Friday Hacks #192: Everything about Randomness, and Reinforcement Learning
Date/Time: 4th September, 7PM
Venue: Online on Zoom: https://www.nushackers.org/fh192zoom
Talk #1: Everything about Randomness
Description
In this talk, we are going to discuss all sorts of random number generation, such as: what does it mean to be random? What is a pseudo-random number generator? What is the difference between /dev/random and /dev/urandom, and which one should we use? What makes a RNG secure, and why do we need to use SecureRandom for cryptographic purposes?
Speaker Profile
Herbert is a recent NUS graduate who currently works at Traverse Technologies (https://traverse.ai). He was a NUS Hackers coreteam member.
Talk #2: Reinforcement Learning with Ray RLlib
Description
Reinforcement learning trains an agent to maximize a reward in an environment. I’ll start with why RL is important, how it works, several applications of RL, and also the compute challenges RL creates.
Then we’ll see how RLlib, implemented with Ray, seamlessly and efficiently supports RL, providing an ideal platform for building Python-based, RL applications with an intuitive, flexible API.
Speaker Profile
Dean Wampler is an expert in data engineering for scalable streaming data systems and applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI). He is a Principal Software Engineer at Domino Data Lab. Previously he worked at Anyscale and Lightbend, where he worked on scalable ML with Ray and distributed streaming data systems with Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and other tools. Dean is the author of several books and reports from O'Reilly, including the forthcoming report "What Is Ray? Distributed Computing Made Simple". He is a contributor to several open source projects and a frequent conference speaker. He also co-organizes several conferences around the world and several user groups in Chicago. Dean has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington. Find Dean on Twitter: @deanwampler
See you there! 👋
Date/Time: 4th September, 7PM
Venue: Online on Zoom: https://www.nushackers.org/fh192zoom
Talk #1: Everything about Randomness
Description
In this talk, we are going to discuss all sorts of random number generation, such as: what does it mean to be random? What is a pseudo-random number generator? What is the difference between /dev/random and /dev/urandom, and which one should we use? What makes a RNG secure, and why do we need to use SecureRandom for cryptographic purposes?
Speaker Profile
Herbert is a recent NUS graduate who currently works at Traverse Technologies (https://traverse.ai). He was a NUS Hackers coreteam member.
Talk #2: Reinforcement Learning with Ray RLlib
Description
Reinforcement learning trains an agent to maximize a reward in an environment. I’ll start with why RL is important, how it works, several applications of RL, and also the compute challenges RL creates.
Then we’ll see how RLlib, implemented with Ray, seamlessly and efficiently supports RL, providing an ideal platform for building Python-based, RL applications with an intuitive, flexible API.
Speaker Profile
Dean Wampler is an expert in data engineering for scalable streaming data systems and applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI). He is a Principal Software Engineer at Domino Data Lab. Previously he worked at Anyscale and Lightbend, where he worked on scalable ML with Ray and distributed streaming data systems with Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and other tools. Dean is the author of several books and reports from O'Reilly, including the forthcoming report "What Is Ray? Distributed Computing Made Simple". He is a contributor to several open source projects and a frequent conference speaker. He also co-organizes several conferences around the world and several user groups in Chicago. Dean has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington. Find Dean on Twitter: @deanwampler
See you there! 👋
Hackerschool: Automation with Python
Date/Time: Saturday, 5 Sep 2020, 13:00 to 15:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Sign-up link: http://bit.ly/hackers-python-automation
Welcome back to Hackerschool! 👋
This week, we will go through how to automate tasks in Python such as reading and writing files, web scraping, downloading videos from youtube, manipulating images in bulk and more.
This workshop will be held on Zoom, and you will need a local installation of Python 3.6 and above to participate in the workshop.
See you there! 😇
Date/Time: Saturday, 5 Sep 2020, 13:00 to 15:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Sign-up link: http://bit.ly/hackers-python-automation
Welcome back to Hackerschool! 👋
This week, we will go through how to automate tasks in Python such as reading and writing files, web scraping, downloading videos from youtube, manipulating images in bulk and more.
This workshop will be held on Zoom, and you will need a local installation of Python 3.6 and above to participate in the workshop.
See you there! 😇
NUS Hackers
Hacker Tools: Virtual machines and installing Ubuntu Date/Time: Tuesday, 1 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30 Sign up here Welcome to Hacker Tools! This session, we'll be talking about virtual machines and their usage, and then putting it into practice by walking…
Just a reminder that Hacker Tools: Virtual machines and installing Ubuntu is happening later today!
If you have already signed up, please check your email for the Zoom link. Otherwise, it's not too late to sign up.
See you there!
If you have already signed up, please check your email for the Zoom link. Otherwise, it's not too late to sign up.
See you there!
Hacker Tools: Shell and scripting
Date/Time: Tuesday, 8 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
The shell is a fast, efficient textual interface to your computer. Come learn to use the shell, and write shell scripts, to do things from managing files and processing text, to writing quick scripts that help you automate and speed up your daily computing life.
Please ensure you have access to a POSIX-compatible shell, such as Bash. If you are on macOS or a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows, consider installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Ubuntu in VirtualBox.
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week's topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/shell-tools/.
See you there!
Date/Time: Tuesday, 8 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
The shell is a fast, efficient textual interface to your computer. Come learn to use the shell, and write shell scripts, to do things from managing files and processing text, to writing quick scripts that help you automate and speed up your daily computing life.
Please ensure you have access to a POSIX-compatible shell, such as Bash. If you are on macOS or a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows, consider installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Ubuntu in VirtualBox.
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week's topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/shell-tools/.
See you there!
NUS Hackers
Hacker Tools: Virtual machines and installing Ubuntu Date/Time: Tuesday, 1 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30 Sign up here Welcome to Hacker Tools! This session, we'll be talking about virtual machines and their usage, and then putting it into practice by walking…
YouTube
Hacker Tools AY 20/21 S 1: Virtual machines and installing Ubuntu
1 Sep 2020
We talked about virtual machines and their usage, and then put it into practice by walking through the installation of Ubuntu in VirtualBox, a popular and open-source hypervisor.
Slides for this workshop are available at https://github.com/n…
We talked about virtual machines and their usage, and then put it into practice by walking through the installation of Ubuntu in VirtualBox, a popular and open-source hypervisor.
Slides for this workshop are available at https://github.com/n…
Hackerschool: Introduction to Git
Date/Time: Saturday, 12 Sep 2020, 13:00 to 16:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Sign-up link: https://bit.ly/hs-git-intro
Welcome back to Hackerschool!
Git is a distributed version-control system for tracking changes in source code during software development. It is designed for coordinating work among programmers, but it can be used to track changes in any set of files. Come learn to use Git so you can version your own personal projects, work with others, or contribute to the vast body of open-source projects that collaborate with Git.
Please install Git on your computer beforehand. We will be focusing on Git itself, using the command line, so please make sure you are able to use Git via the command line.
- Windows: https://git-scm.com/download/win
- Linux: Install Git via your distribution's package manager.
- Mac OS X: Install Git via Homebrew.
No prior programming experience is required!
Hope to see you there! :)
Date/Time: Saturday, 12 Sep 2020, 13:00 to 16:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Sign-up link: https://bit.ly/hs-git-intro
Welcome back to Hackerschool!
Git is a distributed version-control system for tracking changes in source code during software development. It is designed for coordinating work among programmers, but it can be used to track changes in any set of files. Come learn to use Git so you can version your own personal projects, work with others, or contribute to the vast body of open-source projects that collaborate with Git.
Please install Git on your computer beforehand. We will be focusing on Git itself, using the command line, so please make sure you are able to use Git via the command line.
- Windows: https://git-scm.com/download/win
- Linux: Install Git via your distribution's package manager.
- Mac OS X: Install Git via Homebrew.
No prior programming experience is required!
Hope to see you there! :)
NUS Hackers
Hacker Tools: Shell and scripting Date/Time: Tuesday, 8 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30 Sign up here The shell is a fast, efficient textual interface to your computer. Come learn to use the shell, and write shell scripts, to do things from managing files and processing…
Just a reminder that Hacker Tools: Shell and scripting is happening later today!
If you have already signed up, please check your email for the Zoom link. Otherwise, it's not too late to sign up.
See you there!
If you have already signed up, please check your email for the Zoom link. Otherwise, it's not too late to sign up.
See you there!
Hacker Tools: CLI data wrangling
Date/Time: Tuesday, 22 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
Come learn how to manipulate, process, search, and make sense of any form of data with various tools, all while never leaving the Unix command line.
Please ensure you have access to a POSIX-compatible shell, such as Bash. If you are on macOS or a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows, consider installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Ubuntu in VirtualBox.
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week's topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/data-wrangling/.
See you there!
Date/Time: Tuesday, 22 Sep 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
Come learn how to manipulate, process, search, and make sense of any form of data with various tools, all while never leaving the Unix command line.
Please ensure you have access to a POSIX-compatible shell, such as Bash. If you are on macOS or a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows, consider installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Ubuntu in VirtualBox.
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week's topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/data-wrangling/.
See you there!
Hello! Did y’all know we have an instagram? If you prefer following our event updates via instagram, you can follow us https://instagram.com/nushackers 😺
Friday Hacks #193: Fintech and API Design Patterns
Date/Time: 18th September, 7.00PM
Venue: Online on Zoom
Zoom link: https://www.nushackers.org/fh193zoom
For this Friday Hacks, we have talks on fintech and API design lined up for you, with an engineer from Google as one of the speakers.
Talk #1: How does it look like working as a Fintech developer?
Talk Description
In this talk, the speaker would like to share his experiences working as a developer in the Financial Industry. He will discuss questions like:
> What is a consulting developer’s life like?
> What are some domain knowledge one should learn as a Fintech developer?
> Is project documentation a waste of time for a Fintech developer?
For the hackers who like to see code in action, we will walk through a sample real-world consulting project using microservice design.
Speaker Profile
Eric graduated from NUS majoring in Computer Science in 2015. His professional experience mainly aligns with the financial industry (DBS, Fintech startup – Silot.ai, GIC). Occasionally, he will share his learning and findings at his personal blog (https://medium.com/@wgx731).
Talk #2: API Design Patterns
Talk Description
As software systems become more complex nowadays, designing stable, reliable, and easy-to-use APIs has become challenging for many people and organizations. In this talk, we will discuss the standards and best practices in designing APIs, some interesting problems in the space, and how we build AIP.dev, which summarizes Google's API design decisions. We will also go through the importance of open source and walk through some ideas behind apidesignbook.com.
Speaker Profile
JJ Geewax is a software engineer at Google who focuses on API design, real-time payment systems, and cloud infrastructure. JJ is a member of the Technical Governing Board of the Mojaloop Foundation (mojaloop.io) and is responsible for overseeing the development of aip.dev. He is also the author of two books: Google Cloud Platform in Action (gcpia.com) and API Design Patterns (apidesignbook.com).
Hope to see you there!
Date/Time: 18th September, 7.00PM
Venue: Online on Zoom
Zoom link: https://www.nushackers.org/fh193zoom
For this Friday Hacks, we have talks on fintech and API design lined up for you, with an engineer from Google as one of the speakers.
Talk #1: How does it look like working as a Fintech developer?
Talk Description
In this talk, the speaker would like to share his experiences working as a developer in the Financial Industry. He will discuss questions like:
> What is a consulting developer’s life like?
> What are some domain knowledge one should learn as a Fintech developer?
> Is project documentation a waste of time for a Fintech developer?
For the hackers who like to see code in action, we will walk through a sample real-world consulting project using microservice design.
Speaker Profile
Eric graduated from NUS majoring in Computer Science in 2015. His professional experience mainly aligns with the financial industry (DBS, Fintech startup – Silot.ai, GIC). Occasionally, he will share his learning and findings at his personal blog (https://medium.com/@wgx731).
Talk #2: API Design Patterns
Talk Description
As software systems become more complex nowadays, designing stable, reliable, and easy-to-use APIs has become challenging for many people and organizations. In this talk, we will discuss the standards and best practices in designing APIs, some interesting problems in the space, and how we build AIP.dev, which summarizes Google's API design decisions. We will also go through the importance of open source and walk through some ideas behind apidesignbook.com.
Speaker Profile
JJ Geewax is a software engineer at Google who focuses on API design, real-time payment systems, and cloud infrastructure. JJ is a member of the Technical Governing Board of the Mojaloop Foundation (mojaloop.io) and is responsible for overseeing the development of aip.dev. He is also the author of two books: Google Cloud Platform in Action (gcpia.com) and API Design Patterns (apidesignbook.com).
Hope to see you there!
Hackerschool: Introduction to HTML & CSS
Date/Time: Saturday, 19 September 2020, 13:00 to 16:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Sign-up link: http://bit.ly/hs-htmlcss
Welcome back to Hackerschool!
Come learn HTML and CSS, to create and style simple web pages, and deploy them online!
This week, we will be learning:
- What is HTML
- Hands-on - Raw HTML structure
- Headings
- Divs
- Lists
- Images
- What is CSS
- Hands-on: Adding styling to HTML
- Color, background
- Margin, padding, border
- Flex box
- How to host your own HTML Page (if time permits)
Hope to see you there!! :D
Date/Time: Saturday, 19 September 2020, 13:00 to 16:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Sign-up link: http://bit.ly/hs-htmlcss
Welcome back to Hackerschool!
Come learn HTML and CSS, to create and style simple web pages, and deploy them online!
This week, we will be learning:
- What is HTML
- Hands-on - Raw HTML structure
- Headings
- Divs
- Lists
- Images
- What is CSS
- Hands-on: Adding styling to HTML
- Color, background
- Margin, padding, border
- Flex box
- How to host your own HTML Page (if time permits)
Hope to see you there!! :D
Just a reminder that Hacker Tools: CLI data wrangling is happening later today!
If you have already signed up, the Zoom link will be sent later today. Otherwise, it's not too late to sign up.
See you there!
If you have already signed up, the Zoom link will be sent later today. Otherwise, it's not too late to sign up.
See you there!
Hacker Tools: Web browser customisation, and online security and privacy
Date/Time: Tuesday, 6 Oct 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
This week, we’re covering web, web browsers, security and privacy. Come learn how to enhance, customise and secure your web browsing experience with addons and userscripts, along with some cool web APIs that you can use. We’ll then cover some tips and principles for security and privacy, including full-disk encryption and password managers.
There are no software prerequisites this week. The software introduced in the workshop are small enough to download during the workshop itself.
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week’s topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2019/web/ and https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/security/.
See you there!
Date/Time: Tuesday, 6 Oct 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
This week, we’re covering web, web browsers, security and privacy. Come learn how to enhance, customise and secure your web browsing experience with addons and userscripts, along with some cool web APIs that you can use. We’ll then cover some tips and principles for security and privacy, including full-disk encryption and password managers.
There are no software prerequisites this week. The software introduced in the workshop are small enough to download during the workshop itself.
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week’s topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2019/web/ and https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/security/.
See you there!
Hackerschool: Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Date/Time: 3rd October, Saturday, 1.00 PM to 4.00 PM
Sign up here
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods were invented around the time of World War II by several mathematicians and physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project. What started out as a way to solve high-dimensional integrals from chemical physics is now a general, powerful approach to generate samples from probability distributions. It is widely applied in statistics, computations for the natural sciences, and more recently machine learning and data science. Regarded as one of the top 10 most important algorithms in the 20th century, MCMC is undoubtedly an essential tool in any scientist’s technical repertoire.
In this workshop, we will learn about the keys ideas of MCMC, bits of mathematical theory, and its applications and implementations, including variants such as Random Walk Metropolis and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo.
Date/Time: 3rd October, Saturday, 1.00 PM to 4.00 PM
Sign up here
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods were invented around the time of World War II by several mathematicians and physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project. What started out as a way to solve high-dimensional integrals from chemical physics is now a general, powerful approach to generate samples from probability distributions. It is widely applied in statistics, computations for the natural sciences, and more recently machine learning and data science. Regarded as one of the top 10 most important algorithms in the 20th century, MCMC is undoubtedly an essential tool in any scientist’s technical repertoire.
In this workshop, we will learn about the keys ideas of MCMC, bits of mathematical theory, and its applications and implementations, including variants such as Random Walk Metropolis and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo.
Just a reminder that Hacker Tools: Web browser customisation, and online security and privacy is happening later today. If you've already signed up, please check your mailbox for the Zoom link; otherwise, it's not too late to do so.
Hacker Tools: CLI debugging and profiling
Date/Time: Tuesday, 20 Oct 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
Come learn how to debug and profile various things on Linux, all from the command line. We’ll look at how to figure out what’s going wrong with programs you write and the operating system itself.
Please ensure you have access to real Linux. If you are on a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows or Mac, consider installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine like VirtualBox. If you are on Windows, you can also use Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. (WSL 1 is not suitable.)
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
Please make sure you have the following programs installed in your Linux system:
- Git, Perl 5, Python 3, gdb, strace, ltrace, Valgrind, GCC, perf (Linux kernel), htop, dstat, iotop, df, du, free, lsof, ss, stress, s-tui
- On Ubuntu, the following packages: gdb strace ltrace valgrind linux-tools htop dstat iotop lsof iproute2 stress s-tui procps build-essential python3 perl git
- On Arch Linux, the following packages: gdb strace ltrace valgrind perf htop dstat iotop lsof iproute2 stress s-tui procps-ng base-devel python perl git
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week’s topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/debugging-profiling/.
See you there!
Date/Time: Tuesday, 20 Oct 2020, 18:30 to 20:30
Sign up here
Come learn how to debug and profile various things on Linux, all from the command line. We’ll look at how to figure out what’s going wrong with programs you write and the operating system itself.
Please ensure you have access to real Linux. If you are on a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows or Mac, consider installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine like VirtualBox. If you are on Windows, you can also use Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. (WSL 1 is not suitable.)
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
Please make sure you have the following programs installed in your Linux system:
- Git, Perl 5, Python 3, gdb, strace, ltrace, Valgrind, GCC, perf (Linux kernel), htop, dstat, iotop, df, du, free, lsof, ss, stress, s-tui
- On Ubuntu, the following packages: gdb strace ltrace valgrind linux-tools htop dstat iotop lsof iproute2 stress s-tui procps build-essential python3 perl git
- On Arch Linux, the following packages: gdb strace ltrace valgrind perf htop dstat iotop lsof iproute2 stress s-tui procps-ng base-devel python perl git
For security and safety reasons, the Zoom link will not be published publicly. Please register here to attend this workshop.
This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week’s topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/debugging-profiling/.
See you there!