Yao Li @liyao@types.pl

Good morning! A post just rolled across my fedi-timeline saying not to post about politics on Mastodon, so I'm here to remind you that:

1 "politics" refers to decision-making about how to live together in groups
2 choosing to not participate in political discussion is saying you support the status quo, and is a political stance
3 abstaining from politics because you feel safe from its impacts is a privilege and a choice to abandon your more vulnerable neighbours

Orlando the cat
#caturday

Mt. Rainier casting a shadow upwards across the sky.

Please wish my fluffy son a peaceful nap

Dear students:

If you’re considering emailing a former professor just to check in and say hi, but are hesitant because you have nothing substantive to say, consider this an invitation to go ahead and send that email. It really means a lot.

In the spirit of David Patterson's "How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia" talk here are 10 tips I just shared with the @PLDI Program Committee for winning the Undistinguished Reviewer Award.

1. Argue to reject papers because they are not to your personal taste. If the topic is something that you are not excited about, it's unlikely that anyone in the PLDI community will appreciate the work.

2. Argue to reject papers because you would have preferred they be written differently. Better to delay publication of the technical ideas, delay a PhD student's progress toward their degree, etc. than to have the paper be written in a way you don't like.

3. Argue to reject papers because you wouldn't have used a different approach -- especially if they didn't use the approach you invented! Introducing non-standard approaches into the literature is confusing, even if they reveal connections to other areas that may inspire interesting follow-on work.

4. Argue to reject papers simply because the proofs are not mechanized or the code is not publicly available. Regardless of whether a paper makes a significant advance and provides sufficient evidence to support its claims, the field now expects full mechanization and open artifacts.

5. Argue to reject papers because you'd like to see more experiments, better theorems, etc. Even if the the technical claims are already well-supported by the evidence presented in the paper, it will be even better after the next revision.

6. Argue to reject papers because the ideas are "too simple." Even though simple approaches that work well are often the ones that have the most impact in the long run, we should be selecting papers that optimize for technical complexity.

7. Argue to reject papers based on anecdotal evidence. For example, "I heard this paper was rejected previously" or “I used tool X once and it didn’t work" are fine things to bring to the discussion of PLDI submissions.

8. Argue to reject papers because the authors forgot to cite a few tangentially-related papers. You should especially do this if the omitted paper is your own -- after all, if you've written on the topic, you are the expert!

9. Argue to reject papers because they lacks citations to or comparisons with unpublished work. PDFs on the author's website or manuscripts on arXiv are flags planted in the ground and fair game!

10. Argue to reject papers because they build on prior work that you are unfamiliar with. If you don't have the background to understand a paper, it's unlikely that anyone in the PLDI community will appreciate it.

"Meta’s misstep—and its hubris—show once again that Big Tech has a blind spot about the severe limitations of large language models. There is a large body of research that highlights the flaws of this technology, including its tendencies to reproduce prejudice and assert falsehoods as facts."
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-large-language-model-ai-only-survived-three-days-gpt-3-science/

I call my smoke detector Gordon Ramsay because it screams at me every time I cook

One thing that's getting a little lost in this mix, is that some of the people desperately holding on at Twitter are because they are trapped by either healthcare or visas.

That there are systemic traps that trap workers in America so they feel unable to move freely to new employers who want them and would have better pay or conditions is *nuts* and deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

I have #funding for a #phd student interesting in working at the intersection of #ComputerScience and #linguistics, specifically #syntax and compositional #semantics (in a CS PhD program). I've been kicking the tires on the idea of using classic ideas from categorial #grammar to give trustworthy translations from English to a variety of formal specification logics for software specs. 1/

How to Catch a Mountain Lion
an illustrative guide

1. Place a cardboard box where the animal frequently visits.
2. Sit back and wait.
3. A cat is a cat is a cat.

What famous bird site accounts can be found on mastodon now?

I found @SwiftOnSecurity and @internetarchive looking for the tweetofgod (found two bot accounts, 2 year old toots) as well.

Looking for: sarcasm/dry humor mixed with philosophy and technology (so smart kind of funny)

What are some of your favorites?

BTW one of my favourite things in fantasy art is that if you want to make a dragon look menacing or powerful, you draw it in poses used by cats.

If you want to make a dragon stupid but loveable, you draw it in poses used by dogs.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Turing test.

I've been using #AnnotatedEquations in my recent papers. I think it really adds to the readability and understanding of the math.

Here are some examples. It uses #tikz in #latex.

Let me know if you like it. Happy for any feedback.