Archive

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflecting on CS Graduate Admissions

I was just indulging in my favorite bad habit (reading hacker news), when I came across a discussion about  prestige in faculty hiring  - namely, the fact that the majority of CS professors across the US come from the top 18 or so universities, and that even within that, there's bias.  The HN discussion turned to Ph.D. admissions, with a commenter noting: " I'm not sure, but I'd bet that the best institutions actually don't care where their applicants come from. They can afford to just choose the best. It's the so-so places that have to signal their quality by 'hiring the best'. I've seen this in graduate school applications - students with poor marks often stand a better chance of admittance in a top program than a so-so one. " I just finished chairing the CMU CS Ph.D. admissions committee, so I thought it might be worth writing down my experience in doing so.  With two very important notes: I'm not doing it next year, so please don
Read more

Finances for recent CS Ph.Ds headed to academia

Image
As you may have guessed from my recent post analyzing the TCO of my former automobile , and my post on finances for CS Ph.D. students , I've been thinking about finance a bit lately.  After a thought-provoking discussion with a senior colleague in another department, I've come to the conclusion my financial satisfaction graph looked something like this -- and I bet it's similar for many other no-kids-at-completion academics who end up enfamilied (can I make up that word?). (In case I seem too negative about kids, don't get me wrong.  As the absolutely awesome book All Joy and No Fun notes, being honest about the myriad costs of having a child isn't at odds with also being very glad that the little wriggling worm is in your life.  Great book.  If you haven't read it and you do or may have kids, read it.) The Taulbee survey suggests that the median assistant professor in Computer Science has a 9mo salary of about $96,055.  Assuming you pay your summers, that
Read more

Chili Crisp Showdown: Laoganma and Flybyjing

Image
I've been on a bit of a chili crisp mission lately.  The Internets -- and my friends -- appear convinced that the best chili crisp is Laoganma .  Or Flybyjing .  Certainly one of them.  But which? My answer, alas, is that you might want a bottle of each.  Or five bottles of each.  Let's jump in: Laoganma on the left, Flybyjing on the right.  The famous slightly disapproving face of the old grandmother stares at us, contrasted with the apparently very-hard-to-print rainbow label of the newer entrant.  Opening up the containers, one is immediately struck by the color and texture differences: Laoganma, on the left in both photos, has more "crunchy bits", but also has fewer suspended solids in the oil.  The bottle is about 3/4 full of the solid crispy bits.  The flybyjing bottle is only about 1/3 full of crispy bits. This difference flows through to the spoonfuls below -- much more crispy stuff in the laoganma, but its oil is merely the color of chili o
Read more