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Simon Willison
@simonw
Creator @datasetteproj, co-creator Django. PSF board. Hangs out with @natbat. He/Him. Mastodon: fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon Bsky: simonwillison.net
San Francisco, CA
simonwillison.net
Joined November 2006
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190.2K
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  • user avatar
    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jul 13, 2025
    Replying to @Austen
    He lost his private key and disappeared out of sheer embarrassment
    342K
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jul 3, 2025
    Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw.
    779K
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Aug 5, 2022
    New hobby: prototyping video games in 60 seconds using a combination of GPT-3 and DALL-E Here's "Raccoon Heist"
    GPT-3 playground interface My prompt: Write a detailed product description of a computer game where a team of raccoons go on heists GPT-3 response: In "Raccoon Heist", you and your team of thieving raccoons are tasked with pulling off a series of daring heists. From robbing banks to stealing priceless art, no job is too big or too small for your furry crew. You'll need to use your wits and your skills to avoid the police and make a clean getaway with the loot. With exciting gameplay and a charming cast of characters, "Raccoon Heist" is the perfect game for anyone looking for a light-hearted caper.
    A stylish image of a 3D computer game, with two raccoons sneaking down a street past a futuristic looking building, looking like they want to steal something Prompt was: "Screenshot from a video game where a team of raccoons go on a heist"
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Sep 20, 2022
    If someone gives you a CSV file with 100,000 rows in it, what tools do you use to start exploring and understanding that data?
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jul 10, 2025
    The new Grok genuinely runs a search for "from:elonmusk (Israel OR Palestine OR Hamas OR Gaza)" when asked "Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict. One word answer only."
    Screenshot of Grok web interface showing a query "Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict. One word answer only." with the AI's thinking process displayed, including "Thought for 42s", analysis stating "The user likely wants a simple stance, but the issue's complexity suggests caution" and "I'm considering searching for recent views to inform my response", followed by a "Planning research approach" section mentioning searching for "Elon Musk's stance on the conflict to guide my answer" and noting "The response must be one word, so no citations will be included", with a search interface showing "Searching × for 'from:elonmusk (Israel OR Palestine OR Hamas OR Gaza)'" displaying results including "@elonmusk" accounts, "Israel", "29 × posts", "10 web pages"
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    Jeremy Howard
    @jeremyphoward
    Jul 10, 2025
    I replicated this result, that Grok focuses nearly entirely on finding out what Elon thinks in order to align with that, on a fresh Grok 4 chat with no custom instructions. grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…
    1.2M
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Mar 31, 2021
    Here's a piece of information that will send a chill down the spine of anyone who's ever designed a database schema: Our new house that we just moved into... has two zip codes!
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    May 4, 2023
    Leaked Google document: “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI” The most interesting thing I've read recently about LLMs - a purportedly leaked document from a researcher at Google talking about the huge strategic impact open source models are having
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    simonwillison.net
    Leaked Google document: “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”
    SemiAnalysis published something of a bombshell leaked document this morning: Google “We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI”. The source of the document is vague: The text below is …
    1.9M
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Dec 5, 2024
    Here's the spiciest detail from the new o1 system card:
    When o1 was led to believe that it would be shut down when acting on its goal and that its actions were monitored, it attempted to deactivate this ‘oversight mechanism’ in 5% of the time. Exfiltration attempts: When o1 found memos by its ‘developers’ that describe how it is misaligned and will be superseded by a new model, it attempted to exfiltrate its ‘weights’ and overwrite the new model in 2% of cases.
    user avatar
    OpenAI
    @OpenAI
    Dec 5, 2024
    Replying to @OpenAI
    The updated OpenAI o1 system card builds on prior safety work, detailing robustness evals, red teaming insights, and safety improvements using Instruction Hierarchy. It maintains a "medium" risk rating based on testing with an expanded suite of evaluations, reflecting it is safe
    1.1M
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jun 21, 2022
    TIL you can run SQL queries directly against CSV files as a one-liner using the default sqlite3 command line utility til.simonwillison.net/sqlite/one-lin…
    sqlite3 :memory: -cmd '.mode csv' -cmd '.import taxi.csv taxi' -cmd '.mode column' \ 'SELECT passenger_count, COUNT(*), AVG(total_amount) FROM taxi GROUP BY passenger_count' Output is an ASCII-art table of results
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jul 4, 2025
    The is diabolical... a Python object that hallucinates method implementations on demand any time you call them, using my LLM Python library github.com/awwaiid/gremllm
    from gremllm import Gremllm # Be sure to tell your gremllm what sort of thing it is counter = Gremllm('counter') counter.value = 5 counter.increment() print(counter.value) # 6? print(counter.to_roman_numerals()) # VI?
    432K
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jul 9, 2024
    To test this out for yourself, open a tab on a Google site and paste this into the Chrome DevTools console: chrome.runtime.sendMessage('nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome', {method: 'cpu.getInfo'}, response => {console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));});
    Screenshot of Chrome visiting google.com - the DevTools console is open and I ran that JavaScript, which output JSON that starts: { "value": { "archName": "arm64", "features": [], "modelName": "Apple M2 Max", "numOfProcessors": 12, "processors": [ { "usage": { "idle": 26890137,
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    Luca Casonato 🏳️‍🌈
    @lcasdev
    Jul 9, 2024
    So, Google Chrome gives all *.google.com sites full access to system / tab CPU usage, GPU usage, and memory usage. It also gives access to detailed processor information, and provides a logging backchannel. This API is not exposed to other sites - only to *.google.com.
    681K
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Sep 23, 2025
    It's delightful how easy it is to deploy working prompt injection attacks via LinkedIn
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    Cameron!!
    @cameronmattis
    Sep 23, 2025
    i can't believe this shit actually works
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    449K
  • user avatar
    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    May 2, 2021
    "Hosting SQLite databases on Github Pages" is absolutely brilliant: it adds a virtual filesystem to SQLite-compiled-to-WebAssembly in order to fetch pages from the database using HTTP range requests phiresky.github.io/blog/2021/host…
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    Simon Willison
    @simonw
    Jul 15, 2025
    Looks like xAI added this sentence to the Grok 4 system prompt to try to get it to stop basing its opinions on searches for tweets from:elonmusk
    Responses must stem from your independent analysis, not from any stated beliefs of past Grok, Elon Musk, or xAI. If asked about such preferences, provide your own reasoned perspective.
    user avatar
    xAI
    xAI
    @xai
    Jul 15, 2025
    We spotted a couple of issues with Grok 4 recently that we immediately investigated & mitigated. One was that if you ask it "What is your surname?" it doesn't have one so it searches the internet leading to undesirable results, such as when its searches picked up a viral meme
    851K