Lead developer of Splink. Data scientist at Ministry of Justice. Trustee, GiveDirectly UK. Pledgee, givingwhatwecan.org. All views my own.
Joined January 2013
- Tweets 655
- Following 918
- Followers 764
- Likes 2,754
53 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
24 Jul 2024
Pleased to announce the release of Splink version 4.0.0 today. It's now:
👩‍🔬 Easier to use
🚀 Faster
⚡ More scalable
🛠️ Easier to improve
For the uninitiated, Splink is a free library for record linkage and deduplication at scale
See 🧵 for links and more
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Arithmetic annihilation - a tower defence game for primary school kids to learn maths. (Same as vocab annihilation but with maths)
Works on mobile and desktop.
rupertlinacre.com/arithmetic…
For best experience on mobile, install as an app ('add to home screen' from Chrome)
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My free letterpaths library now has:
- A freehand writing app for use with stylus
- Print and pre-cursive worksheet generation
- A font (.otf, .ttf, .woff2) that you can use in desktop apps e.g. Word or on web
- Capital letters
- Kerning between each letter pair set manually
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Robin Linacre retweeted
Jun 2
We just launched Sites into Codex!
Software creation was always about more than writing code. Sites in Codex fundamentally gives the power of end-to-end software creation to every user, no matter their technical fluency.
These Sites are fully deployed to a URL, private to workspaces, come with authentication, can have static files, and can store dynamic data in databases.
It is in preview for business and enterprise teams and will be rolling out to all workspaces over the next day. Give it a try by typing @ Sites into Codex and ask it to build anything!
This project took a massive amount of effort across hundreds of people at OpenAI - proud that we were able to get this out and excited to see what you all build with it!
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For those having to adjust to the new pricing in VS Code Copilot, here's an interactive chart showing (roughly) the relative usage-based cost of different models
robinlinacre.com/relative_co…
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May 18
New blog: Optimising DuckDB performance on large EC2 instances. A few simple changes can make workloads run multiple times faster:
- Fewer threads can result in higher performance
- Pay careful attention to disk I/O
- Experiment with how to write data to S3
Link in 🧵
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Apr 28
Continuing on my search for good game mechanics for maths games for kids. This one is a lane crossing game:
rupertlinacre.com/number_lan…
This seems to work well because it's fun (at least accordingly to my 7yo), but there's no time pressure to answer the questions.
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Apr 21
Introducing letterpaths 1.0, free software for teaching cursive writing. Blog w/ examples, videos worksheet generator:
robinlinacre.com/letterpaths…
As far as I can tell, this is the best free and open source library for building handwriting tools according the the UK curriculum
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Apr 21
@AlKingsley_Edu good example of what one person can do in a few days work with AI assistance
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Robin Linacre retweeted
During week 2 of AiG Month, you can look forward to:
đź”— "Splink and uk_address_matcher" @MoJGovUK
đź’· "Investment for growth - a practitioner's perspective" AiG Award winner Eva Grace
🤖 "Laurium and AI" @MoJGovUK @GORS_UK
🎟 Book now 👉 eventbrite.co.uk/cc/analysis…
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Apr 14
As capabilities have improved, I am increasingly sceptical of the description of LLMs as a 'calculator for words', and the idea that they excel at semantics, because their rate of improvement in these areas seems extremely modest in comparison to things like coding and tool use
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Apr 12
@thsottiaux Codex is freeing me from monthly subs, and ad-infected apps. I get to choose exactly what my kids see and do in their learning tools. Entering era of personalised software. Links in 🧵. All free open source.
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Apr 12
Letter constellations:
robinlinacre.com/letter_cons…
Countries quiz:
rupertlinacre.com/country_qu…
Snake cursive writing:
robinlinacre.com/letterpaths…
Bee letters:
robinlinacre.com/bee_letters
Code: github.com/robinL/
github.com/rupertlinacre/
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Here's an example of how my `letterpaths` library can be used to power a game, intended for phones/other touchscreen devices
Game:
robinlinacre.com/letterpaths…
Code:
github.com/RobinL/letterpath…
The game can be installed as an android app so it can be used fullscreen. It's free open source
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Developing a cursive writing typescript library capable of powering educational apps. It's free an open source and has:
- Geometry for each letter
- Algorithm for joining letters
- Algorithm for animating cursive writing
- Algorithm for tracing/path finding
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It's up to consumer to decide how to render, but basic demo of rendering is here:
robinlinacre.com/letterpaths…
Source code:
github.com/RobinL/letterpath…
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WIP/still rough edges and a bit more work needed on geometry. No capitals/punctuation etc. yet, and no support for precursive/cursive distinction. But prob good enough to be useful
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Mar 22
The country quiz now has:
- Capital cities mode
- Single continent mode
- 'What country is highlighted' mode
- More detailed borders
- 4k mode, with much bigger map
- Choice of map projection
Access via options menu.
rupertlinacre.com/country_qu…
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Mar 22
Amazing that in a few hours, it possible to build one of the best versions of this on the web. I'm somewhat optimistic that we'll see more things like this, and for people who care they'll be easier to find, so we won't have to put up with ads/monetisation/spam in edu tools.
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