Four years ago, I got frustrated constantly switching between different languages and packages just to get my data analysis work done. So, I built @nshiab/simple-data-analysis. It's an easy-to-use, high-performance library for tabular, geospatial, and vector data. 🧵 (1/3)
The city of Garden Grove in CA has an active chemical emergency right now, and they posted an evacuation map that's obviously created with AI And honestly, it looks great. Can't imagine being in a time crunch to get something like this out. ggcity.org/emergency
I released the first alpha of Datasette Agent - a conversational AI assistant for Datasette that can answer questions about data in SQLite databases, and can be extended with plugins to add extra tools and features You can watch a demo video or try it out yourself on agent.datasette.io
On Friday, I’ll be revisiting the session I led at NICAR, *Enhancing public records work with LLMs*. I’ll show off some workflows that combine LLM tools with @documentcloud.org and @muckrock.com. If you missed it at NICAR, now's your chance! Registration: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Building with MuckRock. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.
Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Building with MuckRock. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.
us02web.zoom.us
Join us this Friday and explore Python libraries for the MuckRock Requests and DocumentCloud APIs, and how they can be used with large language models (LLMs) to streamline records requests and assist in analyzing responsive documents. buff.ly/snxwvd1
Building with MuckRock
Miss this session at NICAR 2026? Join this session of Building with MuckRock!
us02web.zoom.us
re the tanstack hack: It took a lot of digging but I finally found a good summary of "here's what we're doing to avoid this in the future" Also TIL about zizmor, a CLI that statically analyzes github action YAML for security vulns, with autofix support! news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4810...
![We had a few revisions of the postmortem with this included, but ultimately felt premature to include given how quickly we released this notice.
That's not to say that we're not working hard on preventative work, however. We:
- [x] Temporarily removed the cache from our PNPM setup
- [x] Removed all caches from GitHub Actions
- [x] Locked down all GitHub actions on the org to commit IDs instead of version numbers
- [x] Enforced non-SMS GitHub 2FA (NPM & GitHub 2FA was already enforced, but SMS was previously allowed)
- [x] Removed all usage of `pull_request_target` from our CI pipeline (already wasn't in our CD)
- [ ] Are introducing `zizmor` as action linting to every repo via a PR check
- [ ] Are likely introducing `CODEOWNERS` on `.github` folders to restrict merging to only the 7 core maintainers
- [ ] Will replace the PNPM setup cache with `actions/cache/restore`, which has more secure defaults
- [ ] Will replace the PNPM setup cache to be isolated between release and PR envs
- [ ] May close the ability to make a TanStack PR as an external contributor (But we're absolutely not going closed source)
We'll have a follow-up blog post that outlines all of this and how maintainers are able to secure themselves simiarly.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fjqvlcfakpht4exffejyfc25/bafkreifrla6pjvry3yekvvzbk523ffjpkxfuhldlbd6iiotl7phjref5hu)
Happy #FECFilingDay ! If you're a journalist/researcher covering today's filings, consider my `libfec` CLI tool to make your life a bit easier! Learn how to use libfec for bulk exports, live updates from the FEC RSS feed, and alerting on individual donations! alexgarcia.xyz/blog/2026/li...
Using libfec for FEC Filing Days, April 2026 Edition
A short guide on using the libfec CLI to cover today's FEC filing deadline
alexgarcia.xyz
Big thanks to everyone who came to my #NICAR26 session for libfec last week, it was a lot of fun! NICAR is the only place where you can chat about federal campaign finance data and actually enjoy it... It wasn't recorded, but I made a video version of it here! youtu.be/UdkQ5HEiF20
Introduction to libfec! (NICAR26 re-record)
YouTube video by Alex Garcia
youtu.be
I will be at #NICAR26 this week teaching classes! For campaign finance folks: come to my Thursday 11:30am class on libfec, a new fast CLI tool for working with FEC data! Also get limited-edition libfec stickers + a campfin "zine"! (Bonus: find @simonwillison.net and I for Datasette stickers)
Wow, never noticed that the SQLite docs have a sponsor message. Added in November of last year sqlite.org/cli.html
One trick with this, using libfec + SQLite: - "Hollywood Democrats" has raised $216k in 2 years, treasurer is Benjamin Eisenberg - Has spent $88.5k (~40%) on "General Campaign Fundraising" exclusively to "Summit Campaign Strategies" - "Summit Campaign Strategies" is owned by... Benjamin Eisenberg
Datasette 1.0a20 is out, with an entirely new SQL-powered permissions system. This is by far the most ambitious project I've attempted with the help of coding agents (Claude Code and Codex CLI) - notes on how it works and what I learned along the way: simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/4/d...
A new SQL-powered permissions system in Datasette 1.0a20
Datasette 1.0a20 is out with the biggest breaking API change on the road to 1.0, improving how Datasette’s permissions system works by migrating permission logic to SQL running in SQLite. …
simonwillison.net
New blog post: I've been working on a new parser for the Federal Election Commission's custom `.fec` file format. Written in Rust, completely open source, and the fastest FEC file parser out there. If you ever work with federal campaign finance data, check it out! alexgarcia.xyz/blog/2025/in...
I'm working on libfec, a new FEC file parser and CLI tool
Parse federal campaign filings
alexgarcia.xyz
Love this approach for seeing if ChatGPT is used in a document: See if `utm_source=chatgpt.com` appears in any URLs. Doesn't prove that ChatGPT wrote it, but at least shows they used ChatGPT when researching.
![Screenshot from article that says:
A paragraph on page 29 also cites a fact to a 2024 Gothamist article, and includes the site where the source was generated: ChatGPT.
[23] https://gothamist.com/news/heres-what-nycs-mayoral-candidates-say-about-freezing-the-rent?
utm_source=chatgpt.com](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fjqvlcfakpht4exffejyfc25/bafkreigo5lrrcbmxtetlxykg2hdjttxxf7zexatzhngtycojzxdjy5rkwe)
Hell Gate *subscribe today!*@hellgatenyc.com · last yr.NEW: Andrew Cuomo used ChatGPT to help write the housing plan he released this weekend, which included several nonsensical passages. The plan even cites to ChatGPT on a section about the Rent Guidelines Board. hellgatenyc.com/andrew-cuomo...
Great guide here by Ed for using sqlite-vec + OpenAI embeddings in a RAG system! Includes great use of the new auxiliary columns feature for storing metadata (further evidence that the LA tech scene is elite)
Ed Izaguirre@handle.invalid · 2y agoFinally got around to publishing part two of my series on SQLite and RAG! Includes full code walkthrough and repo access. Definitely the simplest way to do RAG. Uses sqlite-vec. Thank @alexgarcia.xyz! losangelesaiapps.com/retrieval-au...
NEW BLOG POST: Been testing out 20 LLMs at extracting data from political fundraising emails. See the process and results here: thescoop.org/archives/202...
LLM Extraction Challenge: Fundraising Emails – Derek Willis
Academic and journalist
thescoop.org
Please merge my +321,000 line PR, it's only a few small changes 🥺
If you're interested in embeddings and SQLite you should be paying attention to sqlite-vec Lots of neat stuff in this release - and the blog post provides a very clear explanation of what it can do
Alex Garcia@alexgarcia.xyz · 2y agosqlite-vec v0.1.6 is now out, with metadata support! SQLite vector search w/ metadata filters 👀 - Perform extra filtering w/ WHERE clause in KNN queries - Internally shard vector indexes with partition keys - Aux columns for easy lookups read more: alexgarcia.xyz/blog/2024/sq...
sqlite-vec v0.1.6 is now out, with metadata support! SQLite vector search w/ metadata filters 👀 - Perform extra filtering w/ WHERE clause in KNN queries - Internally shard vector indexes with partition keys - Aux columns for easy lookups read more: alexgarcia.xyz/blog/2024/sq...
sqlite-vec now supports metadata columns and filtering
Metadata, partition key, and auxiliary column support in sqlite-vec
alexgarcia.xyz
metadata filtering has been merged in sqlite-vec. Release coming soon!
Next week I'll be hosting a sqlite-vec online event about metadata filtering, which is coming VERY soon — come through! Wednesday November 20th at 10am PST, in the @mozilla.ai Discord (will be recorded) discord.gg/4ZMAgmrwqf?e...
Join the Mozilla AI Discord Server!
A global space for sharing and advancing open-source AI. | 3420 members
discord.gg
