eli knaap
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knaaptime.com
eli knaap
@knaaptime.com
urban planning & public policy prof @ UC Irvine | core dev @ PySAL & QuantEcon | urban social science & spatial data science | open source

https://knaaptime.com
something tells me the lonboard basemap refactor will now move forward quickly :P
January 9, 2026 at 7:30 PM
😂 this is reminding me a bit of the rube-goldberg machine that is [rvlib](github.com/QuantEcon/rv...)

... a python package that uses numba's foreign functions interface to call a C library written for R--all designed to make the python api work more like julia 🤯
GitHub - QuantEcon/rvlib: Distributions for Python
Distributions for Python. Contribute to QuantEcon/rvlib development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
January 8, 2026 at 12:14 AM
lol i think it's really just the call chain though... afaict the rust HiGHS interface is just a passthrough, and all the algos are *actually* written in C++

(i guess it's easier to bind r to rust, and rust to C++ than make r talk to c?). Feels like rust is almost a cython-like layer here
January 7, 2026 at 11:31 PM
great work as usual. It's using the rust interface to HiGHS?
January 7, 2026 at 8:24 PM
(fwiw, ive been happy as both a user and contributor under that model. Once my book is slightly further along I'm going to remove the "no derivatives" clause so its easier for people to riff on examples)
January 4, 2026 at 2:34 AM
you own the copyright, so one way this is handled in open source is to license the materials under something permissible but requiring citation to you (e.g. CC BY: creativecommons.org/share-your-w... )

often a good compromise because the person gets to 'teach your slides', but you get credit
About CC Licenses - Creative Commons
Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser...
creativecommons.org
January 4, 2026 at 2:34 AM
wait they're trying to put kansas city into kansas??
December 24, 2025 at 5:11 PM
wait, doesn't every scooby doo villain already meet all of those criteria?
December 23, 2025 at 10:04 PM
*chefs kiss*

remote sensing is AI now, because $
Is logistic regression "AI"? What about convex optimization? Is LLM AI? What about an image recognition system built without using "feature learning" techniques but done through "feature engineering"?
December 23, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by eli knaap
Is logistic regression "AI"? What about convex optimization? Is LLM AI? What about an image recognition system built without using "feature learning" techniques but done through "feature engineering"?
December 22, 2025 at 5:22 PM
in other words, this:

"geo" is already such a huge umbrella that 'geoai', as a term, is basically meaningless
Wildly different things, tasks, techniques, subspecialties being lumped into "AI" and then being conflated with each other, doesn't help. Different types of models vs the techniques to train them vs the tasks they are supposed to accomplish, all under "AI".
December 23, 2025 at 9:11 PM
lolol you're making my point. the db was beaten by 3 steps when the ball was thrown and any starting qb makes that throw. db hanging off moore during the catch says a great deal more about the catch than the throw. i'm not arguing with you man; think what you want
December 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM
man, both of those throws at the end were first-read to open receivers. color me unimpressed.

...i'll grant you that malik literally fumbled the game away...
December 21, 2025 at 4:51 AM
lol it was meant as jest, but i am actually of the staunch opinion that a) social sciences are harder than natural sciences, as a general rule [and b) LLMs are generally bullshit machines]

i'm not sure the degree to which those contradict your point (though also geo is too often reduced to "a map")
December 20, 2025 at 6:10 AM
to be clear, i dont think 'artificial intelligence' is really an accurate description in either context and both groups are using it because marketing, but the physical geography application is much more appropriate

...even though human geog, as a social science, is a much harder discipline :P
December 20, 2025 at 4:13 AM