devindotcom

I understand diffusion models somewhat, but I simply don't understand how the actual denoising steps can be skipped in this method. Like isn't the whole point of diffusion, which this uses as a basis, that it must go stepwise from noise to image? Even distilling a diffusion model and accelerating it, it feels crazy that it could go from taking 50 steps to taking 1 or 2.

I've looked at a few papers but none seems to explain in simple terms what is going on here. It's like saying, we made a new car where you turn it on and you are at your destination. If anyone has come across an accessible explanation of this approach I'd love to look at it.

I have more or less the same setup and frustrations. I just have a list of things in my head (certain settings panels, calculator app) that I know neither Everything nor Launchy can find, and those are the one time that week I click the start button. Pretty sad. But really I'm happy with the other tools.

they're workin on it

Rotoscoping is great but pretty labor intensive and not really creative in itself, though it can obviously be part of a very creative process. That makes it a perfect candidate for AI/ML tools to accelerate and I hope they do (or rather I hope they continue to). Tons of animators and filmmakers love the roto look but don't want to deal with the roto process. Get the outlines and motion tracking done 90% with the AI and everyone can focus on the important stuff.

incidentally, feynman would laugh pretty hard at this

pay to play?

*flout

It took a little getting used to - i had the same qualm. But honestly, I don't mind now at all. The text adjustment is very fine in the default reader and the resolution is high, so pick a font you find readable and it's really not so different from a pocket paperback page.

I have a Palma (they sent for review) and I think it's great, though I agree it probably isn't worth the price for most.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/03/boox-ereaders-poke-5-palma...

But the text looks good, the light is nice, and you can even install apps that aren't too demanding - a crossword or something.

I've found that even a Clara HD or BW (the latest version) can be a bit bulky when you're going out with no bag, but the Palma fits in any jeans or jacket pocket and is excellent to have when you find yourself with 20 minutes to wait and no desire to doomscroll. I hope these things get more popular and accessible.

Go back to Suetonius and The Twelve Caesars. Amazing read, even if you can't believe everything. The contemporary (or close) historians are lots of fun.

Anecdotally, all of my friends renting have had their rents continually raised with no breaks. Perhaps there is a wider trend, but if so, their landlords do not seem aware of it.

Yeah, I had to work with SOs in my previous job and this sounds accurate. It's very hard to characterize this kind of thing though so if anyone else is curious it would be best to read up a bit on modern approaches.

Currently dating myself by playing Portishead's Dummy in Winamp 5.66...

Looking forward to this code being lightly maintained for minimal compatibility with future OSes. I dislike change!

i'm with you my brother

An odd article. Their previous work hits a lot of the same notes. But the selective transparency on the methods - for instance, only briefly describing how they arrived at these "taboo conclusions" - suggests they're more interested in stirring the pot and keeping these assertions circulating under the guise of suppressed science. (My mistake, they relocated the pilot study to supp mat, but it is not reassuring to read.)

"A vocal minority and silent majority may have created a seemingly hostile climate against taboo conclusions and the scholars who forward them, even if the silent majority has great contempt for the vocal minority. Future research should test these possibilities more directly."

This kind of editorializing feels out of place and very revealing. This retraction is perhaps indicative of the general quality of the work as well:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761989791...

entire android directory added yest https://github.com/google/project-gameface/tree/main/Android

I was thinking about this while watching an amazing Chinese historical drama, "Longest Day in Chang'an," which has a "24"-like real-time structure. But instead of the beep... beep... beep... you have this one guy in an official building intently watching a water clock and pretty much every episode he bangs a drum on the hour and yells out the exact time and a kind of proverb, like "1 o clock!! The shadows reappear!"

Great show and there are lots of interesting historical details like this. Good post too.

Yeah it's pretty gross. I've tried to move away from synthetic fabrics wherever possible. It's just plastic.

I learned recently that a huge amount of the lint you see in the dryer is microplastics. Guess what? A similar amount comes out in the washer and goes out with the waste water wherever that ends up in your area. (These tiny fibers aren't easily caught by bulk water treatment methods, I understand.)

Hate this. I'm presently torn between the desire to get an EV and dreading the inevitable tech quagmire I'll be wading into as a result. My car is 23 years old but will hopefully last long enough that the pendulum swings back towards simplicity and accessibility, even if that costs more money.

I forgot, I asked for this already, no luck so far: https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/29/please-make-a-dumb-car/

FYI, Microsoft now says (we contacted before publishing) the policy we cited "contained an error" and was intended to only apply to facial recognition, and has been changed in the official code of conduct. We've updated the headline and body to reflect this change. A mod might want to change the HN hed too.

FYI the Analogue Pocket supports a number of OpenFPGA emulators quite well, I have several carts but also plenty of harder to find NES, SNES and GBA roms loaded right on.

yep imo it's dead in that case:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/04/net-neutrality-wont-surviv...

in a sense it goes back to 1966

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/30/commission-impossible-how-...

I disagree. ratfuck is a specific term, not just a general pejorative. and I think class traitor is appropriate here as well. but i get what you're saying. that's the result, pro and con, of the shift away from edited journalism to stuff like ed's newsletter.

I enjoyed the feeling when I made this connection talking with a startup doing this a while back. It's just a different "language" and although it's not a given that LLMs can operate in it, it's a reasonable thing to try, and it turns out they can.

yeah we are struggling with this question too, though an honest subjective assessment on everyday tasks has value, just as benchmarks do. no one has really solved this yet

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/23/why-its-impossible-to-revi...

Biscoff, I hope? Love those.

Lang's Fairy Books are interesting though obviously very "of the time," as we say. But in those and his work editing the Folk-Lore Journal (of which I have a few volumes) he was taking on or nurturing some really serious anthropological literary work. Check out up Sidney Hartland's The Forbidden Chamber, which establishes Bluebeard tales as a "type" seen across multiple cultures and times.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Folk-Lore_Journal/Volume_...

Really interesting stuff. His translations with Leaf and Myers are nice but not exactly poetry, I wouldn't recommend them to anyone as a first read of the Iliad.

MM is 2,000 in Roman numeral notation, not a million.

Very cool. I love seeing things like this being made. Some others from the past few years:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/05/blindpads-tablet-makes-vis...

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/the-becdot-is-a-toy-that-h...

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/10/dot-pad-tactile-display-ma...

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/17/the-monarch-could-be-the-n...

Something I've heard is that the content, APIs, etc are equally important, or you end up with a great device with nothing to display.