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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 17d

Answer: because seniors know the language of software architecture.

This enriches their LLM prompting significantly.

If you want to successfully use AI for coding, learn some software architecture!

Hacker News Top Stories @hackernewsbot.bsky.social · 17d

AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly Make Seniors Stronger? | Discussion

AI Was Supposed to Help Juniors Shine. Why Does It Mostly Make Seniors Stronger? | <Can ELMA/>

AI was supposed to empower junior developers. In reality, it has become a tool that makes seniors more valuable while exposing the gaps in software culture.

elma.dev

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Sep 4

Proud to have been a part of this, a great example of distributed async science!

Huge thanks to @marcusghosh.bsky.social, @neuralreckoning.bsky.social, @tfiers.bsky.social, @krhab.bsky.social and others for putting in the bulk effort 🙌

Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · Sep 4

Is anarchist science possible? As an experiment, we got together a large group of computational neuroscientists from around the world to work on a single project without top down direction. Read on to find out what happened. 🤖🧠🧪

Diagram of how the "collaborative modelling of the brain" (COMOB) project started. Starting material lead to group research or solo research, coming together in online workshops (monthly) in an iterative cycle, finishing with writing up together. The diagram is illustrated with colourful cartoon blob characters.

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Sep 1

A great piece from @ersatzben.bsky.social on the importance of bold, aesthetic, mission-oriented directions in publicly funded research.

betterscienceproject.substack.com/p/the-counte...

The Counter-Reformation of science: how to make magnificence democratic

British research has perfected discipline and outsourced magnificence. The fix is to practise demonstration statecraft – visible proofs of capacity that pair theatre with delivery.

betterscienceproject.substack.com

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Jul 25

open.substack.com/pub/learning...

Backpropagation is older than you think

AI Histories #6: Backprop begins in the Second World War, not with Werbos or Rumelhart

open.substack.com

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

Marcus Ghosh @marcusghosh.bsky.social · Jul 25

How can we best use AI in science?

Myself and 9 other research fellows from @imperial-ix.bsky.social use AI methods in domains from plant biology (🌱) to neuroscience (🧠) and particle physics (🎇).

Together we suggest 10 simple rules @plos.org 🧵

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Jul 25

Both can safely go back to their home country. If (eg) an Indian immigrant doesn’t intend to integrate (continues speaking native language etc), are they then an expat?

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Jul 24

What makes you think immigrants don’t have access to their home country?

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · Jul 24

New preprint for #neuromorphic and #SpikingNeuralNetwork folk (with @pengfei-sun.bsky.social).

arxiv.org/abs/2507.16043

Surrogate gradients are popular for training SNNs, but some worry whether they really learn complex temporal spike codes. TLDR: we tested this, and yes they can! 🧵👇

🤖🧠🧪

Beyond Rate Coding: Surrogate Gradients Enable Spike Timing Learning in Spiking Neural Networks

We investigate the extent to which Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) trained with Surrogate Gradient Descent (Surrogate GD), with and without delay learning, can learn from precise spike timing beyond fi...

arxiv.org

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · May 4

I think we already explain societal impact, just retroactively: pre-PhD work justifies PhD funding, PhD work justifies postdoc funding, etc. We explain past contributions to secure future funds. I don’t think concurrent justification is reasonable, and might even be detrimental.

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

Software Sustainability Institute @softwaresaved.bsky.social · Apr 28

🟢 Applications are now open for two SSI Fellows' events: Niko Sirmpilatze's "Animals in Motion" and Alessandro Felder's "Big Imaging Data". These events will take place during the NIU Open Software Week running between Monday 11 and Friday 15 August in London.
www.software.ac.uk/news/ssi-fel...

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · Apr 24

How do babies and blind people learn to localise sound without labelled data? We propose that innate mechanisms can provide coarse-grained error signals to boostrap learning. New preprint from @yang-chu.bsky.social. 🤖🧠🧪

arxiv.org/abs/2001.10605

Learning spatial hearing via innate mechanisms

The acoustic cues used by humans and other animals to localise sounds are subtle, and change during and after development. This means that we need to constantly relearn or recalibrate the auditory spa...

arxiv.org

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Apr 22

Come build tools for science with us in London!

Food, cool people, great speakers (on both the science and toolmaking sides).

#neuroskyence #openscience #desci #openchem #bioinformatics #opensource #foss

Wojtek Treyde @wtreyde.bsky.social · Apr 22

Following our successful SF event, we (www.compmotifs.com) are running another hackathon!

When? 7-8 June.
Where? London, UK.
Who? Builders and researchers from academia and industry.
What? Develop innovative computational tools to advance the natural sciences.

Join us: lu.ma/apsqlxlj?utm....

Science through Computation

Advancing the natural sciences

www.compmotifs.com

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Mar 15

This is great! But how does it work tech wise? It says powered by the python SDK. I don’t know much about the AT protocol (yet).

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

Marcus Ghosh @marcusghosh.bsky.social · Mar 13

How can we explore the space of computational models in #neuroscience 🧠?

Picture a mouse navigating an environment with light and dark areas.

🧵1/10

Pablo Samuel Castro @pcastr.bsky.social · Feb 10

Can LLMs be used to discover interpretable models of human and animal behavior?🤔

Turns out: yes!

Thrilled to share our latest preprint where we used FunSearch to automatically discover symbolic cognitive models of behavior.
1/12

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Mar 12

If you’re in SF, come build tools-for-science with us later this month! 🛠️

#opensource #neuroskyence #openscience #machinelearning #compchem #chemsky

Wojtek Treyde @wtreyde.bsky.social · Mar 12

We (www.compmotifs.com) are coming to SF!

Together with Pebblebed, we’re hosting a 2-day hackathon on 26-27 March for builders and scientists across disciplines to build new methods and tools for the computational and natural sciences. Join us: lu.ma/t5yik06g.

Reposts will be much appreciated!

Workshop: Science through Computation · Luma

The Computational Motifs Initiative is coming to San Francisco! Together with Pebblebed, we’re hosting a 2-day hackathon on 26-27 March connecting builders and…

lu.ma

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · Mar 7

Just getting started @standupforscience.bsky.social

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Reposted by Rory Byrne

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Feb 20

Scientific data and independence are at risk: We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.

By @neuralreckoning.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/policy/scien...

Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure

Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political…

www.thetransmitter.org

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

Yes but in many cases even a txt file of timestamped lines is enough.

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

#opensource #python #openscience #neuroskyence #machinelearning #neuroai

Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

🔧 Logis - turn your git history into a searchable scientific log.

The `@commit` decorator auto-commits your code when your experiment runs - with metadata in the message.

Then you can find previous results by querying for commits with (e.g.) metrics.accuracy > 0.9.

github.com/flywhl/logis

GitHub - flywhl/logis: Turn your git commit history into a scientific log

Turn your git commit history into a scientific log - flywhl/logis

github.com

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

This is part of @flywhl.dev, an initiative building devtools for science.

Join our Discord: discord.gg/kTkF2e69fH

We've also made a "Call for Problems" in the workflow of computational science, which helps us decide what to build next: flywhl-ideas.notion.site

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

Now, you can search your commit history to find good results and the associated code state.

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

Then when your experiment runs, logis will commit your code for you, with a nice commit message and experiment metadata at the bottom.

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

Or use the (work-in-progress) implicit API, where logis finds your parameters/metrics in the arguments and return value.

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

The SDK is similar to Weights & Biases, just add relevant data to your experiment's run.

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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · Feb 16

🔧 Logis - turn your git history into a searchable scientific log.

The `@commit` decorator auto-commits your code when your experiment runs - with metadata in the message.

Then you can find previous results by querying for commits with (e.g.) metrics.accuracy > 0.9.

github.com/flywhl/logis

GitHub - flywhl/logis: Turn your git commit history into a scientific log

Turn your git commit history into a scientific log - flywhl/logis

github.com

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