Ted Pavlic (he/him/his)

Einstein - AI Homework Agent Einstein logs into Canvas and does your homework automatically. He has his own computer — he can watch lectures, read essays, write papers, and participate in discussions.

Before, the AI agents were general purpose and just happened to allow students to complete online assignments in one click. Now they're marketed as specialists at this.
companion.ai/einstein

Humbled by Evolution Understanding the history and diversity of life inspires awe and wonder.

1. I’m quite happy with this popular piece that Lee Dugatkin and I wrote recently. For the next two weeks it’s free to read on the American Scientist website.

The RenFair announced that it was giving away spears to the first 100 people to attend jousting matches. It was big news -- particularly for all the free-lance reporters.

I tried to take a photo of a grasshopper on my windshield, but now it looks like a gigantic bug destroying the town.

It's surprising that a curling iron is not a good fit for a curling match...

Our dog groomer has a special on Fridays -- "nails trimmed, half off."

That seems a little deep!

YouTube video by Ted Pavlic Guide to Tuning the Many Hyperparameters of a Genetic Algorithm (GA)

Here you go! This lecture (phrased to hopefully be useful to people even outside of the class I'm teaching) goes over the 5–6 GA hyperparameters and hwo they fit on the diagram above.
youtu.be/TwZxTuU8LUI

YouTube video by Ted Pavlic Guide to Tuning the Many Hyperparameters of a Genetic Algorithm (GA)

Here you go! This lecture (phrased to hopefully be useful to people even outside of the class I'm teaching) goes over the 5–6 GA hyperparameters and hwo they fit on the diagram above.
youtu.be/TwZxTuU8LUI

Looks like Facebook is starting to blend its spam together. It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.

Oh -- a key to the quantities:

M: Census population size (N for popgen)
R: Size of parent pool (effective pop size N_E for popgen)
Pc: Crossover fraction
Pm: Mutation rate
E: Number of elites carried over
SP: Selection pressure in selection operator

/cc: @wcratcliff.bsky.social -- You might have some passing interest in this. An attempt to more seriously use concepts from popgen and artificial selection to better understand and use evolutionary algorithms, and I would argue the hand-drawn diagram applies to artificial sel'n in general.

I follow that up with this slide, which I put together a while back to help students use ideas from popgen to build high-level intuition about what you're trying to do when changing hyperparameters/designing new operators. The new diagram just makes that more explicit and tailored for a GA.

In case it's helpful for anyone covering metaheuristics, here is my handy guide for choosing the major hyperparameters of a Genetic Algorithm. I tried to bring in more inspiration from popgen as well as breeding while keeping an engineering (instead of breeder) perspective.

Oh, no! I was really looking forward to getting that pet odor back.

Restorative epistasis can occur between 2 complementary loss-of-function mutations (in yeast) if they happen to cooccur in just the right way (2 wrongs making a right).

"Predicting epistasis across proteins by structural logic"
by Tang et al. (2026, PNAS)
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#RedBull should partner with a major chicken chain on a promotion where if you buy a RedBull you get free 🪽s

NASA won’t bring Mars samples back to Earth: this is the science that will be lost A Congressional bill restores funding for most NASA space-science missions, but there is no money for returning samples already collected on the red planet.

Tariffs hit Mars imports.

"Congressional bill restores funding for most NASA space-science missions, but there is no money for returning samples already collected on the red planet."

"NASA won’t bring Mars samples back to Earth: this is the science that will be lost"
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"Do you think it would be a good idea or a bad idea for the U.S. to use military force to take possession of Greenland from Denmark?"
Good idea: 4%
Bad idea: 71%
(Ipsos)

4%. He did it. He finally hit Lizardman's Constant.

ACM Digital Library: Evolving Access to Support Open Research DL Pricing

Well, the ACM Digital Library Premium is pretty slimy too -- doubling the membership fee just to get access to articles in order to support "Open" access elsewhere -- but at least ACM is much cheaper than IEEE and even gives you an IEEE discount.
libraries.acm.org/subscription...

I generally appreciate scientific societies, but the IEEE continues to be a total scam. So, I saved $510 off my membership by being a member? I guess those who specialize in circuits shouldn't be faulted for circular logic...

After trying out Plus for a few days, the on-screen UI downgrade was just too bad. The voice assistant is a bit better, but it's not worth the losses. Fortunately going back to the old version is as easy as:

"Alexa, end early access"

Hopefully they keep working on this product.

For anyone with an #Amazon #Echo device without a physical volume ring, you can get early access to #AmazonAlexa's #AlexaPlus. Sadly, the on-screen UI is half baked. Example: Below is the legacy Amazon Alexa with a yellow bar indicating a notification on my Echo Show 5. That bar goes away in "Plus".

"In a profession that already demands enormous sacrifices, precarious positions and geographical flexibility, with work that consumes evenings and weekends more often than we’d like to admit, we owe it to ourselves to at least understand how we’re being compensated."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“There Are Two Possible Futures for American Science.” The Simons Foundation president talks about science philanthropy, the future of the research enterprise, and remaining hopeful.

#Science in America right now – Half of the tenure-track jobs in math have been lost between 2024 and 2025 (150 to 70) and the Simons Foundation is funding 1/7 of the remaining jobs. Science is being held together with philanthropy and dental floss. 🧪
issues.org/american-sci...

I told #AlexaPlus a dad joke about bookstores. She understood the joke and inferred that it probably caused my wife to give me an eye roll that "could shutdown a bookstore faster than Amazon."

I was taken aback a bit by an #Amazon AI joking about killing bookstores!

I just saw Roborock's leggy new robovac, and it would make a better dodgeball player than me It can clean your stairs... but that's not all it can do

At least three robot vacuums are in development that aim to conquer stairs. #RoboRock already has a robot with an arm that picks up your dog toys, and the stair climber it is testing has two independent *legs* that make it particularly agile.
www.techradar.com/home/robot-v...

I see! I don't think they're telling the whole story about what happened, but I'm glad they got it fixed!

Options+ and G HUB macOS Certificate Issue Description of the issueA new ‘patch’ installer for Logitech Options+ and G HUB is now available to fix an issue that caused the apps to stop working on macOS.The problem was caused by an expired c...

The fix is out – see link below. I don't think their explanation tells the whole story (otherwise, why would installing an older version fix the issue as well as it did?).

Download the fixed version manually (affected computers must have this done manually) from:
support.logi.com/hc/en-us/art...

Options+ and G HUB macOS Certificate Issue Description of the issueA new ‘patch’ installer for Logitech Options+ and G HUB is now available to fix an issue that caused the apps to stop working on macOS.The problem was caused by an expired c...

The fix is out – see link below. I don't think their explanation tells the whole story (otherwise, why would installing an older version fix the issue as well as it did?).

Download the fixed version manually (affected computers must have this done manually) from:
support.logi.com/hc/en-us/art...

Hey, @drdorotask.bsky.social is here on Bsky!

Such cool work.

We think that retinas degenerate with time and that if all of us live long enough, we’ll get AMD or other neurodegenerative diseases.

But Greenland sharks manage to live for hundreds of years and repair their eyes.

How?