César Soto Valero

Consistently Measure Your Consistency to Beat Talent

Because willpower, motivation, and discipline are not enough

Posted on July 31, 2025

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I've never considered myself particularly talented at anything. Ever. But I have consistently outworked my peers, and I believe that anyone can outperform their toughest competitors by just being consistent. So, consistency beats talent every time. The secret? Measure your consistency, not just your results. In this post, I share...

I'm Switching to Python and Actually Liking It

Here are my tools for building production-ready apps

Posted on July 15, 2025

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I've started writing more Python code lately (because of... AI, you know). In this post, I share the tools, libraries, configs, and other integrations I use for building production-grade Python applications following a frontend-backend architecture.

Evaluation Metrics for Real-Time Financial Fraud Detection ML Models

An overview

Posted on May 8, 2025

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After training a real-time financial fraud detection model, the next step is to evaluate its performance. This post provides an overview of the most common evaluation metrics and considerations for fraud detection models, including confusion matrix, precision, recall, F1-score, AUC-ROC, AUC-PR, and more.

From Classical ML to DNNs and GNNs for Real-Time Financial Fraud Detection

A survey of state-of-the-art techniques

Posted on April 3, 2025

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Financial transaction fraud is a pervasive problem costing institutions and customers billions annually. This survey reviews the current state-of-the-art in real-time transaction fraud detection, spanning both academic research and industry adopted solutions.

Building GenAI Applications Today

What seems to work, what doesn't, and possibly why

Posted on November 17, 2024

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Generative AI has taken the world by storm, offering endless opportunities for innovation. But as with any new technology, there are plenty of pitfalls to avoid. In this post, I dive into the current state of AI startups, shedding light on what works, what doesn't, and why. If you're looking...

Why GenAI Will NOT Replace Software Engineers

For now...

Posted on August 19, 2024

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GenAI systems are becoming more and more capable of performing complex cognitive tasks that were once thought to be uniquely human. In particular, LLMs are proven to be very good at writing code. With all the buzz around GenAI replacing software engineers, are our jobs really at risk? In this...

The Not-So-Strange Case of Cargo Cult in Computer Science Research

Are we mimicking scientific progress without true innovation?

Posted on July 13, 2024

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Arguably, computers and faster communication systems have changed the world more than any other technology. Yet there have been many scientific failures along the way, some prominent, many minor, and a widening gap between aspirations and reality. This article discusses the problem of pseudoscience in computer science. I discuss Richard...

Some Things to Remember Before Acting Pretentiously

And a few personal thoughts on the value of sincere humility

Posted on June 7, 2024

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A few days ago, I had a conversation about my ambitions for the future. At one point, I mentioned that I would like to achieve something remarkable and gain public recognition for it. In retrospect, my answer was quite pretentious. After reflecting deeply on this topic, I realized that what...

The Last Paper's Myth

A tale of contending interests

Posted on May 5, 2024

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The "last paper myth" emerges once academic supervisors realize that a student is about to earn their PhD and leave. It's one last stronghold for supervisors to capitalize on the time and effort they have invested in their students' scientific training. This relentless push not only detracts from the true...

On the Rise, Decline, and Persistence of Web Technologies

From Static HTML Pages to WebAssembly

Posted on April 27, 2024

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The web is (arguably) the only tech platform that has been continuously transformed and evolved at a global scale over the last 30 years. How was this possible? What can we learn from the past technical mistakes and successes? Over the years, I have witnesses the emergence of various web...