actually qualified to apply to data eng positions but i need to completely rewrite my resume =_=

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Reposted by Randy Au

Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 1d

I am so grateful for everyone who has subscribed (500 of you), liked, shared, promoted, and bought me coffee in support of RDM Weekly! Just knowing that people are reading is a huge win. I have really enjoyed putting this newsletter together over the last 3 months and look forward to continuing it!

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15h

Update, I had to leave for about an hour. The cat -has- -not- -moved-

Randy Au @randyau.com · 15h

The cat has discovered that we sleep with electric blankets. It is not about to leave unless it's for food

A white/brown cat sitting on a grey fleece blanket, the blanket has a black button with an led light on indicating it is heating

Randy Au @randyau.com · 15h

nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Randy Au @randyau.com · 15h

The cat has discovered that we sleep with electric blankets. It is not about to leave unless it's for food

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 1d

SOMEWHERE in this house I packed our heating pad and I CAN'T FIND IT T___T we have electric blankets but for working at the desk a pad is nicer

Randy Au @randyau.com · 1d

it's getting chilly in NY.... enough that i dragged out my fingerless gloves and hand sewed back the seam that blew out between two fingers

Randy Au @randyau.com · 1d

I want to make a pot of tea but I'm legally barred from doing so

Picture of a cat sleeping on a person's lap its head resting on the person's arm

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

I wish I knew. maybe it's from the beast wars timeline!

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

lol, I was toying with gemini to explain a bunch of LLM transformer background knowledge to me since it's way out of my self study depth and for no good reason at all it pulls a diagram of a literal electronics transformer at the end

screenshot showing a large image showing of an electronics transformer works including two wire loops, transformer core, AC power on a primary circuit and lightbulb on the primary circuit, with variables for power and voltage turns, cretited to getty images. Immediately above in text are mathematical formulae and a discussion of the billions of parameters in an LLM transformer model

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

Next time the mailman delivers the wrong mail to your address I want you to deliver it this way

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

Yeah but the exec rescheduled the last minute

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

🤣 this post could've been a meeting!!!

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

Man, one thing is clear, there are a lot more UX designer roles out there than research ones

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

All I do is count! 🤣🤣🤣
Oh, I also make trouble.

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

....... afk to fire up the sous vide to make some

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

I'd never choose to be caught up in a layoff, but compared to the other 3 times it's happened to me, we have a CAT this time and this warm little goofball seriously helps

head of a white cat with light brown patches of fur peek out from within a burgundy colored thick blanket. the cat is sleeping peacefully

Randy Au @randyau.com · 2d

There was a period during the Obama era where relations were improving and a lot of programs sprung up . But since then China has increasingly been portrayed as an adversary and that probably has influenced enrollment. foreign languages in general has been seeing less enrollment tho

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 3d

ok,.... ONE DAY, not today, not until I get a solid job again, I'm gonna get a 6k grit finishing stone