Readit Newsaurelian15 commented on Ask HN: Do you use an optimization solver? Which one? Do you like it? · Posted by u/ryan-nextmv
I have been using OSQP [1] quite a bit in a project where I needed to solve many quadratic programs (QPs). When I started with the project back in early 2017, OSQP was still in early stages. I ended up using both cvxopt and MOSEK; both were frustratingly slow.
After I picked up the project again a year later (around 2019ish), I stumbled across OSQP again. OSQP blew both cvxopt and MOSEK out of the water in terms of speed (up to 10 times faster) and quality of the solutions (not as sensitive to bad conditioning). Plus the C interface was quite easy to use and super easy (as far as numerics C code goes) to integrate into my larger project. I particularly liked that the C code has no external dependencies (more precisely: all external dependencies are vendored).
aurelian15 commented on We're building computers wrong [video] youtube.com/watch?v=GVsUO... · Posted by u/lawrenceyan
Neuromorphics aren't analog FWIW. They're just asynchronous.
Depends ;-)
First of all, there is no single accepted definition of "neuromorphic" [1]. Still, as a point in favour of the "neuromorphic systems are analogue" crowd: the seminal paper by Carver Mead that (to my knowledge) coined the term "neuromorphics" specifically talks about analogue neuromorphic systems [2].
Right now, there are some research "analogue" (or, more precisely "mixed signal") neuromorphic systems being developed [3, 4]. It is correct however that there are no commercially available analogue systems that I am aware of. Unfortunately, the same can be said for digital neuromorphics as well (Intel Loihi is perhaps the closest to a commercial product, and yes, this is an asynchronous digital neuromorphic system).
[1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2560/13/5/05...
[2] https://authors.library.caltech.edu/53090/1/00058356.pdf
[3] https://brainscales.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/
[4] https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/documents/ANe...
Core Audio added support for FLAC in High Sierra, macOS 10.13, in 2017.
Apple has supported "ALAC" for longer, which unlike FLAC uses only integer math and is therefore less power hungry on mobile devices. You can transcode losslessly between FLAC and ALAC.
I can't comment on the "power hungry" part, but FLAC only requires and (to my knowledge) has ever only required integer math. Source: just looked at my own FLAC implementation [1].
[1] https://github.com/astoeckel/libfoxenflac/blob/master/foxen/...
aurelian15 commented on Tool to convert copyrighted music into fair use fairuseify.ml... · Posted by u/alphabet9000
When did the HN crowd become so defensive of copyright? I understand the concerns on copilot but it’s kinda weirding me out.
As weird as it may seem, you should not forget that free software licenses are built upon the fabric of copyright. Without copyright, free software could not exist in its current form.
For GPL-like "copyleft" licenses, there would be no way to enforce that binary distributions of derived works are accompanied by their source code. Similarly, in the context of permissive BSD/MIT-style licenses, there would be no way to enforce attribution.
So, given that FOSS---which a large portion of the HN crowd depends on---cannot work without copyright (at least not in its current form), the recent discussions may be less of a surprise.
aurelian15 commented on Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse arstechnica.com/?p=177916... · Posted by u/tarunupaday
This is just one example of the "analogue hole" [1] problem shared by all anti-cheat/DRM systems.
At least in theory, there is no technology that can prevent exploits like this short of dystopian levels of surveillance and locking down computing devices even further.
By that I mean encrypted communication on all computer buses (including USB, HDMI), and only allowing access to those busses via physically hardened "secure" enclaves, up to (in the end game) big-brother-like surveillance (think electronic proctoring solutions).
I think that this is exactly the problem with such DRM schemes---the ensuing cat-and-mouse game will inevitably lead to trampling the user's freedoms, because locking down computing devices and environments to ridiculous levels is the only way in which DRM can be made to work.
Of course, for now, cheats like the one featured in the article should be fairly easy to detect (at least from what I've seen in the linked video). The motion of the bot is extremely jerky; a simple rule-based system, or, if you want to be fancy, a neural network based anomaly detection system should be able to detect this.
On the side of the cheat authors, this could be easily circumvented if they include a "calibration phase", where user input trains a simple neural network to stochastically emulate the dynamics of the user's sensor-action loop. The cheat could then act slightly faster than the user, giving them an edge while still using their unique dynamics profile.
I wonder where this will lead eventually, and I genuinely feel sorry for all the people who pour their heart and soul into competitive gaming; I don't think that this kind of cheating is something that can and should (see above) be prevented in the long-run. The best possible outcome I can imagine is that online gaming becomes more cooperative or once more converges back to small groups of people who know and trust each other.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
Edit: Spelling, grammar, and clarity
aurelian15 commented on Raspberry Pi WiFi to ethernet bridge willhaley.com/blog/raspbe... · Posted by u/dasl
You can also do this with an old OpenWrt router, which also gets you a management interface and a gigabit Ethernet switch as part of the plastic box.
I used to have such a bridge (OpenWrt on Netgear WNDR3800 hardware) Velcro'd to the underside of a TV cart, so that an appliance on the cart that only had Ethernet and 2.4 GHz WiFi built-in could do a more reliable 5 GHz across the room.
I agree that this is a much better option. Also, if you use two OpenWrt devices, you can enable WDS mode to build a true layer 2 bridge. That is, you won't need Proxy ARP and DHCP relay. For example, DHCP and IPv6 will just work out of the box.
Edit: From what I can tell, support for WDS depends on the WiFi chipset. "iw list" must explicitly include "WDS" as a "supported interface mode". At least the Broadcom chipset on the Raspberry Pi Zero does not support this, but, for example, the Atheros chipsets used in a variety of routers do.
Science needs review articles which can be a) updated b) peer reviewed c) attributed to the authorship
Wikipedia solves a but isn't great for b or c.
Building something like this was kind of the idea of Scholarpedia [1], founded by Eugene M. Izhikevich (theoretical neuroscientist). The articles are reviews written by experts in the field, peer-reviewed, and supposed to be updated over time. Most articles happen to be in neuroscience and related fields, but that was more an accident and not by design.
Unfortunately, the project has never really taken off, and only few new articles have been added over the past few years. And of course, just as I am writing this comment, I realize that [2] now redirects to some domain squatter and is blacklisted by my DNS server...
[1] https://sr.ht/~lattis/muon/