606: quantum of sollazzo
#606: quantum of sollazzo – 13 May 2025
The data newsletter by @puntofisso.
Hello, regular readers and welcome new ones :) This is Quantum of Sollazzo, the newsletter about all things data. I am Giuseppe Sollazzo, or @puntofisso. I've been sending this newsletter since 2012 to be a summary of all the articles with or about data that captured my attention over the previous week. The newsletter is and will always (well, for as long as I can keep going!) be free, but you're welcome to become a friend via the links below.
After a month away, I'm back. I was on holiday in South America (a long-postponed, almost expired reward flight) and I'm now fully back until at least August. I've learnt that my survival-level Spanish is not too bad (in South America; while in Spain... forget about it); my survival-level Portuguese is definitely not. Saudade.
The most clicked link last issue was this very visual analysis of homelessness in San Francisco. This week offers a slightly longer Quantum, with links that I read while travelling.
It's AMA o'clock! This is the Quantum of Sollazzo Ask Me Anything section.
AMA – Ask Me Anything by submitting a question via this anonymous Google form. If there are many questions, I'll select a few every 4-5 weeks and answer them on here :-) Don't be shy!
The Quantum of Sollazzo grove now has 30 trees. It helps managing this newsletter's carbon footprint. Check it out at Trees for Life.
'till next week,
Giuseppe @puntofisso.bsky.social
🆕 NEW: Things that caught my attention
A team at the University of Edinburgh published an interesting evaluation of the NHS AI Lab, where I worked 2020-2023. While I'm proud of what we achieved in the AI Skunkworks team by fostering a co-design method that wasn't just "doing AI" but learning how to use it properly, removing the "magic" out of it, the Lab's success was deemed as patchy. However, there are some brilliant lessons learned that the report shares, and I'd recommend reading to anyone who wants to initiate any form of R&D programme. Start here for some media coverage.
Nael Shiab of Radio Canada, a computational journalist who's been on my radar for some time, has published an amazing online course called "Code Like a Journalist". It includes both text and video.
My friend Ben Proctor "has been collating a weekly list of data job opportunities in nonprofits. Ben distributes these through a newsletter you can have delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday." The clever people at Data Orchard have "delved into Ben’s jobs data a few times now to see what it can tell us about the changing job market".
✨ Topical
The Naughty Words the FAA Removed From the Sky
"New FOIA records from the FAA shed light on the frantic effort in 2015 to rename navigation waypoints related to Donald Trump and reveal the list of naughty waypoint names that were changed over the years."
You'll remember that waypoint name duplication was responsible for the grounding of UK traffic control some time ago.
Super speeders
"My first project at NYU was analyzing speed-camera data for extreme recidivism - cars racking up hundreds of violations per year."
Sharp flip in probabilities of parties winning Canada election
The charts were right.
Trump's trade war ignites brand backlash
Axios: "Anti-American sentiment abroad has been on the rise, with President Trump's unpredictable trade policies exacerbating the issue."
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🛠️📖 Tools & Tutorials
SQLite File Format Viewer
"This tool helps you explore the SQLite file format internals according to the official specification. It's designed for developers and database enthusiasts who want to understand the internal structure of SQLite database files."
svg-art
"More about SVG. Note that the example code is written in JSX (or React), not ordinary HTML."
A URL shortener that considers user privacy
Public Digital's James Steward has written about their in-house, open source URL shortener: "Public Digital isn’t usually in the business of making and running software, or of creating our own tools where simple cloud-based alternatives exist. But a few years ago, to support our Signals publications I decided to exercise those muscles and did just that. This is Public Digital’s URL shortener, a tool which preserves user privacy and is open source. I realised we’d never really explained it, so here’s the background."
OSMnx paper
Congrats to Geoff Boeing on publishing the reference paper for OSMnx, the open source python library for road network analysis based on Open Street Map. It's the library I originally used for my road colouring maps – this code of mine might still work, with some updating to more recent versions.
14 Advanced Python Features
Edward Li: "I’ve come across a lot of really interesting, underrated, unique, or (as some might say) “un-pythonic” tricks to really level up what Python can do."
Encoding Sentences as Signals: Introducing Antonine Encoding, a New NLP Paradigm
Data scientist Juliana Antoninus presents "a new family of techniques for representing natural language as structured signals." It's an interesting twist I haven't seen before: "Antonine Encoding reframes language not as a string of tokens, but as a structural waveform. This opens the door to using mature technologies from signal processing — such as spectral analysis, bandpass filtering, phase comparison, and interference modeling — to analyze and manipulate linguistic content."
Abusing DuckDB-WASM by making SQL draw 3D graphics (Sort Of)
"I had this slightly crazy idea: Could I ditch most of the conventional JavaScript game loop and rendering logic and build a 3D game engine where SQL queries did the heavy lifting? Naturally, I decided to try building a primitive, text-based Doom clone to see how far I could push it using DuckDB-WASM."
Tad
Tad is a desktop tool promising "a better way to view & analyze data." bringing together fast-viewing of csv and parquet files and pivot tables.
European alternatives for digital products
If you're based in Europe and would rather use local produce, this website will "help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products."
30 Day Chart Challenge 2025
Greg Dubrow's charting challenge results, with source code in R.
Magick images
A pretty long blog post by one of 18F's former designers showing how to use library ImageMagick to automatically generate social media link preview.
vert
Vert is a browser-based file converter that does all the conversion client-side for images, audio, and documents (videos are still done server-side).
strudel
Strudel is a "new live coding platform to write dynamic music pieces in the browser! It is free and open-source and made for beginners and experts alike."
Reservoir Sampling
"Reservoir sampling is a technique for selecting a fair random sample when you don't know the size of the set you're sampling from. By the end of this essay you will know:"
📈Dataviz, Data Analysis, & Interactive
Does Your State Have More Czech or Slovak Ancestry?
From /MapPorn, with links to the data.
If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?
London Underground Live
A live visualization of London Tube by developer Ben James, who explains it here.
SunSeekr
Funny use of ShadeMap.
(via Ollie East)
I Analyzed Chord Progressions in 680k Songs
Quite a few interesting ideas here for those of a musical persuasion.
A great job is impactful and fulfilling
A great use of visualization for self-exploration.
🤖 AI
Ask HN: Share your AI prompt that stumps every model
"I had an idea for creating a crowdsourced database of AI prompts that no AI model could yet crack (wanted to use some of them as we're adding new models to Kilo Code). I've seen a bunch of those prompts scattered across HN, so thought to open a thread here so we can maybe have a centralized location for this." A HackerNews thread. The comments involving intellectual property / copyright are interesting.
Watching o3 guess a photo’s location is surreal, dystopian and wildly entertaining
Simon Willison: "Watching OpenAI’s new o3 model guess where a photo was taken is one of those moments where decades of science fiction suddenly come to life. It’s a cross between the Enhance Button and Omniscient Database TV Tropes."
He shares the full transcript.
Artificial Intelligence 2025 Legislation
"This webpage covers key legislation related to AI issues generally. Legislation related solely to specific AI technologies, such as facial recognition, deepfakes or autonomous vehicles, is being tracked separately."
By the US-based National Conference of State Legislatures.
Book: AI Value creators
For now free to download (if you part ways with your data), this is a book published by O'Reilly but written by IBM AI "business people". It purports to be a practical guide with real stories and actionable steps, written by IBM's Rob Thomas — SVP Software & CCO, Paul Zikopoulos — VP of Skills & Enablement, and Kate Soule — Product Lead LLM Development.
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