A few things that made my 2025 interesting..

Kigali, Rwanda by night!

2025 is my best year so far, followed by 2024, 2023, 2019, and 2017. 2025 had some resemblance to 2024: two academic semesters, with a "mostly jobless" summer vacation in between! The year started with the fear that the Mt Spurr volcano would erupt. Luckily, it never did! This post lists 30 things that made my 2025 interesting.

1. New Year 2025 in Shenzhen, China.

Family time and busy streets.

2. Smoggy and windy Los Angeles, CA.

Although the wildfire with its smog was not fun, the winds and the dark sky were interesting in a scary way. 

Hilly Kigali!

3. Coffee in the mornings in Bangkok, Thailand.

The interesting drinks and ending the year in style with family. 

4. Experiencing the first real earthquake.

It was 6.0 and felt strong in our home in Anchorage, with things moving and books falling down the shelves. Luckily, the center was still a few tens of miles from Anchorage. So it was not a disaster.

5. Northern Lights at Clearly Summit, Fairbanks, AK. 

While I have seen northern lights before in Anchorage and Utqiagvik, this one was stronger and clearer in the darker location.

6. Music of 2025.

What is a year without some new good music! 

 

7. Published journal papers!

A CONTROL-CORE-2 CLUSTER journal paper: my last paper from the postdoc era. Nice to see it getting published, finally. Two IEEE Computer Magazine papers: Both are products of my collaboration with the Department of Alaska Native Studies. And one RSASE Polar Science paper, a collaboration with Canadian researchers.

Harrison's Cave, Barbados

8. Making friends at a community event in Kigali, Rwanda.

This time for Africa! Now I have visited 6 continents. Only Antarctica is pending! 

9. Walking the hills of Kigali, Rwanda.

It was up and down, and Kigali looks peaceful at night, with lights that look like stars in the adjacent hills.  

10. A long hike in the Foreshore Trail around UBC.

Muddy trail and mudflats of Vancouver, BC, Canada. The stay at UBC for the IEEE CCECE 2025 conference. The university town is peaceful and calm.

11. San Antonio River cruise and dining by the river at night.

Beautiful restaurants of Kigali

It was a productive workshop by NHERI. 

12. Trying diverse cuisines in New York City.

Got to love the diversity of food in the US.

13. Waves of Christ Church, Barbados.

The beachfront hotel let us go to the beach several times.

14. Atlantis Submarine in Bridgetown, Barbados.

The colors disappear, and everything gets blue as we go deep underwater.

Deep into the Ocean, Barbados

15. Black bear sighting at Campbell Park, Anchorage.

A momma bear and her two cubs on our little hike in the park, pretty close. None of us were harmed. The bears minded their business and we minded ours as we slowly walked away. Anchorage reminds us every now and then that we live with wildlife with the frequent moose sightings and now, these black bears.  

16. New Research collaborations.

Including Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Cooper Union in NYC.

17. Fall 2025 semester. Teaching three courses.

One of the three was a new course for me. A full load. I survived.

18. MATLAB Educator Workshop at Carleton University.

Busy days in Northfield, MN, followed by a long walk in Mall of America.

View from the submarine, Barbados

19. My big diary!

I got a nice diary in China. It was very heavy though, like a big brick. 

20. Harrison's Cave Eco-Adventure Park in Barbados.  

Exploring the caves in an underground tram!

21. Atlanta once more!

Returned to Atlanta after two years briefly. Visited both Ponce City Market and Krog Street Market. Interestingly, not too strong memories from the past even from the airport and these places that I used to frequent. 

22. IEEE IPCCC 2025 at Hotel Viata in West Lake Hills, TX.

and some random walks in downtown Austin.

23.  Temples and statues of Hindu Gods in Bangkok. 

Mariamman, Brahma, and Indra. 

24. Croatia EQUISYS project until September 30th, 2029.

This project collaboration of four summers. I am looking forward to it in 2026. 

Malls of Bangkok, Thailand

25. Snowy mountains of Juneau, AK.

Juneau has the mountains much closer to the town than Anchorage! Makes it feel more beautiful and wild than Anchorage.

26. A night in Singapore.

Family reunion, which was supposed to be the moment in 2020 February. Pandemic memories. We have come a full circle.

27. New Year's Eve, crowds, and celebrating 2026 in Bangkok.

Siam Center and Em Quartier malls, celebrating the new year. The malls of Bangkok are so inviting.

28. Museums of Seattle, WA.

Northern lights in Fairbanks, AK.

Although Seattle is not new to us, this time we had a long time to explore it well.

29. A long multi-part trip that started with Tacoma, WA.

Night walks in Tacoma. The beautiful view of the Puget Sound from the hotel window. One of those magical moments. Perfect wrap to the year. 

30. The Amsterdam Airport!

It felt nice to be in Europe, even though it was just a layover in the air side. The last time I was in Europe was 2019 December when I visited Istanbul (and 2020 January in the LHR airport, air side). It reminded me it is long overdue to visit Europe, and also perhaps time to visit Portugal again sometime. I have not been in Portugal since 2019 July.

Every year, I have only one new year's resolution - to outperform my previous years. :) 2026 appears exciting with interesting events already planned. I wish you a happy new year. Thanks for reading my list until the end. You may read the blog posts of all the previous years as well. 

AI, the end or new beginnings?

AI has made it easy for quick fixes into code. As a maintainer of several project repositories, it feels like a relief. Lots of frameworks to assist in coding. I know what I want to do and AI feels like a little helper to quickly type certain code segment that I understand. It also helps find mistakes in code quickly. Similar to what IDEs did, but with extra support. But as an educator, I also feel dangerously horrible use of AI. Students are just throwing essay titles into ChatGPT. When an assignment slightly deviates from the norm and when they cannot let AI to complete it for them, some students are feeling frustrated. Students (both local and those who participate in remote programs - so the issue is global. Not limited to Alaska) simply let AI do coding and writing for them, and when something goes wrong, they are confused. For a trivial fix that would take the code author just a couple of minutes and a couple of lines to fix, the AI ends up with drastic changes. 

Sunset in Barbados

Many student essays feel bland. They lack soul and personality. If you give the student an well-designed homework, they quickly get the answer. When the problem involves thinking on architecture beyond what AI can handle for them at this point, they are stuck. "Can you tell me what I should exactly do here?" For vaguely defined problems, they want clear step-by-step instructions which they can then easily feed into LLMs.

As educators, we should spend more time in teaching architecture and thinking. If all students want is to simply feed clear instructions into ChatGPT, if I were an employer, I would rather do that myself. Why would I pay someone when they need clear instructions, step-by-step guidelines to a software program that they can easily feed into ChatGPT or other more advanced AI coding tools?

I used to enjoy fixing student papers. Those essays had life and personalities. They read like what students wrote. They sounded like the student. Now, they all sound bland. Like an AI slop. And they are indeed detected at 50 - 100% as AI by AI detectors of tools such as Grammarly Premium. At this point, I could simply write everything on my own. That will be, starting from zero, as opposed to trying to fix AI slop, which feels like starting from -100.

Computer science undergraduates are giving up the fight to LLM even before they start. This is sad as this is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

2017

Karlstad University, Sweden

I like to consider myself as someone who is ready to move to another place rapidly. I always have prepared for that since moving out of my country 13 years ago. However, in reality, I was relatively stable in most places when I moved somewhere. 2012 - 2018, Lisboa. 2018 - 2023, Atlanta. 2023 onward Anchorage. However, 2017 is an exception. In certain sense, it also feels like the peak of craziness. In a good way. I moved between countries real rapid. Portugal -> Belgium -> Portugal (and then some back and forth between Portugal and Belgium) -> Belgium -> Saudi Arabia -> Belgium -> Portugal. A year that tested my limits and also the summit of "seek discomfort." It is also the year I traveled most. I went to 9 new countries - and 16 countries in total in that single year. Often I have thought about this year. I have even tried to intentionally overtake the record of 2017. The last time I put a serious effort was 2020. But then the pandemic hit and ruined the plans. Although I tend to believe my subsequent years 2019 and 2024 have greatly overtaken my 2017 in general, the peak of adventures, discoveries, new lands, travels, and sleepless nights (there was a 60-hours no sleep for 2 nights) of my 2017 have left 2017 sort of a peak in my life. I still think of overtaking the year at some point. But not everything can be planned. Stuff happens organically and 2017 had its magical moments.

Lonely long flights and why I love them

Drinks on the flight

I always have enjoyed long solo flights. It may be boring for many. Lonely for others. But I have loved those. When I think about why I love these flights a lot, I have an answer. These flights force me to sit and idle. Usually, I am not at complete rest, except when I fall asleep. But in flight, you give up control. I do not read books or use laptop in the flight. Sometimes I watch the entertainment system in the screen in front of me. But for most part, I just idle. That level of idling is not possible in ground transport. The ground transport gives you more control. You can stop in the middle. You have control. But the lack of control in a flight lets you relax and recall the past memories. It almost feels like time-traveling, when you completely lose yourself to your own thoughts of the past. That is a nice feeling.

Dead Internet Theory

Anchorage in Summer...

The fear of AI replacing software engineers comes a lot across our discussions. The issue I see is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Students regressing to "vibe coders" and using shortcuts, rather than getting fundamentals. Such behaviors could make them easily replaceable by AI or more likely by those who don't even have a CS degree. An enthusiastic manager may decide to "vibe code" themselves, rather than hiring a fresh CS graduate to vibe code for them.

On the other hand, if the CS graduate is very talented and knowledgeable in their fundamentals and latest technologies, they may become the ones who build the AI/LLM tools. After all, we still need CS folks to build those AI tools. Those tools don't build themselves. At least not yet.

Another argument that favors CS degrees are, at least for now, LLMs are good at individual programs - but they are not sufficiently sophisticated to configure and deploy complex systems. You can write some Python (or Java, Erlang, Go, ...) code with LLM. But it is still not possible to build a hybrid cloud architecture with load balancing and security policies configured. I can compare it with dishwashers. Dishwashers may wash the dishes - but you still need to do the initial cleaning (don't throw dishes in with huge chunks of food waste in them), loading, and unloading. These tools may have made our life easier - but did not eliminate house work completely (sadly).

Similarly, the AI/LLM tools may help eliminate redundant, repetitive, and boring tasks. But they won't replace the software engineers completely. But, if our undergraduates let the AI/LLM replace them, it will replace them (individually, not collectively). I emphasize in all my courses that students should see the AI/LLM tools as an extension to themselves, rather than a replacement to themselves.

Sadly, some students tend to misuse AI/LLM in places where it won't even function properly (for example, to summarize videos; ChatGPT cannot even watch a video!)

Another point is, coding is not the only job of a software engineer. It may be just 10 - 50% of the time. Rest of the time goes with attending meetings, making presentations, design decisions, testing, ... These cannot be replaced by vibe coding after all...

I also wonder... if humans stopped making content (blog posts, videos, drawings, audio recordings, ...) AI will continue to train on the slop it itself produced and keep regurgitating recycled slop. YouTube comment sections, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn comments, even YouTube videos themselves are AI slop. We are getting close to the dead Internet theory. Hopefully, it is just a minor, temporary phase.