Bala
4.7K posts
Bala
@balakc
Interested in Networked Systems. He/him.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Katılım Eylül 2008
1.2K Takip Edilen338 Takipçiler
I’m sure having my photo shared in this derogatory way would be devastating if my motivation for getting a PhD was to impress this guy and women-hating friends.
Thankfully, it was not. So I can just laugh about it instead. 😊
Richard Cooper@Rich_Cooper
"Just look at the degree on that chick" ~ No man ever
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Bala retweetledi
Absolutely the right take.
People have wrongly complained about places like Harvard CS having “too much theory” forever. Turns out if you get the theory it’s not that hard to apply it. The reverse is not true.
That + a culture of students working on side projects with their friends is the winning education formula.
julian@JulianL093
This is not a particularly good take and is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of what a top-tier technical college education is suppose to offer. Preparing to understand modern AI as a Harvard or Stanford undergrad is not about learning "prompt engineering", vibe coding, or building Slop Domain-Specific Wrapper Agent #1000, all of which can be picked up in a few days if not hours. To the contrary, the best way for a smart 18-22 year-old to understand AI is to develop a very solid intuition for undergraduate and graduate level probability, linear algebra, and classical ML. If you actually know how foundational RL topics like Q-learning work, you are 95% of the way there, and if you can't even learn that from Harvard or Stanford then this is probably a skill issue on your end. In @boazbaraktcs's excellent ML theory seminar in 2021, I don't think I wrote more than 200 lines of code cumulatively in the entire semester yet I learned an immense amount and credit that class for sparking my interest in modern AI. A year ago I couldn't coherently tell you what a transformer was, but it doesn't matter, because when you develop proper quantitative foundations in college you can figure it out in a couple of weeks. None of this stuff is really that complicated, people just like to pretend that it is.
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Bala retweetledi
3. CMMRS Pre-doctoral Research School (cmmrs.mpi-sws.org), with travel funds. Details: TBA
Our interns can attend all the ADFOCS and CMMRS lectures for free, but please also apply to these events separately to receive additional benefits. (2/2)
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Bala retweetledi
Opportunities for Computer Science undergrad at Max Planck Institutes in Summer 2026:
1. Paid internship:
- Apply here: cis.mpg.de/internships/
- Deadline: November 1 (!)
2. ADFOCS summer school (mpii.de/D1/adfocs). Topic: TBA
3. CMMRS Pre-doctoral Research ... (1/2)
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@FrancisYan_ It is quite nice of you to share these. Good luck with your upcoming submissions.
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I’ve received 8 paper rejections this year -- SIGCOMM (×2), MobiCom, NSDI, HotNets, and NeurIPS (×3, including withdrawn submissions) -- a record high in my career! I hope that by sharing my own bad luck, I can help those who are upset by rejections feel a little better.
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@wupeka One can be incredibly brilliant along one axis, and incredibly stupid along another axis.
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Being brilliant along one axis (e.g. programming) does not give you a license to have your bad behaviour towards others tolerated. I've been fortunate to receive critical but kind feedback from utterly brilliant engineers, delivered in a direct manner but with grace. This made me respect these engineers even more, admiring them not only for their technical achievements, but also for the magnanimous way they held themselves in front of others, prioritizing mentorship over throwing their weight around. Be kind, strive for understanding and empathy.
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@ShriramKMurthi @RightWhig Tan walls :) although I had bought a few when they were on sale. Same with Pirelli P Zero Smartubes.
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@balakc @RightWhig GPs are great. If I could easily buy them off the shelf here I probably would. Definitely had the same experiences w/ Pirelli and Vittoria. I used to buy bike tires for *color*; proved to be fun but painful. Now just black.
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Welp. Second flat in two days. Time to get a new tire and say onara to the old one.
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@ShriramKMurthi @RightWhig I use GP5000 with TUbolito or Pirelli’s Pzero TPU tubes. I used to get a lot of flats when I was using Pirelli or Vitoria. so far this combination is doing well.
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@ShriramKMurthi @RightWhig Thanks! I assume you are not using tubeless setup.
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@RightWhig On my Bike Friday I always used Schwalbe Stelvios. Love 'em. But on my regular road bike I'm in this weird state stuck between "not too heavy, I'm trying to go as fast as I can" and "not too light, I don't have a support vehicle", and…that's not a good place.
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I became an ACM Fellow last night. The awards ceremony was 5 hours including dinner (!) but I enjoyed hearing the many awardees. Amusingly, when I walked on stage to accept my diploma, someone yelled out "Yeah, Derek!" I don't know who it was, but I appreciate the shoutout. 🤣
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LOL a movie portrays something from recent history (2002 Gujarat riots) and these guys can’t handle it. They wanted random action slop and not a movie that holds up a mirror to reality.
Dude, don’t watch any of the classic Malayalam filmmakers/movies then.
Abhijith Radhakrishnan@AbhijithrBJP
I felt sick. Not because the scene was intense but because of what it was trying to say. Why? Why this portrayal? Why this narrative?
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@TaliaRinger It’s really great you can even do these while taking care of a child.
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Everything I've submitted on parental leave so far has been rejected lol. AMAB men have it so much easier without the whole breastfeeding thing
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Bala retweetledi
I think this is pretty normal. People remake old stories all the time, have done so for millennia, and they change them influenced by the culture and norms of their day. Often this helps them better connect with audiences. Moses probably wasn't a white guy, and certainly wasn't of English and Scottish descent, but it's not surprising Cecil B. de Mille used Charlton Heston. When the remakes aren't good, they fade rapidly; every once in a while they succeed, and may exceed the original
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I am very grateful to my students, collaborators, and mentors for the ACM distinguished member recognition!
Princeton Engineering@EPrinceton
.@prateekmittal_ has designed & developed systems that help safeguard internet users as well as artificial intelligence-based technologies, drawing on techniques from data science, network science & applied cryptography. Congrats Prateek! @TheOfficialACM engineering.princeton.edu/news/2025/02/1…
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Tenure, finally—through blisters and bedrock! This would never have been possible without the unwavering support of so many people, both professionally and personally.
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@TaliaRinger I found the time they begin to talk and walk the most amazing.
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It has been almost four months, and I still can't believe I created a human with her own consciousness and personality and her entire future ahead of her. Like wow
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Found this pasted on a wall in my building. The book that transformed my teenage years is suddenly hot again! The kids are going to be all right after all.
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