Simon Willison's Weblog: Beats

California Brown Pelican

2026-09-29T19:47:31+00:00

California Brown Pelican, in San Francisco Green Connection #1 Expanded, US, CA

GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price

2026-09-29T18:27:48+00:00

My comment on GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price — Hacker News.

I'm a bit late with the pelicans because I was live-blogging the keynote: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/29/openai-devday-2026-liv...

Here they are for GPT-6.1-Sol: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...

They're not notably different from the GPT-6 family pelicans: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-pelicans-gr...

Photo Scrubber — local face blur & metadata removal

2026-09-29T16:45:27+00:00

Photo Scrubber — local face blur & metadata removal

Anna's Hummingbird

2026-09-28T18:23:01+00:00

Anna's Hummingbird, in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, CA, US, CA

S3 Is the Future, S3 Is the Past

2026-09-27T23:09:19+00:00

My comment on S3 Is the Future, S3 Is the Past — Hacker News.

One thing I find notable about S3 today is that, while it used to drop in price reasonably often, there hasn't been a price drop in a full decade:

2006-03-14  $0.150/GB-month
2010-11-01  $0.140/GB-month
2012-02-01  $0.125/GB-month
2012-12-01  $0.095/GB-month
2014-02-01  $0.085/GB-month
2014-04-01  $0.030/GB-month
2016-12-01  $0.023/GB-month

Today it's still $0.023/GB-month.

Bluesky reply bot checker

2026-09-27T18:41:44+00:00

Bluesky reply bot checker

Check a Bluesky account for patterns common to automated reply bots by analyzing recent posts for typing speed, posting times, engagement patterns, and other behavioral signals. The tool displays every measurement and rule so you can verify the reasoning and see example replies that triggered the most signals.

Kākāpō Party

2026-09-26T23:39:06+00:00

Kākāpō Party

Experience an interactive pixel-art celebration featuring kākāpō (New Zealand's flightless parrots) jumping and dancing to music. Click, tap, or press Space to trigger confetti bursts, balloons, streamers, and festive effects while the birds party under a disco ball with choreographed dance moves that sync to an upbeat rhythm.

Northern Gannet, Great Blue Heron, California Brown Pelican

2026-09-25T02:07:04+00:00

Northern Gannet, Great Blue Heron, California Brown Pelican, in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, CA, US, CA

New 200-800mm Canon EF lens got me my best photo of Morris yet. They really like hanging out under that sign in the harbor!

commit-rewriter 0.2

2026-09-24T20:06:53+00:00

commit-rewriter 0.2

Python web app to help rewrite your commit messages

datasette 1.0a41

2026-09-24T19:15:23+00:00

datasette 1.0a41

An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data

We just shipped support for the ugliest part of HTTP: Vary

2026-09-23T23:14:57+00:00

My comment on We just shipped support for the ugliest part of HTTP: Vary — Hacker News.

I've been wanting this from Cloudflare for years.

The classic problem here is if you do that thing where user agents that send "accept: text/html" get HTML, while user agents that don't get JSON or some other format.

This used to be impossible to deploy behind Cloudflare caching, because they ignored the Vary header on anything other than images - so you risked caching the JSON version and then serving it up to someone who was expecting HTML.

(Independent of the Cloudflare feature I ended up deciding never to use that pattern, because I prefer having URL that predictably returns HTML or JSON - I add a .json suffix to my apps to serve JSON instead.)

Gemini 3.8 TTS Playground

2026-09-23T17:12:27+00:00

Gemini 3.8 TTS Playground

Test and experiment with Google's Gemini 3.8 text-to-speech API through an interactive playground where you can compose single-voice narration or multi-speaker conversations, preview the generated audio, and explore request and response details. Save your compose settings to bookmarkable URLs for easy sharing, and generate high-quality speech synthesis powered by your Gemini API key.

Shadow roots, explained with live examples

2026-09-23T16:37:18+00:00

Shadow roots, explained with live examples

Learn about shadow DOM through interactive examples that demonstrate style encapsulation, inheritance, slots, parts, and JavaScript access. Explore how shadow roots create isolated DOM trees with private stylesheets and elements that interact with the page DOM in specific, controlled ways.

California Brown Pelican

2026-09-23T02:08:53+00:00

California Brown Pelican, in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, CA, US, CA

llm 0.36

2026-09-22T18:48:37+00:00

llm 0.36

Access large language models from the command-line