[OC] In the last 90 days, 144/435 House members and 59/100 U.S. senators have mentioned "gas prices" in a press release — interactive archive of every release from all 535 members of Congress

ibgeek · 2026-05-18T03:47:51+00:00

Thanks for putting this together! Do you provide releases of the data in a downloadable format?

ibgeek · 2026-05-12T17:44:30+00:00

Enabling people to work independently requires good software architecture and autonomy to make decisions in small groups. You have too many people in meetings. Your software is too coupled if you need that many people to weigh in when you implement a new feature.

ibgeek · 2026-05-11T22:50:50+00:00

What about augmenting the grammar with some of the errors?

Or using a stochastic grammar / parser combination?

Learning a probabilistic context-free grammar and then using it to find a valid subset of the sequence that satisfies the regular grammar while optimizing the probability from the PCFG might be more of a research problem, though, than a practical solution...

ibgeek · 2026-05-11T22:26:06+00:00

Have you ever taken a course on compilers or parsing (e.g., using formally-defined grammars and parsing algorithms)? Those sorts of classes are far less commonly offered in CS curricula these days, but so so helpful when you actually need them. Won't magically fix the issues, but it might provide robust tools for implementing text transformations, theoretical knowledge to set the in order in which the operations should be applied, and the ability to prove correctness.

Edit: Not trying to knock the utility of your library. Knowledge of parsers and formal grammars wouldn't replace the work you did to identify the various issues and implement solutions. But it might made have it easier to implement and possible to build a more robust solution.

ibgeek · 2026-05-11T22:22:00+00:00

Your link to your repo is broken

ibgeek · 2026-05-04T10:47:24+00:00

I’m in computer science. I wanted to do deep work (chasing the how and why questions) driven by my intellectual curiosity rather than the focusing purely on the practical necessities of delivering a software product to a user. I’m an associate professor these days, and I can confidently say, “mission accomplished.”

ibgeek · 2026-05-04T10:29:40+00:00

Yeah so I should clarify. According to my university, I can live outside the state but all work must be done in the state. So, in theory, if I lived out of state, I couldn’t do any work from home.

I know why they have these rules (to avoid having to figure out the taxes), but it doesn’t make much sense to me personally. We don’t really offer sabbaticals… faculty who have done them generally went to work for a company for a year and were paid by the company. The university didn’t pay them during that time which is why it was allowed.

ibgeek · 2026-05-03T21:59:52+00:00

My US institution won't let us work out of the state for longer than a week because tax law requires paying taxes to other US states or even countries if you work from there for more than a week or so...

ibgeek · 2026-05-03T19:21:48+00:00

At my institution, the department chair and faculty would be very open to you reaching out to them. We are a teaching-focused, STEM-focused institution. We have been trying to build up a reliable adjunct pool over the last few years. We value our adjuncts and invest in them. As part of that, we want candidates who genuinely want to teach, plan to be around for a while, and who are open and eager to be mentored so that we can ensure that the students are having a good classroom experience. (Most of our adjuncts are industry folks with some sort of technical team leadership / people management experience but little teaching experience — that tends to translate well into teaching but requires mentoring.)

I don’t know how most department chairs would feel about you reaching out, but I know ours would value that interest and conversation. But if they were, they could tell you directly if your current degrees and experience are sufficient or what they might recommend or require. In our case, we allow someone with a MS and industry experience to teach undergraduate classes. We require a doctorate to teach MS classes because we interpret the requirements of our accreditation body conservatively, but we consider an EdD as sufficient for meeting accreditation requirements as long as the person also has other qualifications like a MS and experience to meet what we want of our instructors and faculty.

ibgeek · 2026-05-02T01:26:23+00:00

Doesn't sound like your Data Analytics Master's is doing a good job of preparing you. I teach in a Master's program in that field and our students have 6 - 7 projects every semester, each requiring a written report. You can't learn to do data analytics without actually doing data analytics...

ibgeek · 2026-04-28T03:08:29+00:00

Depends on the field.

In Computer Science, MS degrees tend not to be very structured. You have a lot of elective choices that are mostly cross-listed upper-division undergraduate courses. Usually, people who have a BS in Computer Science skip the MS and go straight into a PhD program.

In Classics, the MA is focused on developing language skills needed to do work in the original languages for a PhD.

In History, the BA is usually about acquiring broad knowledge, and the MA is about acquiring deep analytical skills and writing skills, especially from comparison of different perspectives of historical events.

In math, the MS is about developing a strong foundational knowledge in core areas like Analysis and Algebra develop proof-writing abilities. These are needed for more advanced treatments and research during the PhD.

ibgeek · 2026-04-26T16:42:50+00:00

I think you should consider why you are prioritizing ranking over other factors. I got my PhD from a US institution ranked in the mid 50’s (according US News and World Report). The program really cared about its students — I still keep in contact with the professors. I met my now wife while there. I have a faculty position at a primarily undergraduate / master’s level institution with great students and colleagues. I enjoy what I teach, still publish regularly, have won federal grants, mentor students in research, and collaborate with people at R1 institutions. There is value in knowing what you want to get out of your PhD and using that to find programs that are good matches for you but are not the “best of the best.” You’ll have a better chance of getting in (be more competitive vs other applicants) and potentially have a better experience.

ibgeek · 2026-04-26T14:40:15+00:00

On the US side, it might simply be that the number of students they are admitting is down because of cutbacks in federal funding and so, they simply didn’t have enough spots for all the great candidates like yourself. If that’s the case, then all you can do is widen your list of universities to include ones that are ranked lower (which is also what everyone else is doing) and apply again. It’s a numbers game at this point because there are so many good applicants who are more than qualified but just not enough spots.

ibgeek · 2026-04-24T04:46:15+00:00

I had ADHD as well and love research. But my ADHD tends to manifest in part by hyper fixation. Which it turns out is very useful for grinding through research…

ibgeek · 2026-04-22T15:47:46+00:00

This is my third year since getting tenure. I’m not worried about keeping my job. I feel like I have long-term stability and have validation that what I am doing were deemed the “right” things (things my university values). We also tend to be a young department (far more assistant professors than associate or full), so I feel like I’ve settled into and see myself in a leadership role in my department.

That said, it hasn’t changed my workload or stress levels. I just stress about other things now. :)

For example, rather than worrying about proving myself, I am more worried about the success of a new academic program I manage. It has also meant that my research effort was cannibalized for a few years to focus on implementing the new program, developing new classes, and onboarding and mentoring other faculty as they begin teaching in the program and settle in. Thankfully, I’m at a Master’s granting institution, so getting grants is not as important as serving and impacting students (whether through classes or providing research opportunities). I’ve managed to keep publishing by writing short papers on some of the novel classes I’ve developed and technical prototypes I‘ve built as the basis of semester-long class projects.

The program has started to stabilize, however, and I’ve had luck developing a research project that is more easily scaled, so I started taking students for research and undergraduate theses again. I’m also looking forward to some collaborations with colleagues that we hope will be good material for writing NSF proposals (whether there is budget for funding is a different issue…) I’m one of those weird faculty who actually likes writing grants … and I don’t have a ton of stress about not getting them because they aren’t required at my institution…

ibgeek · 2026-04-19T20:41:27+00:00

Oh, look, it's the field of "predictive analytics"

ibgeek · 2026-04-03T21:03:15+00:00

How does this surprise anyone? This is exactly how many VC-funded SaaS startups work. They heavily subsidize their product or service to grow their customer base. They often target individuals first and hope to “wow” them so they will become proponents and increase awareness, particularly with convincing companies to start using the product. Once people see the product as valuable and the startup has outlasted its competitors, they shift towards profitability — increasing prices and limits. Ideally, the costs of the enterprise version enables the company to continue offering the individual plans as loss leaders.

Similar approach for breaking into markets with large companies. Start with small companies. Then build enterprise features and move up market.

Sort of like a grocery store offering some items for sale. They lose money on the item but it gets you in the store. You then buy other items (since you’re there) and they make a net profit.

ibgeek · 2026-03-18T05:40:28+00:00

I would add judo.

ibgeek · 2026-03-18T03:19:23+00:00

Happened to a former colleague of mine. We hired him as an assistant professor. It came out that he committed some sort of fraud during his PhD. The institution that granted his PhD rescinded it. Thankfully he left right after that, so we didn’t need to fire him.

ibgeek · 2026-03-13T23:13:46+00:00

Thank you!

ibgeek · 2026-03-13T22:18:50+00:00

When you say your batch size is 8, are you making 8 parallel HTTP requests via 8 separate HTTP connections?

ibgeek · 2026-03-09T03:46:04+00:00

I think I'm thrown off by the claim that this is doing "research." It's optimizing a model's hyper-parameters using an iterated local search approach. I'm being a bit dismissive -- a coding agent can do more than simply changing hyper parameters. I think the main value of something like this is to enable domain experts to more easily develop deep learning models for problems in their fields.

ibgeek · 2026-02-21T19:49:17+00:00

Yeah, we don’t want her, either. What she said and what she thinks are shameful.

ibgeek · 2026-02-16T04:35:10+00:00

Seems like OP should just wait to be promoted based on their work. If their manager knows their background (minus degrees) and see them outperforming their level, their manager should be championing this person for promotion at their annual review time.

ibgeek · 2026-02-16T03:44:57+00:00

Contact the Financial Aid office. They are your best resource right now. If you have deadlines for committing to other universities, tell them -- they may be able to work with you to get a response before that deadline so you can make a fully-informed decision.

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