Computer Science

Dated Mar 21, 2020; last modified on Sun, 14 Mar 2021

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May 17, 2020	»	Mergeable Replicated Data Types 2 min; updated Jul 19, 2025 On a distributed system, each replica should [eventually] converge to the same state. Commutative Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) can accept updates and achieve consistent without remote synchronization. The Need for Commutativity Say we have a queue \( 1 \to 2 \). Suppose two replicas, \(r_1\) and \(r_2\), independently call `pop()`. Each replica will have \(2\) on their queue. However, on receiving an update that the other replica popped, each replica will call `pop()` to be consistent, thereby deleting \(2\). ...
Jan 3, 2021	»	Computer Graphics Potpourri 2 min; updated Feb 12, 2023 Retained Mode vs. Immediate Mode In retained mode, the graphics library exposes an API to the application for building/updating a scene. However, the graphics library is in charge of issuing drawing commands. In contrast, an immediate-mode API allows the application to issue the drawing commands. Retained-mode APIs abstract away initialization, state maintenance and cleanup, but uses more memory. Immediate-mode APIs allow for more targeted optimizations. https://reactjs.org/ is one of the more popular retained-mode web APIs. ...
Jan 3, 2021	»	Information Retrieval Medley 3 min; updated Sep 5, 2022 Pagination with Relative Cursors Exposing pagination through URLs like example.com/items?page=25&limit=100 leads to SQL like `SELECT * from 'items' LIMIT 100 OFFSET 2400;`, which inefficiently goes through 2,500 records and discards the first 2,400. With relative cursors, we have URLs like example.com/items?limit=50&lastID=XXX, which leads to SQL like `SELECT * from 'items' WHERE 'id' > XXX ORDER BY 'id' ASC LIMIT 50`, and this is more efficient, assuming there are indexes for `id`. ...
Jan 4, 2021	»	Privacy on the Web 2 min; updated Sep 5, 2022 One can use `curl -v <url>` to see all of the redirections and cookies set. found that generating a tiny URL for Zoom links gives a URL that first goes to redirect.viglink.com. I tried this on https://tinyurl.com/yyte6pqv , which points to https://www.c13u.com/socioeconomics/2020-11-21-experiments-in-social-economics/ , but didn’t observe any 3rd party cookies. `tinyurl.com` did set a cookie, but that’s probably expected. proposes Federated Learning of Cohorts, which aims to enable ad-targeting based on people’s general browsing interest without exposing the exact browsing history. ...
Oct 4, 2021	»	Online Markets 4 min; updated Sep 5, 2022 WWW ‘21: The Web Conference 2021 REST: Relational Event-Driven Stock Trend Forecasting REST, an event-driven stock trend forecasting framework, that overcomes two limitations of existing event-driven models. Models the stock context, and learns the effect of event information on the stocks under different contexts. Constructs a stock graph and designs a new propagation layer to propagate the effect of event information from related stocks. #stock-trend-forecasting #computational-finance #graph-based-learning The value of stock trend forecasting is not unanimous, e.g. Malkiel contends that forecasting is a fool’s game , while Simon’s RenTech is all about the math . But it seems like the question is an empirical one, and therefore, a good answer should exist. Why are there opposing camps? ...
Oct 1, 2018	»	Kernighan's Remarks on the Digital Humanities 1 min; updated Feb 5, 2022 OCR tends to miss (sometimes) really important context. Make use of derived data, e.g. age at marriage, gender differences, mortality rates, mapping migrations, last names Don’t spend all your time cleaning data. Try a sequence of things, not one big idea. Don’t expect existing tools to do the whole job. All the while, building new tools is not as straightforward. Sample Digital Humanities Projects ORBIS by Stanford . A kayak for the Roman Era. ...
Oct 1, 1974	»	Computer Science & Software Engineering (227 items) Given Language Models, Why Learn About Large Language Models?; LLM Instructions for Advent of Code; LLM Instructions for Advent of Code Using C#; Learning Haskell via AoC 2021; 000. Longest Two-Character Substring; KQL: Overview; Wiki Page; Introduction to LLMs; Relational Model Versus Document Model; Intro to Design Patterns; General Tips on Performance and Optimization; AoC 2021 Day 01: Sonar Sweep; Similarity Measures; Similarity Measures; Thinking About Data Systems; The Missing Semester of your CS Education [MIT]; 01. The Shell; Privacy in CS and in the Law; Web Applications 101; Information Security [COS 432]; ML Crash Course [dev@google]; Examples of Influential Power; Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics [ELE 364]; Designing Data-Intensive Applications [Kleppmann, Martin]; 01. The Tar Pit; Mythical Man Month [Brooks, Jr., Frederick P]; KQL: Common Operators; App Layout; Query Languages for Data; AoC 2021 Day 02: Dive!; The Nearest Neighbor Algorithm; The Nearest Neighbor Algorithm; Reliability; 02. Shell Tools; Tracking and Data Collection; 02. Threat Models for Web Security; Modeling Influence with Graphs; 02. The Mythical Man-Month; KQL: Aggregation Functions; Browse Page; AoC 2021 Day 03: Binary Diagnostic; Secure Multiparty Computation; 03. Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF); The Contagion Model; Caveats on Similarity Learning; Caveats on Similarity Learning; 03. The Surgical Team; The Cards Manager; AoC 2021 Day 04: Giant Squid; Maintainability; Infection Models: SI, SIS, SIR; Handling Noisy Data in Nearest Neighbors; Handling Noisy Data in Nearest Neighbors; Bayesian Rating; Reusable Cards; AoC 2021 Day 05: Hydrothermal Venture; The Case for Range Normalization; The Case for Range Normalization; Home Page; AoC 2021 Day 06: Lanternfish; 06. Version Control (Git); Predicting Continuous Targets Using NN; Predicting Continuous Targets Using NN; AoC 2021 Day 07: The Treachery of Whales; Other Measures of Similarity in NN; Other Measures of Similarity in NN; AoC 2021 Day 08: Seven Segment Search; The Curse of Dimensionality and Feature Selection; The Curse of Dimensionality and Feature Selection; AoC 2021 Day 09: Smoke Basin; Classes in C++; AoC 2021 Day 10: Syntax Scoring; Privacy [COS 432]; 019. Counting Sundays; Structures in C++; 020. Factorial Digit Sum; 021. Amicable Numbers; 022. Name Scores; 023. Non-Abundant Sums; AoC 2021 Input Parser; Enumerations in C++; Unions in C++; AoC 2021 Main; AoC 2021 Solution Runner; AoC 2021 Test Code; AoC 2021 Parsing Arguments; Signal Is Finally Bringing Its Secure Messaging To the Masses; 218. To-Do List Pt. I; 380. Smooshed Morse Code; AsyncIO in Python; API Design; Caching; CAP Theorem; Data Modeling; Database Indexing; Greedy Algorithms; Networking Essentials; Of [Non]Overlapping Intervals; Sharding; Print Zero Even Odd; Print FooBar Alternately; Earliest Finish Time for Land and Water Rides; Thread-Based Parallelism in Python; Minimum Cost of Buying Candies with Discount; Print in Order; Delivery Framework for System Design Interviews; Valid Sudoku; Is Subsequence; Minimum Size Subarray Sum; Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array; Rotate Array; Two Sum; Majority Element in Array; Merging Sorted Arrays; Dictionary-Based Implementation of Classes and Objects (Python); Model Context Protocol (MCP); Societal Effects of LLMs; AoC 2024 Day 16: Reindeer Maze; Tons of Buttons; AoC 2024 Day 15: Warehouse Woes; AoC 2024 Day 14: Restroom Redoubt; C# Performance Tools; Remarks on Numeric Types; Shortest Paths in a Graph; AoC 2024 Day 13: Claw Contraption; AoC 2024 Day 12: Garden Groups; AoC 2024 Day 11: Plutonian Pebbles; Playing Politics as a SWE; Thinking Like a Strong Engineer; Collection Types in C#; Generic and Non-Generic Collection Interfaces in C#; AoC 2024 Day 04: Ceres Search; AoC 2024 Day 05: Print Queue; AoC 2024 Day 06: Guard Gallivant; AoC 2024 Day 07: Bridge Repair; AoC 2024 Day 08: Resonant Collinearity; Resilient App Development in .NET; .NET Linting and Style Tooling; JSON Serialization in .NET; AoC 2024 Day 03: Mull It Over; AoC 2024 Day 02: Red-Nosed Reports; AoC 2024 Day 01: Historian Hysteria; Popping Bubbles Game for Computer-Use Models; Copilot in VS Code; Attributes and Reflection in C#; Building with LLMs; LLM Evals; Governing Bodies; Calculators; UX for LLMs; WWW Watering Hole; 3 Maps: Locator, Topographical, and Treasure; Using LLMs to Enhance My Capabilities; Consistent Hashing; Why Have We Stopped?; Leading Big Projects; Finite Time as a SWE; Minimum Penalty for a Shop; Shortest Path in a Grid w/ Obstacles Elimination; Minimizing Bottom-Right Paths in a 2xN Grid; Queen's Movements on a Chessboard w/ Obstacles; Testing in a Monorepo; Database Layer; Continuous Integration Tooling; Of Stale UI and Re-renders; Inheritance; Markup Features; Of Builds and Bundlers; Client/Server Interface; Use of Local Storage; Hosting the Flashcards App; Identity Access Management; Productivity for Software Engineers; C++ Meta-Programming; Binary Search; K-th Smallest Element in Sorted Matrix; Spanning 4-Directional Walks From Origin to Destination w/ Obstacles; Unique Paths to the Bottom-Right Corner w/ Obstacles; Unique Paths to the Bottom-Right Corner; Debugging; Testing Your Code; Perspectives on Software Engineering; Resource Management in C++; Templates in C++; Software Engineering Journal Reviews; Journal Reviews; Bloom Filters; Socio-Economic Equity in Tech; Towards a Collaborative Web Browser; Reviews of WWW Proceedings; Journal Reviews on Fairness; Observer; Rage Against the Algorithm; Areas of Interest in Computer Science; LLMs: Stochastic Parrots 🦜 and How (Not) to Use Them; Research on Privacy Enhancing Techniques; Privacy on the Web; Computer Graphics Potpourri; Information Retrieval Medley; On Systems Programming; Software Dependencies; ML Usefulness to a Dev; ML Usefulness to a Dev; Of Code Smells and Hygiene; 01. Sum of Powers; Chrome vs. Everybody; Mergeable Replicated Data Types; On Data Science; Miscellaneous Topics; APIs Are Not In the Efficiency Business; Scalability; Facebook to Pay $550 Million to Settle Facial Recognition Suit; AoC 2019 Day 01: The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation; To-Do List (Intermediate); Smooshed Morse Code (Intermediate); Facebook Monetizing Encrypted Messaging by Analyzing Metadata [Twitter]; Applications for DP; Building Intuition About DP; AoC 2019 Day 02: 1202 Program Alarm; SQL Injection; Cross-Site Scripting (XSS); Kernighan's Remarks on the Digital Humanities; An Apology for the Internet - How It Went Wrong [Intelligencer]; Fermat's Little Theorem (Intermediate); Linear Feedback Shift Register (Intermediate); Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes [COS 381]; A Zooming Web Browser;