erinaceousjones (u/erinaceousjones)

erinaceousjones commented on Gemini Diffusion deepmind.google/models/ge... · Posted by u/og_kalu

minimaxir · 3 months ago

> Diffusion models work differently. Instead of predicting text directly, they learn to generate outputs by refining noise, step-by-step. This means they can iterate on a solution very quickly and error correct during the generation process. This helps them excel at tasks like editing, including in the context of math and code.

This is deliberately unhelpful as it begs the question "why hasn't anyone else made a good text diffusion model in the years since the technology has been available?"

The answer to that question is that unlike latent diffusion for images which can be fuzzy and imprecise before generating the result image, text has discrete outputs and therefore must be more precise, so Google is utilizing some secret sauce to work around that limitation and is keeping it annoyingly close to the chest.

erinaceousjones · 3 months ago

I heard it's been a difficult project to justify spending the research/computer time on at scale, because the models use an equivalent amount of compute for training and inference, but more parallelizable. So 5 times more compute units can be required and they get the work done 5 times faster. On a Google scale, that meant the hard internal sell of justifying burning through $25 million worth of compute units over 1 day instead of $5 million each day for 5 days. Something like that.

erinaceousjones commented on Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android holdtherobot.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/mikenew

transpute · 3 months ago

  There's roughly 4 different approaches to Linux on Android:
    • virtual machine emulating x86_64
    • Termux
    • arm64 binaries running in chroot
    • proot..  Same idea as chroot, but doesn't use forbidden system calls

Fifth option: arm64 pKVM VM from Android 15 on Pixel 7+ phone/tablet hardware using nested h/w virtualization. Shipped in 2025 under the uninformative name of "Linux Terminal" via Development options, Android now has full Debian Linux with VM root, no emulation, compatible with USB-c desktop display.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43973395 & https://www.androidauthority.com/android-linux-terminal-purp...

> The main purpose of this Linux terminal feature is to bring more apps (Linux apps/tools/games) into Android, but NOT to bring yet another desktop environment.. Ideally, when in the desktop window mode, Linux apps shall be rendered on windows just like with other native Android apps.. GPU acceleration is something we are preparing for the next release.

Hopefully Android 2025 Linux VMs will lead to iOS 19 VMs at WWDC, since Apple wants to sell smart glasses to compete with Meta glasses.

erinaceousjones · 3 months ago

Technically Pixel 6 has the pKVM feature too (I have the terminal app from the feature drop when it was added). We're just missing DP alt mode introduced from Pixel 8 onwards

erinaceousjones commented on Fast machines, slow machines (2023) jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-mac... · Posted by u/amatheus

maccard · 4 months ago

I switched from android back to iOS last year. There seems to be some sort of inherent latency in either android or Samsung’s UI that causes the UI thread to lag behind your inputs by a noticeable amount, and for the UI thread to block app actions in many cases.

Things like summoning a keyboard causing my 120hz galaxy phone to drop to sub 10fps playing the intro animation for GBoard were just rampant. All non existent in iOS

erinaceousjones · 4 months ago

I do wonder if part of it is down to Android default animation speeds.... Pixel 6 here, Gboard snappy enough. Something I do on every android device I own though is go into developer settings and change all the animation durations to 0.5x. Makes stuff seem snappier. In reality I'm sure it's dropping just as many frames as it async loads garbage enterprise uncompressed asset icons or whatever, but hey it shows up on screen 2x as fast!!!!

Edit: oh, no, you have a point about the UI blocking stuff, it's fine when apps are loaded and active but "cold booting" a UI component definitely has lags in stupid places, android UX feels like a web perform sometimes due to that.... Tap button, go on holiday for a week, come back and it's responded to the button press (while you were trying to do something completely different and now you've pressed something else and you're not sure what because this time the button you pressed closed the activity overlay 1ms after)

erinaceousjones commented on Cwtch – Privacy Preserving Messaging docs.cwtch.im/... · Posted by u/dp-hackernews

thaumasiotes · 6 months ago

Are they worried that their project is going to be called "cooch"? It seems likely to severely inhibit uptake.

erinaceousjones · 6 months ago

it's pronounced more like "cutch" (well, for me it is anyway) :))

if the name bothers, it can be forked. looking forward to "yCont" messenger!

erinaceousjones commented on Practical UX for startups surviving without a designer tibinotes.com/p/practical... · Posted by u/tb8424

kskjfjfkdkska · 6 months ago

> Common patterns—like password strength indicators—usually exist for good reasons.

NIST does not recommend password strength indicators. Make sure the form is compatible with password managers.

https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/sp800-63b.html#password

erinaceousjones · 6 months ago

Reading through their guidance they don't really mention anything about password strength indicators being a good or bad idea. Sure, they list out a set of rules to verify passwords by and state no OTHER arbitrary rules should be included. But that doesn't prevent you from calculating password strength based on the rules they specify ie. minimum length and complexity.

But I get that "strength" is a poor metric. It shouldn't allow "weak" passwords. It should be binary - pass or fail.

The nicest thing about strength indicators - and I reckon this is why they are copied a lot - is that they are usually real-time feedback to the user with a nice red/orange/green invalid/weak/strong indicator that updates as the user types. The best ones even go as far as show you the list of rules your password is failing to meet, again updating as you type. Much much nicer than the server-side validation form submission loop imo.

So, remove the middle concept of "weak but allowed" passwords from the strength indicator widget, I think then you get good UX that meets NIST recommendations..?

erinaceousjones commented on Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers · Posted by u/Hold-And-Modify

ghxst · 7 months ago

Thank you, I'm a bit surprised people took issue with my comment but I suppose I could have worded it better.

As for your case, I wonder if Okta is relying on an external service like IPQS to get a score, that could explain why they don't really have any control over it.

erinaceousjones · 7 months ago

Thankyou! I checked with IPQS and my residential IP had been flagged for being "a proxy". I routinely SSH VPN (sshuttle) into my home network to do things so maybe that's why.

erinaceousjones commented on Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting theverge.com/news/609207/... · Posted by u/ambigious7777

whywhywhywhy · 7 months ago

Connectors are where the issue is and there is a difference even if they fit in the same plugs and power can still go through them.

From your link

> Compared to the original 12VHPWR connector, the new 12V-2x6 connector has shorter sensing pins (1.5mm) while the conductor terminals are 0.25mm longer

erinaceousjones · 7 months ago

That's inconsistent messaging from Corsair, then. Parent comment quotes the times they're like "ehh, they're same thing, don't worry about it" and then they go on to say "well TECHNICALLY there's a teeensy difference in conductor sizes"???

Either they are confident that the 0.25mm terminal difference is within tolerance enough that they consider 12VHPWR to be functionally equivalent to 12V-2x6, or they're getting themselves confused let alone the target audience of their article.

erinaceousjones commented on Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers · Posted by u/Hold-And-Modify

ghxst · 7 months ago

Try clearing your cookies and disabling all extensions, if that still results in a block you can try a mobile hotspot. You're either failing some server side check (IP, TCP fingerprint, JA3 etc.) or a client side check of your browser integrity (generally this is tampered with by privacy focused extensions, anti-fingerprint settings etc.). It's not a "fix" but can at least give you an indication of why it is happening.

erinaceousjones · 7 months ago

I think it's unfair this comment has been flagged or downvoted or whatever. It's pragmatic information!

The mobile hotspot thing... I have to do that to do anything involving Okta.

For some frustrating reason my IPv4 address, which I pay extra to my ISP to have, has been blocklisted by Okta. A login flow failure in one of the apps work uses triggered my address getting banned indefinitely is my best guess. My works Okta admins don't really understand how to unblock me on their Okta tenancy, and Okta support just directs me back to my local admins (even though it's any okta-using org I'm banned from logging into).

I get that misuse/abuse detection has to do its thing but it's so frustrating when there's basically zero way of a legitimate user from an IP of undoing a ban. My only recourse is to do all my using of okta from another IP.... If I was a legit spammer I wouldn't think twice about switching to another IP from my big pool, probably.