index.md (2950B)
1 --- 2 title: "Weeknote for 2025-W09" 3 description: "Parallel purrr, ethics of LLMs, and fed news" 4 date: 2025-02-24T07:59:00-08:00 5 draft: false 6 categories: 7 - Weeknotes 8 --- 9 10 ## Purrr goes parallel 11 12 Literally the only thing I miss from my days of programming MATLAB is 13 [parfor](https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/parfor.html), which made it 14 dead simple to massively hasten slow but parallelizable algorithms. I've 15 written parallel code in other languages, but nothing has been as easy as 16 replacing `for` with `parfor`. The new `.parallel` option in purrr's `map` 17 functions looks to change that. This feature is only available in the 18 development version of the package---I wouldn't depend on this until it's in 19 CRAN, personally---but it's an exciting development. 20 21 [Parallelization in 22 purrr](https://purrr.tidyverse.org/dev/reference/parallelization.html) 23 24 ## The ethics of using LLMs 25 26 I appreciate this essay on the ethical use of LLMs. I think it covers the main 27 points that [LLM critics]({{< ref "/posts/coding-assistants" >}}) have with the 28 current crop of models: their damage to the environment, use of training data 29 gathered without consent, inaccuracy and bias, and impact of the balance of 30 power between the working class and the wealthy. I don't agree with the 31 author's conclusion---I believe the use of the foundation models that exist 32 today is unambiguously unethical[^future]---but this post is a good treatment 33 on the topic, and worth sharing with folks who haven't even _considered_ the 34 ethics of the new technology. 35 36 [Can I ethically use LLMs?](https://ntietz.com/blog/can-i-ethically-use-llms/) 37 38 ## What's new in the federal government 39 40 Apparently a new inflammatory email was sent out by Musk's 41 [OPM](https://www.opm.gov/) on Saturday (02-22), but I have yet to see it since 42 I don't work on weekends. Maybe I'll have something to say about it next week. 43 In the meantime, I actually had a regular week with one noteworthy and 44 wholesome experience: one of my junior colleagues walked me through setting up 45 VS Code so that I could become familiar with the tooling that most people are 46 using these days. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft and I [love my editor]({{< ref 47 "/posts/vim" >}}), so I've always used the first point of friction I 48 encountered as an excuse to abandon VS Code the previous times I've looked at 49 it. But it's good to learn new things and this was a great chance for my 50 colleague to flex their skills. We'll soon be involved in an effort to help 51 retrain SAS programmers in Python, so choosing the most popular editor seems 52 like the safe and boring choice---in a domain where safe and boring is the way 53 to go. 54 55 [AP: Key federal agencies refuse to comply with Musk’s latest demand in his 56 cost-cutting 57 crusade](https://apnews.com/article/musk-federal-workers-trump-demand-firings-06553df358086db05917d3c50f3699d6) 58 59 [^future]: I won't reject the possibility that an "ethical" large language 60 model might exist someday.