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jamessb

1,840 karma · joined March 27, 2012

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jamessb··on AWS cancels serverless Postgres service that scales to zero
You may be interested in this article in Communications of the ACM: Serverless Computing: What It Is, and What It Is Not?

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3587249 (pdf)

jamessb··on Heat pumps, more than you wanted to know (2023)
> a pill that makes your body heat up without fuss when it's cold, and lose weight along the way.

A mitochondrial uncoupler like 2,4-Dinitrophenol will do this [1], but I don't think the risk of death is worth it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol

jamessb··on Why Aren't We Sieve-Ing?
> Putting author names but no date at the top seems to be some sort of standard template or convention that every single paper author or institution everywhere uses since forever, since I never see dates at tops of papers.

The year usually appears in the bottom left of the first page, and in the header or footer of subsequent pages.

The first linked PDF [1] says only "14th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation" (without the year), but does have the year on an initial cover page. The second [2] says "HotOS ’23, June 22–24, 2023, Providence, RI, USA". The third [3] says "SOSP ’23, October 23–26, 2023, Koblenz, Germany" in the bottom-left of the first page.

However, this information may be missing from an author produced files/preprints, as it may be inserted along with page numbers when the conference proceedings or journal issue gets created. This seems to be the case for the fourth linked PDF [4].

[1]: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi20-yang.pdf

[2]: https://jasony.me/publication/hotos23-qdlp.pdf

[3]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3600006.3613147

[4]: https://junchengyang.com/publication/nsdi24-SIEVE.pdf

jamessb··on RR – Railroad Diagram Generator
Compare the first image in the README to the corresponding section of the "original grammar":

  if_stmt:
      | 'if' named_expression ':' block elif_stmt 
      | 'if' named_expression ':' block [else_block] 
  elif_stmt:
      | 'elif' named_expression ':' block elif_stmt 
      | 'elif' named_expression ':' block [else_block] 
  else_block:
      | 'else' ':' block 

Whilst I can read this, I need to jump around to find the definitions of labels, and it requires mental effort to remember how each label was defined. The effort would be greater for a more complex example.

The diagram essentially avoids this by inlining the definitions of `elif_stmt` and `else_block`. This makes it much faster for me to read.

jamessb··on Ask HN: What are some great examples of bi-directional diagram/code projects?
See Ravi Chugh's Sketch-n-Sketch work: http://ravichugh.github.io/sketch-n-sketch/

You might find it useful to look at the papers that cite the paper: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=2233351225886461130...

jamessb··on Ask HN: UX Challenges Matrix?
Was it the Person Spectrum from Microsoft's Inclusive Design Toolkit? (the axes are touch/see/hear/speak and permanent/temporary/situational)

https://www.google.com/search?q=Microsoft%27s+Inclusive+Desi...

jamessb··on Ask HN: How does `lnav` run its playground which you can just SSH into?
It looks like they run an SSH server inside a Docker container defined by this Dockerfile [1]. This uses the ForceCommand directive in the sshd_config file to ensure that a specific command is run when a user connects (rather than the user connecting directly to a shell).

Depending on whether the user connects as the `playground` or `tutorial1` user they interact with a bash script that is either [2] or [3]; these run lnav, using the timeout command to limit how long users are connected for, and to kill the lnav process if it gets stuck.

[1]: https://github.com/tstack/lnav/blob/master/demo/Dockerfile

[2]: https://github.com/tstack/lnav/blob/master/docs/tutorials/pl...

[3]: https://github.com/tstack/lnav/blob/master/docs/tutorials/tu...

jamessb··on Phind Model beats GPT-4 at coding, with GPT-3.5 speed and 16k context
> the state of the art of machine learning which uses geospatial data (e.g. GeoJSON) as both input and output

> There is no such state of the art

Some GIS work uses vector data: points/lines/polygons representing features (e.g., the location of roads or the outlines of buildings), which can be stored in formats like GeoJSON or WKT. But other work uses remote sensing data/satellite imagery that can be stored in raster formats like GeoTIFF - essentially TIFF image files with additional information stored to georeference them.

You can totally do machine learning on satellite imagery where both the input and output are geospatial data (e.g. to categorise land use - the inputs are multispectral images and the outputs can be images where the value of each pixel represents the identified land use).

You can also use machine learning for tasks like building footprint detection/delineation (e.g., [1]) based on satellite imagery. The output from such a pipeline can be a set of polygons, which could be saved as GeoJSON.

I'd consider either of theses to be examples of "machine learning which uses geospatial data (e.g. GeoJSON) as both input and output".

[1]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/how-to-extract-buildi...

jamessb··on Embeddings: What they are and why they matter
Yes - it uses the implementation of MiniBatchKMeans provided by the scikit-learn library.

(I'd call this an "algorithm" rather than a "model" - it doesn't have any model weights learnt from a training dataset)

For more details, see the pages in its user guide describing:

* the K-Means algorithm: https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/clustering.html#k-me...

* the Mini Batch variant of k-means: https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/clustering.html#mini...

jamessb··on OpenSAFELY is a secure, open-source platform for analysis of health records data
> "into academia where there is no AtoI/FOIA requirements"

As a general statement, this is incorrect: in the UK (where OpenSAFELY operates) Universities are considered "public authorities" under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and people have a right to request access to information that they hold.

jamessb··on G9.js: Automatically Interactive Graphics
There were some interesting comments when this was last discussed on HN (7 years ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12572412
jamessb··on Using Lidar to map tree shadows
> coupled with http range queries on the static files hosted in S3 to bypass the need for tiling

Did you look into Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF format?

https://www.cogeo.org/

It is supported by OpenLayers: https://openlayers.org/en/latest/examples/cog.html

(I don't think that Maplibre or Leaflet have built-in support for it)

jamessb··on Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty
The FT article says: 'A group of academics who compile the Data Colada blog about the evidence behind behavioural science has started publishing a series of posts in which they say they will detail “evidence of fraud in four academic papers” co-authored by Gino'.

The first two of these blog posts are:

https://datacolada.org/109

https://datacolada.org/110

jamessb··on Framework Laptop 13 review: a DIY dream come true
Their "DIY Edition" (vs "Pre-built") allows this: the laptop comes without memory and storage installed, and you either install your own or install separately packaged parts that you ordered at the same time during the configuration process.
jamessb··on Pandas AI
Sketch is similar, but can do code generation (with `.sketch.howto`): https://github.com/approximatelabs/sketch

> This because the function is no longer idempotent, each call to the AI can yield a different result.

Also, it makes it harder to verify correctness, and may make processing larger datasets (or repeatedly processing similar datasets) more expensive.

jamessb··on Open source implementation of Google's MusicLM in PyTorch
The project README thanks "Stability.ai for the generous sponsorship to work and open source cutting edge artificial intelligence research", so it's not necessarily just a hobby (though it's possible they just provide compute resources).

Phil's homepage [1] links to a form [2] where you can suggest a paper for him to implement.

[1]: https://lucidrains.github.io/

[2]: https://forms.gle/Dtrxc6CceHEcqS6X6

jamessb··on Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety
On the topic of names, why is there a hyphen in the company name?

The anatomical term "pia" can be pronounced as if it starts with either "pea" or "pie". Writing "pi-a" is very strongly suggestive of a pronunciation like the Greek letter pi (i.e., like "pie", not "pea"), especially as the website's favicon is the letter pi. However, the website says it's pronounced "pea-uh".

So I would think that the hyphen would bias people towards the "wrong" pronunciation.

jamessb··on Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney
> I can not identify any deeper moral or social or any idea.

The fairy destroys the bread that Penelope has created by turning it into butter. The fairy then expresses remorse, apologises, and offers to undo this ("Sparkles was sorry for her mischief, and offered to help Penelope turn the butter back into bread"). Penelope accepts the apology, and they set aside their differences to engage in a joint venture together.

Arguably this isn't a good expression of a moral lesson, but there are moral themes here (destroying what other people have worked hard to create is bad; apologising and offering to fix your mistakes is good, forgiveness is better than holding a grudge).

jamessb··on Show HN: I “wrote” a kid's book with ChatGPT and Midjourney
The prompt [1] didn't fully transfer to the generated story.

This is an important part of the prompt:

> she had too much butter. Because of that, things got slippery.

> Until finally she opened the first ever butter theme park.

But the generated story doesn't say that the layer of butter in the kitchen was slippery, or explain that butter in general is slippery (and hence could create "slippery slides"), which make the idea seem like a bizarre jump:

> Sparkles was sorry for her mischief, and offered to help Penelope turn the butter back into bread. But Penelope had a better idea.

> Together, they opened the first ever butter theme park

[1]: https://adventure-of-penelope.vercel.app/credits

jamessb··on Compilable Lightweight Markup Language for Linear Algebra
I wonder whether adding a brace for each row would clarify the notation, by more closely resembling a single multi-line brace:

  A_ij = { 1 if (i,j) ∈ E
         { 0 otherwise
  where
  A ∈ ℝ^(n × n)
  E ∈ { ℤ × ℤ }
  n ∈ ℤ
jamessb··on Compilable Lightweight Markup Language for Linear Algebra
The docs [1] include a table of symbols you can copy/pate from, and lists shortcuts that will be expanded by the IDE/online editor [2] - these mostly look like the LaTeX commands for the symbols (some are more concise, like \R and \Z as shortucts for \mathbb{R} and \mathbb{Z}).

It would be useful if there was something like a help button in the IDE that opened this table in a modal, rather than just a link.

[1]: https://github.com/iheartla/iheartla/wiki/Keywords-And-Speci...

[2]: https://iheartla.github.io/iheartla/

jamessb··on Which GPU(s) to get for deep learning
If you're interested in Deep Learning specifically, the fast.ai "Practical Deep Learning for coders" course [1] is often recommended. It says "You don’t need any university math either — we’ll teach you the calculus and linear algebra you need during the course".

[1]: https://course.fast.ai/

jamessb··on Show HN: DevClad – A social-workspace platform for developers
> you are matched with another dev using an ML algorithm

Could be simplified to just:

> you are automatically matched with another dev

jamessb··on HTML with Superpowers: An Introduction to Web Components
The eventual aim of Open-UI is to establish a set of standard UI components like this.

> The purpose of Open UI to the web platform is to allow web developers to style and extend built-in web UI controls, such as <select> dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, and date/color pickers.

> Today, component frameworks and design systems reinvent common web UI controls to give designers full control over their appearance and behavior. We hope to make it unnecessary to reinvent built-in UI controls

https://open-ui.org/

jamessb··on Yark: Advanced and easy YouTube archiver now stable
It looks like this depends on a "./add-video.py" script that isn't in the repository.
jamessb··on How to Build Beautiful Maps with Folium and Leaflet (2021)
Their RSS feed lists a contact email address: https://notes.weissig.me/index.xml
jamessb··on Ask HN: What are good self hosted time tracking software for consultants?
> Or is there a list of them somewhere?

awesome-selfhosted lists 4 self-hosted systems: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#tim...

(ActivityWatch, Kimai, TimeTagger, Traggo)

jamessb··on Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
The current title of this submission ("Worst Opening Sentences of 2022") is not quite correct: the about page [1] states that "the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels".

The opening sentence of (what would be) the worst novel is different to the worst opening sentence of a novel.

The Children's & Young Adult Literature Winner for 2022 [2] is actually a good opening sentence:

> Three bears arrived at their den to discover a yellow haired girl sleeping, and as she was neither too hot nor too cold, neither too soft nor too hard, but just right, they ate her.

[1]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about

[2]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022

jamessb··on Converting a WW2-Era Landing Gear and Flaps Indicator into a USB Peripheral
This reminds me of a blog post [1] that was recently posted to HN [2]:

> Fortunately, Helsinki has an amazing library (more like a library, hacker space, gaming cafe, and a public hangout place combined) where I could go and desolder the header for free.

[1]: https://kimmo.blog/posts/7-building-eink-weather-display-for...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33583326

jamessb··on Ask HN: What are some of the best podcasts for developers?
> On the Metal has been discontinued

They started hosting conversations on Twitter spaces instead, which were then published as a podcast called Oxide & Friends: https://oxide.computer/podcasts/oxide-and-friends

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