6 posts tagged with "thoughts"

At Kariba Labs, we believe deeply in the power of open source software. That is why we are building Open Source Observer (aka OSO), an open source tool for measuring the impact of open source projects. In order to achieve our goal of making open source better for everyone, we believe that OSO needs more than just open source code. We are committed to being the most open and reliable source of impact metrics out there. We will achieve this by committing the OSO project to the following practices:

• Open source software: All code is developed using permissive licenses (e.g. MIT/Apache 2.0)

• Open data: All collected and processed data will be openly shared with the community (to the extent allowed by terms of service)

• Open infrastructure: We will open up our infrastructure for anyone to contribute or build upon our existing infrastructure at-cost.

These are the things I wish I had known before deciding to go to grad school. Obviously take these with a grain of salt, as they just represent one man's opinion.

I love writing. I miss that aspect of working in research. You see the slightest thread of an insight, and then just keep pulling on it through reading related work, writing, and iterating, until you've formed a coherent thought to share with the world. Not everything I write is equally insightful (or coherent) to others, but I always enjoy the writing process nonetheless. In academia, writing took the form of technical papers that might only see the light of day on Arxiv. Nowadays, my preferred medium is blogging, but without dedicating time to writing, it just doesn't happen.

Key Takeaways​

• Centralized proprietary recommendation algorithms are hard to get right. Social media platforms are failing us as sole arbiters of truth on their platforms.
• Let’s open up the ability for 3rd party developers to create recommendation algorithms on Twitter services.
• Instead of jumping straight into a fully decentralized protocol, which is risky and takes a lot of work, let’s test the underlying assumptions on production Twitter first.
• If decentralization is the ultimate goal, any work we do here will be useful on the path.

Have you ever had that awkward moment with a PhD student, where someone asks:

How much longer until you graduate? Do you know what you'll do after school?

The student hesitates to answer, or worse, bolts in the other direction. For the majority of people who will never get their PhD, I'll give my explanation for the reason why. Disclaimer: this opinion will be heavily biased towards PhD's in computer science and may not apply to other fields.

For years, my website was a single gigantic HTML file. Adding content and making edits felt a lot like stacking Jenga blocks a mile high. While that was fun in many ways, it is 2015 and it is time to move to some form of automated system like Jekyll.