Hello everyone 👋,

We've posted the video of our Hackerschool session on Practical Functional Programming on YouTube. You can watch it here: https://hckr.cc/hs2324s2-w5-recording

Additionally, you might find this guide helpful: https://hckr.cc/practical-elixir-workshop-guide

For more resources related to the content, visit: https://hckr.cc/practical-elixir-workshop-resources

Friday Hacks #253💡

🗓 Date/Time: Friday, 23 Feb, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕Food and🧋Drinks will be served!

Sign up here:
NUS
Non-NUS

Talk #1: Arbitrage in Crypto: MEV Attacks

Unlike the financial markets, arbitrage is not (yet) outlawed in decentralized finance. In this talk, Chien Hao will explain the technical details of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and how the scene has evolved throughout the years. Topics include MEV-boost, Flashbots, flashloans, sandwich attacks, and oracles. He will share anecdotes from his research at an undisclosed crypto trading firm. No prior knowledge is required for this talk!

Speaker Profile
Chien Hao is a retired competitive programmer who is now part of a small team of MEV searchers. He has special interest in cross-chain long tail market inefficiencies and smart contract security. He welcomes questions and discussions about crypto @tch1001

See you there 👋

Friday Hacks #253💡

🗓 Date/Time: Friday, 23 Feb, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕Food and🧋Drinks will be served!

Sign up here:
NUS
Non-NUS

Talk #2: MySQL Internals

This talk takes a dive into the architecture of MySQL’s InnoDB storage engine. From in memory and on disk structures to the various locking strategies used to provide transactions, this talk aims to let you understand why your queries might be running slower than you’d expect.

Speaker Profile
Omer Iqbal is a Tech Lead Manager at TikTok, who is a full stack engineer with a passion for building scalable distributed systems and optimizing system performance. He gets very excited in discussions around distributed consensus, Rust, Kubernetes, networking, functional programming, compilers, GPUs, media codecs and mobile app development.

P.S. We're always on the lookout for Friday Hacks speakers! If you're interested, let us know at: https://hckr.cc/speak-at-fh and we'll reach out if there's a fit!

See you there 👋

Hello everyone 👋,

We've posted the video of our Hackerschool session on Introduction to Docker on YouTube. You can watch it here: https://hckr.cc/hs2324s2-w6-recording

Friday Hacks #254 🫧

🗓 Date/Time: Friday, 15 Mar, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕Food and🧋Drinks will be served!

Sign up here!

Talk #1: Exciting Trends in Music Technology with Deep Learning
In this talk, we'll journey into the fascinating the world of music technology. We will discuss how tech has impacted various aspects of music ranging from creation (music generation, audio synthesis), consumption (recommendation, hit song prediction) and distribution (copyright detection, soundtrack analysis). Furthermore, with the recent advances in deep learning / generative AI, we will also discuss some exciting trends emerging at the forefront of music technology, as well as the safeguards needed to ensure that AI continues to be assist and inspire, instead of replacing music artists.

Speaker Profile
Hao Hao is a machine learning engineer at BandLab Technologies, applying AI/ML to assist music creation workflow and enhance intelligent musical analysis.

See you there 👋

Friday Hacks #254 🫧

🗓 Date/Time: Friday, 15 Mar, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕Food and🧋Drinks will be served!

Sign up here!

Talk #2: Time Synchronization Protocols in Distributed Systems
Ever wondered how your phone can set the time automatically? How accurate do you think it can get? Ever wondered what the consequences are of devices with misaligned clocks? This talk dives into the fascinating world of how our modern world agrees on what the time is, and the various engineering challenges faced by people who are unable to.

Speaker Profile
Ayush is a Backend Engineer at TikTok, and worked in their iOS Team until recently. He loves digging deeper into the nitty-gritty code that is usually abstracted away, and will talk about time synchronization and Radiohead with anyone who will listen.

See you there 👋

Hackerschool: Introduction to Databases

🗓 Thursday, 14 Mar, 7pm to 9pm
📍 COM3-01-20 (Do take note the venue has been changed from COM3-01-25)
🧁 Refreshments will be served!

Sign up:
Non-NUS
NUS

Databases play a pivotal role in organizing and accessing information efficiently. Whether you're intrigued by the architecture behind databases or seeking practical skills in data manipulation, this workshop is tailored to introduce you to the essentials of database design and querying.

We'll kickstart the session by delving into the principles of database design, exploring how to structure and model data effectively. From conceptualizing entities and relationships to translating them into database schemas, you'll learn the foundations of building robust databases.

Moving forward, we'll dive into the world of SQL (Structured Query Language), the universal language for interacting with databases. Through interactive exercises, you'll master essential SQL commands to gain insights from your datasets.

No prior experience with databases is required – we'll guide you through every step of the way. Whether you're a complete novice or looking to refresh your skills, this workshop is designed to accommodate all levels of learners.

Do install postgres and pgAdmin beforehand!

See you there 👋

Hey everyone, the venue for tomorrow's Hackerschool session (Introduction to Databases) has been changed from COM3-01-25 to COM3-01-20 instead.

Hackers Toolbox: LaTeX

🗓 Tuesday, 19 Mar, 6.30pm-8.30pm
📍 SR 11 @ SoC (COM3 01-20)

Sign up here!
NUS
Non-NUS

This week, we’ll be introducing the well-known LaTeX document preparation system used widely across fields to prepare high-quality documents, papers, notes, journals, books, slides, cheatsheets, resumes, and so on. Come learn this invaluable tool that will let you create beautiful documents and impress your readers 🤩🥳

Prerequisites:
- Please have TeX and TeXstudio installed before the workshop. You can install either MiKTeX or TeX Live, depending on your OS. If in doubt:

- On Windows, MiKTeX is easier to install: https://miktex.org/download#win
- On Linux, install TeX Live using your package manager.
- On macOS, install MacTeX, a version of TeX Live for macOS: http://tug.org/mactex/

TeXstudio:
- On Windows and macOS: https://www.texstudio.org/#download
- On Linux, install TeXstudio using your package manager.

See you there 👋

Hackerschool: Generative AI and Prompt Engineering

🗓 Wednesday, 20 Mar, 7pm to 9pm
📍 COM3-01-25
🧁 Refreshments will be served!

Sign up here:
NUS
Non-NUS

Join us for a hands-on workshop with Fintech ML where we'll dive into the world of prompt engineering, covering both its basics and design principles.
In addition, we’ll explore the crucial role of prompt engineering in Fintech applications, such as banking apps, investment platforms, and personal finance tools.

Plus, you'll have the chance to create your own interactive prompts using Python and the OpenAI API. It's a fun and practical way to discover how prompt engineering can be applied in real-life scenarios.

Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to learn something new and have fun doing it!

See you there 👋

Friday Hacks #255 🍄

🗓 Date/Time: Friday, 22 Mar, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕Food and🧋Drinks will be served!

Sign up here:
NUS
Non-NUS

Talk #1: Creating prototypes that prove a point
This talk explores the process of designing and creating prototypes to validate hypotheses and illustrate key concepts. Through practical examples and insights, we will understand how prototypes serve as powerful tools to test ideas effectively and drive innovation forward.

Speaker Profile
My name is Shoib, and I am a Year 4 Computer Engineering student. I ran a startup for 3 years in Computer Vision, and have been an award winner in several startup competitions. Since then, I've dived into genAI, focusing particularly on reasoning agents. You can check out my open-source project at: https://github.com/Nuggt-dev/Nuggt. I've crafted a variety of prototypes tailored to diverse needs, spanning government projects to Agritech solutions. I'm looking forward to sharing my experience in the talk!

See you there 👋

Friday Hacks #255 🍄

🗓 Date/Time: Friday, 22 Mar, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕Food and🧋Drinks will be served!

Sign up here:
NUS
Non-NUS

Talk #2: ERP X: Road Charges, Reimagined
ERP X is an exploration of what road charging in Singapore could look like. The concept is simple: use roadside cameras to read license plate numbers, and inform drivers via a mobile app. Learn about how the team went through the process of exploring, designing and building the prototype in the span of a month. This product came from Hack for Public Good 2024, Open Government Product's annual hackathon.

Speaker Profile
Justyn Oh is a software engineer at Open Government Products. He works on FormSG, Checkpoint and ERP X. In his spare time, you can find Justyn playing board games, bouldering, chilling at a cafe or writing code in OCaml. He has a B.S. Physics with an additional major in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

See you there 👋

Hello everyone 👋,

Thank you for waiting. We've posted the video of our Hackerschool sessions on YouTube.

Introduction to Databases & SQL: https://youtu.be/8wlxAMnZsHY
Generative AI & Prompt Engineering: https://youtu.be/ZZNu1VfYzHw

Hackerschool: Introductions to Large Language Models

🗓 Wednesday, 27 Mar, 7pm to 9pm
📍 COM3-01-25
🧁 Refreshments will be served!

Sign up:
Non-NUS
NUS

Having fun in last week's workshop and would like to learn more? Get ready for another engaging session where we'll dive even deeper into the world of chatbot customization!

In this workshop, we'll explore:

🔹 RAG Techniques: Discover how to take your chatbot to the next level with retrieval augmented generation techniques.

🔹 Generative AI Project Lifecycle: Learn the ins and outs of developing a generative AI project, from conception to launch.

🔹 Opportunities and Risks: Gain insights into the potential opportunities and risks that generative AI technologies present to individuals, businesses, and society.

Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to learn something new and have fun doing it!

See you there 👋

Hackers Toolbox: Shell and Scripting

🗓 Tuesday, 26 Mar, 6.30pm-8.30pm
📍 SR 11 @ SoC (COM3 01-20)

Sign up here!
NUS Students
Non-NUS

The shell is a fast, efficient textual interface to your computer. Come learn to use the shell, and write shell scripts, to do things from managing files and processing text, to writing quick scripts that help you automate and speed up your daily computing life.

Please ensure you have access to a POSIX-compatible shell, such as Bash. If you are on macOS or a Linux distribution, you are set; if you use Windows, consider installing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or Ubuntu in VirtualBox.
- WSL: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

This workshop is largely based on the Missing Semester of Your CS Education lecture series conducted in MIT. This week's topic is based on https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2020/shell-tools/.

See you there! 👋

Friday Hacks #256 🐝

🗓️ Date/Time: Friday, 5 Apr, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕 Food and🧋drinks will be served!

RSVP:
NUS
Non-NUS

Talk #1: Livestreams are Fun! Creating + Hosting a RTMP relay server with Google Cloud's ecosystem
Work from home has become a thing for most industries, and that same notion has impacted online events. But what if we need to stream this content to multiple platforms simultaneously? We look at tackling this problem using Google Cloud Platform, and hosting a fully managed RTMP server for relaying a live-stream to these different platforms, while looking at additional functionalities we can implement on this RTMP server with the different tools of Google Cloud.

Speaker Profile
Weiyuan Liu is a Google Developer Expert in Google Cloud, and his day job is to serve as a Senior Engineering Manager at Ascenda. Outside of work, he helps to run GDG Cloud Singapore, and also founded "Big O(n) Development", focused on improving and developing the careers of others.

Friday Hacks #256 🐝

🗓️ Date/Time: Friday, 5 Apr, 7pm
📍 Venue: COM3-01-20 Seminar Room 11
🍕 Food and🧋drinks will be served!

RSVP:
NUS
Non-NUS

Talk #2: The Misunderstood Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
Most computer science, engineering, and data science students would have encountered principal component analysis (PCA). Most likely, PCA was introduced to you as a dimension reduction technique and perhaps as a data visualization technique. However, these are merely byproducts of what PCA was originally formulated for, which is the deconvolution of variations in the input data into orthogonal (and hopefully meaningful) directions.

Speaker Profile
Wong Limsoon is a Kwan-Im-Thong-Hood-Cho-Temple Professor in Computing at NUS. Recognized for his contributions to database theory and computational biology, he was honored as a Fellow of the ACM in 2013. Limsoon's research embodies insight into a problem, coupled with an elegant and logical exploitation of that insight.

See you there! 😊

Hacker Tools: Self-Hosting 💻

🗓 Tuesday, 2 Apr, 6.30pm-8.30pm
📍 SR 11 @ SoC (COM3 01-20)
🥐 Light refreshments will be provided!

Sign up here!

Are you tired of relying on third-party services for your online needs? Planning to build a really cool Orbital project but not sure how to deploy it? Learn how to host your own projects and share them with the world through our self-hosted workshop 😉

Prerequisites:
- do set up VPS before the session (Feel free to check out this link or ask in the chat!)
- If you’re a student, you can use your school email to get a Github Student Developer Pack for a free domain and credits. (https://education.github.com/pack)
- If you’re a member of the public, you can set up free instances of Google Cloud Engine and follow along!
- If you have a Github Student Developer Pack, do also grab a free domain from namecheap!

See you there!👋

Hackerschool: Introduction to Explainable AI (XAI)

🗓 Thursday, 4 Apr, 7pm to 9pm
📍 COM3-01-20
🧁 Refreshments will be served!

Sign up:
NUS
Non-NUS

Curious about Explainable AI (XAI) and its real-world impact? Join us for a hands-on workshop with Fintech ML to discover the essentials!

🔍 Explore the evolution of XAI and its vital role in ethics and compliance.
🎓 Learn key concepts and techniques like LIME and SHAP.
🖥️ Get hands-on experience with RandomForestClassifier and XAI methods.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to enhance your understanding of AI transparency and its practical applications, especially in FinTech!

See you there 👋

Hello everyone 👋,

We've posted the video of our Hackerschool: Introduction to Large Language Models session on YouTube.

You may view it here.