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Donal Fellows

@dkf@cyberplace.social

mastodon 4.6.6

Research Software Architect for Research Software Engineering at the University of Manchester.

Tcl programmer, but also many other techs too. Lots of software automation engineering these days.

I want real AGI, not fake stuff powered by overtrained LLMs.

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11 Posts

Joined March 04, 2025

Best Language:

Tcl

Best Project:

SpiNNaker

Posts

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · Aug 03, 2026

Replying to @neilmadden@infosec.exchange

@neilmadden@infosec.exchange Python does fairly well at tracking this sort of thing via PEPs. There might be some loss from the early stages, but that seems to be often true due to nobody realising at the time that it was important to keep it. Transitioning between VCSs is a key time when there's information loss. Or when the product gets moved between companies.

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · Aug 01, 2026

Replying to @johncoxon@wandering.shop

@johncoxon@wandering.shop Nature does pretty well when you just leave it alone. Yes, there's a natural shifting of what plants do best over time, and for most of the UK, the real endpoint is forest. The sycamores invade my garden every year...

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · May 17, 2026

Replying to @dkf@cyberplace.social

@CGM@mastodon.scot But I can't do anything about that myself; I'm on other projects (in atmospheric science and materials science) because they had the need for my skills and the money to pay for my work. Comes of being an internal consultant software engineer.

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · May 17, 2026

Replying to @CGM@mastodon.scot

@CGM@mastodon.scot Exactly. It's a completely different technology direction, focused more around brain simulation. Turns out, if you simulate enough, you get something quite AI-like, except with very different limitations. I hope the team gets to investigate the key missing cell types (cortical pyramidal neurons, Purkinje neurons) as the result would have interesting applications.

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · May 12, 2026

Normally, I don't share LinkedIn junk... but this time I'll make an exception:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/congratulations-to-our-research-software-share-7459961130879193088-YKAp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABiy5lEBsYvrxI1O5NkWVzsQjhsnkVw1EvE

Congratulations to our Research Software Engineers - Andrew Rowley, Donal Fellows and Andrew Gait, a

Congratulations to our Research Software Engineers - Andrew Rowley, Donal Fellows and Andrew Gait, all part of The University of Manchester team named in the Mahowald-Mead Prize for Neuromorphic Engin

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @dkf@cyberplace.social

#2 is a whole bunch of new functions, for example: set y [expr { $x1 * erf($x2) }]

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · May 04, 2026

Two new features added to the forthcoming Tcl 9.1 today.

#1 is a way to pick items out of a list:

set bools [lfilter x $theList {string is boolean -strict $x}]

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @wyatt_h_knott@mstdn.social

@wyatt_h_knott@mstdn.social @quixoticgeek@social.v.st "Natural gas" is almost pure methane, which burns extremely cleanly and efficiently. Propane has a higher proportion of carbon, and lower of hydrogen, but also burns cleanly (with a somewhat different configuration of burner due to needing more oxygen per unit volume of gas).

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · Mar 08, 2026

@rayckeith@techhub.social Don't think of him as Batman. Think of him as more like Lex Luthor. He even looks the part.

techhub.social

Third Foundation (@rayckeith@techhub.social) - TechHub

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · Mar 08, 2026

They perform projections in a (very!) high-order smooth differentiable space. For problems which that describes, they work excellently. But when the problem doesn't fit that pattern, they're not so great. (The underlying math of hypersurfaces doesn't require differentiability, but the training algorithm guarantees it.)

Public LLMs have an awfully large training dataset. Much bigger than you think.

Donal Fellows @dkf@cyberplace.social · Feb 03, 2026

Replying to @tauon@possum.city

@tauon @eloy On some platforms, you can use the Outlook application instead of the web app. Not that that's meaningfully better. I really miss being able to use Thunderbird.

Donal Fellows

Posts

Congratulations to our Research Software Engineers - Andrew Rowley, Donal Fellows and Andrew Gait, a

Third Foundation (@rayckeith@techhub.social) - TechHub

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