Doug Turnbull
@softwaredoug.bsky.social
Search at Reddit, formerly Shopify and OpenSource Connections. Helped write Relevant Search / AI Powered Search
http://softwaredoug.com
http://softwaredoug.com
The real politik nature of the shutdown isn't about the ACA. The longer it went on, the more Trump's callous, optional actions hurt people directly, the more the electorate turned on Trump
Keeping that going is how you isolate a President who can't help but overplay every hand he's dealt
Keeping that going is how you isolate a President who can't help but overplay every hand he's dealt
November 10, 2025 at 5:07 PM
The real politik nature of the shutdown isn't about the ACA. The longer it went on, the more Trump's callous, optional actions hurt people directly, the more the electorate turned on Trump
Keeping that going is how you isolate a President who can't help but overplay every hand he's dealt
Keeping that going is how you isolate a President who can't help but overplay every hand he's dealt
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.
November 9, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.
Damn the name "Cuck Schumer" has been there all along... I can't be the first that thought of it...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...
Thune Says Deal to Reopen Government Is ‘Coming Together’
www.nytimes.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Damn the name "Cuck Schumer" has been there all along... I can't be the first that thought of it...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
👀 Animals have been assigned.
Scheduled to print fall 2026!
We have iterated on this with over 3k students (and continue to do so). We give our students access to the full draft as part of our evals course (link in bio)
Scheduled to print fall 2026!
We have iterated on this with over 3k students (and continue to do so). We give our students access to the full draft as part of our evals course (link in bio)
November 8, 2025 at 5:03 PM
👀 Animals have been assigned.
Scheduled to print fall 2026!
We have iterated on this with over 3k students (and continue to do so). We give our students access to the full draft as part of our evals course (link in bio)
Scheduled to print fall 2026!
We have iterated on this with over 3k students (and continue to do so). We give our students access to the full draft as part of our evals course (link in bio)
If an OpenAI bailout happened, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be in the context of bankruptcy restructuring (like GM in 2008 crisis). So it wouldn’t really solve anything, it would just be taxpayers buying high on a distressed asset
November 8, 2025 at 3:53 PM
If an OpenAI bailout happened, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be in the context of bankruptcy restructuring (like GM in 2008 crisis). So it wouldn’t really solve anything, it would just be taxpayers buying high on a distressed asset
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
I’m a product of big government. Everyone likes to shitpost the government. California taxpayers and the regents of the University of California saved my ass. fortune.com/2025/11/06/s...
Scott Galloway says he’s a product of big government: ‘Taking bets on unremarkable people pays off’ | Fortune
Galloway credits UCLA for his success, despite an initial rejection: “California taxpayers and the regents of the University of California saved my ass.”
fortune.com
November 7, 2025 at 2:17 PM
I’m a product of big government. Everyone likes to shitpost the government. California taxpayers and the regents of the University of California saved my ass. fortune.com/2025/11/06/s...
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
lol
November 6, 2025 at 4:47 AM
lol
AI Powered Search late tickets available.
Trey and I opened up signups to folks who missed the first class of our Maven course -which you can watch in video form - with a discount to cover missing that class:
promocode: stragglers
maven.com/search-schoo...
Trey and I opened up signups to folks who missed the first class of our Maven course -which you can watch in video form - with a discount to cover missing that class:
promocode: stragglers
maven.com/search-schoo...
AI-Powered Search: Modern Retrieval for Humans & Agents by Doug Turnbull and Trey Grainger on Maven
Learn the latest AI Search skills with the authors of "AI-Powered Search"
maven.com
November 5, 2025 at 3:27 PM
AI Powered Search late tickets available.
Trey and I opened up signups to folks who missed the first class of our Maven course -which you can watch in video form - with a discount to cover missing that class:
promocode: stragglers
maven.com/search-schoo...
Trey and I opened up signups to folks who missed the first class of our Maven course -which you can watch in video form - with a discount to cover missing that class:
promocode: stragglers
maven.com/search-schoo...
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
City of Charlottesville voters! I have seen a few posts online today about the polling place mixup and am sharing this over here for folks.
November 4, 2025 at 3:18 PM
City of Charlottesville voters! I have seen a few posts online today about the polling place mixup and am sharing this over here for folks.
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
Cville arear friends — if you have family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, your kids friends ... so and so forth... who use SNAP benefits, please make sure they know about this City Market Special
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Charlottesville City Market Offers “Harvest Special”: $20 in Free Produce for SNAP Customers. www.charlottesville.gov/civicalerts....
Charlottesville City Market Offers “Harvest Special”: $20 in Free Produce for SNAP Customers. www.charlottesville.gov/civicalerts....
Charlottesville City Market Offers “Harvest Special”: $20 in Free Produce for SNAP Customers
Charlottesville City Market is excited to announce participation in the Virginia Fresh Match “Harvest Special,” a statewide initiative providing extra support to SNAP customers and Virginia’s farmers ...
www.charlottesville.gov
November 4, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Cville arear friends — if you have family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, your kids friends ... so and so forth... who use SNAP benefits, please make sure they know about this City Market Special
Your AI chiropractor can tell you about AI Powered Search training
November 4, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Your AI chiropractor can tell you about AI Powered Search training
LLMs are not a good tool for labeling. They're a tool for feature engineering.
(Use Traditional ML w/ LLM features for the labeling)
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/11...
(Use Traditional ML w/ LLM features for the labeling)
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/11...
LLM Judges aren’t the shortcut you think
After the LLM judge hype curve crashes, what will come after?
softwaredoug.com
November 3, 2025 at 4:42 PM
LLMs are not a good tool for labeling. They're a tool for feature engineering.
(Use Traditional ML w/ LLM features for the labeling)
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/11...
(Use Traditional ML w/ LLM features for the labeling)
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/11...
Lightning Lessons on The march to Cheat at Search with *Agents* coming in Feb -- Coming Nov 17, Radu Gheorghe of Vespa.ai will share best practices on RAG chunking. Or really beyond RAG chunking :)
maven.com/p/e2a6af/bey...
maven.com/p/e2a6af/bey...
Beyond chunks - how to actually data model for RAG
In enterprise and web search, many questions are answered by separate bits of documents, yet semantics and properties of the containing entity are also important. While there's no silver bullet - beca...
maven.com
October 30, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Lightning Lessons on The march to Cheat at Search with *Agents* coming in Feb -- Coming Nov 17, Radu Gheorghe of Vespa.ai will share best practices on RAG chunking. Or really beyond RAG chunking :)
maven.com/p/e2a6af/bey...
maven.com/p/e2a6af/bey...
I've been using agents for search rerankers, this was a lot of fun to work on
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
An agent-coded search reranker
An experiment guiding an agent to code a search reranker optimized for NDCG. How badly overfit is it?
softwaredoug.com
October 20, 2025 at 1:08 PM
I've been using agents for search rerankers, this was a lot of fun to work on
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
It doesn't take much to roll your own reusable agentic loop that uses just (annotated) Python functions as tools
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
General purpose agentic loop in 40 lines of Python
Drop in any well-typed Python function; the loop builds the tool schema and wiring for you. How I build dumb demos and experiments.
softwaredoug.com
October 16, 2025 at 1:19 PM
It doesn't take much to roll your own reusable agentic loop that uses just (annotated) Python functions as tools
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
I don't know what this means
October 10, 2025 at 6:34 PM
I don't know what this means
Reposted by Doug Turnbull
EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in a 2022 interview warned supporters of reproductive rights that "one day it’s going to be your turn."
"Murder is murder. And one day it's going to be your turn."
"Murder is murder. And one day it's going to be your turn."
October 8, 2025 at 5:44 PM
EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in a 2022 interview warned supporters of reproductive rights that "one day it’s going to be your turn."
"Murder is murder. And one day it's going to be your turn."
"Murder is murder. And one day it's going to be your turn."
Surprised by the last minute signups for Cheat at Search with LLMs -- starting at 12:30PM ET! Signup below:
maven.com/softwaredoug...
maven.com/softwaredoug...
Cheat at Search with LLMs by Doug Turnbull on Maven
Learn to build LLM based query + content understanding in search
maven.com
October 8, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Surprised by the last minute signups for Cheat at Search with LLMs -- starting at 12:30PM ET! Signup below:
maven.com/softwaredoug...
maven.com/softwaredoug...
All the defenses of Jay Jones are whataboutiism (the GOP said similar bad thing, so we shouldn't hold Jones accountable). You either follow a moral principle or it’s meaningless.
Threats of political violence should be disqualifying.
Threats of political violence should be disqualifying.
October 7, 2025 at 3:51 PM
All the defenses of Jay Jones are whataboutiism (the GOP said similar bad thing, so we shouldn't hold Jones accountable). You either follow a moral principle or it’s meaningless.
Threats of political violence should be disqualifying.
Threats of political violence should be disqualifying.
I measured the impact of letting an agent drive a dumb BM25 search tool. It improves NDCG 15-30% above just BM25 in two datasets
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
Reasoning boosts search relevance 15-30%
Kicking the tires on an initial, naive agentic search with some thoughts on how it could be improved further
softwaredoug.com
October 6, 2025 at 8:06 PM
I measured the impact of letting an agent drive a dumb BM25 search tool. It improves NDCG 15-30% above just BM25 in two datasets
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...
softwaredoug.com/blog/2025/10...