Computer things @Berkeley and music things elsewhere.https://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3miw5h67ufs2zIt turns out that the 'weakest' tic-tac-toe opening is actually the best one — if your opponent occasionally makes mistakes. New post on what games can teach us about coordination cost in distributed systems: https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/two-commitments/07 Apr 2026 15:58 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3miw5h67ufs2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3memlfsdpzs2h📄 New blog post! AI will soon write most distributed code. Distributed code is where our worst bugs —Heisenbugs— live. The real lever isn’t “test more,” it’s **aim better**: AI should target frameworks where correctness contracts are explicit and checkable. https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/codegen-reality/11 Feb 2026 23:00 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3memlfsdpzs2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lsj6zwb3vc2wNebula Film Festival https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/nebula-film-festival?utm_campaign=sharemodal&utm_medium=organicsocial&utm_source=bluesky26 Jun 2025 13:07 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lsj6zwb3vc2whttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lqt6wlfmw22qThe last blog post in my miniseries on CRDTs is up! https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/crdt-inflationary/ Mix of pragmatism and formalism. There's actually a small result in there that may be novel: Strong Eventual Consistency !=> Determinism. Curious to hear whether they've seen this result elsewhere.05 Jun 2025 01:42 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lqt6wlfmw22qhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lqb2mwotqk2dNext blog post in the CRDT Series is up! This one is for the developers... stay safe out there, folks. https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/crdt-dont-read/28 May 2025 20:37 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lqb2mwotqk2dhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lq7ei6e4222jGood thread. Thoughtful as always. [contains quote post or other embedded content]28 May 2025 04:28 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lq7ei6e4222jhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lpsa6ynah22q(Catching up to my LI feed). Next blog post is out! This is the first real post in a short series on CRDTs, an idea that has some currency in the distributed programming community, but one that comes with a number of sharp edges. Be careful out there! https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/crdt-turtles/22 May 2025 23:06 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lpsa6ynah22qhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lpsa4effts2qBlog relaunch! Bbye wordpress, hello github. If you're into SW dev, cloud, databases, distributed systems, automatic codegen ... or data and CS in general... check it out. As a warmup, I'm starting with a series of posts on CRDTs. Intro post up now: https://jhellerstein.github.io/blog/crdt-intro/22 May 2025 23:05 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lpsa4effts2qhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lmxifg3bic2gWow! @arvind.bsky.social giving an awesome keynote including discussion of VegaExpress and GoFish interactive vis libraries from his group. #EPICRetreat #UCBerkeley.16 Apr 2025 21:01 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lmxifg3bic2ghttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lmx4gzxhe22hHere’s a provocative example from JD Zamfirescu-Pereira on ways that humans and LLMs can get misaligned on expectations. Is the LLM lying? Is it just emitting tokens? How do people interpret this? #EPICRetreat #UCBerkeley.16 Apr 2025 17:27 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lmx4gzxhe22hhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3li3flhqqpc2xIn some kind of sad watershed, today was the day as a professor when I live-ChatGPT'ed the answer to a question in a Zoom with my PhD student and his undergrad mentees. But hey, let's paint it in a positive light: this was a demonstration of using the right tool at the right time.13 Feb 2025 19:15 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3li3flhqqpc2xhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lggkedd5u22iSunset in #Berkeley these days is a perfect field goal over the golden gate bridge. Shifts quite a ways north during the summer.23 Jan 2025 18:50 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lggkedd5u22ihttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lfapl4wqok2l2025. What a time to be alive!08 Jan 2025 17:42 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lfapl4wqok2lhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lceynz5rvz2eSunset over SF looked promising again today so we went down to the bay to take it in.03 Dec 2024 06:20 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lceynz5rvz2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3lccahae7cc2qSunset over SF was stellar today.02 Dec 2024 04:01 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3lccahae7cc2qhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3l7vwoip7sd2yThe legendary Phil Bernstein talking @BerkeleySky about his work in sw libraries for DPUs. Phil was paving the way for relational DBs and transactions in the 70s, and is still doing deep, detailed technical work. @Berkeley_EECS @BerkeleyDataSci01 Nov 2024 19:44 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3l7vwoip7sd2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3kahvgaxqly2uHT Remy Wang, UCLA.28 Sep 2023 17:43 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3kahvgaxqly2uhttps://bsky.app/profile/joehellerstein.bsky.social/post/3kag7zjfj7a2lBerkeley Data Systems and Foundations (DSF) in the house! With special guests from the awesome Simons Institute semester of database theory (HT NEU db group).28 Sep 2023 01:47 +0000at://did:plc:seqpwb2eyyo464hagz7dzyos/app.bsky.feed.post/3kag7zjfj7a2l