hitting the ground running
I realized that as much as I like how bare-bones Leaflet is, the website has some weird bugs and honestly isn't very secure. Anyone with the URL could've sent out the updates that I was sending. So, now I'm going to start using Buttondown, because it's free and I've heard good things. The look is not as good (imo), but this new setup should work better for me. Hopefully (!) this is the last time I have to migrate. Even if I do though, I think it'll be easier to migrate from Buttondown vs an earlier in development site like Leaflet.
work
This week, I feel like I got a lot done! We managed to submit one paper to SIGMOD 2026, so hopefully that goes well! Fortunately, it was a resubmission, so it was mostly just rewriting and selling the paper better. I'm much happier with this version than the one we submitted before.
Also, despite pushing for the deadline, I also made a lot of progress on my other papers! I did some writing for each, and one that moved on from brainstorming toward actual writing. I'm still planning to use the next month before I start to write as much as possible. There are so many other projects that I wish I had time to do, and I need to make time to recruit PhD students.
I got some news about my future work too! I found out that in the Spring, I'll get to teach CS 579. I'm excited, because it'll be very similar to classes I TA'd for back at UChicago, and I think I'll be able to teach a pretty good class. On top of that, it'll allow me to meet both undergrads and grads at Stevens because it's cross-listed.
non-work
Despite the busy week, I managed to have a lot of fun! My friend from DSO came to visit, so I got to see her in person for the first time in a while. Also, my partner officially got sworn in as a federal lawyer in the NYSD court! Fun fact: While I was watching her, I learned that the NY Southern District court is even older than SCOTUS. It was also really cool to be in a court house and to see how the swearing in went. I was pretty quick and all 30ish lawyers that were admitted introduced themselves. Cool to see how much variety lawyers can have in how, what, and where they practice.
Before the week started I finished Blue Prince! The game was super fun and there was so much to learn about the world and game mechanics. Unfortunately, this also means the stopping point was kind of anti-climactic. One of the main themes is that you can basically keep playing the game, and there are apparently secrets that even the Blue Price community is trying to work out. So, I just had to basically pick a point where I was satisfied with how much I'd solved and moved on. I still think I did a whole lot though. I don't know what I'm planning to play next.
things i saw this week
I learned about the Vivaldi browser, which seems like it has a lot of unique things going for it. I'm planning to make it my daily driver for a little bit to test it out
An Economist article making the case that AI is killing the internet, which I think is a common sentiment
I wonder, though, if this deluge of AI content is caused by the effective subsidizing that the AI bubble has caused
Will it stick around after AI is more expensive or becomes enshittified?
Accessible Micah Lee blog post which covers how Signal is useful to preserve privacy and avoid surveillance when attending protests
A Lesswrong post that discusses some potential gaps in how computer security experts might be mis-evaluating the "inside" vs "outside" threat model distinction
I don't think I fully buy into the distinction myself, and I think that this website generally over-estimates the abilities of AI agents. I still thought the post made me think a bit though
I think there might be more concern about sending all your data to an AI company by using their model. In this way, the model's is like an inside backdoor to some outside company. I don't know of anyone abusing this yet, but I'm sure it will come.
A WSJ Article about the best cities for recent grads to go to (it's rough out there)
questions
How much more work would be useful analyzing the security of WebAuthn and FIDO2?
A paper from CRYPTO 2021 does some analysis, but I'm not sure if there are other open problems or extensions around it.
Thanks for reading to the end! Here's a picture from this week:
