From schneide at cs.cmu.edu  Wed Feb  4 14:31:54 2015
From: schneide at cs.cmu.edu (Jeff Schneider)
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2015 14:31:54 -0500
Subject: Uber
Message-ID: <54D273AA.5050607@cs.cmu.edu>


Hi Everyone,

I'm sure you've all heard about the new lab Uber is opening in Pittsburgh.  I've 
decided to take a leave of absence starting in June to help set the lab up 
(similar to what I did when I went to Psychogenics 10 years ago).  Its an 
exciting opportunity for me to help get a new lab going in Pittsburgh.

All of the Auton projects will continue as planned so this will not cause much 
change for most of you.  Artur and Barnabas will be taking over some of my 
responsibilities as needed and of course I will remain involved in them during 
my leave, but at a reduced level.

My apologies for sending this in email but I couldn't find a way to get everyone 
together in person on short notice.

Jeff.


From awd at cs.cmu.edu  Wed Feb  4 19:53:59 2015
From: awd at cs.cmu.edu (Artur Dubrawski)
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2015 19:53:59 -0500
Subject: Uber
In-Reply-To: <54D273AA.5050607@cs.cmu.edu>
References: <54D273AA.5050607@cs.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <54D2BF27.4050002@cs.cmu.edu>

Ok, so now if we need a ride we know whom to call :)

Good luck Jeff!

Artur


On 2/4/2015 2:31 PM, Jeff Schneider wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I'm sure you've all heard about the new lab Uber is opening in 
> Pittsburgh.  I've decided to take a leave of absence starting in June 
> to help set the lab up (similar to what I did when I went to 
> Psychogenics 10 years ago).  Its an exciting opportunity for me to 
> help get a new lab going in Pittsburgh.
>
> All of the Auton projects will continue as planned so this will not 
> cause much change for most of you.  Artur and Barnabas will be taking 
> over some of my responsibilities as needed and of course I will remain 
> involved in them during my leave, but at a reduced level.
>
> My apologies for sending this in email but I couldn't find a way to 
> get everyone together in person on short notice.
>
> Jeff.
>


From mahesh.sabhnani at gmail.com  Thu Feb  5 04:17:05 2015
From: mahesh.sabhnani at gmail.com (Mahesh Sabhnani)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2015 04:17:05 -0500
Subject: Uber
In-Reply-To: <54D2BF27.4050002@cs.cmu.edu>
References: <54D273AA.5050607@cs.cmu.edu>
	<54D2BF27.4050002@cs.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <CAM7ZXKHNJpqV2MY47UuHsR9BGaAhEW_HY1zshkO=DhKybwM5gw@mail.gmail.com>

Now that Jeff is in, my hopes are even higher that one day *no person* will
drive the car that takes me to work :) For most, driving is boring anyways.

Jeff, I am happy for Uber research lab and wish you good luck.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 7:53 PM, Artur Dubrawski <awd at cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Ok, so now if we need a ride we know whom to call :)
>
> Good luck Jeff!
>
> Artur
>
>
>
> On 2/4/2015 2:31 PM, Jeff Schneider wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> I'm sure you've all heard about the new lab Uber is opening in
>> Pittsburgh.  I've decided to take a leave of absence starting in June to
>> help set the lab up (similar to what I did when I went to Psychogenics 10
>> years ago).  Its an exciting opportunity for me to help get a new lab going
>> in Pittsburgh.
>>
>> All of the Auton projects will continue as planned so this will not cause
>> much change for most of you.  Artur and Barnabas will be taking over some
>> of my responsibilities as needed and of course I will remain involved in
>> them during my leave, but at a reduced level.
>>
>> My apologies for sending this in email but I couldn't find a way to get
>> everyone together in person on short notice.
>>
>> Jeff.
>>
>>
>
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From bapoczos at cs.cmu.edu  Thu Feb  5 13:45:58 2015
From: bapoczos at cs.cmu.edu (Barnabas Poczos)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2015 13:45:58 -0500
Subject: Uber
In-Reply-To: <54D273AA.5050607@cs.cmu.edu>
References: <54D273AA.5050607@cs.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <CAHFiJZt=TiHD8owRKW5weMZTZ=63yeTEm8_z=4DUy7_+XsxMCg@mail.gmail.com>

Good luck Jeff! :-)

It is awesome that Pittsburgh will have a new research lab.

We need more labs working on other great ML applications.
For example, it would be nice if these guys could also open a lab
somewhere close to CMU:

www.beermapperapp.com/

Cheers,
Barnabas


======================
Barnabas Poczos, PhD
Assistant Professor
Machine Learning Department
Carnegie Mellon University


On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Jeff Schneider <schneide at cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I'm sure you've all heard about the new lab Uber is opening in Pittsburgh.
> I've decided to take a leave of absence starting in June to help set the lab
> up (similar to what I did when I went to Psychogenics 10 years ago).  Its an
> exciting opportunity for me to help get a new lab going in Pittsburgh.
>
> All of the Auton projects will continue as planned so this will not cause
> much change for most of you.  Artur and Barnabas will be taking over some of
> my responsibilities as needed and of course I will remain involved in them
> during my leave, but at a reduced level.
>
> My apologies for sending this in email but I couldn't find a way to get
> everyone together in person on short notice.
>
> Jeff.
>

From predragp at andrew.cmu.edu  Sun Feb  8 19:09:55 2015
From: predragp at andrew.cmu.edu (predragp at andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2015 19:09:55 -0500
Subject: matlab slowness
Message-ID: <43b4ea9572e93bbc42ef9446d75c46b2.squirrel@webmail.andrew.cmu.edu>

> I just submitted the paper I was working on (which used a bunch of
matlab simulations) so I've got some free time to help debug this. Not
really sure where to start though as I know very little about matlab
configurations. I suppose something to verify is whether this is an
issue for people not in Neill's group? Is there an autonlab member who
uses a lot of Matlab and would thus be self-interested? I don't know
Chun-Liang Li but I think he uses matlab a lot...
>
> Best,
> Seth
>

I am forwarding you e-mail to users at autonlab.org hopping that somebody can
help.

Most Kind Regards,
Predrag

> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:55 PM, Seth Flaxman <flaxman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sure. I compared lot1, low1, and lov3:
>>
>> lot1
>>>> bench(5)
>> ans =
>>
>>     2.4679    0.5507    0.2113   38.6126    0.9343    0.8627
>>     2.0373    0.5239    0.1893   30.0908    1.1267    0.6388
>>     1.9278    0.5322    0.1908   32.5306    0.4670    0.7822
>>     3.1591    0.4540    0.2404   41.5550    1.6787    0.9064
>>     3.2059    0.5684    0.1988   25.0799    0.9904    1.6566
>>
>> low1
>>>> bench(5)
>> ans =
>>
>>     1.0779    0.2725    0.1980   22.7329    0.4850    0.5008
>>     1.3599    0.2884    0.2047   26.0477    0.4822    0.4942
>>     1.2960    0.2476    0.1984   27.1457    0.4907    0.4321
>>     1.2698    0.2802    0.1980   15.6125    0.5065    0.4892
>>     1.0454    0.2650    0.1989   10.4417    0.5208    0.5081
>>
>> lov3
>>>> bench(5)
>> ans =
>>
>>     0.3191    0.1766    0.2183    1.7567    0.4645    0.4663
>>     0.2828    0.1779    0.2291    1.5642    0.4895    0.4726
>>     0.3462    0.1938    0.2316    1.8131    0.4603    0.4967
>>     0.2673    0.1896    0.2086    1.7520    0.4870    0.4616
>>     0.3018    0.1713    0.2180    1.8592    0.4587    0.4514
>>
>>
>> Another clue, perhaps, is that if I start up 5 or 6 instances of matlab
then the 5th or 6th will often crash immediately. Matlab seems to do
very weird things with forking. I'm attaching one of those dumps, which
I just got when I tried to run the above.
>> Seth
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 4:32 PM,  <predragp at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>>> Any updates? lov3 and lov4 seem, if anything, to be even slower
especially
>>>> for sparse linear algebra:
>>>>
>>>> lov3:
>>>>>> bench
>>>>     0.6941    0.3787    0.2958   14.4527    0.5514    0.5435
>>>> lov4:
>>>>>> bench
>>>>     1.0360    0.5322    0.2471   16.4350    0.5510    0.6338
>>>>
>>>> Does matlab rely on system packages that are architecture specific, like
>>>> ATLAS?
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Seth
>>>>
>>>
>>> I have not had chance to work on this stuff but I did little thinking. I
>>> am starting to worry that having SSD HDD in those two computing nodes
what
>>> not such a smart idea. Could you do me a favour and check how the
performance compares to LOW1 which has regular HDD.
>>>
>>> Predrag
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 10:31 PM, <predragp at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> > Hah, okay. The fact that it's 0.27 seconds on CMU servers and 33
seconds on low1 seems quite strange.
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> Just to let you know. I am so busy until the end of next week that
there
>>>>> is not chance I could look into it before than. I apologize for any
inconvenience.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Predrag
>>>>>
>>>>> > I found another benchmarking script here:
>>>>> > http://math.ucdenver.edu/~jmandel/matlab/matlab_benchmark.html
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Here's lov3:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > 1. large LU:   0.860
>>>>> > 2. small LU:   0.944
>>>>> > 3. sparse  :   0.302
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Here's low1:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > 1. large LU:   1.813
>>>>> > 2. small LU:   0.526
>>>>> > 3. sparse  :   2.216
>>>>> >
>>>>> > And here's linux.gp.cs.cmu.edu:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > 1. large LU:   0.569
>>>>> > 2. small LU:   0.491
>>>>> > 3. sparse  :   0.176
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Seth
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 9:29 PM,  <predragp at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>>>> >>> The warning matlab issues when I start it seems worth
>>>>> investigating
>>>>> >>> further:
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>> MATLAB is selecting SOFTWARE OPENGL rendering.
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>>                             < M A T L A B (R) >
>>>>> >>>                   Copyright 1984-2014 The MathWorks, Inc.
>>>>> >>>                    R2014b (8.4.0.150421) 64-bit (glnxa64)
>>>>> >>>                              September 15, 2014
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>> Warning: MATLAB has disabled some advanced graphics rendering
>>>>> features
>>>>> >>> by switching to software OpenGL. For more information, click <a
href="matlab:opengl('problems')">here</a>.
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>> (I'm running matlab at the command-line by ssh'ing into lop1
then low1.)
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>> Seth
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> The fact that we are using Open Graphics Library should not impact
>>>>> your
>>>>> >> code which does non graphics related  computations. The fact that
MathWork
>>>>> >> favours closed binary blobs graphics drivers over OpenGL is very
telling.
>>>>> >> The papers produced by binary blobs are immediately rejected from
>>>>> all
>>>>> >> Mathematics Journals because there is no way to properly referee
>>>>> and
>>>>> >> scrutinize somebody work which uses closed source code.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> Predrag
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >>> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 9:05 PM, Seth Flaxman
<flaxman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> >>>> Fair enough. I think the other server comparisons are most
>>>>> relevant,
>>>>> >>>> but I don't have the full specs on these. Here's what I can
>>>>> tell:
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> linux.andrew is running RHEL 6.5 / Matlab R2013a:
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> [sflaxman at unix5 ~]$ matlab -nodesktop -nosplash -r "bench(1)"
>>>>> >>>>     0.0631    0.0962    0.3625    0.2873    0.4062    0.0177
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> linux.gp.cs is running Ubuntu / Matlab R2014a
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>>     0.0825    0.1056    0.3558    0.2302    0.3217    0.0124
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> phd-serv4.heinz.cmu.edu is running Fedora / R2014a
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>>     0.0671    0.0844    0.2428    0.2703    0.2975    0.0067
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> And I just tried low1:
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>>     1.5470    0.2842    0.2995   33.8112    0.6661    0.5224
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> Weird! Column 4 is for Sparse linear algebra...
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> Maybe the issue is with R2014b? R2014a isn't still available on
>>>>> any
>>>>> of
>>>>> >>>> the autonlab servers for comparison is it?
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> Seth
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 8:35 PM,  <predragp at andrew.cmu.edu>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> >>>>> Oh and I forgot to say. If a single core on my server is slower
>>>>> than
>>>>> >>>>> a
>>>>> >>>>> single core on your laptop then I would expect your LAPTOP to
>>>>> execute
>>>>> >>>>> code
>>>>> >>>>> faster. The catch is that server can do massive parallel
>>>>> processing
>>>>> >>>>> and
>>>>> >>>>> that what MATLAB is very good for.
>>>>> >>>>>
>>>>> >>>>> Predrag
>>>>> >>>>>
>>>>> >>>>>
>>>>> >>>>>
>>>>> >>>>>
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>





From predragp at andrew.cmu.edu  Sun Feb  8 20:40:50 2015
From: predragp at andrew.cmu.edu (predragp at andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2015 20:40:50 -0500
Subject: ipython27 notebook installed
In-Reply-To: <D49E58ECFA4AA6A5.1-31dc36f5-71f7-49c4-aab0-cc0ec9a7cca5@mail.outlook.com>
References: <ef92bf90b6d9713d8a67a88b0104f584.squirrel@webmail.andrew.cmu.edu>
 <A34D98D617BDDE46AAB13D33864E8D7444BB1B@PGH-MSGMB-03.andrew.ad.cmu.edu>,
 <f9e74e7e1ca0a8fb61b70d67543efa46.squirrel@webmail.andrew.cmu.edu>
 <D49E58ECFA4AA6A5.1-31dc36f5-71f7-49c4-aab0-cc0ec9a7cca5@mail.outlook.com>
Message-ID: <8079028d7f224163632440544c76901f.squirrel@webmail.andrew.cmu.edu>

Dear Autonians,


Due to popular demand I have upgraded ipython27 on all computing nodes and
desktops to version 2.4 which supports notebook mode. I also installed
icewm light desktop environment on all computing nodes as well as Firefox
so that you can use the notebook. This is short how to.

In order to use ipython27 notebook you will have to log into a computing
node using x2go client and bash.autonlab.org as a proxy. Make sure that
you chose "custom desktop" as the option and execute the command icewm.
Once you log in GUI mode into one of computing nodes using x2go client you
will be presented with minimal icewm desktop environment. Open an xterm
and type

ipython27 notebook

The server will ask you if you are sure that you want to run ipyton27 in
the insecure notebook mode. Answer yes and Firefox will automatically
start and present you with the notebook on

127.0.0.1/notebook

If you wonder what is ipython27 notebook think of  Mathematica notebook.


Most Kind Regards,
Predrag


P.S. If you have troubles understanding this chaotic e-mail but you use
Python and want to use ipython shell in notebook mode please stop by my
office NSH 3119 and I will be happy to give you demo and walk you through.



From poczos.barnabas at gmail.com  Tue Feb 24 09:23:20 2015
From: poczos.barnabas at gmail.com (Barnabas Poczos)
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2015 09:23:20 -0500
Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: Special Machine Learning & Algorithms Seminar, Ravi Kannan
 - February 24, 2015]
In-Reply-To: <56664.76.164.62.98.1424786445.squirrel@webmail.cs.cmu.edu>
References: <56664.76.164.62.98.1424786445.squirrel@webmail.cs.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <CAHFiJZuLdDgULO2s=NDASJaZonEu_FowotEiKJ9TiMg3XE4_jw@mail.gmail.com>

FYI


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nina Balcan <ninamf at cs.cmu.edu>

Hey guys.

Don't miss this! It is supposed to be great.
Barnabas and Aarti, please forward it to your students.

Nina
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [Fwd: Special Machine Learning & Algorithms Seminar,

Hi everyone.

Please join us for a Special Machine Learning & Algorithms Seminar by
Ravi Kannan, at 2:00 PM tomorrow. Please see full details below.

Best.
Nina Balcan

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Please join us for a Special Machine Learning & Algorithms Seminar!

Tuesday, February 24, 2015
2:00 pm
NSH  3305


Ravi Kannan<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/kannan/>, Principal
Researcher in the Algorithms - Microsoft Research
Host: Nina Balcan


Title:   Topic Modeling: A Provable Algorithm

Abstract:

Topic Modeling is widely used. The general model inference problem is
hard. Known provable algorithms need some strong assumptions on the model.

After a from-first-principles introduction, the talk will formulate a
model with two natural assumptions: (i) each document has a dominant topic
and (ii) each topic has dominant words. We provably solve the model
fitting problem. The algorithm is based on three natural components: a
thresholding step, Singular Value Decomposition and clustering. The proof
crucially draws upon recent results on the convergence of another widely
used tool: Lloyd's k-means algorithm. We test both the performance of the
algorithm and the validity of the assumptions on real document corpora
with success. The simple device of thresholding has other uses - we will
see an exponential advantage for certain \planted" problems in terms of
the signal-to-noise ratio.

Joint with T. Bansal and C. Bhattacharyya, Indian Institute of Science.

Bio

Ravindran (Ravi) Kannan is Principal Researcher in the Algorithms Research
Group at Microsoft Research Bangalore. Previously he was a professor at
CMU, MIT, and Yale, where he was the William Lanman Professor of Computer
Science. His research areas span Algorithms, Optimization and Probability.

He is widely known for introducing several groundbreaking techniques in
theoretical computer science, notably in the algorithmic geometry of
numbers, sampling and volume computation in high dimension, and
algorithmic linear algebra. He received the Knuth Prize in 2011, and the
Fulkerson Prize in 1992. He is a distinguished alumnus of IIT Bombay.

From predragp at andrew.cmu.edu  Sat Feb 28 19:42:56 2015
From: predragp at andrew.cmu.edu (predragp at andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 19:42:56 -0500
Subject: End of Public Updates for Oracle JDK 7 
Message-ID: <32666b92dbb4adde39f19e840bd7c377.squirrel@webmail.andrew.cmu.edu>

Dear Autonians,

I just updated Java (JDK) on all computing nodes and desktops to R7u75.
However I am afraid that I am a bearer of a bad news. This is the last
Oracle JDK 7 publicly available update. If you are using Java and in
particular if you maintaining important Java depended software like TCWI
or TrafficJam you should start immediately experimenting with Java 8 or
even better try to migrate away from Java all together.

Most Kind Regards,
Predrag Punosevac