FB posts 2021

Dec 14: Support charity and get rewarded with awesome games, ends Dec 14 2359 GMT. I chose https://www.autistica.org.uk/. The hardest part is entering all the 50+ steam keys… https://jinglejam.tiltify.com/

Dec 08: YT recommended a video on smart notes which led me down a rabbit hole into the Zettelkasten method and Evergreen notes. What an eye-opener it has been! I’ve been writing notes badly all along, which explains why I rarely refer to them. The key is to write notes on one idea/concept and find connections between the new note and existing ones and link them with sufficient context. https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes

Nov 30: Came across this Agile Engineering Fluency map while looking for resources to help dev teams improve. What are some other useful resources out there? https://arlobelshee.github.io/AgileEngineeringFluency/

Nov 28: Caves of Qud has the best changelogs. Looking forward to their 1.0 release. Here are some examples: · Fixed a bug that caused flaming NPCs to attempt to douse themselves using lava. · Reduced the chance of hurting yourself while getting into or out of a regeneration tank. · You can no longer talk to your original body while dominating another creature. (This led to bad things.) https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/333640

Nov 09: We live in amazing times. VC are talking about Zero-Knowledge Proofs with CS prof and portfolio company’s founders. I love how they call ZKP “beautiful” technology, it is truly amazing that we can check the proof of computation much faster than redoing the computation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9wfc_aKCk

Nov 06: The Cambrian explosion of Zero-Knowledge proof systems for verifying computation. AFAIK the first time ZKPs are used for scaling txns per second. Allowing nodes to verify proofs instead of re-executing the computation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y9LyTtUtwE

Nov 03: Getting rusty at my proofs. This came up from work today when designing a score function. Q: given a non-empty list L of n real numbers, each one in [0,1) and an integer y, 0 < y <= n. Let L’ be L with the largest element removed and avg(l) be the average of the values in the list. Prove that y * avg(L) - (y-1) * avg(L’) < 1 or give a counter example. I can only prove it for the trivial cases where y = n and y = 1. Any help is appreciated!

Oct 30: Previously, I was using https://github.com/tabulapdf/tabula-java to extract txns from DBS PDF statements but they changed the PDF format in Feb. Today, I found out that https://camelot-py.readthedocs.io/en/master/ works with the new format, unlike Tabula. Finally able to update my https://www.ledger-cli.org/ records. Feels good when the ledger computed balance matches the PDF printed balance on the last statement. https://www.ledger-cli.org/

Oct 25: New algorithm for generating uniform random integer in an interval posted as a pull request. https://github.com/apple/swift/pull/39143 https://github.com/apple/swift/pull/39143

Oct 08: “Unix was built for me. I didn’t build it as an operating system for other people, I built it to do games and to do my stuff.” – Ken Thompson at around 1:10 into the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3jOJfrOknA

Sep 25: Casual Sat morning learning causal inference from Brady Neal’s excellent online course https://www.bradyneal.com/causal-inference-course https://www.bradyneal.com/causal-inference-course

Sep 21: 城裡的月光2021 MV, a collaboration by various singers to spread positive energy this Mid-Autumn Festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRV62sUKxfQ

Aug 29: TIL we can infer causation from observations. I thought randomized controlled trials were the only way. This topic is known as causal inference. https://matheusfacure.github.io/python-causality-handbook/landing-page.html

Aug 09: Finally managed to understand the Fast Fourier Transform. Wonderful use of polynomial multiplication as the motivating example and excellent visualizations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7apO7q16V0

Aug 08: Love discovering gems like this! A free (no iap, no ads) mobile app to create an SRT video stream. Using this + OBS studio to workaround a webcam with broken video. https://softvelum.com/larix/

Aug 07: As usual, I’m very late to the game and only learnt about the bootstrap method in statistics last month. It has been a fascinating journey into how computation has influenced statistics via Efron and Hastie’s excellent book, Computer Age Statistical Inference. https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/CASI/

Aug 04: Trying out a new font and a new terminal emulator, Jetbrains Mono in Kitty. Looking good so far, feels more comfortable compared to my previous setup using Terminus in rxvt https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

Jul 20: What is the minimum amount of resources needed to solve a computational problem? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DWmBhMgWrI

Jul 18: p-values can vary a lot when an experiment is repeated! The effect size and its confidence interval are much more informative. PS: did not know something this complex can be simulated in Excel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OL1RqHrZQ8

Jul 17: TIL using Gardner-Altman estimation plot to show the difference between two groups. An alternative to null-hypothesis testing which only says whether to reject/accept the NH. https://acclab.github.io/DABEST-python-docs/robust-beautiful.html

Jul 03: Changelog: You can no longer attempt to sit on yourself, if you are a chair, or sleep on yourself, if you are a bed. Darn! https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/333640/view/2966165443317312670

Apr 13: New £50 note featuring Alan Turing. Possibly the first bank note to feature a computer program in the design. What other references to Turing’s work can you spot? https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/images/banknotes/50/polymer/polymer-50-specimen-back.jpg