Christopher Smith
@chriscarrollsmith.bsky.social
Software developer and technology consultant in Albany, NY
Answer: a few states (Minnesota, New Jersey) look a little better; a few others (South Carolina, New Mexico) look a bit worse.
But for the most part, the states permitting single-family housing and the states permitting multi-family are generally the same states.
But for the most part, the states permitting single-family housing and the states permitting multi-family are generally the same states.
August 6, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Answer: a few states (Minnesota, New Jersey) look a little better; a few others (South Carolina, New Mexico) look a bit worse.
But for the most part, the states permitting single-family housing and the states permitting multi-family are generally the same states.
But for the most part, the states permitting single-family housing and the states permitting multi-family are generally the same states.
Yesterday I ran across this map of housing permits by state. Seems to be single-family, so I wondered how much the map might be penalizing urban states that do more multifamily development.
To answer this question, I replicated the analysis with multifamily permits (next tweet).
To answer this question, I replicated the analysis with multifamily permits (next tweet).
August 6, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Yesterday I ran across this map of housing permits by state. Seems to be single-family, so I wondered how much the map might be penalizing urban states that do more multifamily development.
To answer this question, I replicated the analysis with multifamily permits (next tweet).
To answer this question, I replicated the analysis with multifamily permits (next tweet).
*Winner*: The winning project, by Steve Senkus, scraped, chunked, and embedded the entire text of the "Big Beautiful Bill" for semantic search. Which, by the way, you can achieve with just five CLI commands!
July 7, 2025 at 1:49 AM
*Winner*: The winning project, by Steve Senkus, scraped, chunked, and embedded the entire text of the "Big Beautiful Bill" for semantic search. Which, by the way, you can achieve with just five CLI commands!
*Runner-up*: My own pitch was that you can use the help output from any command-line tool to create a prompt template for `llm`, then wrap the template with a shell script to create a purely natural language version of the tool. As proof of concept, I made `nl-repomix`:
July 7, 2025 at 1:49 AM
*Runner-up*: My own pitch was that you can use the help output from any command-line tool to create a prompt template for `llm`, then wrap the template with a shell script to create a purely natural language version of the tool. As proof of concept, I made `nl-repomix`:
*Runner-Up*: Evan Mullen scraped the HTML from Doctor of Credit, a website that aggregates bank deposit bonus offers, and then piped it to `llm` for conversion to a JSON array so he could compute which offers have the best ROI.
July 7, 2025 at 1:49 AM
*Runner-Up*: Evan Mullen scraped the HTML from Doctor of Credit, a website that aggregates bank deposit bonus offers, and then piped it to `llm` for conversion to a JSON array so he could compute which offers have the best ROI.
I think about this tweet all the time.
July 4, 2025 at 3:00 PM
I think about this tweet all the time.
If you want to open a Github issue on one of my projects just to tell me how great it is, I fully support that, btw 🥹
May 29, 2025 at 1:48 AM
If you want to open a Github issue on one of my projects just to tell me how great it is, I fully support that, btw 🥹
I used to be in the "it doesn't matter that much who's president" camp. It's increasingly clear that it matters a lot at the low end.
May 1, 2025 at 2:10 PM
I used to be in the "it doesn't matter that much who's president" camp. It's increasingly clear that it matters a lot at the low end.
Liberal yard sign update
April 19, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Liberal yard sign update
So excited for the golden age that will result from Democrats believing in the dismal science as well as the non-dismal ones.
April 19, 2025 at 6:55 PM
So excited for the golden age that will result from Democrats believing in the dismal science as well as the non-dismal ones.
Crime down = bad
April 18, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Crime down = bad
Wednesday in the United States of America
April 16, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Wednesday in the United States of America
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they *should*, they didn't stop to think if they *could*.
April 12, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they *should*, they didn't stop to think if they *could*.
Me before trying ChatGPT's new memory feature: "Okay, I don't expect to be impressed by this, but let's try it out"
Me after trying it: "We're barreling toward a world where human connection won't be able to compete with AI chatbots that can make us feel fully known and seen"
Me after trying it: "We're barreling toward a world where human connection won't be able to compete with AI chatbots that can make us feel fully known and seen"
April 11, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Me before trying ChatGPT's new memory feature: "Okay, I don't expect to be impressed by this, but let's try it out"
Me after trying it: "We're barreling toward a world where human connection won't be able to compete with AI chatbots that can make us feel fully known and seen"
Me after trying it: "We're barreling toward a world where human connection won't be able to compete with AI chatbots that can make us feel fully known and seen"
It's worse than Idiocracy. It's not even that they're dumb; it's that they're actively trying to do dumb things because doing dumb things to generate publicity is the one thing they're world-class, genius-level experts at.
April 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM
It's worse than Idiocracy. It's not even that they're dumb; it's that they're actively trying to do dumb things because doing dumb things to generate publicity is the one thing they're world-class, genius-level experts at.
Largest single-day point loss in the history of the Nasdaq Composite stock index.
April 3, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Largest single-day point loss in the history of the Nasdaq Composite stock index.
The underlying assumption is that the trade deficit is a measure of the dollar value of all cheating and protectionism by the foreign government. That's almost certainly a misunderstanding. Structural trade deficits are generally understood to be a function of our own petrodollar system.
April 2, 2025 at 11:00 PM
The underlying assumption is that the trade deficit is a measure of the dollar value of all cheating and protectionism by the foreign government. That's almost certainly a misunderstanding. Structural trade deficits are generally understood to be a function of our own petrodollar system.
As part of his tariff announcement, Trump shared this chart purporting to show that US tariff rates are actually much lower than the foreign tariffs we're retaliating against. Economists immediately expressed puzzlement, because these numbers seem completely made up.
April 2, 2025 at 11:00 PM
As part of his tariff announcement, Trump shared this chart purporting to show that US tariff rates are actually much lower than the foreign tariffs we're retaliating against. Economists immediately expressed puzzlement, because these numbers seem completely made up.
One application for this is to empower your "dumb" Claude AI agent in Cursor or Windsurf seek advice from a much smarter model. With only a little prompting, Claude can make pretty effective use of command-line tools like `llm`.
Have fun!
Have fun!
March 25, 2025 at 6:23 PM
One application for this is to empower your "dumb" Claude AI agent in Cursor or Windsurf seek advice from a much smarter model. With only a little prompting, Claude can make pretty effective use of command-line tools like `llm`.
Have fun!
Have fun!
Add this to your `extra-openai-models.yaml` file. You can find the file location by running `dirname "$(llm logs path)"` in a Bash terminal.
March 25, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Add this to your `extra-openai-models.yaml` file. You can find the file location by running `dirname "$(llm logs path)"` in a Bash terminal.
I won't bore you with the full summary, but here's the topic it chose.
March 23, 2025 at 1:36 AM
I won't bore you with the full summary, but here's the topic it chose.
This is not healthy price action
March 10, 2025 at 3:17 PM
This is not healthy price action
Awesome, thanks! Filing this one away in the "hot tech tips I need to try" folder. It's on the list right after this 5g mitigation strategy I saw on Insta! 🔥🔥🔥
March 9, 2025 at 2:22 AM
Awesome, thanks! Filing this one away in the "hot tech tips I need to try" folder. It's on the list right after this 5g mitigation strategy I saw on Insta! 🔥🔥🔥
I used a self-hosted Qwen-2.5 to extract frames where Zelensky looked skeptical from a 20-second clip of his meeting with Trump. Code is open-sourced, Github link below
March 2, 2025 at 8:33 PM
I used a self-hosted Qwen-2.5 to extract frames where Zelensky looked skeptical from a 20-second clip of his meeting with Trump. Code is open-sourced, Github link below
I also wrote a couple very simple human labeling tools so you can validate the LLM outputs against expert humans. github.com/chriscarroll... github.com/chriscarroll...
February 19, 2025 at 10:11 PM
I also wrote a couple very simple human labeling tools so you can validate the LLM outputs against expert humans. github.com/chriscarroll... github.com/chriscarroll...