mdekstrand

mdekstrand, 26 days ago to random

If a blind student wants to do a CS undergrad specifically to work in assistive technology, what schools would be particularly good for that? (Feel free to boost for reach.)

mdekstrand, 1 month ago to random

Super excited to be co-teaching a tutorial at #RecSys2024 this year on doing experiments with POPROX, an #NSFFunded platform currently in development to support user-facing #recsys experiments. Come join us! https://recsys.acm.org/recsys24/tutorials/

mdekstrand, 2 months ago to random

"your algorithm can’t do anything that would be illegal if done by a real person" — I appreciate the FTC explicitly articulating this principle. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing

mdekstrand, 2 months ago to random

On the downfall of civilization … https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/sorry-we-machines-destroyed-your-civilization-in-such-a-boring-way

mdekstrand, 3 months ago to random

dear #hci #lazyweb: a lit review chase this week has had me trying to scare up a copy of Frayling's 1993 "Research in Art and Design" (Royal College of Art Research Papers v1n1), and it does not seem to be on the Internet. Worldcat shows one physical copy in Denmark?

Does anyone have a link (or a PDF) they could share w/ me? (feel free to reply by email) #icanhaspdf

mdekstrand, 3 months ago to random

This is depressing. https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

mdekstrand, 3 months ago to random

"Do you want to get credit for this review in Web of Science?"

idk, sure.

"Do you want to go through the work of figuring out how the hell to properly create and link accounts to get that credit to show up?"

uhh not really.

mdekstrand, 3 months ago to random

I really need to find a better liquor store, but I guess Highland Park will tide me over until I go to Scotland in March.

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

as we see yet another Boeing safety alert, I keep thinking about the role of rendering antitrust law a dead letter.

Since we allowed Boeing to gobble up all their competitors, the US airliner industry consists of one firm. If they were competing with McDonnel-Douglas and Lockheed, suitably stiff penalties and compliance costs could be levied without upending the economics of an entire industry.

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

Looks like the NSF/Amazon Fair AI program didn't exist past 2022 — anyone know if that is correct, or whether there's a successor program?

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

All this work in AI for “customer service” but what about AI for navigating customer service? If it’s good enough for them to try to handle my problem, shouldn’t it be good enough for me to try to navigate customer service to get it solved?

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

Another #ECIR2024 preprint! Lex Beattie, Henriette Cramer, Sole Pera, and I map the space of goals and “intervention strategies” for consumer-side impacts of IR & #recsys (with application to other stakeholders too).

We argue that effective impact work needs to be well-grounded, contextualized in broad and creative thinking about possibilities, and use methods that are well-matched to the goals. TL;DR put down the regularizer and step away from the algorithm.

https://md.ekstrandom.net/pubs/ecir-impacts

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

When I created my Data Science class, I wrote a guide to writing effective assignment solution notebooks in Jupyter. I've now revised it to be more course- and tech-independent and moved it to my website. https://md.ekstrandom.net/resources/writing-notebooks

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

New on my blog — a detailed writeup of my setup for Zoom calls, remote teaching, and video recording & production, along with recommendations at a variety of price points for improved quality. https://md.ekstrandom.net/blog/2024/01/zoom-lecture-studio

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

Frodo: "It looks like a form of shell. I can't quite make it out."

Gandalf: "The tongue is that of Windows batch files, which I will not utter here."

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

A few songs I learned will be 25 years old next year…

• I Want It That Way (Backstreet Boys)
• Higher (Creed)
• All Star (Smash Mouth)
• (You Drive Me) Crazy (Britney Spears)
• All The Small Things (Blink-182)
• Smooth (Santana)
• Learn to Fly (Foo Fighters)

mdekstrand, 4 months ago to random

As is my tradition the last few years, I've written up the current state of my computing toolbelt: https://md.ekstrandom.net/blog/2023/12/tools

mdekstrand, 5 months ago to random

This by @kissane is really good, and towards the end covers a solid non-religious argument grounded in demonstrable harms for second-degree defederation from Threads. https://erinkissane.com/untangling-threads

mdekstrand, 5 months ago to random

XKCD on the money again. When I was teaching databases, I had an approx. 30-minute extended discourse on date and time and why it's harder than the students think even after they think they've accounted for everything. And another 20-30 minutes in a different lecture on text encodings, why we can't have nice things, and why if I had a time machine I would go to the 1950s or 60s and leave copies of the UTF-8 specification in the break rooms with the note "please save us".

https://xkcd.com/2867/

mdekstrand, 7 months ago to random

I took another swing at writing up my student recruiting page — wanted to highlight more directly why a student might want to work with me & what makes a good fit, with less “please don't do X or Y”. I'm recruiting for Fall 2024! https://md.ekstrandom.net/students/prospective

mdekstrand, 7 months ago to random

BE/NL IR friends — the Dutch-Belgian IR workshop is next month, CFP now up: https://dir2023.github.io/DIR2023/

mdekstrand, 8 months ago to random

@deilann tired: ACID compliance.

Wired: postgreSQUIRREL, the ADHD-compliant database. Forgets what it’s doing halfway through a transaction! Commits twice because it isn’t sure it did the first time! Replies to queries with paranthetical bonus content!

mdekstrand, 8 months ago to random

still p. sad that Microsoft bought & shuttered Wunderlist. It was a really great piece of software, and I haven't found anything else quite like it.

mdekstrand, 9 months ago to random

Savage Chickens on AI…

mdekstrand, 9 months ago to random

This is a really good write up of the impact of conferences in Hawai’i. Goes beyond CHI — any conference leadership considering a proposal for a Hawaii event should read it. https://www.chiinhawaii.info/