Working Remote

Thu Apr 09 2020

Last week I watched my professor drone on for seven hours about computer circuitry. As my eyes struggled to stay open as he babbled about SR-latches, I wondered: what sequence of dreadful mistakes did I make to land myself in this situation. I got through my entire college career without pulling a single all-nighter, yet that night changed it all.

Although I could have followed along with the lecture material during the regular class time, remote learning made a tantalizing temptation to procrastinate and binge two and a half weeks of lecture material in one night –two nights before the exam. Ironically, I ended up doing remarkably well on that exam and felt prepared for every question; nerveless, it still begs the question… Why? After asking around, I found that all eight of my friends taking the class also binged the lecture videos before the exam.

Read More »

College Cookbook Part 2

Tue Jan 28 2020

Following up on the college cook book that I wrote a year ago, I wanted to “open source” some of my current obsessions. I am going to highlight three recipes that are quintessential for college students because they are easy to prepare ahead of time, transportable, and are high in energy. The combination of these three recipes makes a long day on campus a breeze.

1 Cold Brew Coffee

Cold brew coffee is currently a major fad because it is less acidic than normal coffee, high in caffeine, lasts around 2 weeks in the fridge, and tastes sweeter than normal coffee. I am a major coffee fanatic, but, buying coffee on campus is expensive and the lines are long in the morning. Cold brew is great for college students because you can make it weeks in advance and easily transport it anywhere on campus.

1.1 Ingredients

coarsely ground coffee
container (most people use mason jars)
filtered water
coffee sweeteners

1.2 Preparation

Read More »

2019 in Review

Tue Dec 31 2019

Following the tradition I started last year, I’m making a quick “year in review” blog post. At this point year in review posts are cliché, however, I want to continue the tradition because reflection helps me move forward with a focused vision on what is important. I’m going to chunk this into semesters because that is how my college brain thinks right now.

1 Spring Semester

During the spring semester, I was on CO-OP at RIT doing research.

1.1 Talks Given

Intro to R
Graph Databases
Adversarial Networks in Cyber Security
How Hackers use Genetic Algorithms to Develop Malware

1.2 Favorite Blog Posts Written

1.3 RIT Datafest

Read More »

Responsible Optimization

Fri Nov 15 2019

Clive Thompson a very prominent technical author came to Rochester on November fifteenth to talk about the “Problems of Efficient Coding”. Going into this talk, I expected it to go along the lines of how making super “efficient” code often results in code that nobody understands and is hard to maintain. To my pleasant surprise, Clive Thompson provided a nuanced discussion around the cultural problems created when we try to optimize every problem using technology.

To understand Clive’s point, he used Facebook as a prime example of this problem. Before the Facebook feed system, the web largely acted like a blog where people had to actively reach out to everyone’s page to get content. Right after Facebook implemented the feed system there was a big debacle where nearly 20% of Facebook users entered a Facebook group opposed the new feed system. For nearly a week there were student protesters outside of the Facebook office. People initially found the feed system creepy because it gave everyone ambient awareness of everything happening in their network; this in some regards decreased “anonymity”. You no longer had to go out to every one’s page, Facebook created a tailored newspaper for you to consume. As a result of the new feed system, people started producing a lot more content to put on social media sites since people consumed it immediately. To filter content and only provide people with “important” posts, Facebook employed machine learning algorithms which favored posts that get more clicks. It turns out that people are very likely to click on things that are highly emotional or controversial–machine learning algorithms were quick to learn this and favor controversial content. People started to play the algorithm and turn Facebook into a hot take tire fire as it get littered with absurd conspiracy theories like #Pizzagate. Facebook’s motto used to be “move fast and break things”, however, after Zuckerburg was lambasted in front of congress, that motto is slowly changing.

Read More »

College Cookbook

Wed Jan 23 2019

I occasionally cooked during High School, however, college was my first real experience cooking on a daily basis. Since I have lived to tell the tail, I want to share some of the recipes that I created/modified which got me through my first two years of college.