Latest Posts

• Using GPT-3 To Write A Blog Post

  by Michael Berkey on May 12, 2022

  OpenAI’s GPT-3 model is very powerful and has been available to use through their API for a few months now (without the waitlist). Its text completion is free up to ~225,000 words, it’s easy to use, and its writing is passable as a real person. Perfect for creating a low effort blog post.

• Game Design and Education

  by Matt Wildman on Apr 16, 2022

  When video games are brought up people think of a lot of things, if you’re a programmer you might think about intense performance requirements and graphics calculations. Artists probably think about animations and UI design, and hobbyists likely think about level design. When it comes down to it though, something very fundamental to game design that people often forget is teaching.

• Artificial Consciousness and Phenomenology

  by Reed Nelson on Apr 07, 2022

  Perceptions of what it takes for a computer to have consciousness seem to vary radically from person to person. If you have very low standards, perhaps you think it possible that the internet, or even just individual computers already have some level of consciousness. At the other extreme, you could think real artificial consciousness is centuries off or even impossible¹. I decided to write about...

• Why I Use Firefox

  by James Ma on Apr 03, 2022

  I use Firefox because I can customize everything I want, the way I want. I can choose which websites get to install cookies on me, and which don’t. But most importantly, I choose Firefox because it is upfront with me about what it does and what it doesn’t do.

• Exploiting GitHub Actions

  by Nick Winans on Mar 17, 2022

  I’m a contributor to the open source keyboard firmware ZMK, which is a firmware that runs on custom, usually wireless keyboards. It turns electrical keypresses into real output to your computer with a bunch of cool features and customizations. In our project, we house widely available custom “boards” and “shields”. “Boards” are defined as the part of the keyboard that has the microprocessor running the firmware, and “shields” are the keyboard looking circuit b...

• Incorrect Reification: An Anti-Pattern

  by Phoenix Kahlo on Feb 25, 2022

  For better or for worse, what entices me in creating software is less the prospect of engineering a working thing and more the structural elegance of a well-architectured system fitting together neatly. I tend to dive into some vastly ambitious project of creating a framework or engine of some sort, typically with self-awareness that I’ll get bored and move on once I’ve gotten a sense of what does and doesn’t work elegantly about the approach.

• Hatathon 2022

  by Will Woods on Feb 16, 2022

  This past weekend (2/11/22 and 2/12/22) the UPL Hosted its first ever Hatathon, a hat-themed Hackathon! The prompt for the Hatathon was “Help Your Community”, and we had around 30 teams attend. The Hatathon was a beginner friendly event, which was intentionally left open ended to allow teams of all skill levels to compete. We’re really happy with every project we saw, and were able to help lots of teams with technical questions and helped teams pick up new technologies. The Hatathon was an...

• A Cautionary Tale Of Amazon Web Service Classes

  by Carson Drury on Feb 09, 2022

  I find winter break to be a strange time for college students. Of course, since it is break, students want to relax and recoup after a long semester. Although, the length of winter break often makes students fell like they’re wasting their time if they don’t do something productive. CS students often take this time to create a small project or learn something new. This often allows for a balance of productivity and relaxation. As a computer science student myself, I follow this trend. I wo...

• Learning To Code With Projects

  by Rudy Banerjee on Feb 02, 2022

  Computer science is a vast field, and there are tons of different ways that people can learn and get involved with it. One of the best ways to do so is by doing computer science projects. There are many different ways to go about doing so: tinkering around with tools and tutorials freely available on the internet, attempting a longer project of some kind involving dedicated research and looking into things, and working on group projects in different settings. All of these are great ways to...