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Blog migration and self-hosting retrospective
Avid readers of my blog (which I like to pretend are out there somewhere) will notice that the theme has changed. This is because I migrated my blog from self-hosted WordPress to the hosted wordpress.com service and the theme was not available. The process left me with some thoughts about WordPress and self-hosting. Background I…
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Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
I recently bought a webcam from Amazon (late to the party, I know), and when it came it was fine but not amazing. When I went through the packaging I saw a little card saying “send us a screenshot of your 5-star review and we’ll give you a $10 Amazon gift card”: I thought that…
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Python performance: it’s not just the interpreter
I have a particular view of Python performance from my experience on the Pyston project, and since this view is somewhat nonstandard I wanted to take some time to explain it and give a motivating example. A common explanation for Python’s low performance is that it is an interpreted language. In this post I hope to…
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PoolJacking: easy 51% attacks against Bitcoin and Ethereum
With the recent Ethereum Classic double-spend attack, I decided to finally write this post about an existing vulnerability in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The attack vector has been used in the past to steal a small amount of Bitcoin, but it can be used more cleverly to pull off 51% attacks and double-spend an unbounded amount of…
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Update on NumPy acceleration
I’ve been looking into accelerating NumPy using TensorFlow, and the results have been pretty interesting. Here’s a quick update. tldr: TensorFlow adds a lot of overhead and doesn’t speed up CPU execution, making converting NumPy->TensorFlow less promising. TensorFlow’s ability to target GPUs, though, makes up for the overheads, but not all NumPy programs are GPU-friendly.…
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Monitor crashes
I’ve gotten a new problem in my life: my monitor has started crashing. To be fair, the steps that cause it are fairly esoteric (using the USB ports, then switch the video input), but the failure mode is pretty remarkable: the monitor becomes completely unresponsive. As in, I can’t switch the video mode again. And…
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Persuasiveness and selection bias
I happened to be watching the Oscars last night, and I was pretty shocked to see the mistake with the Best Picture award. Thinking back on it, this is a bit surprising to me: many things are happening that should be more “shocking” (all the craziness in Washington) but don’t seem to affect me the…
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Personal thoughts about Pyston’s outcome
I try to not read HN/Reddit too much about Pyston, since while there are certainly some smart and reasonable people on there, there also seem to be quite a few people with axes to grind (*cough cough* Python 3). But there are some recurring themes I noticed in the comments about our announcement about Pyston’s…
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NumPy to Theano / TensorFlow: Yea or Nay?
Hey all, I’m investigating an idea and it’s gotten to the point that I’d like to solicit feedback. The idea is to use Theano or TensorFlow to accelerate existing NumPy programs. The technical challenges here are pretty daunting, but I feel like I have a decent understanding of its feasibility (I have a prototype that…
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Amazon-Walmart arbitrage
I recently ordered some junk food from Amazon, despite my wife’s objections. I ordered it from an Amazon Market (aka third party) seller since that was the choice picked by Amazon for one-click ordering. The food arrived, and the interesting thing is that it arrived in a Walmart box, with a Walmart packing slip. Evidently,…
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