Top all-time · #20580
CRIME De-Coder
Company blog · crimede-coder.com/blogposts · on HN as apwheeledataprogramming
CRIME De-Coder is the company blog at crimede-coder.com, writing about data and programming. Since 2023, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 40 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for posts on Python crime analysis, including an early-release data science book and a guide to large language models for analysts. Comments concern a PDF embed that fails to load and site navigation, not the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
CRIME De-Coder provides crime analysis consulting: program evaluation, predictive analytics, process automation, workload analysis, and training for police agencies.
Most-linked posts?
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-02
What Hacker News says?
This example could be all javascript (and I try to do that in some scenarios). Most of the other demo's on my site are just javascript/D3 or other libraries even with some slightly more advanced metrics, https://crimede-coder.com/demos . There are some cases in which I do want python numerical libraries though. Say I wanted to do a forecast ARIMA model based on arbitrary combined inputs for the graphs, or do differe…
Comment linking /demos
on “PyScript: An open source platform for Python in the browser”Submitted Why I Wrote Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python (2023) as a story · 123 points
HN discussionFor folks interested in seeing a usecase, I have a panel dashboard of Dallas crime statistics at: https://crimede-coder.com/graphs/Dallas_Dashboard Startup takes around a minute (which includes installing various python libraries + loading an external 5mb dataset). But once up and running it is quite responsive. (And works fine on my iphone.) Many businesses I work with use Tableau free versions, and just manually u…
Comment linking /graphs/Dallas_Dashboard
on “PyScript: An open source platform for Python in the browser”Submitted Notes on Crime Trends in the US as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI have a question I ask people I interview now for data science jobs -- can you run a python hello world from the command line? A non-trivial number of people who say they have multiple years of data science + python experience do not know how to do this! People need to know how to write functions to write professional software, not just put a soup together of notebook cells. Disagree with Matt even that they won't…
Comment linking /blogposts/2023/EarlyReleasePython
on “Show HN: Briefer – Multiplayer notebooks with schedules, SQL, and built-in LLMs”Submitted Regulating tech companies like banks as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor a newer list I would add the mapbox API as well. So I work in data analytics, not so much web-mapping. For those applications, IMO local solutions, like ESRI, are good options if you are limited to addresses in the US, https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2024/LocalGeocoding . Googles TOS was that you can't even cache the results, https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms . So saving to a database and doing an…
Comment linking /blogposts/2024/LocalGeocoding
on “Geocoding APIs compared: Pricing, free tiers and terms of use”Submitted A graph is worth 1000 tables as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI am not a fan of the kernel density estimators with a continuous color ramp (at least this map the KDE does not recalculate on zoom, that is pretty much worthless). Currently the UI on the left returns all empty images for me, https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/re068bj1vnaitsoh59x27/NoImage... I rather enjoy using either points directly (and for dense point maps use leaflet's cluster markers), or actual outlined areas…
Comment linking /graphs/DurhamHotspots
on “Show HN: Play with an interactive heatmap of SF crime (and other cities)”Submitted Finding Outliers in Proportions as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNot an open source, but I discuss it in my book with examples for OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini, https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2026/LLMsForMortals . All of the models, you need to have a consistent input to get the cache hit. So if you are chatting with a document, and change the system prompt, it will be a cache miss, even if the rest of the items are all the same. If you even pass in the document in not the same o…
Comment linking /blogposts/2026/LLMsForMortals
on “Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber”Submitted Police Departments should share crime data as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIn the same page you quote, https://crimede-coder.com/services/PredictiveAnalytics , the next sentence states "CRIME De-Coder has developed methodology to make predictive analytics more fair and racially equitable (Circo & Wheeler, 2022; Wheeler, 2020)." In terms of turn inward, check out the work I have done on early intervention systems (to identify problematic officers), https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2024/E…
Comment linking /blogposts/2024/EIS
on “Why I Wrote Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python (2023)”Submitted How well did LLMs for Mortals hold up 6 months after publishing as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"Plug-in could not be loaded". Reminded me of the good old Java Applets / ActiveX days. `<object data="/images/DS_PythonCrimeAnalysis_EarlyRelease.pdf" width="100%" height="500"></object>` is causing that problem. Here's the link: https://crimede-coder.com/images/DS_PythonCrimeAnalysis_Earl...
Comment linking /images/DS_PythonCrimeAnalysis_EarlyRelease.pdf
on “Why I Wrote Data Science for Crime Analysis with Python (2023)”Submitted Confidence in Classification Using LLMs and Conformal Sets as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI have a similar background, and I just use a $5 a month Hostinger plan that manages the PHP server and I am quite happy with it. So it is just keeping my server side secrets in PHP in a way that makes sense. Now, this does not allow me to say do python web-apps (that are not WASM). Hostinger has VPS for quite cheap I would consider if I needed that (if AWS lambda does not make sense, I did a python google cloud app…
Comment linking /graphs/Dallas_Dashboard
on “Ask HN: How to secure website for public launch”Submitted Large Language Models for Mortals book released as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhile this is true, it is still possible to take the probabilities and make determinations of recall and false positives using conformal sets, https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2026/ConfClassification (Or just use a model to re-calibrate the probabilities, I like the conformal approach though as those rates are what I often care about.) You just need some labelled data to generate the "corrected" probabilities (or…
Comment linking /blogposts/2026/ConfClassification
on “Jev Can't Be Calibrated”Submitted LLMs for Mortals 6 months later as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK | Remote | Raleigh, NC, USA PhD (in criminal justice), and with my background mostly focus on mathematical modeling in the public sector. This includes program analysis (I did X and want to see if it made Y go down), forecasting/machine-learning (I have won several prediction competitions by NASA/NIJ), and optimal allocation (integer linear programming, GIS, and network algorithms). Doing this work you…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2024)”Submitted Filtering Secrets from Coding Agents with a Hook as a story · 1 points
HN discussionJust released a new book on using the foundation model APIs, https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2026/LLMsForMortals , Large Language Models for Mortals: A Practical Guide for Analysts with Python. Up to date and has examples for all of the major foundation model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and AWS Bedrock). Goes through basics of calling the API, structured outputs, RAG, and MCP/Agents. Also has a chapter…
Comment linking /blogposts/2026/LLMsForMortals
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)”Submitted Using local LLM models vs. APIs as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSo I agree with the general geist of this, a few counter-examples though: If you have the raw log-probs, I show how to use conformal inference to set false-positive or recall rates, https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2026/ConfClassification Some of the peer reviewed papers with the older models did show calibration was bad (not close to monotonic). This post with newer models (for one example, classifiying injuries…
Comment linking /blogposts/2026/ConfClassification
on “Don't ask an LLM for a confidence score”Submitted Large Language Models for Mortals: A Practical Guide for Analysts with Python as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf I may shamelessly suggest my own book for those looking for a more basic intro to calling the APIs, including a chapter devoted to agentic patterns across the different SDKs (openai, claude, and google), https://crimede-coder.com/blogposts/2026/LLMsForMortals . Basically I wanted to write a book that did not spend the majority of time on training LLM and architecture, as it is just not relevant to the majority of…
Comment linking /blogposts/2026/LLMsForMortals
on “The Hitchhiker's Guide to Agentic AI”Submitted We don't know what causes wide spread crime trends as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe map to view directly is here, https://crimede-coder.com/graphs/DurhamHotspots I made a video to discuss several of the cartographic decisions in making an interactive hotspot map of crime in Durham, NC. Discussion includes hover functionality (so you can see underneath the area), popups vs tooltips, and clustermarkers in leaflet for dense point patterns and being able to interact with overlapping points.
Comment linking /graphs/DurhamHotspots
on “Cartographic decisions on a leaflet hotspot of crime map [video]”Submitted Is gun shot detection tech worth the cost? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion