This month (https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/github_ai_training_policy_changes/), Github announced that Microsoft's CoPilot product will be allowed to train on all projects hosted on Github, unless the owners of the projects toggle a certain setting off before 24 April 2026. This continues the trend of Microsoft's long arc to own software development from the ground its planted in. A saying I've learn in startups is “the company culture starts with the founders” and well, I guess that makes Microsoft a bit venal.

The software canon of the 20th century includes many titans pushing the proverbial convenience builder up the machine-language hill. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper invented COBOL, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson collaborated on the C language, Guy Steele invented Lisp, and Brendan Eich invented JavaScript. All of these gifts are for the sake of making software easier to write in order to leverage the capacities of better and better hardware.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen came on the scene in the 1975 with Altair Basic, which extended the ubiquitous BASIC language from 1964 by adding an interpreter. This development was fantastic, but we must remember this innovation came about from Gates and Allen periodically participating in the hobbyist meetups to learn the tricks of the trade, experimenting with new concepts, and learning freely.

The point in bringing this up is the infamous 1976 letter titled “An Open Letter to Hobbyists” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists), where Gates shows us his true colors. He asserts that those very same hobbyists that helped him are now getting a free ride by using his Altair BASIC without paying their dues to his company. He cites how musicians are paid royalties for record sales, and writer royalties for their books. And as such, Gates refused to publish the source code of their flagship product, preventing the code from being entered into libraries for low-income hobbyists to checkout and upload onto their machines.

The century continues with Gates's Microsoft Corporation battling Netscape in the Browser wars, with more battles over who owns JavaScripts development in a shared web. It's messy stuff because these corporations hate each other yet want their customers to enjoy a common web. Microsoft creates JScript, their own interpreter for JavaScript, while pushing Mosaic out of the picture. Mozilla comes onto the scene to break it up with the ECMAScript conventions through the dark ages of Javascript of the 2000s, but that's a different story.

“Microsoft loves Open Source” was a 2009 PR rebrand of their hate for competitive OS “cancer” (their words) known as Linux, a free alternative to Windows during the time when Windows Vista was continuing to perform poorly. So they committed to Open Source, the way Microsoft does, by buying out fiefdoms of Open Source that fit into their empire, like villages on the steppe being collectivized. Eventually, in 2018, Microsoft got what it wanted with the acquisition of GitHub, arguably the most publicly visible website where Open Source code is maintained. There were promises of maintaining the space for this development, despite the mass exodus to GitLabs.

Now we are at juxtaposition: Gates's company built on open domain knowledge now plans to hoover up any and all code (ignoring licenses!) on a platform for Open Source for their Copilot tool. We should expect another letter from Microsoft in 6 months saying we must stop committing code freely without Copilot's permission to evaluate it first. Microsoft's dark heart, branded with embrace-extend-extinguish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish), continues to beat the same rhythm it has since 1976. Embrace original ideas, extend it for the next stop, and extinguish it once goals are met.

I attended the Troy City Council meeting on March 19, 2026 to speak on the dangers of Flock Group Inc. cameras in our community, as it relates to autonomous profit-driven LLM bots like Moltbot, and how insecure cameras will be exploited by these bots for profit by data brokers to the government. I listened to the conversations involving the council, the administration, and the affairs representative from Flock. I don't have every question asked and the answer written down: I trust that the council to deliberate based on those exchanges, and the more than 40 public testimonies against this technology. What I want to write about is the context in which this happened.

In 2021 the City of Troy entered a contract with Flock Group Inc. for these cameras without review from the council. Yet now we are upset with this choice. Why the change of heart for a service they hope to develop a relationship with a tool to aid safety? The answer is that the advancement of software from 2021 to 2026 has changed the core business operations of Flock Group Inc.'s software. When Flock Group Inc. first offered their services to the Troy Police Department, we existed in a pre-LLM age where the software technology for image recognition was less mature, and now we live in an age where LLM technology has leveled-up the capabilities of everything.

Another important concern is how we got here: the contract auto-renewed before the council could hear on the situation. The combination of 1) a contract that renews without review, and 2) a software service that changes its definition of data storage/utilization of public data in in relation to LLM tools as core business features is extremely concerning because it allows of the exploitation of the slow movement of the government for the benefit of private corporations.

When I listened to Mayor Mantello's Administration speak jointly with the Troy Police Department, I heard officers who were using a tool for their needs of research license plates for ongoing investigation of crime. They picked this system because there are other municipalities that also subscribe, allowing for tracking of stolen vehicles across county and state lines. They picked this system because it helped save people who are mentally distressed from themselves. The list goes on, but to say the least the tool is used throughout their day-to-day operations so that they can do their jobs faster and safer.

I understand that need, especially as one officer said that they have used LPR (License Plate Reader) technology for 17 years for assist them in their jobs. However, Flock Group Inc. has become more than a LPR tool in the span from 2021 to 2026. Flock Group Inc.'s representative was a nontechnical “affairs representative” who punted any difficult technical question about how Flock Group Inc moves data, retains data, and removes data, or which 3rd parties are used to achieve their feature set. Any corporation worth their salt would have either their sales rep or technical rep available to answer these questions. It's common practice in the business world to have a technical person on hand to explain the hard questions when the customer starts asking. Instead we had navel gazing from a man who said “I'll get back to you later on that.” This is purposeful ignorance to avoid culpability for what they are doing now: implementing LLM technology to replace their image-recognition technology as both a cost-savings and feature benefit technology.

What the representative and police officers did say is that the cameras send the data to a Flock Group Inc server to be stored for 30 days of use, which is then deleted from the city's record. However the contract with Flock Group Inc says that they own the data forever for their own internal uses. So that footage is there to be cited and used for any feature the system as a whole can deem. It may be completely true that the Troy Police Department cannot see the data anymore, and at the very same time that Flock Group Inc. retains the data for training and referential purposes for their larger system. This is the problem with companies like Flock Group Inc.: they seek ownership of the data for purposes outside of the contract's obligations and misinform their clients.

2021 image-recognition technology was not LLM-based, it could be be used for a myriad of purposes. LLM technology is now the “it” technology for how to process large amounts of data. LLM technology is so much more capable than the 2021 image recognition technology. The LLM technology is a blackbox, especially for how the corporate partnership could be between OpenAI/Anthropic and Flock Group Inc. Their cameras send the full frame of video to the Flock Group Inc. servers, and is stored with some sort of metadata tagging for objects like vehicles or other objects of interest. The simplest solution for Flock Group Inc. to leverage the new LLM technology would be to send the entire stream of frames to that agent for analysis. This means that the video would be used to train the LLM bots, without the consent of the public, on public images.

This approaches my chief concern, which is insecure cameras. If these cameras are insecure, then that means anyone on the internet can access those frames and develop their own database. That means anyone who has a freely available LLM-bot like Moltbot can be setup to commercialize the data as a data broker, to learn about the habits of the public for advertising, or to be sold to any government. These bots can operate at speeds of hundreds of nanoseconds to make decisions about these images for their pre-defined goal by their master.

At the end of the day, Troy needs a tool that stays a LPR. A tool that stays the form that we agreed to years ago. Officers trust their vest to stay a vest, their gun to stay a gun, their radio to be a radio, and so on. This LPR is not a LPR anymore, but a cog in an exploitation machine due to the lack of care for software quality and sticking to your mission.

The current AI trend is like the Gordian Knot, so I'm going to cut to the chase. Large Language Model software tools ("LLM") are not Artificial Intelligence ("AI") because the apparatuses are pattern matching machines which contain almost all existing functional data. Software companies, especially Alphabet Inc, want to re-define our vocabulary and perspectives in relation to their LLM work so their LLM marketing department can bring in the hay. To be clear, I'm not saying LLMs are useless or a wrong direction in development of "AI," but rather it's the Fool's Gold for the path towards AGI, the pursuit of the academic field of Artificial Intelligence research. Large Language Models are pattern-matching engines trained on humanity's digital exhaust, not thinking machines. The intentional mis-marketing of their fluency for intelligence is the category error of our decade.

Alphabet (formerly Google, founded in 1998) has profiled the entire internet since its creation as a search engine so that every possible digital bit pattern is referenced for the tuning of their machines: the pattern for a red apple the LLM tool references has been processed from more apples than I will see in my life, so the probability of the stochastic machine generating a viable red apple is within the bounds because the models are over-trained: normal real intelligence does not require the level of training LLM tools undergo. If the inference is not trained into the weights of the LLM already, it's baked into Gemini's "red apple" instruction book toolchain. That's not intelligence: what has been achieved is a larger series of actions which incorporates a stochastic machine and look-up commands. We've had that since the 1960s.

Allow me to explain: this is the Thought Experiment called "The Chinese Room" argument by John Searle (1932-2025). You, the observer, have a dialogue with an anonymous almost-sealed room by passing notes written in Chinese into the room through a compartment, and the room returns a response written in Chinese. You think the room must contain an entity that is intelligent in Chinese, but that's not so. There is a person in the room with dictionaries and instruction books to decipher the content of the notes, act on them, and then re-cipher them into Chinese to be sent out again. The person has no idea what the notes say, and yet they act on them to a caliber that the outside observer believes the inner-person speaks Chinese very well. There is no intelligence in the room beyond the person being able to identify the strokes of a character to find in a reference book and act on it.

Apply this to legal work, to animation work, to anything that you could condense into an "instruction book" for the LLM to ingest and you will fit OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's LLMs into the Chinese Room argument. If you were to read the short story "The Game" by Russian cybernetist Anatoly Dneprov (https://www.hardproblem.ru/en/posts/Events/a-russian-chinese-room-story-antedating-searle-s-1980-discussion/), Dneprov's conclusion answers the riddle of the hallucinations we see from LLM tools: incomplete/incorrect data or machine implementation. If LLM tools were truly intelligent^†, they would understand their output as incorrect before exposing it to the user.

"Ok, so what's the threshold for AI, asshole? These LLM tools are taking jobs and I feel dumb." AI must think, as Searle said, in such way that it understands the context before being provoked: consciousness does not exist in the LLMs. Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) counters the Chinese Room argument by saying the experiment simplifies the intelligence away from the operator. Paraphrasing, "If the content of the note requires world knowledge or elicits an emotional response, does the operator look that up too?" But this too can be distilled into a world atlas or a feelings chart: there's no possibility for a metaphysical discussion with the operator. The operator cannot initiate a stop of the process with the correspondent, and discuss how received notes are trivial or some other meta-commentary, or that the metadata of the references have gaps or errors.

Alphabet, Meta, Anthropic, and others have explained their "AI genesis" in 3 steps: 1) Prep: build the Transformer matrix and sanitized dataset; 2) Train: use GPU clusters to calibrate the Transformer matrix on the dataset into the latest LLM model; and 3) Export: expose the LLM tool to different toolchains for consumers to interact with. A key observation of this: the models do not think, they wait for an initiative on step 3; the models stop learning after step 2's training such they are frozen in time. The LLM tool prompts are a shell game: one prompt copy is sent to the trained tool to attempt to decrypt and assessed by its dictionaries and lookups while a second copy of the prompt, with the system logs of the process, is sent to the mothership to be used for the training step for the next model without gaining knowledge except user behavior. Tighter and tighter the feedback loop becomes, and more slop is passed off as intelligence.

The following are my notes from the meeting, held by the Boys and Girls Club of Lansingburgh, regarding a proposal by the Office of the Mayor for a new location for Troy's City Hall. This proposal's crux is to purchase Proctors Theater (on 4th Street) with the Troy Local Development Corporation, then have the City of Troy rent the space. They are estimating it costing 10 million dollars in total: 1.8 for purchase, and then 8.2 for repairs.

View the Presentation

Anyway, here are the notes:

I left after that. It was 8:20pm.

Delivered on November 25, 2024 to Jon Elbaum, Executive Director, The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.

No acknowledgement or response as of this publication.

Mr. Jon Elbaum,

It is with great displeasure I write to inform you of my decision to halt all planned financial support to the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. This is a difficult decision—— not for lack of cause, but for my great passion for classical music, and my own respect for freedom of expression. Your organization's lack of collaborative communication, abandonment of leadership, and direct oppression of our community voice has made this choice clear for me.

Your specious dictum was vacuous and superficial, and betrays your institution. To permit someone who supports oppression is to condone the oppressor themselves. The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall is a Musical Institution of our proud region. To be offered the chance to grace the stage of The Hall is to walk in the light of Rachmaninoff, Gillespie, and Hartford. Are their legacies equal to that of Matisyahu's shadow?

I took you on your literal word from your email: freedom of expression, knowing that people will be heard. I (and I'm sure you can as well) recall examples of peaceful and violent demonstrations in our nation's history. January 6 2021, the Selma to Montgomery Marches, and our own Black Lives Matter protest on June 7, 2020. I witnessed the protest outside of the hall on November 21, 2024, and saw respect, acknowledgement, and calls for action to end the bloodshed. Our community held a demonstration that did not violate your rights. I was present during the Black Lives Matter Protest of June 7, 2020: the fact that your organization brought the Troy Police Department into a completely respectful demonstration renders your respect for Freedom of Expression patently false. The allocation of these personnel to censor our community is a pearl-clutching waste of resources. This thuggish behavior tarnishes not only our community values, but normalizes that supreme power rules supremely: what happens when fascistic powers turn their focus on our own institutions?

The IDF has killed more than one hundred thousand Palestinian citizens, a majority of them children (Watson Institute at Brown University). This number is not solely based on the gunned down citizens seeking shelter in the "Safety Corridors." It includes the deaths of people in the Israeli ran camps. Non-combat individuals without food and potable water: forced starvation and death from exposure.

100,000 is twice the population of Troy, New York— read that sentence again and look at Troy on a map: 100,000 is twice the population of Troy, New York. There have been detailed documentation, footage, and coverage of human carnage that has be described by the U.N. as "atrocities against humanity." and by Amnesty International as "genocide." What is happening right now will be remembered as a 2024 retelling of South African Apartheid. Ethno-exsanguination for beachfront property.

The people of Israel are not the State of Israel. The people of Palestine are not Hamas. The Zionism of 2024 is not the Zionism described by Associate Justice Louis Brandeis, nor by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The right to exist, the freedom to be, are American ideals. That is what moved our nation to defend and support the Jewish people. Benjamin Netanayahu and his administration are abusing our trust. The IDF is committing genocide by using the United States's good will as leverage against the most vulnerable people, and your administration normalizes this by inviting an IDF sponsor who doesn't "have a problem with those numbers" to perform here (MSN).

Your view ("kind of a no-win [situation] for us", The Times Union) is exactly what is wrong with our American Institutions: your spineless, greedy administration refuses to take responsibility for their own misconduct. I would call this a mistake, but you felt so emboldened in The Times Union article to call this good PR and proceeded to victim blame the good people of our community. Exploiting the outcries over the deaths of more than 50,000 children due to forced starvation is good PR for the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall? Wicked, and foul morals that ruin any semblance of honesty in your calls to support children education in the joys of music.

Yes: you did announce this performance in July, but it is not the community's responsibility to review every performer's qualities and fit for our stage. I've worked with live performance before: I understand how scheduling and vetting works. This responsibility and accountability is dutifully yours yet you rebuke the notion— your shifting of responsibilities shows your embarrassing lack of integrity by stigmatizing the harmed further, and exemplifies your unfitness to carry the mantle of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. It is the organization's responsibility to uphold its ideals, and your lack of empathy, integrity, and foresight should be openly mocked, especially for your disgusting rhetoric when receiving well-found criticism. Your petulant behavior of censorship and oppression of our community is a dishonor to your office as the Executive Director of this legendary hall.

I will no longer consider financially supporting the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall until reparations have been made to the people of Palestine.

Your neighbor,

Michael Gardner II

A large problem is a difficult thing for many reasons, but chiefly because it's exhausting.

When I started my career as a software engineer, I was fresh out of grad school, equipped with a toolkit of problem-solving tactics, but I didn't have the strategic vision to sustain myself as a resource. What do I mean by that? STEM students often speak of grueling workloads and rigorous courses, which build resilience for tackling difficult work.

But what if the challenge is too difficult? In those cases, it often means pulling an all-nighter with questionable results.

Starting

The tricky part of starting is knowing where to begin. Some days, the path is clear; on others, less so. I'll often spend hours or days just staring at the problem. I keep a list on my phone of ideas I care about that I've been mulling over for months, sometimes years. For simplicity's sake, let's say you know the problem and have a solid attempt at a solution—maybe you're 60% confident in what's needed and have done something like this before.

In projects, I talk a lot about perspective. Two useful perspectives here are the “giant steps” and the “baby steps." Begin by mapping out your full understanding of the problem and estimating what needs to be done; these are your giant steps. Then, break down each giant step into smaller, manageable actions—your baby steps. This can take anywhere from an hour to a full day, depending on the problem, assuming you already have a tentative solution. With your baby steps outlined, find the ones that make the most sense to start with and dive in. Remember to reserve 30 minutes at the end of the day for stopping.

Stopping

If you work in an environment where your boss swoops in like Beetlejuice, shrieking about productivity quotas, my condolences—you deserve better. Bossman's still human, and he's probably sneaking out at the end of the day, too, so give yourself the grace to stop as well.

Each day, I define what I aim to accomplish and work toward that goal. Sometimes, though, 4:50 p.m. rolls around, and everything's still a mess. So, I make a note for myself—a bookmark of sorts. I jot down what I was working on, any issues I noticed, and thoughts to revisit tomorrow. I already have my list of baby steps, but these notes are valuable because they capture insights from that in-the-zone state of mind.

I also take a moment to tidy up my workspace. Physical clutter clouds the mind, and while I'm not the neatest person, I've accepted that a bit of mess is part of my process. Taking the time to clean up and reset helps future me to refocus when it's time to dig back in.

Starting Again

The key here is knowing what you can realistically accomplish in a day. I feel a sense of accomplishment when I reach my daily goals, so it's important to be honest with myself about my limits. The sooner you're honest with yourself, the easier it becomes to approach each new start without hesitation. To say it different: don't set yourself up for failure. Know what is realistic for yourself.

Come back to your workspace.
Review your giant and baby steps.
Adjust based on yesterday's progress.
Did meetings cut into your time, leaving you with too much on your plate?
Adjust.
Did you get more done than expected?
Adjust.

Now, read yesterday's notes.
Start again!

On October 9th, the good people at Creighton Manning and the city government of Troy, NY, held a second meeting for the NY Route 2 Corridor Improvement Project. During this meeting, Creighton Manning presented a slide show that demonstrated how they collected feedback and created two new concepts.

My recommendations for the Route 2 Corridor Improvement Project are as follows:

1. Consolidate Route 2 onto Ferry street as a bi-directional route.
2. Consolidate the bike path onto Congress street as a bi-directional bike route, with one-way car traffic.
3. Protect the bike path with a concrete barrier, and convert a few parking spots on the opposite side to serve as loading zones.
4. Designate one parking spot per block for bike-only parking.

This aligns most closely with the new Proposal 1B (side note: why are we reusing numbers instead of calling this a "Proposal 2" if it’s a new concept?)./p>

Historically, nearby communities used this route, but not in the way we see today.

Before the current bridge, a trolley ran along Congress Street, connecting the area to neighboring towns. This was local transit, not an expressway like today’s Route 2. Reallocating Route 2 to Ferry Street would restore Congress Street to its original function as a local route.

As someone who has run on several streets in and out of Troy—from Eagle Mills to Emma Willard, from Monument Square up the Approach, past the RPI President's mansion on Tibbits, and onto Route 2 and back down—I know firsthand that certain roads here aren’t suited for bikes. I won’t ride my bike on Route 2 because it feels like a death sentence, particularly with the speeding out-of-state drivers who show little regard for local traffic. We can’t change the behavior of drivers from across state lines, which is precisely why this project needs #2: our bicycle traffic consists of locals and families who commute daily.

At the meeting, several residents voiced similar hopes, including a family excited to bike safely across the river to Price Chopper and other long-time residents who depend on Congress Street for their daily commutes.

Additionally, we need a concrete barrier to protect bicycles from vehicle traffic. I've seen trucks parked in bike lanes regularly, from 1st Street south of Adams to River Street south of Division. Even with road markings, I’ve had close calls with 18-wheelers twice. A dedicated concrete barrier would make Congress Street safe for families on bicycles, not just in theory but in reality.

A resident at the meeting said it best:

The reason why bike lanes suck in this town, compared to Montreal, is we lack commitment to a quality, permanent solution-- not these painted on divisions that can be scraped away in a week. This is a solved problem in other NE cities; the problem isn't a lack of solution, it's a lack of commitment.

Finally, to serve the biking community better, we should provide free parking for bicycles. Dedicating one parking spot per block to bikes would enhance Congress Street's capacity to welcome visitors and improve accessibility. We could even look at installing charging stations for electric bikes in the future.

Learn more about this Creighton Manning & Alta project at their website: https://congressandferrycorridor.altago.site

Provide feedback at: https://congressandferrycorridor.altago.site/#contact

The Route 2 traffic that travels through Troy, New York is detrimental to the community of downtown Troy. The city's traffic system is pretty simple: a grid of one-ways, alternating direction that has been established since 1787. It wasn't until 1970 that the Congress Street bridge was completed which has since changed the purpose of Congress and Ferry Street. The issue with Congress and Ferry Street is that it's distributing the load of traffic incorrectly, and for the wrong audience.

By "wrong audience", I'm meaning wrong consumer audience like how a product is designed for a market. We must de-prioritize cars as our market segment-- this is what I mean by the "wrong audience." The traffic of Route 2 brings noise, violence, and bad attitudes from people who don't plan to contribute here. Every summer night, motorcycles with modified exhausts rev and peel out through Congress street. Accidents are all too frequent with Congress and 4th street having seen multiple vehicle-to-person collisions and fatalities. The current placement of the route makes it too easy for brash drivers to enter the downtown at speeds exceeding the limits set by the city.

Every week, I can count well into the teens the number of times speeding cars (rolling off of Route 2 onto 2nd street to cut north) run stop signs where families and children exist. And by run, I'm not saying rolling stop.

All of the proposed solutions do not solve this problem at the root cause, because the problem cannot be solved effectively without de-prioritizing cars. All solutions presented align on a road diet that reduces the lanes to one lane per direction. Additionally, one solution (C) suggests moving the bicycle lanes away from the traffic, which doesn't make sense with the goals of the project.

My proposal is:

1. Make Ferry Street bidirectional for all of Route 2 traffic;
2. Add a two lane bicycle path to Congress

This aligns with proposal 1B, except the Ferry Street component.

Implementing a bidirectional Ferry Street for all Route 2 traffic would significantly contribute to the redistribution of traffic and alleviate aggressive traffic from downtown Troy. While this proposal will worsen the experience for cars, it aligns with the goal of de-prioritizing cars and prioritizing alternative modes of transportation. Although it may result in increased traffic through a tunnel, this is precisely what the tunnel is designed for: cars! Additionally, this will allow for Congress Street to return to being a more local street instead of a route.

Local-izing Congress Street would benefit from adding a two-lane bicycle path to prioritize bicycle transportation for not only locals but Russel Sage and RPI students. Separating the bicycle lanes from the Route 2 traffic will enhance the safety and comfort of cyclists, encouraging more people to choose biking as a viable transportation option. Not just residents, college students too; creating a bicycle route on Congress creates an inviting route for Russel Sage and RPI students to easily cross the river and explore the rest of the capital region.

So, the NY Route 2 Corridor Improvements Project should prioritize the needs of the community over the convenience of passing traffic. By implementing a bidirectional Ferry Street for all Route 2 traffic and adding a two-lane bicycle path to Congress Street, we can effectively redistribute traffic, enhance safety for cyclists, and create a more balanced transportation system.

It is important to remember that while traffic may spend only a few minutes passing through downtown Troy, the residents and businesses spend their lives here. The Congress Street bridge has only existed since the year 1970 (which allows for this passage) while the Troy grid's design has existed since 1787 (here's a cool map I found), which is one hundred twenty-one years before the Model T was produced for the public. Two blocks of streets should not be dedicated to the purpose of Route 2's modern existence. We must isolate this to one street and use the tunnel to dampen the noise for everyone. By de-prioritizing cars in the evaluation of Route 2, we can create a more livable and vibrant community.

Learn more about this Creighton Manning & Alta project at their website: https://congressandferrycorridor.altago.site

Provide feedback at: https://congressandferrycorridor.altago.site/#contact

A Word

I attended RPI during the last years of the Jackson administration. During my tenure, I focused on my scholastic endeavors and pursued organizations with purpose: art and governance. I was a member of the Rensselaer Student Union and held membership in RPI Players, Student Government, and the Rensselaer Concert Choir.

To say it a different way: I had a life as an engineer because of the Student Union. I pursued a duel Bachelors of Science degree in the School of Engineering and School of Science with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence, minored in Computer Music and obtained a co-terminus Masters of Science degree offered by the Lally School of Business while maintaining the Dean's List. I am smart, but I'm not intelligent like my peers. I had to apply myself and maintain a regimen.

By means of the Student Union, I had an outlet for a social life while learning core skills for life. To be an RPI students means to subscribe to 4 years of academic rigor with only the opportunities afforded on campus. I learned a lot about community, organization, and collaboration in those clubs. Those experiences have led to skills that are invaluable in adult life. Not just that: it's good, clean fun putting on a production of Dracula or The Love of Three Oranges, and preparing to perform Handel's Messiah at the Holiday Concert.

During the years of 2016-2018, I witnessed the Jackson administration reduce student responsibility, accountability, and expertise by means of restricting autonomy of the organization of the Rensselaer Student Union broadcasting boldfaced lies such as stating the students were worried about the physical building being destroyed instead of the real issues like free speech, freedom of assembly, removal of the athletics budget, reduction of budget limits, etc.

So we protested. Twice.

This letter captures a point of view on May 2nd, 2018. I was about to graduate with my M.S. on May 19th, and move on from RPI. I had observed the statecraft of the Jackson Administration and seen it snub out our attempts at reaching outside of the RPI community. I rendered my opinion: a lack of integrity.

I wrote a letter to show the doublespeak of the Administration: how can you prepare Engineers for the Real World when you act like a nanny and don't trust them to budget a project?

The Letter

Integrity is the trust that a set of people have in their, or others’, abilities to firmly adhere to moral values. This is the critical part of a regimen of an ethical code that assures us that our capacities will not fail us; to foster the growth of our moral character and therefore ourselves. The strong gravity of dignity tends to cloud our judgment of our self-reflection on our integrity, so this ability of critical introspection is lauded by society. Idealistically, this moral acumen is imbued into education such as the scholastic system at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute throughout your time in our community. However, integrity has become a maladroit afterthought crammed into syllabi, zero tolerance drug and alcohol policies focusing on penal action instead of rehabilitation, and judicial processes that start with the assumption of guilt.

Critical to a higher echelon of integrity is a quality of communication that speaks honestly of the truth and fairness of your constitution which relentlessly flows forward like water. As evident in the lack of response by RPI to three letters from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union, the existence of a dam is apparent; we have no true north. The lack of response could be considered an incompetency, but that would require the assumption of being blind, deaf, and mute to all overtures in equal regards, no matter the topic. Evidence to contrary is as follows: ignoring the letter expressing disgust over the rejection of a peaceful demonstration while heralding presidential accolades in science; casting aside disconcerting letters of physically sequestering disagreement and prosecuting advocates of dissent while welcoming bigoted accounts of racism; rebuffing the condemnation of their actions suppressing free speech while merrily pushing a self-righteous, all- encompassing, one-sided “plan”; and justifying their assault of student rights with frivolous judicial cases under the guise of “trespassing” and “failure to comply” while RPI forces an agenda of self-bestowed off-campus jurisdiction to further control their desired veneer.

The education offered at this college is world class, but the administration is draconian. It is a consolidation of power, without remorse, from the people that live day to day in the community. Last semester, 10 years ago, it was announced that sophomores were required to live on campus in 2010. Next year is the start Summer Arch, with required on- campus living the summer before students’ sophomore and junior years. Our Winter Break will be shorter, despite the direct harm it will cause to transgender students, to foreign students, our mental health, and our peers with chronic health issues. Our class sizes have increased by 25% each with no increase in the presence of mental and physical health resources, and there are more “forced triples” in housing than ever before. This year, we ran out of guaranteed housing because we are stuffed with students while the college praises ever-growing numbers. The Union has lost control over the athletics budget, the Rensselaer Handbook of Student Rights and Responsibilities, hiring processes, and is paying for programs that it doesn’t even oversee. To be blunt, the action of this deceitful administration is ostentatious, Machiavellian, and a charade of the values of academia in higher education.

The encroachment of our rights will not end; it is an uncompromising wave that erodes our abilities and responsibilities. To look upon this wave for guidance is not only naive, but self-destructive. We must reinforce the integrity of our community and the system that we as students have set forward. Even now, we are dragging RPI along with an open letter, asking the Board of Trustees to revoke an honorary degree given in 2001 to a now-convicted rapist who has drugged, molested, and penetrated women without their consent.

Administrative integrity is a component of college education that has become scarce in modern higher education despite the increase in administration power over the decades, with an exemplar of this absence in our own community. Their dignity clouds their self-reflection, preventing them from seeing their faults and the concerns of the students. The students here are brilliant in reflection on how to work and improve with the community, not against it like our alma mater. The most earnest growth of character is in the ability to try, fail, and succeed with your peers, not supervised by any sort of risk mitigation, but rather by your friends and colleagues, that is a defining experience of college that everyone is entitled to. Cherish, protect, and foster autonomy, because once the freedom is gone, we will never get it back.

Michael J. Gardner II, CSE/CS ’17, TC&E G ’18

The best part of live music is not knowing what you will witness. I think back to 2019 when I saw a screening of Parasite by Bong Joon-ho; I did absolutely no research and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I never heard of Joshua Redman until my piano tuner, Jonathan, told me about him. Jonathan and I go back and forth over a few things: peace in the Middle East, who should be president, etc. but the safe harbor is everything related to the piano.

Before we go further, we must understand that if we think musicians have opinions with regards to the music, we must accept that the technicians have opinions on the apparatus from which the music is emitted from. Jonathan thinks my 90 year-old Monarch baby-grand is neat, but reminds me that I bought it for $200. He tunes it half a step flat (at my request: there is a crack in the outer slope of bass bridge) when citing the other pianos he works on. Like the one Redman's group would be playing.

Jonathan told me, at the time, that the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall's grand piano had just returned to its home after being "re-built" in some fashion. The term "re-built" holds a similar meaning to "refinish" or "restore" as used by woodworkers, but the piano tech means "we have taken a goddamn piano apart and put it back together again" when they use the word built in "re-built." To learn more about this, he suggests reading Under the Lid by Stephen H. Brady, or Pianos Inside Out by Mario Igrec. Moving on: this piano had some work done to improve the brightness and the voicing. Curators of music venues cry for "brighter piano" as much as a 70's rock fan cry "more cowbell." The piano at the Hall has received feedback that its voice is buried when preforming with a group. Jonathan said that the Joshua Redman Group will be the debut performance of the piano since it's spa day away, so I went and bought tickets for the show in a couple weeks.

We arrived 30 mins late to the performance; I had placed the calendar event for Thursday instead of Wednesday but thankfully I noticed an email from the Hall in my inbox reminding me (Thanks Box Office!). We entered as vocalist Cavassa whispered "such a lovely place, such a lovely face" and the group drew us through a dreamy cover of The Eagles. Why did I buy tickets to an Eagles cover band? shot through my mind, but I held my tongue. We settled in and Joshua spoke.

Joshua is touring his album Where Are We. He acknowledged a theme (of many) of "places in the United States" and a reflection of "where we have been, and where we are going." Tonight's selection would be a curation of tracks from the album, which are blends of ideas from different songs based on locations in the United Sates. We had missed out on Chicago Blues and met them with Hotel California, now we journey onto Streets of Philadelphia and By The Time I Get To Phoenix.

Joshua Redman Group is: drummer Brian Blade, pianist Aaron Parks, double bassist Joe Sanders, vocalist Gabrielle Cavassa, and saxophonist Joshua Redman.

The group's foundation, the drum and bass, is tight. Moving through these songs, you feel the union between them. I wish Blade pushed the envelope more during his solos; they felt restrained by staying within the time signature. Regardless, his choice of percussion support was expert to hold the group together. Sanders's energy is impulsive when it comes alive: he has range in his ability to whisper the high bass lines rapidly that come crashing down into a piercing melody.

Parks had a real run of the piano. He appeared and disappeared; one moment the melody is there, right there, dancing above the others; and then the next it's creating a mist, background for the others to hang their voices on. As a pianist with his very own $200 piano, I thought the Hall's piano was too bright (sacrilege!) in the sense of lack of lower timbre; I know that sound resonates through the body of a piano and develops sympathetic vibrations from the lower strings due to the harmonic series. The re-built work done was meant to narrow the dissonances generated from the mid-to-upper strings to render a clearer sound; Jonathan said the technician that worked on it downstate added a new brass bar to suspend the strings just so, and green felt near the Agraffe to reduce the vibrations.

To be honest, I had a hard time hearing Cavassa. The Hall's acoustical properties have a lot of benefits that lead to sound filling the space. Especially when everyone is rowing together, like a symphony. Gentle crooning does come through in certain songs, but the sound designer had to up their gain for later.

Redman returns to the stage and introduces the final piece: Alabama. He illustrates the composition by discussing America's journey in its identity through its people by firmly pressing two songs together: the jazz standard Stars Fell On Alabama (a song about 2 lovers), and Alabama by John Coltrane, a meditation on the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by the Ku Klux Klan on September 15th, 1963. Cavassa steps aside for the piece, and Redman took center stage. The instruments melded into an amorphous roll. At three different moments during his sax solo, Redman's eyes turned upward with an expression that I could only assume was a mix of pleading and freight, communing to the ghost of John Coltrane, asking to be a conduit of musical expression. The music swirled in a violent orgy as he descended into a integrated cacophony between him, the pianist, double bassist, and the drummer. Madness, power, and emotion.

We left after that. My head was swimming from the saxophone as we hit the cold air, clarifying vision.

Let's go fishing with git! 🎣

Background: I work on a team that supports a large, globally available video game. We are in the middle of implementing a set of features and there was a misunderstanding of where the data is to be saved in a database table for the user generated data service, but we have the exact code we are looking for in our git log.

I want to find the code that I wrote before so I don't have to think about how to do the task again because we spent that thought time already (Grug brain dev). my problem is I do not know the hash of what commit the code is in.

1. I know git and grep and some basic Unix, so let's see what we can do
2. git log lets me see all of the logs, so that's useful
3. grep -e 'pattern' helps search for text
4. git log -p changes the output to the content of the commit
5. the | character takes output from command and pipes it into another command

git log -p | grep -e 'FirstPublishedDate' will get me closer but the output is rather noisy; the word 'FirstPublishedDate' is a common term in this development. Additionally, the output from grep is only structured by if a line contains that phrase; it's a bit of a salad without the context of git. so let's try again:

1. git log has -G to do a search, and I can narrow it by the branch name
2. git log -G'FirstPublishedDate' -p 143495-back-populate-new-filter-values will narrow the search to the branch and do the filtering by pattern for me, and then -p will show me the content
3. now let's use grep -C 10 to show the ten lines around it, and use a new keyword like @@ to hone in on the hash.

Our answer is git log -G'FirstPublishedDate' -p 143495-back-populate-new-filter-values | grep -C 10 -e '@@' with the result

Right at the top. A not so unused function after all 🎣

Introduction

John Conway created The Doomsday Calendar algorithm. It is a both a marvel of a mnemonic and a fun party trick. The premise is this: given a date (e.g. Jan 1st, 1970) one can calculate the day of the week (e.g. Thursday). Let's get to it.

I like this mental tool because it takes a defined but difficult-to-answer problem ("Can you tell me the day of the week, from 6 months ago, without looking at your calendar?") and answers it with "I have defined a two part system to convert this into a brain-dead, three step solution" (with some exceptions, but we'll get to those).

The two part system is this:

1. Knowing the Anchor Day (AD) of the year (a.k.a. "the doomsday"), which follows a pattern similar to Leap Years.
2. A mnemonic system to remember the constant pattern every year that the AD appears in.

Three three steps are:

1. Calculate the AD for the year given to you
2. Recall the placement of the AD in the month given to you
3. Do middle-school-level math to find the day of the week

System Part 1: Anchor Days (AD)

Anchor Days follow a pattern of when a new year happens, we move forward one day of the week. In 2000, the AD was Tuesday. In 2001, the AD was Wednesday. 2002 is left as an exercise for the reader.

When we get to 2004, a leap year, we are injecting an additional day into Our ("humanity's") calendar. Why? Because nothing is perfect: Earth's orbit is not a perfect 365 days-- it is closer to 365.25. So every 4 years we correct our week day calendar system by appending a day to February.

How does the Doomsday Calendar algorithm solve this? Conway constructed his solution by adding a conditional clause to his mnemonic system. I'm going to say it: I think this is poor design and couples the two parts into one system. For me, dear reader, this makes the mnemonic system feel like two systems. So I'm going to tell you how I remember.

2003's AD is Friday. 2004, a leap year, has two ADs, depending on if you are before/during Feb 28, or during/after Feb 29-- the AD is Saturday and then Sunday.

To put it in the year-scope of this system: For every non-leap year, we move the AD forward by 1 day of the week; for every leap year, we move the AD forward by 2 days of the week.

System Part 2: Mnemonics Set

That's it!

I'll elaborate: each line is a way to know where the AD appears in a certain month. Let's dive in.

9-to-5 at 7/11

This is shorthand the months of September, March, July, and November, and their ADs. There are two pairs of numbers: 9-to-5 and 7/11. They are encoded: you get a two-for-one special at this 7/11 by reversing the numbers. Here comes the logic.

9-to-5 is for September and May (9 and 5). September's fifth day, and May's ninth day. 7/11 is for July and November (7 and 11). July's eleventh day, and November's seventh day.

To apply it to 2000, with an AD of Tuesday: May 9th is a Tuesday, July 11th is a Tuesday, September 7th is a Tuesday, and (you guessed it) November 7th is a Tuesday.

I think this phrase is easy to remember because it causes me to think of a person working a normal job span, 9-5, at a gas station convenience store. Therefore, I've learned how to use knowledge I knew already for a different purpose, so very little mental load.

M-to-D for all even months except February

This one is easy: every even month (except February), that number of the month is the number of the day that is the AD. This is 4-4, 6-6, 8-8, 10-10, 12-12.

To apply it to 2000, with an AD of Tuesday: April 4th is a Tuesday, June 6th is a Tuesday, August 8th is a Tuesday, October 10th is a Tuesday, and December 12th is a Tuesday.

This phrase is easy to remember because of the even numbers. Except February.

Pi Day, Valentine's Day, Jan 3rd

So that just leaves January, February, and March. 2 of the 3 fall on days that are easy to remember: pi day (3.14 for Americans), and Valentines day (February 14th). The only new one here is January 3rd. There's no good mnemonic, you gotta use rote memory techniques for that.

Here comes the truth you all have been waiting for: 2000 is a leap year. By my system, as spoken of earlier, there are two ADs: Monday for all days up to and including February 28 and Tuesday for all days including and following February 29.

March 14th is after the leap day, so it is a Tuesday. February 14th is before the leap day, so it is a Monday, and January 3rd is a Monday as well.

3 Steps: The Algorithm Applied

The three steps are:

1. calculate the AD for the year given to you
2. recall the placement of the AD in the month given to you
3. do middle-school-level math to find the day

Let's pick 2017, May 1st.

1: Calculate the AD

Time is a construct and is relative, so we must start anchored to reality. 2000's AD is Monday/Tuesday.

Between 2000 and 2017, there are 17 years with 4 of them being leap years (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016).

17 with an extra 4. 17 + 4 = 21 , So we must advance 21 days in the week day cycle from Tuesday as our AD.

(For you more Pure Maths people, pardon the words) The week is 7 days, so if we remove 7 from 21, we have 14 days to increase by, but we are back to Tuesday as our AD. We do this again to reduce 14 to 7, and AD is still Tuesday. Once more, and we are done: the AD is Tuesday for 2017.

If there are readers in the audience who know their modulo math (a different topic from this post), you knew this answer.

2: Recall the placement of the AD in the month given to you

Remember our mnemonics.

9-5 at 7/11.

May is the 5th month, so 2017-05-09 is a Tuesday.

3: Do middle-school-level math to find the day

I say this level because I'm confident I remember myself, as a middle school student, being asked "hey, today is the 9th, what day of the week was the 1st?" or some variant.

If today is a Tuesday, and it is the 9th, that means the 2nd was a Tuesday. So May 1st, 2017 was a Monday.

Go. Rush to your calendar and check; my next trick: the lottery.

Estimates, Assumptions & Exceptions

I have defined this with an estimate, which lead us to an assumption, which causes exceptions with this tool. We are trying to map math onto the solar system.

The measure of time for Earth to complete an orbit does not fit 1:1 into the measure of time that passes in our day-night cycle. There are 365 days in a calendar year, but the Earth takes longer than that to complete its orbit. I estimated it to be 365.25 days to acknowledge the leap year in this post; my goal is to explain the Doomsday Calendar algorithm, not the history of Humankind's adventures with the calendar.

This estimate of 365.25 days is not true, it's actually an over correction. For brevity, here are the rules:

• If the year is divisible by 400, it is a leap year,
• If not, but the year is divisible by 100, it is not a leap year, and
• If not, but the year is divisible by 4, it is a leap year.

2000 is a leap year, 2100 is not a leap year. Everything defined in this post work exactly; we were looking in the time range of 2000-2017, which is myopic for this algorithm. You now have the tools to calculate the day of the week in 1332: good to know when the red-letter day falls.

Practice

This method is only good if it lives in your brain, so write down a couple dates and prove out the system. It's fun to crack out the dates, and it's very useful for when people are planning meeting 3 months ago and you can tell them "no, that's on a Saturday, let's do the day before." Also good for parties to tell people when their birthday falls.

My full intents for this website are numerous and unknown; "countably infinite" comes to mind.

The immediate and obvious: a place to show my "professional career", that is, my record of how I've made a living.

Another: to write relevant documents-- but relevant to what/whom? TBD.

Topics of interest:

• Computer Science (i.e. "programming")
• Opinions/Local Affairs
• Cooking
• Literature/Humor
• Photography