Claus Aranha

@[email protected]
310 Followers
170 Following
3.8K Posts

Computers are weird and magical and I love what people do with them.

I teach and research at the University of Tsukuba (Japan). EvoComp, Alife, MAS, ICPC. I'm happy to talk shop when it's cool or someone needs help, but I'm here more to make friends.

I love games, gamedev, maps, bots, spiders and pixel art. Slacking alt at @wrench

Brazilian in Japan. Want to see a less EU-US centric fediverse.

I generally approve follows if the stuff in your profile passes a vibe check.

Work Sitehttp://conclave.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Languagesen, ja, pt, fr
PronounsThey
Show threadClaus AranhaFeb 25

I asked the student to record a video of the best performing individual. Lo and behold, our little robotic Alberto Santos Dumont.

As you can see in the GIF, the robot evolved to exploit the physics engine, ignoring gravity through internal collisions. I love it when Evolutionary Computation plays little tricks like that.

But this also highlights the danger of "Kaggle Science" - focusing on getting a high score on some arbitrary measure will often hide things and lead to these cases. (3/)

Show threadClaus AranhaFeb 25

The student sent me a message that they completed the initial GA implementation, sending me this graph as evidence. They asked if they should move on to IM.

The graph looks exactly like what you would expect from a well working GA: A slow increase of fitness value, eventual convergence way above the initial value. It even had reasonably small variation.

Thing is: I knew the problem was tricky, and this was the very first time the student implemented GA, so my spider sense was tingling. (2/)

Claus AranhaDec 23
Hey look at me, picking up physical books at a library, like an animal.
Claus AranhaJun 24, 2025
How was your week?
Claus AranhaApr 19, 2025
Linklings (a pretty good conference review manager), still allows me to set an MSN or AOL messenger as contact information. That's adorable.
Claus AranhaDec 21, 2024

Yearly participation on the regional ICPC contest. This time three teams from tsukuba qualified, two veteran teams, and a newbie team.

Today is the system rehearsal, and tomorrow is the actual contest. The winning team progresses to the world finals at ???

Claus AranhaSep 30, 2024

I was updating the publication list on my website, and I found something VERY weird:

IEEE added some keywords to my WCCI paper that I didn't put there.

Somehow, they decided to add the keyword "Extraterrestrial Measurements" (and also sociology) to this paper, which was not in my submission.

I would LOVE to write a paper about Extraterrestrial measurements, but this one isn't it.

Claus AranhaAug 8, 2024
I'm now thinking about my low key favorite janky game under a whole new light.
Claus AranhaJul 22, 2024

Associated Press Journalist carries the Olympic torch in France this weekend from her wheelchair.

She lost her leg during an Israeli assault on civilians last year, which killed another journalist and wounded several more.

In spite of its war crimes, Israel is not banned from the Olympics 😞

(Image from APN:
https://apnews.com/article/paris-olympics-lebanon-israel-journalists-afp-assi-9de5b684d6bbf80b8faa569981030444 )

A Lebanese photojournalist, wounded in Israeli strike, carries Olympic torch to honor journalists

A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon has carried the Olympic torch in Paris to honor journalists wounded and killed in the field. The torch relay is part of celebrations in which about 10,000 people from various walks of life were chosen to carry the flame across France before the Games opening ceremony on July 26. Christina Assi, of Agence France-Presse, was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling on Oct. 13 2023 while reporting on the ongoing conflict between the Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Israeli military. She was severely wounded and had part of her right leg amputated.

AP News
Claus AranhaMay 1, 2024

Official webpage of Columbia University, proudly celebrating the Vietnam War student protests in 1968.

Interesting to contrast with the protests against the genocide in Palestine today, with the violent repression against those stepping outside the party line.

Of course, this matter little when we consider that last week 700 bodies were found in mass graves under the Al-Shifa hospital, most of those patients and medical workers, and signs of murder and torture