Research, writing, and technical notes.https://connorfaulkner.com/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/building-cviz/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/building-cviz/I built a native Rust tool that turns git repositories into interactive 2.5D spatial maps — and hooks into Claude Code to light up files in real time as the agent navigates.Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/blog/what-ive-been-building/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/what-ive-been-building/A snapshot of what's been occupying the late nights — physics simulations, LLM compression, telescope anomaly detection, a codebase visualizer, a crypto trading system, and a GPS football tracker.Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/blog/building-djangoship/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/building-djangoship/I extracted the reusable parts of a Django job board into a SaaS boilerplate for European developers. Here's what that process actually looked like.Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/research/trading-bot/https://connorfaulkner.com/research/trading-bot/An XGBoost classifier trained on 3,033 historical signal outcomes that doubles win rate in a live crypto trading system — from 24% to ~50% — by scoring each signal's confidence before execution. Deployed in dry-run with three parallel strategies and a delta-neutral carry layer.Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/research/physics-llm/https://connorfaulkner.com/research/physics-llm/Testing whether structures from physics — thermodynamics, renormalization group, lattice theory, and mean-field dynamics — can guide LLM compression. Five research directions validated on GPT-2 124M: entropy-based quantization (2.6× better than uniform), RG-guided pruning, lattice attention with a phase transition, GPTQ interaction analysis, and metastable cluster verification.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/research/sdss-spectral-anomalies/https://connorfaulkner.com/research/sdss-spectral-anomalies/Seven anomaly detectors — from Isolation Forest to a conditional normalizing flow — running on public SDSS DR18 stellar spectra. Includes a physics-motivated PBH candidate screening pipeline, semi-synthetic evaluation harness, and a Streamlit dashboard. Scales to 50K+ spectra.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/research/spin-quant/https://connorfaulkner.com/research/spin-quant/26 experiments compressing GPT-2 with physics-motivated k-means codebook quantization. Best result: PPL=84.2 at 0.836 bits per weight — 38× compression vs FP32. Null results triangulate the GPTQ design from first principles.Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/blog/building-ising-rs/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/building-ising-rs/The journey from a college Python script to a publication-grade Monte Carlo engine achieving 0.01% accuracy on the 3D critical temperature.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/blog/dns-threat-intelligence/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/dns-threat-intelligence/Technical notes on detecting domain generation algorithms through DNS traffic analysis — expanding on published research at Akamai.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/blog/hello-world/https://connorfaulkner.com/blog/hello-world/First post — what this blog is for and what to expect.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/research/ising-rs/https://connorfaulkner.com/research/ising-rs/A publication-grade Monte Carlo simulation engine for classical spin models, achieving 0.01% accuracy on the 3D critical temperature. Supports three universality classes, GPU acceleration via CUDA, and finite-size scaling analysis — targeting Physical Review E.Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/phishing-usps-malicious-domains-traffic-equal-to-legitimate-traffichttps://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/phishing-usps-malicious-domains-traffic-equal-to-legitimate-trafficAkamai threat-research writing on USPS-targeted phishing infrastructure and the scale of malicious traffic reaching it.Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/hospitality-phishing-campaign-dns-analysis-global-threathttps://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/hospitality-phishing-campaign-dns-analysis-global-threatA coauthored Akamai investigation into a hospitality-focused phishing campaign, with emphasis on DNS analysis and its broader global impact.Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/dga-dynamic-unexpected-behavior-in-dnshttps://www.akamai.com/blog/security-research/dga-dynamic-unexpected-behavior-in-dnsAkamai security research on DGA families that use dynamic seeds, focused on how that behavior appears in DNS traffic and why it matters for detection.Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://connorfaulkner.com/research/genomics-pca/https://connorfaulkner.com/research/genomics-pca/Analysis of genetic substructure across global populations using genome-wide SNPs and principal component analysis on the 1000 Genomes Project dataset.Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT