Bits, Bytes, Late Nights

Ouroboros: An infinite AI content feed

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Gilded Age of content is nearly upon us, when generative AI models will create everything we consume. Everything will be perfectly curated to the viewer and generated on the fly right before your eyes. This post demonstrates how the pieces are nearly there and how easy it is to put an app like this together.

I Think, Therefore I Am Everything

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As it turns out, our best explanation of physics proves that I’m the only real thing in this universe.

Prices Don't Go Down

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

With a new U.S. President looming on the horizon and the policies he’ll bring along, people are hoping for economic improvements, for some reason. Unfortunately, the harsh reality of modern economics suggests that prices must always go up.

How Does the System Make You Feel?

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A quick essay that’s a long time coming on how the economic system of our world makes me feel. In a word: demoralized.

Irrational Economics

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Why did I pay $12 for a water bottle at a festival? Why did you buy Tylenol over the generic brand of acetaminophen? Did you know it’s really easy to cause liver damage with acetaminophen? In this post, I laugh at the bad economic decisions we make as humans every day.

The Economics of Sustainability

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A brief (by university standards) essay that ties together history, economics, philosophy, ethics, nutrition, and environmentalism to analyze the prosperity resulting from capitalism and industrialization in contrast to our hopes for a sustainable society.

Byte-sized Algorithms: Removing Duplicates

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is just some basic Leetcode-esque stuff I needed to do at work recently. It shouldn’t surprise or impress anyone who has thought about this before, but it was mildly interesting to think and write about.

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 11:14:35 -0800

“Whataboutism” isn’t a logical fallacy if it’s in the context of a zero-sum game.

Why NFTs Matter

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s not about ape avatars, basketball highlights, or other digital trinkets. It’s about authentic relationships.

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 02:12:42 -0700

Theres nothing inherently wrong with anecdotal evidence. Yes, the big picture matters, but that shouldnt make real stories less meaningful.

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 16:44:11 -0700

Conspiracy theory: Corporations dedicate some non-trivial part of their marketing budget to influencing pop culture into including their products (e.g. songs).

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 14:28:29 -0700

Conspiracy theory: Popular TV networks time their commercial breaks at the same time (give or take a minute for plausible deniability) to guarantee that viewers see at least some advertisements.

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 21:22:43 -0700

How do places whose local economy basically exists because of tourism have the gall to charge people extra money to visit there? Occupancy taxes are a joke.

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 19:08:12 -0700

If every brand of paper towels claims that 6 of their rolls is the same as 9 “regular” rolls, doesnt every brand then become a regular roll? Which means 6 rolls = 9 rolls = 13.5 rolls = … ad infinitum.

Use this one weird trick to get infinite paper towels for life!

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 14:40:04 -0700

Machine “learning” is a misnomer: The modern black-box algorithms that show us things they think we want to see start by learning from our behavior but end by manipulating it.

After all, isn’t it much more optimal (and ML just cares about optimality) to slowly convince 10 users that they all want to see 1 thing rather than to show them 10 uniquely-relevant things.

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 18:26:13 -0700

America is one of the only first-world countries out there that allows pharmaceuticals to advertise to the public directly. And then we wonder why we’re over-medicated…

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 13:36:30 -0800

Just learned about parallel construction, where the story that law enforcement tells the public is completely fabricated in order to keep the juicy details secret. It’s fascinating to think about this in the context of the recent Bitcoin ransomware bust.

Newspeak in an AI-Driven World

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Or: Stop trying to make everyone dumber, Outlook.

Do Self-Driving Cars Dream of Snitching?

Wed, 26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A cynical (or realistic) take on how a utopian dream–autonomous, self-driving vehicles–can turn into a dystopian nightmare: the global snitching fleet of the future.

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 14:51:35 -0800

Suppose you wanted to graffiti someone else’s fence without getting caught. The color of the graffiti isn’t important; it’s about sending a message. That means you can choose any color paint you want. Naturally, everyone in the neighborhood has access to the same colors (so no particular choice would draw suspicion) except for one: it’s a special, rare color that you are known for producing. You aren’t the only one who has any, but you did invent it.

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 21:40:01 -0800

If you know why a rule exists, you know when it’s okay to break it.

Sat, 05 Dec 2020 13:30:04 -0800

Just realized that the pending ubiquity of self-driving cars will mean every road-accessible inch of our planet will be under a state of constant surveillance thanks to the dozens of high-resolution cameras that will be on every vehicle.

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 22:47:24 -0800

At what point did America’s materialistic superiority over the Soviet Union transition into a religion of consumerism?

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 15:07:14 -0800

Has anyone ever considered the fact that since Google is often the provider of free WiFi at most Starbucks, it can secretly man-in-the-middle all of the hotspot’s traffic since it’s also a trusted SSL certificate provider? Of course, this would be relatively easy to catch (for example, by noticing that Bing’s cert is verified by Google rather than Microsoft), but the potential is still unnerving… All it would take is a few targeted, hard-to-spot interceptions to gain backdoors on many, many systems.

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 16:44:45 -0800

Isn’t it odd how more and more normalized it is to have a chemical buffer between our conscious mind and the real world? From the innocence of sipping on a work-day beer to dependence on caffeine consumption for productivity to the absurdity of same-hour marijuana delivery, it seems our grasp on the world around us slips deeper and deeper into the murky waters of substance-induced thought with each passing day / normalized drug.

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 02:51:01 -0800

There are only two classes worth thinking about: worker and ruler.

On Apple's Ecosystem

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A short blurb on an interesting (if not worrying) possible byproduct if Apple is forced to release their iron grip on the AppStore.

Why Does 0.999... = 1?

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A simple explanation for a fundamental mathematical truth.

On Pascal's Wager

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A guy who took two philosophy courses questions the premises of a 400-year-old argument for the necessity of believing in God.

Minecraft and the Simulation Hypothesis

Thu, 14 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Are we reaching the hardware limitations of our simulated universe?

Contact Tracing Privacy

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

An analysis of Apple’s novel contact tracing protocol for COVID-19 though the lens of a paranoid privacy enthusiast.

Why (Not) Peer-to-Peer?

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

An overview of the Internet’s growth in the 2010s and some questions about what’s to come… With the current state of centralized content distribution, why aren’t we moving to a peer-to-peer model?

Notes

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my comprehensive note directory. These typeset works are the product of untold hours of study and synthesis of various graduate-level topics in computer science. They were created specifically for Georgia Tech’s graduate program, but most of them should be self-contained and well-structured enough to serve as a gentle introduction to many different topics:

My notes on Computational Perception are the ones that started it all. This 330+ page behemoth provides a (relatively) gentle introduction to computer vision and computational photography. It starts with basic image processing, builds up to “old school” vision techniques, and eventually closes out with applications of machine learning algorithms to vision. It requires a strong mathematical foundation: a basic understanding of concepts from linear algebra and calculus is assumed, though helpful links to outside resources are provided where it’s relevant. This is by far my largest and most comprehensive set of notes and is available for purchase on LeanPub.

My Pescetarian Recipe Collection

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A collection of tasty pescetarian recipes that I’ve gathered over the years with my personal tweaks and suggestions included.

Optimizing Sessionless Sessions

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Or, arriving at the rationale behind the existence of JSON Web Tokens in an extremely roundabout fashion.

Efficient P2P Broadcasting

Mon, 23 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A memory-less solution that minimizes extra message duplication.

Tracking Your Every Move

Fri, 07 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Or, abusing MAC addresses for fun and profit (well, no profit unless you’re a massive corporation or the government…).

Hello there,

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m George.

I study computer science and sometimes cook things. I’m a bit of a cypherpunk at heart, particularly interested in cryptography, peer-to-peer technologies, and applications of virtual and augmented reality. Fittingly, I work at the Stellar Development Foundation on the “Decentralization” team, creating (hopefully) useful abstractions to the underlying protocol (like Stellar RPC) for developers to create dApps on our blockchain.

I write about these topics and others in various (albeit rare) posts. I also enjoy travel (to work from my laptop with a different view) and you can catch me playing volleyball on the beach most weekends.

Privacy <3

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Woah, how’d you get here? This page isn’t even linked from anywhere 😜

This site has no tracking, no ads, and no nonsense. I have no idea who reads it, so if you like (or hate!) a post, shoot me [email protected]">an email and tell me!

JavaScript is only used to render math with $\LaTeX$ (I might change this at some point to pre-render images, instead). This is the way the Web should always be!