Pálenica

Last Friday,  Il Professore  gave a talk at Google NY on  'algorithmic theory of mapreduce'. As is his style, the talk was to draw attention to a topic and provide food for thought, technical results riding along  mostly to make a point. Muthu spent a good chunk of time talking about the model and results from  A Model of Computation for MapReduce  by Karloff, Suri and Vassilvitskii. Let me chime in with some comments. On a practical note, the MapReduce library we have at Google (with Hadoop being the open source equivalent) is a great tool that simplifies many data processing tasks. The typical use of MapReduce is to process logged data of some sort: search queries, records of auctions being  run to sell ads on a page etc. Typically, the input data file contains a lot of extraneous information that is irrelevant to the task at hand. For example, information identifying machine serving the request, request timestamp or the list of matching ads is i...

None of my 3 submissions are in. It was to be expected given the reviewer's comments, but it's unhappy news nevertheless. Time to re-group, re-flect, re-write and re-submit. Where to?

45 minutes of nothingness, crowded peace with a book or a laptop on my lap. I seldom get myself to do useful work on the train, but catching up on news is something I would likely have done anyway. The Czechs have agreed to let the US install an anti-missile radar somewhere in the Brdy mountains; big news. Slovakia officially supports the move, except for the prime minister who is openly opposed in hopes of courting Russia; he was

Two sociologists from Oxford University wrote what to my untrained eye looks like a pretty thorough study on the educational background of members of extremist Islamic groups. The study observes that many Islamist extremists are well educated (well above average number hold college and higher degrees), and that a disproportionate number of them were trained as engineers. The paper is 90 pages long but it's an engaging reading; I've spent better part of an hour browsing through it. Part of the attempted explanation is that (i) people who choose to study engineering are ambitious, (ii) prefer a neat, well designed world that behaves according to definite rules and (iii) if disgruntled, are more willing to resort to extreme measures. I am not doing justice to the study, but reading it reminded me of the comic book supervillains who fought Batman, Spiderman and other superheoroes while plotting to take over the world. Message to take home? Be nice to us engineers or feel our wrat...

had a good chat with Elliot over Mexican food. Conversation was excellent, thanks to my resourceful and ever entertaining companion, ruptured by occasional spells of silence contributed by me. Elliot came to give a talk at Columbia, brought news and gossip and had compassion with the slow-witted, gloomy, aging homo corporatus (that is me). Enjoyed the chat, escorted Elliot to train, bought a loaf of bread, heading home after a day of work. The beef burrito was not so good, but there was lot of it and for some reason I felt compelled to eat it all. Stomach not happy. Sigh.

Sitting on a train, tired as a dog. Haven't done much, spent large part of the day staring at the screen. The worls ducks. And world sucks. Should be working on a paper or two, write referee reports, code.. am depressed. Had great plans to write over the weekend. Cleaned apartment, went shopping instead -- all useful tasks, but not what I intended. Stoc deadline slipping by, ec is the natural target. Old buddy of mine shot me an email yesterday, brought happy college memories hiding under thick layers of the last.. almost decade. Should make a point talking to her more often.