Personal and academic profile of Neeraj Rajesh. Zola 2026-10-12T00:00:00+00:00 https://neeraj.stax.xyz/atom.xml 2026-10-12T00:00:00+00:00 2026-10-12T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/resume/ <p><a href="mailto:nrj5k@stax.xyz">nrj5k@stax.xyz</a> · <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://linkedin.com/in/neeraj-rajesh-8248b29a">LinkedIn</a> · <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://github.com/nrj5k">GitHub</a></p> <h2 id="summary">Summary</h2> <p>Systems engineer and PhD candidate (Illinois Institute of Technology) building AI-driven infrastructure for high-performance storage and distributed systems. Rust-first, with hands-on work in reinforcement learning, eBPF tracing, ML-based telemetry, and multi-LLM platforms. Author of 10 papers and 2 posters; research collaborations with LLNL, LBNL, and Argonne.</p> <h2 id="technical-skills">Technical Skills</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Languages:</strong> Rust (primary), Python, C, C++, Bash</li> <li><strong>Systems:</strong> Linux, eBPF/BPF, CephFS, HPC clusters, distributed storage, containers, systemd, GitLab CI/CD</li> <li><strong>ML/AI:</strong> PyTorch, reinforcement learning, neural networks, multi-LLM orchestration, CUDA (GPU training)</li> </ul> <h2 id="experience">Experience</h2> <h3 id="graduate-research-assistant-gnosis-research-center-illinois-tech-chicago">Graduate Research Assistant, Gnosis Research Center, Illinois Tech, Chicago</h3> <p><em>Jan 2021 - Present</em></p> <ul> <li>Developing <strong>Jathakam</strong>, a unified AI platform for HPC storage optimization combining reinforcement learning, lightweight neural networks, and adaptive caching agents.</li> <li>Built <strong>Eris</strong>, an RL gym for storage I/O optimization, plus <strong>burnme-rly</strong>, GPU-offloaded (CUDA) RL training infrastructure for Eris agents.</li> <li>Developed <strong>Aneris</strong>, an adaptive data-importance characterizer for multi-tiered I/O systems using ML on live telemetry.</li> <li>Built <strong>Apollo</strong>, an ML-assisted real-time storage resource observer deployed on HPC clusters for live resource management.</li> <li>Contributed to <strong>ChronoLog</strong> (distributed tiered log store) and extensions to the <strong>Hermes</strong> multi-tier buffering system.</li> </ul> <h3 id="graduate-research-intern-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory">Graduate Research Intern, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory</h3> <p><em>May - Aug 2025</em></p> <ul> <li>Characterized I/O intents of traditional deep learning training applications using unsupervised learning.</li> <li>Extended the DataCrumbs tracing infrastructure with PEARL-mode BPF probes to build per-request causal chains.</li> </ul> <h3 id="graduate-research-intern-argonne-national-laboratory-alcf">Graduate Research Intern, Argonne National Laboratory (ALCF)</h3> <p><em>May - Aug 2022</em></p> <ul> <li>Worked on distributed storage systems and HPC I/O characterization of GPUs.</li> </ul> <h3 id="graduate-research-intern-lawrence-berkeley-national-laboratory">Graduate Research Intern, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory</h3> <p><em>May - Aug 2021</em></p> <ul> <li>Characterized HDF5 application I/O behavior and developed feature-reduction methods using evolutionary algorithms on Darshan counters (SC '21 poster).</li> </ul> <h3 id="graduate-research-intern-the-hdf5-group">Graduate Research Intern, The HDF5 Group</h3> <p><em>May - Aug 2020</em></p> <ul> <li>Worked on I/O characterization and optimization for scientific HDF5 workloads.</li> </ul> <h2 id="projects">Projects</h2> <ul> <li><strong>vloop-MOS:</strong> Multi-LLM research platform orchestrating ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, with observability and API design for production workflows.</li> <li><strong>vloop-coder:</strong> Autonomous development pipeline that turns ideas into GitLab issues, plans execution, and opens merge requests, covering prompt design through CI/CD.</li> </ul> <h2 id="selected-publications">Selected Publications</h2> <ul> <li><strong>TunIO: An AI-powered Framework for Optimizing HPC I/O</strong> - IPDPS '24 (first author)</li> <li><strong>Aneris: An Adaptive Data Importance Characterizer for Multi-Tiered I/O Systems</strong> - HiPC '26 (first author)</li> <li><strong>DTIO: Data Stack for AI-driven Workflows</strong> - SSDBM '25</li> <li><strong>Apollo: An ML-assisted Real-Time Storage Resource Observer</strong> - HPDC '21 (first author)</li> <li>Also: Viper (ICPP '24), LuxIO (HiPC '22), HFlow (CLUSTER '21), ChronoLog (MSST '20). <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/">Full list</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="education">Education</h2> <ul> <li><strong>PhD, Computer Science</strong>, Illinois Institute of Technology (Advisors: Dr. X.-H. Sun, Dr. A. Kougkas), <em>2018 - Present</em></li> <li><strong>MS, Computer Science</strong>, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI (GPA 3.78/4.0), <em>2015 - 2017</em></li> <li><strong>BTech, Computer Science and Engineering</strong>, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India, <em>2010 - 2014</em></li> </ul> 2025-06-01T00:00:00+00:00 2025-06-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/bateman2025dtio/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>HPC, Big Data Analytics, and Machine Learning have become increasingly intertwined as popular models such as LLMs and Diffusion Models have been driving discovery in scientific fields. However, each of these domains has its own storage infrastructure with unique I/O interfaces and storage systems, requiring feature sets that are often incompatible. Users with experience in one domain lack the expertise to change their applications to match the data stacks of the other domains, necessitating expensive conversions. There is a need for a transparent solution for the unification of disparate data stacks for the triple convergence of HPC, Big Data, and ML that can provide the required functionality while achieving higher performance. To better support converged HPC, Big Data, and ML workflows, this paper proposes DTIO, a scalable I/O runtime that unifies the disparate I/O stack for modern scientific ML workflows. DTIO utilizes a unique DataTask abstraction to express the movement of data, its ordering, and its dependencies on other data as a task. DTIO achieves a unification of scientific and ML workflows by utilizing intelligent mapping of interfaces, and automatically determines the best method to relate their unique semantics. DTIO's online translation with DataTask caching can improve performance by 49.6% compared to offline translation methods. DTIO also offers numerous optimizations, such as asynchronous I/O and aggregation.</p> 2024-08-01T00:00:00+00:00 2024-08-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/ye2024viper/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>Scientific workflows increasingly need to train a DNN model in real-time during an experiment (e.g. using ground truth from a sim- ulation), while using it at the same time for inferences. Instead of sharing the same model instance, the training (producer) and infer- ence server (consumer) often use different model replicas that are kept synchronized. In addition to efficient I/O techniques to keep the model replica of the producer and consumer synchronized, there is another important trade-off: frequent model updates enhance infer- ence quality but may slow down training; infrequent updates may lead to less precise inference results. To address these challenges, we introduce Viper: a new I/O framework designed to determine a near- optimal checkpoint schedule and accelerate the delivery of the latest model updates. Viper builds an inference performance predictor to identify the optimal checkpoint schedule to balance the trade-off be- tween training slowdown and inference quality improvement. It also creates a memory-first model transfer engine to accelerate model delivery through direct memory-to-memory communication. Our experiments show that Viper can reduce the model update latency by≈9x using the GPU-to-GPU data transfer engine and≈3x using the DRAM-to-DRAM host data transfer. The checkpoint schedule obtained from Viper's predictor also demonstrates improved cumu- lative inference accuracy compared to the baseline of epoch-based solutions.</p> 2024-05-01T00:00:00+00:00 2024-05-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/rajesh2024tunio/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>I/O operations are a known performance bottleneck of HPC applications. To achieve good performance, users often employ an iterative multistage tuning process to find an optimal I/O stack configuration. However, an I/O stack contains multiple layers, such as high-level I/O libraries, I/O middleware, and parallel file systems, and each layer has many parameters. These parameters and layers are entangled and influenced by each other. The tuning process is time-consuming and complex. In this work, we present TunIO, an AI- powered I/O tuning framework that implements several techniques to balance the tuning cost and performance gain, including tuning the high- impact parameters first. Furthermore, TunIO analyzes the application source code to extract its I/O kernel while retaining all statements necessary to perform I/O. It utilizes a smart selection of high-impact configuration parameters of the given tuning objective. Finally, it uses a novelReinforcement Learning(RL)-driven early stopping mechanism to balance the cost and performance gain. Experimental results show that TunIO leads to a reduction of up to≈73%in tuning time while achieving the same performance gain when compared to H5Tuner. It achieves a significant performance gain/cost of 208.4 MBps/min (I/O bandwidth for each minute spent in tuning) over existing approaches under our testing.</p> 2022-12-01T00:00:00+00:00 2022-12-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/bateman2022luxio/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>Storage in HPC is typically a single Remote and Static Storage (RSS) resource. However, applications demonstrate diverse I/O requirements that can be better served by a multi-storage approach. Cur- rent practice employs ephemeral storage systems running on either node- local or shared storage resources. Yet, the burden of provisioning and configuring intermediate storage falls solely on the users, while global job schedulers offer little to no support for custom deployments. This lack of support often leads to over- or under-provisioning of resources and poorly configured storage systems. To mitigate this, we present LuxIO, an intelli- gent storage resource provisioning and auto-configuration service. LuxIO constructs storage deployments configured to best match I/O require- ments. LuxIO-tuned storage services show performance improvements up to 2×across common applications and benchmarks, while introducing minimal overhead of 93.40 ms on top of existing job scheduling pipelines. LuxIO improves resource utilization by up to 25% in select workflows.</p> 2021-11-01T00:00:00+00:00 2021-11-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/rajesh2021features/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>Feature reduction is an integral part of data preparation in machine learning. It helps denoise the data and makes it easier to fit the model. Predicting the performance of an application using Darshan counters can be tricky due to the large amount of data available, with not all of them being pertinent to predicting the I/O performance. There exist methods for feature reduction, the most common being recursive feature elimination (RFE). The RFE method aims to correlate the features to a specific data point. We aim to get a subset of features that are able to distinguish between the different applications, then compare the effectiveness of the subset by creating a model to predict I/O performance. We then aim to compare that with a similar model created with all the features and with a subset of features determined using RFE implemented on Scikit Learn.</p> 2021-09-01T00:00:00+00:00 2021-09-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/cernuda2021hflow/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>Modern applications are highly data-intensive, leading to the well-known I/O bottleneck problem. Scientists have proposed the placement of fast intermediate storage resources which aim to mask the I/O penalties. To manage these resources, three core software abstractions are being used in leadership-class computing facilities:IO Forwarders,Burst Buffers, andData Stagers. Yet, with the rise of multi-tenant deployment in HPC systems, these software abstractions are: managed and maintained in isolation, leading to inefficient interactions; allocated statically, leading to load imbalance; exclusively bifurcated between the intermediate storage, leading to under-utilization of resources, and, in many cases, do not support in-situ operations. To this end, we present HFlow, a new class of data forwarding system that leverages a real-time data movement paradigm. HFlow introduces a unified data movement abstraction (the ByteFlow) providing data-independent tasks that can be executed anywhere and thus, enabling dynamic resource provisioning. Moreover, the processing elements executing the ByteFlows are designed to be ephemeral and, hence, enable elastic management of intermediate storage resources. Our results show that applications running under HFlow display an increase in performance of 3x when compared with state-of-the-art software solutions. IndexTerms—Data streaming, I/O forwarding, elasticity, dynamicity, multi-tenant, data-intensive, I/O,data pipeline, in-transit</p> 2021-06-01T00:00:00+00:00 2021-06-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/rajesh2021apollo/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>Applications and middleware services, such as data placement engines, I/O scheduling, and prefetching engines, require low-latency access to telemetry data in order to make optimal decisions. However, typical monitoring services store their telemetry data in a database in order to allow applications to query them, resulting in significant latency penalties. This work presents Apollo: a low-latency monitoring service that aims to provide applications and middleware libraries with direct access to relational telemetry data. Monitoring the system can create interference and overhead, slowing down raw performance of the resources for the job. However, having a current view of the system can aid middleware services in making more optimal decisions which can ultimately improve the overall performance. Apollo has been designed from the ground up to provide low latency, using Publish-Subscriber Pub-Sub semantics, and low overhead, using adaptive intervals in order to change the length of time between polling the resource for telemetry data and machine learning in order to predict changes to the telemetry data between actual resource polling. This work also provides some high level abstractions called I/O curators, which can further aid middleware libraries and applications to make optimal decisions. Evaluations showcase that Apollo can achieve sub-millisecond latency for acquiring complex insights with a memory overhead of ~57 MB and CPU overhead being only 7% more than existing state-of-the-art systems.</p> 2020-11-01T00:00:00+00:00 2020-11-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/rajesh2020characterizing/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>By characterizing the I/O behavior of applications, we try to answer the following questions: Can we decompose an application profile into a simple sequence or ”genome” sequence that describes the application? Can we compare these different ”genomes” using a simple similarity metric? Using a simple similarity metric can we, Compare the I/O characteristics of 2 or more applications using their ”genomes”? Can we use a simpler mechanism to recreate the I/O behavior of the application? What can we infer about the original application’s behavior?</p> 2020-10-05T00:00:00+00:00 2026-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-amazon/ <h1 id="amazon">Amazon</h1> <p>Amazon while known for its store they have another monster hiding in plain sight. AWS or Amazon Web Services aims to provide cheap cloud services to anyone with a credit card. End of the day you are giving money to Amazon. A company known for undercutting businesses and giving them money is bad for that little local business you love.</p> <p>Some alternatives to AWS are:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.linode.com/">Linode</a> (acquired by Akamai in 2022, remains a distinct brand)</li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.bahnhof.net/">Bahnhof</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.orangewebsite.com/">Orange Website</a></li> </ul> <p>To move away from the Amazon Store. Hehehe. good luck? I am still in the process of this. All I can say is support local + small businesses as much as possible.</p> <ul> <li>Ebay?</li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.etsy.com/">Etsy</a></li> </ul> <p>Take care now!</p> <footer class="tbte-series"> <header class="tbte-series-title"> <h2>Free yourself from the Toxic Big Tech Ecosystem</h2> <hr> </header> <div class="tbte-series-links"> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-yourself-from-tbte">Intro</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-facebook">Part 1: Facebook</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-microsoft">Part 2: Microsoft</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-google">Part 3: Google</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <strong>Part 4: Amazon</strong> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-ourselves-from-tbte">Follow-up</a> </div> </footer> 2020-10-04T00:00:00+00:00 2026-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-google/ <h1 id="google">Google</h1> <p>Oh boy this is gonna be a long one considering the number of applications in the Google Ecosystem. This company has a huge monopoly in your data collection just by the different tools in their ecosystem.</p> <p>Google Tools (mainly but not limited to):</p> <ul> <li>Search</li> <li>Chrome</li> <li>Android</li> <li>Electronic mail (or email as the kids say it)</li> <li>Drive, along with <ul> <li>Docs</li> <li>Sheets</li> <li>Slides</li> <li>Forms</li> <li>Jamboard</li> </ul> </li> <li>YouTube</li> <li>Chat tools <ul> <li>Hangouts (shut down in 2022)</li> <li>Meets</li> <li>Allo (shut down in 2019)</li> <li>Duo (merged into Google Meet in 2022)</li> </ul> </li> <li>Misc. Services (That is how big Google is, I need a miscellaneous section)</li> </ul> <p>For Google I shall be going in the order of ease rather than the order I mentioned them above, which is more in the order of relevance.</p> <h2 id="search">Search</h2> <p>Due to the complexities of searching the only alternative viable is <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://duckduckgo.com/">DuckDuckGo</a>. They protect your privacy and also have a lot of cool features like bang commands.</p> <p>Bang commands start with <code>!</code> followed by the command. So, if I did <code>!slackbuild 0ad</code> it would take you to the search result in SlackBuilds.org for 0ad. If I did <code>!scholar data privacy</code> it would take you to the search result of Google scholar (I know, I know) for data privacy.</p> <p>If you want to self host your own search engine, while results may vary based on configuration etc. One could use <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://github.com/searxng/searxng">SearXNG</a> (a fork of the now-unmaintained Searx) or use one of the publicly available instances <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://searx.space/">here</a>.</p> <h2 id="chrome">Chrome</h2> <p>Chrome is (was?) a great browser. I am not going to argue about that. It is however used as a tool to spy on you, just like Microsoft Edge! As an alternative you can use <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/">Firefox</a>. It does have its problems, like it uses Google search by default which you can change to Duckduckgo! With its minor issues it is still a great browser and the best alternative to a browser that can work as a Chrome and Chromium based browser. It also has Firefox sync which helps you sync your browser across machines. It is FOSS so people have access to the code to make sure it is not spying on you and it follows rigorous reviews before a new piece of code is added to the official Firefox code. So, access to the source code is always great!!</p> <p>If you do need to use a Chromium based browser, use Chromium, if you do not use the Google Sync then it is fairly Google free. There is also <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium">Ungoogled Chromium</a> where someone has gone out of their way to remove the Google bits. You should find a package for your distro of choice, it should be easier to get now considering the (one of many) recent Google controversy.</p> <p>If you are using Google Chrome on your Android device <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://github.com/uazo/cromite">Cromite</a> (a fork of the now-unmaintained Bromite) is an option that aims to curb the idea of "browser as an advertisement platform".</p> <h2 id="e-mail">E-Mail</h2> <p>Some good ol' Gmail alternatives are:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://proton.me/mail">Proton Mail</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://tuta.com/">Tuta</a> (formerly Tutanota)</li> </ul> <p>Both are designed with your privacy in mind. The major downside is they do not have the "unlimited storage" Google provide and have paid upgrade-able versions.</p> <p>I personally use my Gmail to sign up for junk and get random spam whereas I use Proton Mail for all communications with people I know.</p> <h2 id="chat-tools">Chat Tools</h2> <p>The chat tools need to be put into 2 categories:</p> <p>User tools:</p> <ul> <li>Hangouts (shut down in 2022)</li> <li>Allo (shut down in 2019)</li> <li>Duo (merged into Google Meet in 2022)</li> </ul> <p>Conference/Enterprise tools:</p> <ul> <li>Chat</li> <li>Meets</li> </ul> <h3 id="user-tools">User Tools</h3> <p>Hangouts and Allo: Same as the alternatives for Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.</p> <p>Duo: Duo is designed to be a Video chat application. Both Signal and Matrix can fill this gap or one could also use Jitsi Meet (more about it when talking about Google Meets).</p> <h3 id="enterprise-tools">Enterprise Tools</h3> <p>Chat: For chat specifically which aims to be a Slack alternative, use Matrix. It is designed to be a Slack, IRC alternative which I feel does a decent job of personal communications as well.</p> <p>Meets: For Meets one can use <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://meet.jit.si/">Jitsi Meet</a> via their different public instances <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://ladatano.partidopirata.com.ar/jitsimeter/">here</a>. Jitsi Meets has improved in leaps and bounds since BC (Before CoVid-19) and is super smooth now. My favorite feature about Jitsi Meets is the <code>Raise hand</code> feature which none of the other conference call apps have and it has existed way BC.</p> <h2 id="drive">Drive</h2> <p>Drive is a hard thing to replace as you still have to trust your data on someone else's computer. There are very few providers that I would trust:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://mega.nz/">Mega.nz</a> is the only that comes to mind that gives you 20GB of free storage and encrypts your files as well.</li> <li>Setup your own <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://nextcloud.com/">Nextcloud</a> instance, while still relatively easy it can still be daunting for those who have not used a Linux based OS.</li> </ul> <h2 id="android">Android</h2> <p>Android is a pain to replace. It is the Windows of the mobile ecosystem, in their reach and also in how they spy on you. Replacing it has slight limitations as it isn't as easy to change the OS on the mobile as one would hope and it involves checking if the phone you intend to buy is supported by the OS you would like to install. There are however a few phones that are built from the ground up with privacy and non-Android OS in mind.</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/">PinePhone</a> <ul> <li>A realistic as FOSS as possible phone while also being affordable. You can put any OS you would like on this $150 - $200 phone.</li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/">Librem 5</a> <ul> <li>This is a phone built from the ground up keeping FOSS in mind by Purism. This phone was a long shot and has been in the works for a few years but is finally showing signs of life for customers. This phone is as FOSS as possible for a phone built from scratch. Priced at $700 roughly and $1200 for the Made in USA version of the phone. I want to live in the world where this phone makes sense but we sadly do not.</li> </ul> </li> <li>A Google free version of Android <ul> <li>This is possibly the most affordable but you need to make sure you use the right phone and the right ROM. You can put in a compatible ROM into an existing Android phone which pimps it out for us privacy concerned folks. <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.replicant.us/">Replicant OS</a> which replaces all proprietary blobs from the existing Android OS.</li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://e.foundation/e-os/">/e/</a> is an OS marketed as a Degoogled version of Android.</li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://lineageos.org/">Lineage</a> is also a pretty good degoogled Android alternative that has a nice bunch of built-in privacy centric features</li> <li>For Pixel phones, <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://calyxos.org/">Calyx</a> and <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://grapheneos.org/">Graphene</a> are great ROMs</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h2 id="youtube">YouTube</h2> <p>Holy fuck balls, this is gonna be hard. To find a YouTube equivalent that hasn't been taken over by the alt-right.</p> <p>You have LBRY which is open source and a nice little blockchain but its founder is Jeremy Kauffman. LBRY Inc was shut down by the SEC in 2023, and its main instance Odysee is effectively centralized now.</p> <p>The only alternative is <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://joinpeertube.org/">PeerTube</a> which requires content creators to host their own site or upload to an existing instance of PeerTube.</p> <h2 id="misc-services">Misc. Services</h2> <p>Domains: Google Domains (sold to Squarespace in 2023) provides custom domain names. Alternatives to use would be <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://njal.la/">Njalla</a> or <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.namecheap.com/">Namecheap</a>.</p> <p>There are more obscure services Google provides which shall be added here.</p> <footer class="tbte-series"> <header class="tbte-series-title"> <h2>Free yourself from the Toxic Big Tech Ecosystem</h2> <hr> </header> <div class="tbte-series-links"> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-yourself-from-tbte">Intro</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-facebook">Part 1: Facebook</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-microsoft">Part 2: Microsoft</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <strong>Part 3: Google</strong> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-amazon">Part 4: Amazon</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-ourselves-from-tbte">Follow-up</a> </div> </footer> 2020-10-03T00:00:00+00:00 2026-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-microsoft/ <h1 id="microsoft">Microsoft</h1> <p>This company has been in cahoots with the NSA since Late Windows 95 and have been spying on you ever since.</p> <p><strong>Windows</strong></p> <p>As of now GNU/Linux is a great alternative for Windows for most tasks including gaming. The only field I think it needs a little work in is Adobe compatibility. While they do have great tools for design, most people are taught to use the Adobe Suite from a young age. Brainwash 'em while they are young and they'll remain loyal customers, something Microsoft has also done by providing free tools for students. To use the Adobe tools, one could use WINE. It's worth noting that you may have different results based on which version of WINE as well as the version of the Suite you are using, which you can see <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://appdb.winehq.org/">here</a>.</p> <p>For Gaming specifically, Valve has done a wonderful job bridging the gap. On Steam, it now has a large number of Linux native games. For those that are not native, you could use the built in Proton tool, which is based on WINE.</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://pop.system76.com/">Pop!_OS</a> <ul> <li>They have done a lot of heavy lifting in trying to make driver installation and hybrid graphics (like nVidia Optimus) a lot easier to use</li> <li>Based on Debian (which is what Ubuntu is based of) so you will have a lot of software packaged for it already</li> <li>Aimed at Linux beginners tho' a little more targeted for Laptops that have hybrid graphics but still great on the Desktop</li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a>/<a class="external" rel="external" href="https://linuxmint.com/">Mint</a>/<a class="external" rel="external" href="https://kubuntu.org/">Kubuntu</a>/<a class="external" rel="external" href="https://neon.kde.org/">KDE Neon</a>/<a class="external" rel="external" href="https://elementary.io/">Elementary OS</a> <ul> <li>Very user friendly</li> <li>Based on Debian, so you have all the apps already packaged for it</li> <li>The 5 are "same same but different but still same" and aimed at Linux beginners <ul> <li>Elementary OS is a great Mac OS like alternative complete with those gestures they like to brag about</li> <li>Kubuntu and KDE Neon use KDE which is a little Windows like but on steroids and can be themed to look like Windows 7 or anything your heart desires. KDE Neon is by the folks at KDE and would have the latest and greatest that KDE has to offer. Kubuntu is Ubuntu with KDE slapped on it</li> <li>Ubuntu is Ubuntu, its made by Canonical, and they can claim FIRST! to bringing Linux to the mainstream</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://manjaro.org/">Manjaro</a> <ul> <li>User Friendly</li> <li>Based on Arch Linux, so you have all the apps packaged for Arch Linux which is pretty extensive and has just as many applications packaged for it as Debian derivaties</li> <li>Built with the KISS principle in mind, being based on Arch Linux</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p>The 3 above are aimed at being easy to setup and use for Linux beginners, and don't force you to use the terminal except in certain dire circumstances.</p> <p>Below are some GNU/Linux operating systems that put you into the deep end of Linux and force you (and thus show you) to use the terminal.</p> <p>Disclaimer: Using the terminal at first can be daunting, but eventually you realize it is a lot more powerful than its GUI counterpart</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="http://www.slackware.com/">Slackware</a> <ul> <li>My personal favorite</li> <li>Very Unix-ey</li> <li>Tries to stay away from Systemd</li> <li>Focus on Stability and KISS principle</li> <li>Limited number of apps in the official repository compared to Debian and Arch and though a respectable number of user submitted via SlackBuild <ul> <li>Though SlackBuilds provide an easy framework to create packages from source</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://archlinux.org/">Arch Linux</a> <ul> <li>Rolling Release</li> <li>Uses Systemd</li> <li>Focus on bleeding edge and KISS philosophy</li> <li>Lot of apps in the repository, official and user submitted via AUR <ul> <li>Has an easy build system to create packages from source</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> <h3 id="office">Office</h3> <p>Use <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.libreoffice.org/">LibreOffice</a>. It may not be as "pretty" but you can get the job done with a little relearning of certain tools.</p> <h3 id="github">GitHub</h3> <p>Everyone in the open source and FOSS movement died a little when Microsoft bought GitHub. GitHub was huge, it was the place for any Open Source and FOSS project out there. This was Microsofts plan to support the Open Source Community and proclaim their undying love for them. End of the day though, it is still Microsoft, the company known for its EEE tactic. It stands for Embrace, Extend and Extinguish and has been a ploy of theirs since 1995 at least, where they tried to kill HTML by extending it. This is mainly why people in the Open Source Community still have a hard time welcoming Microsoft. I have a problem with them being in the board of the Linux Foundation. If they are embracing some open source project you can bet your money that they are going to extinguish it soon. With Github the main selling point is GitHub Actions, which to me looks like how Microsoft saved their investment into Azure. You see how they embraced GitHub and then extended it with GitHub Actions, which is basically Azure in a monkey suit. At this point it is up to us to ensure that do not extinguish other similar services.</p> <p>Some alternatives are:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://about.gitlab.com/">GitLab</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://gitea.io/">Gitea</a> (the community fork <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://forgejo.org/">Forgejo</a> was created in 2022 over governance concerns)</li> </ul> <p>These are two good alternatives that can and should be used instead of Microsofts GitHub. If Micro$oft is coming for a project you love you better duck and cover because they are going to ruin it all.</p> <footer class="tbte-series"> <header class="tbte-series-title"> <h2>Free yourself from the Toxic Big Tech Ecosystem</h2> <hr> </header> <div class="tbte-series-links"> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-yourself-from-tbte">Intro</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-facebook">Part 1: Facebook</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <strong>Part 2: Microsoft</strong> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-google">Part 3: Google</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-amazon">Part 4: Amazon</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-ourselves-from-tbte">Follow-up</a> </div> </footer> 2020-10-02T00:00:00+00:00 2026-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-facebook/ <h1 id="facebook">Facebook</h1> <p>This company is absolute trash. They sadly provide a decent way to keep in touch and share your life with your friends, especially if you move around a lot. They also provide 2 chat services, Messenger and Whatsapp, which have, in some parts of the world, taken over all modes of communication from calls and texts. They've become a tool that everyone from grandma to the family dog utilizes. Conversations in Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger are a lot more private and intimate compared to what is put on your Facebook wall. Facebook sells this data to the highest bidder, who uses this information to sell you different useless products or worse, useless ideas.</p> <p>Alternatives for Facebook as a social media service:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://diasporafoundation.org/">diaspora*</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.gnu.org/software/social/">GNU Social</a></li> </ul> <p>For Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://signal.org/">Signal</a> <ul> <li>Developed by the Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC</li> <li>As seamless as WhatsApp, can easily be used as an alternative</li> <li>Handles SMS to people who do not have a Signal Account</li> <li>FOSS</li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://xmpp.org/">XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol)</a> <ul> <li>Was called Jabber and is based on XML</li> <li>You can self host it</li> <li>If you used WhatsApp or Google Talk (not Hangouts or chat which were slower and sucked!) you have used XMPP as they were built off XMPP</li> <li>Open Standards and has different extensions that can extend the base features of XMPP made by XSF</li> <li>FOSS</li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a> <ul> <li>Developed by the Matrix Foundation</li> <li>You use a number of clients to access it with the most feature-full being Element (previously called Riot.im), which is made by the Matrix Team via their company Element (previously called New Vector)</li> <li>You can self host a federated server and talk to people on Matrix or sign up on the official Matrix.org server or join a number of existing servers listed <a class="external" rel="external" href="https://www.hello-matrix.net/public_servers.php">here</a></li> <li>You can use it to communicate with people on other services (like Signal, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Facebook messenger, SMS, etc.) using Bridges</li> <li>Slightly more technical as you have to deal with your encryption keys yourself by setting up the built-in backup system. It is simple, but it is an extra step for people who just want to install, create account, and use without a second thought. Signal is better for those kinds of people, for now. Matrix and its clients are rapidly growing and over the past year have become easier to use</li> <li>FOSS</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <footer class="tbte-series"> <header class="tbte-series-title"> <h2>Free yourself from the Toxic Big Tech Ecosystem</h2> <hr> </header> <div class="tbte-series-links"> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-yourself-from-tbte">Intro</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <strong>Part 1: Facebook</strong> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-microsoft">Part 2: Microsoft</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-google">Part 3: Google</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-amazon">Part 4: Amazon</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-ourselves-from-tbte">Follow-up</a> </div> </footer> 2020-10-01T00:00:00+00:00 2026-10-06T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-yourself-from-tbte/ <p>I wrote this article to give people a guide to get away from Tech Ecosystems that prey on the users, while encouraging them to use tools that would respect them and their data, without using them as a means to profits. I have been passionate about this topic for some time, and implementing it into my daily life has been a slow but rewarding process. It has been a year or so since I started an experiment of living off the "grid", while still being connected to people. I am going to refrain from using any references to plugging out of the Matrix as there is an Open Protocol called Matrix which is definitely worth plugging into, which I shall elaborate on later. I find that, while I may not interact with as many people as before, the interactions I do have are a lot more deep and fulfilling.</p> <p>I wrote this out before watching the The Social Dilemma, which focuses mainly on Facebook, and while it gets into the problems of the current Big Tech Ecosystem preying on its users, I want to focus on what we can do right now, you and me, to reclaim our digital selves, to take the power from these centralized data collection and interaction engines and give it back to the people it belongs to, the users (for I am Tron! and I fight for the user).</p> <h2 id="what-is-the-toxic-big-tech-ecosystem-tbte">What is the Toxic Big Tech Ecosystem (TBTE)</h2> <p>These are companies that essentially use you as the product without telling you. They have a history of collecting and selling your private data, and it's about time we stop allowing them to do that.</p> <p>The big 4 of TBTE are:</p> <ul> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook">Facebook</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google">Google</a></li> <li><a class="external" rel="external" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)">Amazon</a></li> </ul> <p>While these companies do provide essential services which we tend to use on the reg, there are better (read: don't sell your data) alternatives to them. I understand that it is hard to stop using these services if there isn't a viable alternative to them, which is why I shall be providing an alternative for each of them as I go in depth. This article is not about the damage they do by using you, there are many better sources for that. This is more about how you can stop using their services and a set of alternatives that better respect your data and privacy. All tools mentioned are Free and Open Source or at least Open Source.</p> <p>Disclaimer: Growing up, I looked up to these companies and wanted to work with them. After waking up and smelling the coffee, I do not like how they conduct business, use their customers, and their complete lack of ethics and morals. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I assisted them in that endeavor. So, forgive me if I sound like a disgruntled ex.</p> <h2 id="the-series">The series</h2> <p>This guide is split into parts, one per company:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-facebook/">Part 1: Facebook</a></li> <li><a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-microsoft/">Part 2: Microsoft</a></li> <li><a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-google/">Part 3: Google</a></li> <li><a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-amazon/">Part 4: Amazon</a></li> </ul> <footer class="tbte-series"> <header class="tbte-series-title"> <h2>Free yourself from the Toxic Big Tech Ecosystem</h2> <hr> </header> <div class="tbte-series-links"> <strong>Intro</strong> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-facebook">Part 1: Facebook</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-microsoft">Part 2: Microsoft</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-google">Part 3: Google</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/tbte-amazon">Part 4: Amazon</a> <span role="separator" aria-hidden="true">::</span> <a href="https://neeraj.stax.xyz/blog/free-ourselves-from-tbte">Follow-up</a> </div> </footer> 2020-10-01T00:00:00+00:00 2020-10-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/kougkas2020chronolog/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>Modern applications produce and process massive amounts of activity (or log) data. Traditional storage systems were not designed with an append-only data model and a new storage abstraction aims to fill this gap: the distributed shared log store. However, existing solutions struggle to provide a scalable, parallel, and high-performance solution that can support a diverse set of conflicting log workload requirements. Finding the tail of a distributed log is a centralized point of contention. In this paper, we show how using physical time can help alleviate the need of centralized synchronization points. We present ChronoLog, a new, distributed, shared, and multi-tiered log store that can handle more than a million tail operations per second. Evaluation results show ChronoLog's potential, outperforming existing solution by an order of magnitude.</p> 2020-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 2020-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/cashtagnn-2020/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>In this paper, the authors present a system, CashTagNN, which uses the sentiment and subjectivity scores of tweets that include cashtags to model stock market movement, and in particular, predict opening stock market prices. Currently, the system focuses on two companies: Apple and Johnson &amp; Johnson. The system uses two machine learning methods for prediction, a feed-forward neural network, and a deep convolutional neural network. The authors use stock market prices in March and October 2016 as training data, with stock market prices in November 2016 as test data. The time series used for training and testing consists of stock prices recorded at one minute, five minutes, and one-hour intervals. Results show that the Feed Forward Network Model, in this case, outperforms the Deep Convolutional Network model. C CS Concepts •ComputingMethodologies ➝NeuralNetworks •Information Systems ➝ Web and Social media network</p> 2016-10-01T00:00:00+00:00 2016-10-01T00:00:00+00:00 Neeraj Rajesh https://neeraj.stax.xyz/publications/cashtagnn-2016/ <p>Abstract:</p> <p>In this paper we discuss a system, CashTagNN, which uses the sentiment and subjectivity scores of tweets that include cashtags of two companies, Apple and Johnson and Johnson, to model stock market movement, and in particular predict opening and closing stock market prices. We demonstrate that by using only sentiment and subjectivity along with a neural network machine learning model we can predict the opening and closing prices of the two companies with high accuracy.</p>