Hacker News: dwiel

New comment by dwiel in "How to measure frequency response of a speaker at home"

dwiel — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 01:10:50 +0000

what if you move the microphones and speakers at varying but precise speeds so that doppler shift can be used to shift frequencies? you could play a tone on the speaker, shift the relative velocity (spin the microphone really fast?) and calibrate a frequency range of the microphone. with a calibrated mic frequency range, you can now calibrate that range of the speaker. repeat. each calibration step is going to accumulate error. to be clear, not a practical solution, but fun to theorize.

New comment by dwiel in "A new Suez crisis threatens the world economy"

dwiel — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 16:52:08 +0000

In some situations the US has gone to war with countries who not long after are close allies. Germany comes to mind, but there are others. In other cases the situation you describe is more accurate. What are the primary factors that influence one outcome or another?

New comment by dwiel in "Google Brain founder says big tech is lying about AI danger"

dwiel — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 19:39:06 +0000

As someone who has been following deep learning for quite some time as well, Bengio and Hinton would be some of the first people I think of in this field. Just search Google for "godfathers of ai" if you don't believe me.

New comment by dwiel in "Chromebooks will get 10 years of automatic updates"

dwiel — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 01:06:31 +0000

Not only this but my Chromebook wasn't upgradable even though the parts weren't soldered in. I tried upgrading the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module but it wouldn't grab the latest drivers so I had to stick to the old Bluetooth that barely reaches across the room.

New comment by dwiel in "Job Corps: free, residential training and education for low-income young adults"

dwiel — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 01:37:02 +0000

Its obvious why it is set up this way. That said, it can be hard to see other people who make the same wage, spend it all on fancy cars and a bigger house get more aid when you've been living modestly and saving resulting in less aid.

New comment by dwiel in "Cloud seeding catching on amid Rocky Mountain drought"

dwiel — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:45:55 +0000

I agree that we are already massively terraforming the planet, and that there is some terraforming we should stop and dinner we should do more of.

New comment by dwiel in "Quitting the rat race"

dwiel — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 01:52:23 +0000

Or you know, talk to your spouse about it first. I dropped down to $0 income for 2 years with two kids and a wife. My family is as strong as ever.

Obviously just one data point and divorce rates are high. Do you have any data on this specific case: depressed about job, quits job to be happier, results in divorce. It seems quiet possible that given the circumstances, quitting the job might decrease the chance of divorce by helping remove so much stress from work.

New comment by dwiel in "Bayesian statistics and machine learning: How do they differ?"

dwiel — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 17:41:50 +0000

Yeah right, in my experience I haven't needed as many networks in the ensemble as I first assumed. This paper [1] suggests 5-10, but in practice I've found only 3 has often been sufficient.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.12188

New comment by dwiel in "Bayesian statistics and machine learning: How do they differ?"

dwiel — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 16:30:15 +0000

Right, the claim was that "Neural networks give probability estimates. Bayesian methods give us probability estimates AND uncertainty" which presents a false dichotomy. I think we agree.

New comment by dwiel in "Bayesian statistics and machine learning: How do they differ?"

dwiel — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 16:11:45 +0000

It is common for a network to output the distribution, so the output is both the mean and variance instead of just the mean like you pointed out. For example check out variational autoencoders.

New comment by dwiel in "The Case for Abolishing Elections"

dwiel — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 13:38:02 +0000

A few ideas:

1) make the sortition group big enough, say 1000 or 10000 people, so the required number of people bribed goes up, which increases bribery cost as well as chances of getting caught

2) make a bounty program to help put a lower bound on the cost to bribe

New comment by dwiel in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2022)"

dwiel — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 19:19:54 +0000

Terran Robotics | Bloomington, IN | Full-time, Onsite\Hybrid

Hiring for two roles: AI/Robotics/Software Engineer and Structural/Materials Engineer

At Terran Robotics, we're building construction robots that turn dirt into extraordinary homes. We've got $6m+ in LOIs, we're building our first production unit right now and completing 2 paid projects in the spring of '23 to de-risk the tech. We aren't inventing a new material. Our walls are similar to adobe which means they are already accepted in building code and already loved by home buyers. The only reason adobe is expensive is because it's built by hand. Our robots change that.

We are looking for people who want to join our small team and get this product off the ground. Specifically, we are looking for someone who has experience with one or more of the following: computer vision/SLAM, AI, robot control, reinforcement learning. We've got our current material and structural system permitted, but are looking for someone with a structural engineering and/or material science background interested in taking it to the next level.

https://terranrobotics.ai

contact@terranrobotics.ai

New comment by dwiel in "Geothermal may beat batteries for energy storage"

dwiel — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:02:06 +0000

You can actually push a bit if current backwards through the cell to heat it up. Some people have tried this but not sure about what prevents this from being more wide spread

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/03/18/heating-solar-panels-...

New comment by dwiel in "AI Hyperopia"

dwiel — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 17:14:03 +0000

I actually find the "build something that is probably wrong faster" really helpful. I frequently write a function and a quick bit of documentation about what it should do, let copilot finish it, realize my intent was wrong, rethink the intent, etc. If I didn't have copilot I would follow the same process, but it would take a lot longer to realize my intent was wrong.

It takes some time to learn what copilot is capable of and how best to prompt it, but I'm my experience it very quickly pays off.

New comment by dwiel in "Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used"

dwiel — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 23:03:40 +0000

I use filters all of the time, but they frequently don't work (as mentioned but a sibling comment) sometimes the filter value don't allow a range so if you want anything between 10 and 100 you have to select all of the values between 10 and 100. Other times, the options aren't sorted so you have to select 10,000 uf and 10 mf and 0.01 F. Still other times numeric values are sorted alphabetically so you get 1 ohm, 1.1 kohm, 1.2 megaohm, 2 ohm, etc. So to select a range you need to clock through around the entire range of values looking for the order of magnitude you want.

New comment by dwiel in "Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used"

dwiel — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 23:51:46 +0000

I wish digikey was as good as McMaster. With digikey I often have to parse through a huge table with many pages to figure out what the difference is between a bunch of search results. On McMaster you can clearly see search results categorized in sub tables and densely arranged to make clear what the options are.

Are there any electronics websites that actually organized like McMaster?

New comment by dwiel in "Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory"

dwiel — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:30:45 +0000

And what about the highly skilled lower paid workforce also using automation in China? And with fewer safety requirements the machines are cheaper too.

New comment by dwiel in "Solar canopies on parking lots"

dwiel — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 16:02:13 +0000

It is possible you could get away with that in some places, but everywhere I've lived in the US, it is illegal to sell electricity to your neighbors. The only way around it I've seen is to give it away for free, but it is hard to build a scalable business around that.

New comment by dwiel in "Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips"

dwiel — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 21:31:32 +0000

I've received money from the NSF SBIR grant program and know another half a dozen others who have as well, and while there is certainly a process, it isn't too bad. All the people I know who have received them are at startups and small companies. That said, the NSF does more than just SBIR and I can't speak to any of that.

New comment by dwiel in "The Swerve"

dwiel — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 01:22:28 +0000

You are right, I was mixing up authoritarian communism and anarchist communism, thank you.