Marco
@mcognetta.bsky.social
Language and keyboard stuff at Google + PhD student at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
I like computers and Korean and computers-and-Korean and high school CS education.
Georgia Tech → 연세대학교 → 東京工業大学.
https://theoreticallygoodwithcomputers.com/
I like computers and Korean and computers-and-Korean and high school CS education.
Georgia Tech → 연세대학교 → 東京工業大学.
https://theoreticallygoodwithcomputers.com/
Pinned
Marco
@mcognetta.bsky.social
· Jan 5
A lot of you followed me due to #NLP, but I like to post about #chess (especially computer chess), #programming (especially puzzles, code golf, etc), and machine learning.
And some less technical stuff like #Korean, #Esperanto, and #trains (mostly in Japan, just due to proximity).
And some less technical stuff like #Korean, #Esperanto, and #trains (mostly in Japan, just due to proximity).
Reposted by Marco
The Recurse Center is a self-directed retreat for programmers, coming to make for the joy of making, collaborate with kind peers, and of course— become a dramatically better programmer. We don’t charge tuition, since we’re fully funded by our integrated recruiting team.
Applications are now open!
Applications are now open!
November 22, 2025 at 10:04 PM
The Recurse Center is a self-directed retreat for programmers, coming to make for the joy of making, collaborate with kind peers, and of course— become a dramatically better programmer. We don’t charge tuition, since we’re fully funded by our integrated recruiting team.
Applications are now open!
Applications are now open!
Reposted by Marco
And here is the presentation I gave on networking, self-promo, and how to make the most out of a conference. Hope this helps for everyone at NeurIPS!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9hG...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9hG...
Conferencemaxxing: How to grow your profile and network as a scientist
YouTube video by Michael Saxon (NLP & Generative AI research)
www.youtube.com
November 19, 2025 at 11:59 PM
And here is the presentation I gave on networking, self-promo, and how to make the most out of a conference. Hope this helps for everyone at NeurIPS!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9hG...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9hG...
Reposted by Marco
My strength is the breadth of my opening repertoire.
December 17, 2024 at 12:16 PM
My strength is the breadth of my opening repertoire.
Reposted by Marco
I’m really excited about our release of Gemini 3 today, the result of hard work by many, many people in the Gemini team and all across Google! 🎊
blog.google/products/gem...
Gemini 3 performs quite well on a wide range of benchmarks.
blog.google/products/gem...
Gemini 3 performs quite well on a wide range of benchmarks.
November 19, 2025 at 2:53 AM
I’m really excited about our release of Gemini 3 today, the result of hard work by many, many people in the Gemini team and all across Google! 🎊
blog.google/products/gem...
Gemini 3 performs quite well on a wide range of benchmarks.
blog.google/products/gem...
Gemini 3 performs quite well on a wide range of benchmarks.
Reposted by Marco
A whale conversation in whale vowels. Pinchy the whale and her conversant.
The vowels are so clear that they can be transcribed with our human letters.
aye, aye!
The vowels are so clear that they can be transcribed with our human letters.
aye, aye!
November 19, 2025 at 12:22 AM
A whale conversation in whale vowels. Pinchy the whale and her conversant.
The vowels are so clear that they can be transcribed with our human letters.
aye, aye!
The vowels are so clear that they can be transcribed with our human letters.
aye, aye!
Reposted by Marco
(1/2) 🎉 New preprint: "Contextual Morphologically-Guided Tokenization for Latin Encoder Models"
w/ @diyclassics.bsky.social @brenocon.bsky.social
w/ @diyclassics.bsky.social @brenocon.bsky.social
November 14, 2025 at 8:02 PM
(1/2) 🎉 New preprint: "Contextual Morphologically-Guided Tokenization for Latin Encoder Models"
w/ @diyclassics.bsky.social @brenocon.bsky.social
w/ @diyclassics.bsky.social @brenocon.bsky.social
Reposted by Marco
Through November, JR East is hosting live music performances in a Green Car running on the Chuo Line. www.traicy.com/posts/202511...
JR東日本、中央線快速グリーン車で生演奏イベント 11月の土休日に、各日1往復 - TRAICY（トライシー）
JR東日本は、中央線快速グリーン車内で生演奏イベントを11月1日から30日までの土休日に実施する。 中央線快速グリーン車5号車1階にて、プロの演奏者による生演奏を行う。実施列車・区間は、豊田駅午後1時41分発の快速東京駅 […]
www.traicy.com
November 18, 2025 at 2:41 AM
Through November, JR East is hosting live music performances in a Green Car running on the Chuo Line. www.traicy.com/posts/202511...
Reposted by Marco
I wrote a short blog post about masked softmax layers in PyTorch (i.e., when you have structural constraints that tell you some classes _must_ have probability zero).
This was based on a real bug I found in a neural chess model implementation.
This was based on a real bug I found in a neural chess model implementation.
Masked Softmax Layers in PyTorch
Correctly computing masked softmax layers.
mcognetta.github.io
November 3, 2025 at 7:39 PM
I wrote a short blog post about masked softmax layers in PyTorch (i.e., when you have structural constraints that tell you some classes _must_ have probability zero).
This was based on a real bug I found in a neural chess model implementation.
This was based on a real bug I found in a neural chess model implementation.
Do we think Pepsi is trying to replicate "AI co-created" Coke or GenAI Coke Christmas commercials?
November 17, 2025 at 1:36 AM
Do we think Pepsi is trying to replicate "AI co-created" Coke or GenAI Coke Christmas commercials?
My apartment in Tokyo was too small for an espresso machine, but I'm back at it now.
November 16, 2025 at 11:46 PM
My apartment in Tokyo was too small for an espresso machine, but I'm back at it now.
Reposted by Marco
Are we still doing starter packs?
Put this one together because I love seeing things that lovely folks write on the internet, and I'm sure there are more people to meet and add to this list.
go.bsky.app/AnM2t7r
Put this one together because I love seeing things that lovely folks write on the internet, and I'm sure there are more people to meet and add to this list.
go.bsky.app/AnM2t7r
November 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Are we still doing starter packs?
Put this one together because I love seeing things that lovely folks write on the internet, and I'm sure there are more people to meet and add to this list.
go.bsky.app/AnM2t7r
Put this one together because I love seeing things that lovely folks write on the internet, and I'm sure there are more people to meet and add to this list.
go.bsky.app/AnM2t7r
Reposted by Marco
Great to see Tarin Clanuwat featured for her amazing work. She has a deep love for Japanese classical literature and is using AI to build bridges to that past for everyone.
www.tokyoupdates.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/post-1670/
We’re lucky to have her driving this at Sakana AI.
www.tokyoupdates.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/post-1670/
We’re lucky to have her driving this at Sakana AI.
November 14, 2025 at 3:55 AM
Great to see Tarin Clanuwat featured for her amazing work. She has a deep love for Japanese classical literature and is using AI to build bridges to that past for everyone.
www.tokyoupdates.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/post-1670/
We’re lucky to have her driving this at Sakana AI.
www.tokyoupdates.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/post-1670/
We’re lucky to have her driving this at Sakana AI.
Incredible figure for the first page. Just brutal.
November 13, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Incredible figure for the first page. Just brutal.
Reposted by Marco
Really happy to have published this post that I've been working on for a few months now 🥰
Safe to say I enjoy these side quests - I'd like to think it's the first of many!
blog.owenlacey.dev/posts/are-yo...
Safe to say I enjoy these side quests - I'd like to think it's the first of many!
blog.owenlacey.dev/posts/are-yo...
"Are you the one?" is free money
blog.owenlacey.dev
November 10, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Really happy to have published this post that I've been working on for a few months now 🥰
Safe to say I enjoy these side quests - I'd like to think it's the first of many!
blog.owenlacey.dev/posts/are-yo...
Safe to say I enjoy these side quests - I'd like to think it's the first of many!
blog.owenlacey.dev/posts/are-yo...
A side channel attack on streaming LLMs where one can recover conversation topics while only seeing encrypted packet response streams.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.03675
arxiv.org/abs/2511.03675
Whisper Leak: A novel side-channel attack on remote language models | Microsoft Security Blog
Understand the risks of encrypted AI traffic exposure and explore practical steps users and cloud providers can take to stay secure. Learn more.
www.microsoft.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:11 AM
A side channel attack on streaming LLMs where one can recover conversation topics while only seeing encrypted packet response streams.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.03675
arxiv.org/abs/2511.03675
Reposted by Marco
I was struck with an incredible thought: The Subword Tolkienizer.
November 8, 2025 at 7:58 AM
I was struck with an incredible thought: The Subword Tolkienizer.
I was struck with an incredible thought: The Subword Tolkienizer.
November 8, 2025 at 7:58 AM
I was struck with an incredible thought: The Subword Tolkienizer.
Reposted by Marco
🎉 Congratulations to all #EMNLP2025 award winners 🎉
Starting with the ✨Best Paper award ✨:
"Infini-gram mini: Exact n-gram Search at the Internet Scale with FM-Index"
by Hao Xu, Jiacheng Liu, Yejin Choi, Noah A. Smith, and Hannaneh Hajishirzi
aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
1/n
Starting with the ✨Best Paper award ✨:
"Infini-gram mini: Exact n-gram Search at the Internet Scale with FM-Index"
by Hao Xu, Jiacheng Liu, Yejin Choi, Noah A. Smith, and Hannaneh Hajishirzi
aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
1/n
November 7, 2025 at 10:29 PM
🎉 Congratulations to all #EMNLP2025 award winners 🎉
Starting with the ✨Best Paper award ✨:
"Infini-gram mini: Exact n-gram Search at the Internet Scale with FM-Index"
by Hao Xu, Jiacheng Liu, Yejin Choi, Noah A. Smith, and Hannaneh Hajishirzi
aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
1/n
Starting with the ✨Best Paper award ✨:
"Infini-gram mini: Exact n-gram Search at the Internet Scale with FM-Index"
by Hao Xu, Jiacheng Liu, Yejin Choi, Noah A. Smith, and Hannaneh Hajishirzi
aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
1/n
Reposted by Marco
Got to the part of "temperature" and I'm aware that a higher temperature == less predictable but never knew why.
Turns out it's very simple. Before the "score" for a set of tokens is turned into a probability distribution it's divided by the temperature. Higher values "flatten" the distribution.
Turns out it's very simple. Before the "score" for a set of tokens is turned into a probability distribution it's divided by the temperature. Higher values "flatten" the distribution.
November 6, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Got to the part of "temperature" and I'm aware that a higher temperature == less predictable but never knew why.
Turns out it's very simple. Before the "score" for a set of tokens is turned into a probability distribution it's divided by the temperature. Higher values "flatten" the distribution.
Turns out it's very simple. Before the "score" for a set of tokens is turned into a probability distribution it's divided by the temperature. Higher values "flatten" the distribution.
Reposted by Marco
Just added my book, "Theory of Computing: An Open Introduction" to OER Commons, and working on getting it listed in Canadian repositories too. One step closer to making education more open and accessible to everyone!
oercommons.org/courses/theo...
oercommons.org/courses/theo...
Theory of Computing: An Open Introduction
This book is suitable for courses on the theory of computing at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and for self-study. Topics are introduced in a logical order: we begin with the simple finit...
oercommons.org
November 6, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Just added my book, "Theory of Computing: An Open Introduction" to OER Commons, and working on getting it listed in Canadian repositories too. One step closer to making education more open and accessible to everyone!
oercommons.org/courses/theo...
oercommons.org/courses/theo...
Reposted by Marco
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
Caveats:
-*-*-*-*
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
This is very high on my list of advice for PhD applicants.
I've written two SoP (masters and PhD) and the similarities between the things I wrote about in the SoP and the things I wrote my theses on ends roughly at "written in English".
I've written two SoP (masters and PhD) and the similarities between the things I wrote about in the SoP and the things I wrote my theses on ends roughly at "written in English".
Mistake 3, cont': people worry they narrow down by proposing specific questions ("What if this is not the EXACT thing I want to work on in grad school?").
But an SoP is not a *contract*, it will not be waved in front of you when starting grad school.
But an SoP is not a *contract*, it will not be waved in front of you when starting grad school.
November 7, 2025 at 12:20 AM
This is very high on my list of advice for PhD applicants.
I've written two SoP (masters and PhD) and the similarities between the things I wrote about in the SoP and the things I wrote my theses on ends roughly at "written in English".
I've written two SoP (masters and PhD) and the similarities between the things I wrote about in the SoP and the things I wrote my theses on ends roughly at "written in English".
Reposted by Marco
Mistake 3, cont': people worry they narrow down by proposing specific questions ("What if this is not the EXACT thing I want to work on in grad school?").
But an SoP is not a *contract*, it will not be waved in front of you when starting grad school.
But an SoP is not a *contract*, it will not be waved in front of you when starting grad school.
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Mistake 3, cont': people worry they narrow down by proposing specific questions ("What if this is not the EXACT thing I want to work on in grad school?").
But an SoP is not a *contract*, it will not be waved in front of you when starting grad school.
But an SoP is not a *contract*, it will not be waved in front of you when starting grad school.
Reposted by Marco
y'all seem to really like baseball bsky.social/about/blog/1...
The World Series Was Electric — So Was Bluesky - Bluesky
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?” — Moneyball 2011
bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 9:58 PM
y'all seem to really like baseball bsky.social/about/blog/1...
Reposted by Marco
Presenting today our work "Unsupervised Word-level Quality Estimation Through the Lens of Annotator (Dis)agreement" at the Machine Translation morning session (Room A301, 11:45 China time). See you there! 🤗
Paper: aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
Slides/video/poster: underline.io/events/502/s...
Paper: aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
Slides/video/poster: underline.io/events/502/s...
Unsupervised Word-level Quality Estimation for Machine Translation Through the Lens of Annotators (Dis)agreement
Gabriele Sarti, Vilém Zouhar, Malvina Nissim, Arianna Bisazza. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. 2025.
aclanthology.org
November 6, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Presenting today our work "Unsupervised Word-level Quality Estimation Through the Lens of Annotator (Dis)agreement" at the Machine Translation morning session (Room A301, 11:45 China time). See you there! 🤗
Paper: aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
Slides/video/poster: underline.io/events/502/s...
Paper: aclanthology.org/2025.emnlp-m...
Slides/video/poster: underline.io/events/502/s...