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eugenewu.net
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eugenewu.net
why i pay for the verge
kcoxdc.bsky.social Kate Cox @kcoxdc.bsky.social · 7d
There are blocks I won't go jogging down because it's just a wall of Ring cameras right up against the street with no setback and I do not need everyone and their grandmother recording me struggling at sunrise.

www.theverge.com/podcast/8220...
NILAY: mechanically, walk people through what you mean. You put enough Ring products in a neighborhood, and then AI does what to them that helps you get closer to the mission of zeroing out crime? JAMIE: So, the mental model, or how I look at it, is that AI allows us to have ... If you had a neighborhood where you had unlimited resources, so every house had security guards and those security guards were people that worked the same house for 10 years or 20 years, and I mean that from a knowledge perspective. So, the knowledge they had of that house was extreme; they knew everything about you and that residence and your family, how you lived, the people that came in and out. And then, if that neighborhood had an HOA with, call it private security, and those private security were also around and knew everything, what would happen? When a dog gets lost, you’d be like, “Oh, my gosh, my dog is lost.” Well, they would call each other, and one of them would find the dog very quickly. So, how do we change that and bring that into the digital world is — NILAY: Can I just ask you a question about that neighborhood specifically? JAMIE: Sure. NILAY: Do you ever stop and consider that that neighborhood might suck? Just the idea that every house on my street would have all-knowing private security guards, and I would have an HOA, and that HOA would have a private security force. You can easily paint that as dystopia. Everyone’s so afraid that we have private cops on every corner, and I’m paying HOA fees, which is just a nightmare of its own.
November 17, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by ewuuu
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
eugenewu.net
As an academic who has named papers after the classic mortal kombat ninjas (eugenewu.net/ninjas.html), I am obligated to share that the new Mortal Kombat II trailer IS AMAZING!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9pH...
July 18, 2025 at 12:43 AM
eugenewu.net
1/ Where does *academic* database research go from here—in a world dominated by AI, $100B in private investment, and an NSF budget cut in half? Where should focus go?

At SIGMOD 2025, we hosted a panel to discuss, summarized on the SIGMOD blog: wp.sigmod.org?p=3828

🧵 Key takeaways from the panel:
Panel Summary: Where Does Academic Database Research Go From Here? – ACM SIGMOD Blog
wp.sigmod.org
July 7, 2025 at 2:25 PM
eugenewu.net
Columbia's Data Management Group just wrapped up @sigmod2025.bsky.social with a strong showing: 4 papers, 2 demos, a keynote, a tutorial, and a panel. Highlights include a test-of-time award, best paper at DEEM, and best industry demo awards!

A full write up is at: eugenewu.net/general/2025...
Eugene Wu
eugenewu.net
July 2, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by ewuuu
kareemcarr.bsky.social
The US government is aiming to get rid of a quarter million people involved in science research and education by 2026.

I have no words.
July 1, 2025 at 3:21 PM
eugenewu.net
software craftsmanship in action.
ultorg.bsky.social Eirik Bakke @ultorg.bsky.social · Jun 18
Ultorg 2.0 is released, with several user-requested features! With conditional formats, you can color rows or cells, or "strike through" a row, based on values or an arbitrary formula condition. (1/6)
June 18, 2025 at 7:06 PM
eugenewu.net
Working on HILDA@sigmod2025.bsky.social keynote slides. Thinking about human data interaction, AI, and a virtuous cycle. Looking forward to seeing folks in a week!
June 16, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by ewuuu
reckless.bsky.social
the following 30 seconds from perfect movie REAL GENIUS are a rock solid vision of the future of education youtu.be/wB1X4o-MV6o?...
May 14, 2025 at 4:07 PM
eugenewu.net
Almost every db faculty that has received an nsf award ad benefitrd from hector and sylvia’s work. Well deserved!
sigmod2025.bsky.social SIGMOD/PODS 2025 @sigmod2025.bsky.social · Apr 24
🏆 The 2025 SIGMOD Contributions Award goes to

Hector Munoz-Avila and Sylvia Spengler

Citation:
"For outstanding service to the database community by initiating and supporting research, and for increasing awareness globally about the importance of database innovation."
April 24, 2025 at 11:31 AM
eugenewu.net
Go columbia db! Congrats to luis and papa john!
sigmod2025.bsky.social SIGMOD/PODS 2025 @sigmod2025.bsky.social · Apr 24
🏆 The ACM SIGMOD Test of time award (2025) goes to

K-shape: Efficient and accurate clustering of time series
John Paparrizos, Luis Gravano

2025.sigmod.org/sigmod_award...
2025.sigmod.org
April 24, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Reposted by ewuuu
reckless.bsky.social
Could not have been clearer about this www.theverge.com/24282022/kam...
Then presumptive Trump health secretary RFK Jr. hit the scene to spew his dangerous anti-vax bullshit, convinced enough people to stop getting vaccinated, and the fucking measles came back. When this man visited Samoa in 2019, he contributed to a measles outbreak so bad that 83 people died, almost all of them children. But to see this failure of collective action would require a break with the MAGA worldview, so these dummies have fallen back to saying getting measles is actually good. Do you trust Donald Trump to see this tradeoff and understand this outcome? To adjust to it and use the power of the Oval Office to convince Americans that the balance of harms favors vaccinations over a rise in measles cases? He couldn’t even do it for the covid vaccines his own Operation Warp Speed produced, and Vance is now blowing anti-vax dog whistles as loudly as he can in his public speeches. It is a near certainty that Trump will just blame the next measles outbreak on immigration because at least he can shoot at brown people.
February 20, 2025 at 8:48 PM
eugenewu.net
Excited for Phil Cascado from Outropy to join our class to talk about systems problems that arise when building agentic systems for real. AI is great for demos and hard for products.

Class: W6113.github.io
February 18, 2025 at 3:22 PM
eugenewu.net
Excited for Phil Cascado from Outropy to join our class to talk about systems problems that arise when building agentic systems for real. AI is great for demos and hard for products.

Class: W6113.github.io
February 18, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Reposted by ewuuu
flowingdata.com
Dishonest charts are coming from all directions, and they're only going to hit harder. Unless we push back. So, an interactive guide: Defense Against Dishonest Charts flowingdata.com/projects/dis...
Defense Against Dishonest Charts
This is a guide to protect ourselves and to preserve what is good about turning data into visual things.
flowingdata.com
February 13, 2025 at 9:45 PM
eugenewu.net
Really excited for shreya to speak about docETL, and in general LLM powered data analysis and the role of agent-based optimization, in our graduate seminar Agents For Real

Class website: w6113.github.io
February 13, 2025 at 3:22 PM
eugenewu.net
Exciting opportunity at the Columbia DAPLab! We are looking to hire a postdoc to work on AI Agents at the intersection of systems, AI, and HCI for Fall 2025. 🔥

Check out the details in the job post here: daplab.cs.columbia.edu/positions

#ColumbiaUnversity #AI #AIAgents
February 7, 2025 at 11:34 AM
eugenewu.net
The disparity between the ease to write an EO and the effort needed to push against it seems like a problem.
qasimrashid.com Qasim Rashid, Esq. @qasimrashid.com · Jan 28
BREAKING: Attorneys General of CA, NY, AZ, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, NV, NC, NJ, NM, OR, RI, VT, WA, WI, and D.C. are suing Trump for his budget freeze.

That 0 GOP AGs are joining, despite the fact that this freeze hurts their constituents the most, speaks to how MAGA is 100% a cult.
January 29, 2025 at 1:52 AM
eugenewu.net
Mechanisms for user agency and control over their data will continue to grow in importance and visibility!
marcua.net Adam Marcus @marcua.net · Jan 5
New post: Databases are more powerful than they've ever been, but the average person's relationship with their data is in the worst state it's ever been. Your data is stored in databases you don't control, and should instead be stored in your own personal database. blog.marcua.net/2025/01/05/m...
Maintaining control of our data with personal databases
Relational databases are in their sixth decade, and the database community is understandably celebrating and reflecting on its accomplishments. In two wonderful pieces, Donald Chamberlin shared his pe...
blog.marcua.net
January 6, 2025 at 2:12 PM
eugenewu.net
Looks like science giving us the finger. Sometime certainly feels like it
emilymyers.bsky.social Emily Myers @emilymyers.bsky.social · Dec 13
Just did a calculation of our lab's time from project conception to publication (e-pub) over the past x years. We're averaging 3.5 years from the first idea to acceptance. About 6-9 months of this is review time. Don't know how typical this is but good reality check esp. for trainees.
Histogram showing time to publication of papers in years; distribution centers on about 3/5 years
December 23, 2024 at 2:04 PM
eugenewu.net
End of semester faculty reviews from McSweeny’s.

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-f...
December 15, 2024 at 8:11 PM
eugenewu.net
ok last one. i swear
December 13, 2024 at 8:19 PM
eugenewu.net
Mad Lad in class wrote this story about Codd with an odd bod.
December 13, 2024 at 8:14 PM
eugenewu.net
I asked my students in introduction to databases to create database memes. Here are some bangers:

I remove all data redundancy,
Might not preserve some functional dependency,
Cluttered databases I do reform,
'Am your good ol' friend Boyce-Codd Normal Form.
December 13, 2024 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by ewuuu
tomgauld.bsky.social
A helpful gift shopping algorithm that I made for @theguardian.com a couple of years ago.
A very complex diagram which begins with the question "Do you need a a gift for someone" but, despite many questions and choices, always suggests either giving a book or buying a book for yourself, or gets in a huff and says "I give up!".
December 11, 2024 at 1:12 PM