Ravit's Blog

When looking forward to the great expanse that I envision lying forward in the future, I feel awestruck imagining the range of possible outcomes that exist. On the one hand, I imagine how if I put my best foot forward and dedicate myself wholeheartedly to the pursuit of my ambition, with the help of luck I might find myself in the position of just having found a top job at a large company. On the other hand, I imagine myself allowing things to slip by and not endeavoring to find a good job and not practicing the skills needed to find one, but instead slacking off and investing suboptimal effort in pursuing my duty. Comparing these two drastic alternatives, I can see that the long-term effects of both are drastic. One the one hand, I can work my way into finding a respectable position in society. If not, I might find myself bereft of a job, straggling to keep up with the lower ranks of the software engineering competition. However, more important to me currently than achieving either of...

Inspired by the web series Gullak , I have been thinking about a sportsman-like attitude to studies, academia, and preparation for the workforce, where an attitude of a game is taken towards the whole enterprise of studying hard, getting good grades, maintaining good extracurriculars, having good references, maintaining achievements, and securing good placement in schools or jobs. That being said, there are varying degrees of the serious-ness of attitude that people take towards sports, but they are surely not awarded the same degree of seriousness as practical life affairs, such as marriage, divorce, birth, illness, death, divorce, politics, arguments, or careers. All the way from middle school, or perhaps earlier, starting in elementary school, to college and beyond, developing individuals typically have the opportunity to be immersed in a school-type setting in which there are students, resources, hope, motivation, and a range of attitudes and feelings. While there are some for whom...

There are two implications to being young. In the first place, you have time to grow and think and mature and you have a daily routine to follow. Second, however, there is little importance or urgency in your life alone so you can while your time away easily. And yet, there is a deep resentment no matter which attitude is taken so that the developing individual is encouraged to ignore the minutiae of one's daily routine as a consequence of the imposing nature of the mirages of the stages of life through which one progresses. Given the gun problem in Chiraq, fingerprint-based biometric authentication is a good solution to ensure that only the individuals who are judged as being competent users of the weapon use it. Because of the danger of guns, another possible enhancement to them is the installation of a small user-facing camera, microphone, screen, and speaker on the gun so that it is possible to legally mandate LLM-enabled therapy with the user before the user is allowed to pull...

John's Steinbeck's masterpiece East of Eden  takes place in a region that symbolizes the land where Adam and Eve were driven out to after eating the forbidden fruit. It is a place of labor and difficulty, in contrast to the idyllic paradise of Heaven. It is a matter of interpretation whether the stories of the Bible can be compared to true stages of development that humans encounter in life and whether the fall from paradise can be likened to a barrier from what was formerly perfect that is temporal, spatial, generational, technological, or biological. The East, being the place from which the sun rises, represents a solar injunction to the duty of one's day at daybreak, and as the day carries on past midday, the sun casts shadows upon people and disappears past the horizon of the West into shade. But can we humans, knowing now as we did not know previously at the time of the writing of the Bible, that the Earth is round and not flat, attempt to reenter paradise by circumnav...

I am sharing here something I have written about LLMs and modeling. Most of it leans towards the science-fiction side, but it is at least partially based on reality and hopefully it will serve as a foundation for some future research ideas. Hope you enjoy! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1He_KZDnfAaKOfcLkrfY_XVwMsHLmdhHK/view?usp=drive_link

So today is Saturday, October 7th. Yesterday was the end of Week 1 of the quarter, meaning that we have about 10 more weeks before Winter Break, which doesn't seem like a lot. Summer this year was eventful. Firstly, I joined Smash Gyms for about two months, which I attended in the evenings after coming home from my internship. I attended the Muay Thai and Strength/Conditioning classes mostly. Secondly, I interned this summer at the same place I had interned at last summer, Cadence Design Systems. I enjoyed my time there and I didn't feel very stressed. Thirdly, during the last three weeks of summer break, which were also roughly the first three weeks of September, my parents went to India, leaving me and my brother to take care of the home, which we did. Now that I am growing older, I feel that I should be more careful about the words I choose, particularly on a public-facing blog like this one. There are pros and cons to this blog being public. The self-critical voice inside m...

I just realized something that is simultaneously great and terrible--that hard work is the key to satisfaction. It is great because it means that if you work hard, life will be better. But at the same time, it is terrible because it means that you have to work hard even if you don't want to. I woke up around 8:30 full of fear, worry, and frustration. After I finished a long day of work (~10 hrs work at least I think), however, I feel satiated and fine. I still have a lot of work, but I feel a little calmer. I also had a random thought a few days ago that I thought I would talk about. Religion seems like not just one thing but rather a combination of multiple things. It is the stories and literature or mythology that comprise the story it tells. E.g. The Ramayana It is a set of rules by which you must live your life and tells you your values. E.g. The Ten Commandments It is your personal relationship with God. It is a source of comfort and love to help you get through tough times an...

I realized yesterday that I haven't been living up to my full potential. I have been doing my math homework at the last moment, going to bed late, skipping lectures, and underperforming in my classes. I have been lazy, staying in bed a lot and watching too much YouTube. The fact that I have been lacking is not good for my reputation or academic performance, but it also makes me feel lowly and rotten inside. Yesterday, I had dinner with a fellow CS student, who impressed me in a few ways. Firstly, he seemed to have a vast knowledge of math during our discussion, mentioning his enrollment in honors complex analysis and discussing some advanced mathematical concepts. Secondly, he secured an internship at SpaceX, for which he completed an 8-hour interview problem. Thirdly, he talked about how he built a productivity app in CS97 that reached a hundred downloads in the past week. Additionally, he appeared to have a vast social group, referencing clubs such as StartupUCLA, and personally ...

  On occasion I find myself relieved that the human lifespan, typically speaking, is as long as it is. Because when I read the great works of the writers who immaculately and beautifully string together words with masterful precision and beauty when I gaze upon the artwork of artists who have a creative imagination and incredible technique too, and when I listen to the controlled, intentional keystrokes of master pianists, I am overwhelmed by a great sense of inferiority and awe. In part, this drives me to continue on my mission of becoming a better artist. I imagine that when he was my age, Jordan Peterson would have been a better artist in nearly every conceivable manner. Better writer, better speaker, better artist, better pianist, better dresser. And the attainment of these tremendous artistic capabilities obviously is not something that can be cultivated in an instant but rather requires the dedication of many quiet, focused hours. So, I do want to become a more cultured per...

Hey everyone, It's been a number of months since I last posted so I wanted to write a little check-in post. I don't have much to advertise about my life over the course of this past school year, except to assure my hypothetical readers that I am in sound health and that I am in no grave danger, which unintentionally sounds like something an abductee would be forced to say to a camera at gunpoint. I have faced some challenges in recent months, as is natural through the progression of life, pertaining to my professional and personal life. I don't wish to get into the details of these difficulties at the moment because I am still working through them and I think that writing about them at this uncertain moment would burden me more than I would like. But rest assured, I have written them down and intend to discuss some if not all of them after they have been resolved to some extent. Additionally, I have achieved one major milestone which brings me much joy, that is, submitting ...

The third year of my university is beginning tomorrow. I know the next couple of months will be quite busy with classes, lab, and grad school applications. Nevertheless, I'm excited for the grind to begin. I feel pride when I look back upon the winter and spring quarters of last year, which likewise kept me very busy. I am more than halfway done with Crime and Punishment , which I have been enjoying so far. While I'm away, I think I'll miss my neighborhood friends and the company and support of my family. I hope that not much changes in the meanwhile. Out of all the things I plan on working on this quarter, I feel the most unprepared for graduate school applications as well as internship applications. I think above all, I need to make a plan for each of these activities and stick to it.

Hello there, It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I would reflect briefly on what I've been doing this summer and what my plan is for the next couple of months. My internship at Cadence ends next Friday, the 17th, and the first day of my university is the Thursday following that, the 22nd. My internship experience this summer has been a pretty positive experience. I went to the office regularly and had a chance to meet the members of the San Jose team. I often met and had lunch with the two other interns on our team in the office breakroom or in the campus cafeteria; we got along pretty well, fortunately. I found my work quite engaging and interesting, especially since I was writing code and adding features to a program of manageable size. In addition to weekly intern meetings, my manager(s) shared invitations with me for larger team meetings, in which the team discussed bugs, new features, and progress updates. By attending these meetings, I was able to understan...

Society values people who: are knowledgeable, and have well-thought-out ideas Top Tech CEOs are all hardworking and hence know a lot about their companies, which are like their babies. People who can defend their ideas and win debates are better negotiators and get their way. are tall and handsome it's true, but don't worry if you aren't; life is unfair. you can probably get quite far without these. are goal-oriented Dr. Larabee asks Akeelah "Do you have any goals?" are witty A friend might react positively if I say something witty. Maybe the idea behind wit is to laugh in the face of suffering. are relatable If you are like them, they want to be like you. They can learn from your actions. are humble, likable, and optimistic Humble people are humble because they think a lot about how much they don't know, not about how much they know. Likable people tend to attract people. Optimistic people give people around them a reason to live. are trustworthy Trustworthy ...

One of my professors is a theoretical computer scientist. Looking at his past publications, which all are very mathematical in nature, I started to doubt whether I should really go into TinyML, a field that is very high-level for a computer science field. I also started to think about different skills that are required to contribute to these fields; I guess theoretical computer science requires a mathematically-oriented mind, while the majority of ML requires an engineering-oriented mind. I also was thinking about the nature of software engineering. It is exciting to come up with a new idea or improvement that can do good in the world--improve the performance or quality of a tool or introduce a new digital product. For example, it is exciting to propose new OS philosophies, research ways to make networks and distributed systems more efficient, and develop new hardware accelerators. But, it seems to me that at the heart of most of today's software is the repetitive implementation of...

There must be some game that two neural networks can play to solve the problem of NAS. GANs solve the problem of image generation through a very simple zero-sum game between two networks, where both compete to capture or evade the other.  Secondly, there must be a continuous way to deform a simple neural network into an immensely complicated one, like deforming a cow into a sphere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYkm8mnXss

05/23 In the past couple of days, I listened to two podcasts by Lex Fridman: one with Richard Dawkins concerning evolution and the other with Roger Penrose concerning artificial intelligence. I also listened to some comedy clips by Ricky Gervais. Today, I was recommended this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFupAV1_xWU, which combines all three topics: artificial intelligence, evolution, and Ricky Gervais. How good has YouTube's recommender system gotten? 05/25 I have been thinking a lot lately about what I would like my summer to look like. Above all, I would really like two things: 1) to contribute and learn as much as I can about TinyML and 2) to set myself up for a solid grad school application. I have been contemplating graduating a year early for a while now and I think I should do it. One thing that intimidates me about applying to grad school is the sheer competence of the application pool: among the contenders for the limited number of positions are people who are m...

It has been several days since my last post. As the quarter draws to a close, I have been thinking a lot about what I ought to do during the upcoming summer. I have two main goals, both of which I would like to fulfill. The first is to publish a paper in the lab I'm in. If I am able to do so, the publication will mark the culmination of the work I began about a year ago. I am frankly somewhat tired of working as part of this application-oriented project because I continually run into errors that are not directly related to the research. For example, I often have trouble replicating theoretical results that have been confirmed long ago; this is not a very useful problem to solve because it has already been solved before by someone else. By solving a problem relating to replicating a previously demonstrated result or debugging an error in a binarized model training script, I am not making useful progress. If, on the other hand, I were given a more theoretical problem, such as to prop...

 

I attended a Jeopardy game for computer science for an honor society that I am inducting into. I was able to answer several questions successfully, including some that I learned recently. I knew some answers after reading about ENIAC, the Halting problem, and Ada Lovelace in The Imitation Game . Being able to answer those questions felt rewarding because I was able to apply my knowledge practically, if only through recall on a game associated with testing obscure knowledge. I accepted my ML internship offer last Saturday. I am most excited to learn what having an office job is like and to visit the office campus if the job is in person. I am most worried about my lab. I wish I had some more conclusive data to report and that I could speed up my turnaround rate for experiments given to me. I also wish I had a clearer high-level perspective about my tasks and experiments so that I could more effectively decide what to spend time on. Lastly, I wish that I would articulate my thoughts bett...

I visited Dumbarton bridge today with my dad, a bridge over the Bay. From there, I could see San Francisco and Oakland and the Bay Bridge connecting these two. I enjoyed the trip. I have a lot of work on my plate and feel guilty that I only worked for an hour and a half today. But, I had many enjoyable experiences, including an evening walk and teaching some younger friends how to kick and punch. Tomorrow, I plan to wake up around 5am and work for an hour and a half, then exercise at 7am with my neighborhood friend. I have several tasks lined up for myself, including automata homework, statistics homework, a history essay, and a lab for my os class. Ideally, I will spend 8-9 hours of worktime tomorrow and also visit the library to return some books and get some more. However, I expect it to be difficult to achieve this goal. Today, I watched the daily routine of Lex Fridman and found it inspiring. I am reminded of how privileged I am to enjoy most of the classes I take and to be able t...