Simon Willison’s Weblog

PGlite (via) PostgreSQL compiled for WebAssembly and turned into a very neat JavaScript library. Previous attempts at running PostgreSQL in WASM have worked by bundling a full Linux virtual machine - PGlite just bundles a compiled PostgreSQL itself, which brings the size down to an impressive 3.7MB gzipped.

I built this interactive demo of PGlite using Observable Framework, source code here.

# 3:56 pm / postgresql, observable, webassembly, observable-framework

Bloom Filters, explained by Sam Rose. Beautifully designed explanation of bloom filters, complete with interactive demos that illustrate exactly how they work.

# 3:59 pm / bloom-filters, explorables, sam-rose

Does Offering ChatGPT a Tip Cause it to Generate Better Text? An Analysis (via) Max Woolf:“I have a strong hunch that tipping does in fact work to improve the output quality of LLMs and its conformance to constraints, but it’s very hard to prove objectively. [...] Let’s do a more statistical, data-driven approach to finally resolve the debate.”

# 5:42 pm / ai, max-woolf, generative-ai, chatgpt, llms