Understanding Backpropagation A Bit Better
I work with neural networks on a daily basis. But one thing has always escaped my understanding: how backpropagation actually works. By coding an SGNS network from scratch, I forced myself to implement a backpropagation mechanism all by myself. This helped me understand this crucial part of neural networks. In this article, I show you what I learned, and hopefully you, too, will understand the backpropagation algorithm better.
PhalfwayD
A few days ago, I finally hit a milestone on my journey to a PhD: My mid-term examination, the final point at which major changes to a dissertation can still me made. In this article, I want to offer some reflections on this event, and how it has changed my view on the entire journey.
The Best New Apple OS Feature is the Most Boring One
Apple just released new versions for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The updates promise a ton of new features, albeit many are geoblocked in the European Union. However, the best new feature of the new OS versions is probably the one you imagine to be the least exciting.
Understanding Files and Folders: A Primer
In the past years, educators have noticed that younger generations began having difficulties understanding the traditional file-centric model of computers. In this article, I provide a primer in what the file-centric model is and how it works, targeted at people who grew up learning only the app-centric model of smartphones.
Panic? Thoughts on the U.S. Presidential Debate
Last Thursday, the presidential candidates for the 2024 U.S. election met for their first public debate in Atlanta. The reactions to the debate were clear: It was a disaster for Biden. While I tend to agree, I think that the debate debacle rather points to a deeper crisis of the Democratic Party: A lack of vision, charismatic leaders, and a hostile environment to do politics in.
How hard can line endings be, really? A horror story from integration hell
They are invisible to the eye, yet crucial for writing: Line endings. While most of the time, it doesn't matter whether you use Windows or Mac, it becomes a central piece of writing when it comes to detecting linefeeds. In this article, I share a short story on how you can really mess this – seemingly simple – task up.
Understanding TOTP Two-Factor Authentication: An ELI5
When logging in online, you usually have to provide a second factor before the website lets you in: A six digit code from your smartphone. Have you ever wondered how this works? After a recent incident where I lost all my 2FA keys, I decided to understand the algorithm.
The Transformer Architecture: A Visual Guide
A few days ago, Grant Sanderson a.k.a. 3Blue1Brown started uploading videos offering a visual introduction to the transformer architecture. I think they are great and you should watch them. Also, they reminded me that two years ago I produced something very similar, but in PDF-format because I like to look at large images that both show the entire process in all its gory glory and the detail at the same time.
A Rant
R sucks, and in this – very opiniated – article, I collect a selection of the various issues I have with this language. Do not get me wrong: R is great for statistics, but for everything else it really, really sucks.
Web Design for Web Scrapers
Social scientists sometimes find themselves in the situation of having to scrape some data from websites since a corresponding dataset does not yet exist. In that case, they are often confronted with confusing HTML code and can struggle to extract the data they want. In this article, I want to provide a primer in web design, the profession of creating these websites. Understanding what web designers think will help disentangle the issues many of us face when looking at some HTML and trying to extract precious data from it.