📚ML Practitioner’s Guide to Fine-Tuning Language Models

🦾Plus: ‍📊 Anthropic brings Claude directly into Excel

October 28, 2025

Hey folks! Let’s get into Big Data and AI craziness…

In today's edition: What's Shaping the Future of Data?

  • 🏗️ Data Engineering Services Strategies

  • 🌙Moonshot AI releases Kimi CLI Agent written 100% in Python

  • 🧠Thinking Machines’ On-policy Distillation combines RL and SFT

  • đź’°Open Claude Sonnet-level Agent that’s 92% Cheaper

  • đź’ľ AMD wins $1B AI supercomputer agreement

  • ⚡ AI Startup powering ChatGPT hits $10B

  • đź’ˇ AI Tutorial:Build a 30-day plan with Manus 1.5 to achieve any goal

  • 🤖 AI Tools and Data Tools to checkout

In this article, you will learn when fine-tuning large language models is warranted, which 2025-ready methods and tools to choose, and how to avoid the most common mistakes that derail projects. This guide is for practitioners who want results, not just theory. You’ll learn when fine-tuning makes sense, which methods to use, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

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Data engineering services have evolved into a critical pillar of enterprise strategy. They empower businesses to manage massive datasets, optimize decisions, and uncover hidden insights. In 2025, companies that leverage big data engineering services are achieving faster innovation, stronger operational efficiency, and a data-driven edge over their competitors.

Moonshot AI has released Kimi CLI AI agent for your terminal, built entirely in Python -an interesting departure from the Rust and Go implementations we've seen lately. It handles coding tasks, doubles as a shell with mode switching via Ctrl-K, and ships with both Agent Client Protocol (communication between agents and IDEs) and MCP support out of the box..

Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines has released another very interesting study on on-policy distillation, a training method that blends the strengths of reinforcement learning and distillation. Instead of only imitating a teacher or only learning from end rewards, it samples outputs directly from a student model, then uses a larger teacher model to grade every single token, essentially providing real-time feedback on which reasoning steps went wrong, not just whether the final answer was correct.

A compact model that matches frontier intelligence while burning 92% less cash per API call just dropped with full open weights. Shanghai-based MiniMax has released MiniMax-M2, an open-source 230-billion-parameter MoE model that activates only 10 billion parameters during inference, delivering Claude Sonnet-level intelligence at 8% of the price with roughly 2x the speed.

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👨‍💻 Data Tools, Libraries

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AI News:

Anthropic just released Claude for Excel in beta, letting users interact with the AI assistant through a sidebar that can read, analyze, and modify spreadsheets, alongside new connectors and Skills for the financial industry. The integration allows Claude to explain spreadsheets, fix formulas, populate templates with new data, or build new workbooks from scratch.

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OpenAI just rolled out major updates to GPT-5 designed to better recognize and respond to users experiencing mental health emergencies, after consulting with over 170 mental health professionals across dozens of countries.

Odyssey just launched Odyssey-2, a new interactive video model that generates streaming AI footage at 20 frames per second, allowing users to shape and control multi-minute videos through text prompts as they explore the scene. Unlike other video models that take minutes to produce short clips, Odyssey-2 streams footage immediately, with new frames appearing every 50 milliseconds.

AMD has signed a $1B partnership with the US Department of Energy to build two AI supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, with Oracle and HPE to build systems for scientific research and national security. Lux will arrive in early 2026 as the nation's first dedicated "AI Factory" for training and deploying foundation models for scientific discovery.

Mercor, which connects AI labs like OpenAI with domain experts for training their foundational AI models, has raised $350M at a $10B valuation. Felicis Ventures is leading this round, with Benchmark, General Catalyst, and Robinhood Ventures also participating.

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AI Tutorial

🗓️ Build a 30-day plan with Manus 1.5 to achieve any goal

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Manus 1.5 to reverse-engineer any goal into a 30-day execution plan with daily inputs, then import it directly to Google Calendar as a color-coded schedule.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to manus.im, select "Agent" mode (not standard chat) to enable autonomous file outputs and planning capabilities

  2. Craft a detailed prompt: "Reverse-engineer [$X goal] into a 30-day execution plan with time-blocked daily inputs. Color-code by priority: 🔴Outreach 🟠Content 🟡Fulfillment 🟢Community 🔵Planning. Output calendar-ready ICS file in EST timezone"

  3. Submit and let Manus generate your files: 30-day markdown plan, daily checklist, ICS calendar file, and summary with power hours and weekly anchors

  4. Download the ICS file, open Google Calendar, click "+" under "Other calendars", select "Import", choose your ICS file, and destination calendar

  5. Review your imported calendar with color-coded, time-blocked daily inputs ready to execute

Pro tip: If daily quotas feel off, tweak inputs in the prompt (e.g., raise follow-ups, reduce content time) and regenerate a new .ics. Inputs drive outcomes.

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  9. Data Analyst AI connects Google Analytics with ChatGPT, delivering AI-powered eCommerce insights and automated weekly reports.

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