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I install brew, and then install cask (using brew). Then I install mactex and emacs using cask. I install Dropbox, so my research directories get to sync. These days Opera is my browser of choice. I use f.lux and caffeine to get my monitor to behave. I can't live without some keyboard customizations. I open keyboard preferences, and get function keybindings to work without requiring the pressing of fn key. While there I map the CAPSLOCK to Control key. I use alt-left/right to traverse between desktops. My Emacs customization takes some time. I use the modularized emacs24-starter kit at http://eschulte.github.io/emacs24-starter-kit/ . It is great, it has good defaults, but it would be much better if it has better documentation and instructions. Since I install emacs using cask rather than from binary, I get to enjoy good package-manager support using ELPA. To see the available packages type M-x package-show-package-list. I install auctex, exec-path-from-shell, ipython,...

What does DARPA and Facebook have in common? Move fast and break things! A couple weeks ago Stefanie Tompkins, DARPA acting deputy director, visited University at Buffalo to give a talk and meet researchers. She talked about DARPA and funding opportunities at DARPA. I had the mental image of DARPA as a slow moving, hard to maneuver aircraft carrier , but her talk painted a very different picture, and partially changed my perception of DARPA. DARPA , then ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), was created in 1958 as a response to Sputnik 1 . DARPA's mission is to prevent strategic surprise, avoid another Sputnik moment. And as you already know, the best way to predict future is to invent it. So DARPA is perpetually pushing the envelope to invent the next strategic surprise and disruptive technology itself. DARPA has a large number of successes under its belt. Internet has its roots in ARPANET.  GPS grew out of basic research on atomic clocks funded by DARPA. DARPA is also ...

The "Story of Your Life" is the science-fiction story which the Arrival film was based on. It was a very good read. Back in November, before the movie was released, I read it in less than 2 hours, in one breath. [Spoilers ahead.] The first couple pages of the book had some weird/mixed usage of the past future tense. Right at that first page, you get the idea that something is not right and this is going to be an interesting read. And as you keep reading, the story drops on you more clues, and you feel both smart and awed, when you first piece together that Gary was indeed the linguist's (Louise) first husband, and the daughter is not dead yet due to the climbing accident. Ted Chiang gives a lot of credit to the readers' intelligence. I liked that a lot. I also liked that I had to google and learn several things while reading the story. I googled to learn about "Fermat's principle", "teleology", "ideograms", and some related lin...

On Thursday, April 6, Google announced Federated Learning.   The announcement didn't make quite a splash, but I think this is potentially transformative. Instead of uploading all the data from the smartphones to the cloud for training the model in the datacenter, federated learning enables in-situ training at the smartphones themselves. The datacenter is still involved but it is involved for just aggregating the smartphone-updated local models in order to construct the new/improved global model. This is a win-win-win situation. As a smartphone user, your privacy is preserved since your data remains on your device, but you still get the benefits of machine learning on your smartphone. Google gets what it needs: it perpetually learns from cumulative user experience and improves its software/applications. Google collects insights without collecting data (and some of these insights may still be transferable to advertising income). Secondly, Google also outsources the training to the ...