Should AI-Generated Images Be Copyrightable? Yes and No.

I often encounter a recurring issue when running projects on a remote server and trying to collect data afterward. The setup in my run_script.sh usually includes a line for sending emails once the job is done. #!/bin/bash #BSUB -J StockTraderTestRun # Set the job name to StockTraderTestRun #BSUB -q gpu # Submit to the long queue #BSUB -o /nfsshare/home/tang/StockTrader/%J.out # Standard output file #BSUB -e /nfsshare/home/tang/StockTrader/%J.err # Standard error file #BSUB -N # Send email at job finish #BSUB -u ariana_tang@outlook.com # Set your email address # Change directory to where the main.py script is located # Execute the main.py script cd /nfsshare/home/tang/StockTrader/StockTradingDRL_upload/ python /nfsshare/home/tang/StockTrader/StockTradingDRL_upload/main.py novel_lstm_positive But here’s the rub: the email dispatch never functions as intended. There’s a subtle irony in how my efforts to debug are commensurate with the perceived benefits of receiving an email notification post-job completion. Admittedly, I’ve been somewhat negligent, routinely plugging in the line #BSUB -u ariana_tang@outlook.com # Set your email address and occasionally altering the address, half-hoping for a spontaneous fix. ...

In the thrilling contest of high-frequency trading, my squad is called ‘MONOPOLY’ inspired by Ariana Grande’s hit single of the same name. The song is about “friendship, freedom, protecting your energy and staying right in your bag. We’re all about that life in the lab — working hard and spilling the tea on all things academic. I spent the whole day diving into developing a DRL algorithm for our HFT contest — it’s both a blast and a bit of a time sink, considering opportunity cost. But anyway, I got our code up and running and even churned out some early results. ...

There are peaks, there are valleys, and sometimes you’re just stuck at the bus stop a bit longer.

I knew, and was heavily influenced by a fascinating AER paper by Joel Waldfogel from 1993, aptly titled “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.” Economists often praise holiday spending for its positive macroeconomic effects. However, gift-giving’s critical microeconomic facet lies in the recipient making different choices than the giver. Essentially, gifts risk being mismatched with recipients’ preferences, potentially causing a deadweight loss. Waldfogel’s paper, deriving data from Yale undergraduates’ surveys, estimates holiday gift-giving destroys 10% to 33% of gifts’ value. While these students might not represent the entire U.S. populace, their gifts’ nature likely does. Annually, holiday expenditures hit $40 billion, implying a substantial deadweight loss, rivaling income taxation’s inefficiency. The paper also explores cash gifts versus in-kind gifts, determining friends and “significant others” give the most valued gifts. ...

People straddling the realms of economics and computer science have a fascinating way of thinking. I used to believe I was the sole individual who viewed my surroundings through a “math” filter. However, it appears that everyone in this field has their unique quirks. Take, for instance, one of the professors I work with. He genuinely “calculates” his academic networking social distance. Our recent discussion about a paper left him in awe of the mathematical techniques employed, and here’s the conversation: ...

Regarding ADIP, a first-order method for solving LP, the following is an excerpt from Deng et al.’s arxiv page: The ADMM-based interior point method (ABIP, Lin et al. 2021) is a hybrid algorithm which effectively combines the iterior point method and the first-order method to achieve performance boost in large-scale linear programming. Different from the standard interior point method which relies on a costly Newton step, ABIP applies the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to approximately solve the barrier penalized problem. In this paper, we provide a new version of ABIP with several improvements. First, we develop some new implementation strategies to accelerate ABIP’s performance for linear programming. Next, we extend ABIP to solving the more general linear conic programming and establish the associated iteration complexity of the algorithm. Finally, we conduct extensive numerical experiments in both synthetic and real-world datasets to demonstrate the empirical advantage of our developments. In particular, the enhanced ABIP achieves a 5.8x reduction in the geometric mean of run time on 105 LP instances from Netlib and it compares favorably against state-of-the-art open-source solvers in a wide range of large-scale problems. Moreover, it is even comparable to the commercial solvers in some particular datasets. ...

Everyone is familiar with linear programming (LP) and its possibly NP-hard simplex algorithm. Additionally, there are interior-point methods and more. Recent advancements in the field are aimed at handling large-scale LP problems that necessitate parallel processing. One approach is the PDHG (Primal Dual Hybrid Gradient) method, a first-order optimization method for large-scale LP. Another intriguing method is the second-order ADMM. While the PDHG method is straightforward in its core concept, it employs numerous heuristic techniques, some of which have solid theoretical foundations, to expedite the optimization process. These include step size selection, adaptive restarts, primal weight updates, and more. ...

Shanghai ranks among China’s top international cities, alongside Hong Kong. Being an undergrad student in Shanghai, my friend and I represent a significant chunk of the city’s active consumer base, i.e. we contribute substantially to its vibrant atmosphere and GDP. Shanghai residents genuinely embrace international cultures, with a strong preference for North American influences. European styles, particularly those from Italy and France, also enjoy popularity. Some venture into Mexican or Latino influences, while others delve into East Asian elements like Zen culture from Japan or Korean pop culture. The Little Red Book app, similar to Instagram, serves as a platform for young people to share their “foreign lifestyle” experiences. It’s quite amusing, as some consider eating burgers and bagels as a symbol of a fancy, high-class lifestyle (ewww, seriously?). In terms of price they are symbolizing US food price indeed… Bagels, which cost around ¥8-30, barely pass as a breakfast item due to their small size, and a burger for ¥60 or more is standard (in contrast to the filling and budget-friendly 生煎包, pronounced Sheng-Jian-Bao, a type of fried meat bun, which costs about ¥15 per share). ...

Today’s blog draws inspiration from Freakonomics Radio’s podcast, which presented a three-episode series on “How to Succeed at Failing.” It’s not the most pleasant topic to discuss. In their final episode, they did something quite bold, or at least it seemed daring to me. They interviewed several individuals who had experienced failure in entrepreneurship, academia, and relationships. We often mourn, blame, and regret our own failures, but what perspective should we have when it comes to others’ failures? ...