Sunset Geometry (2016)

Robert Vanderbei has written a beautiful series of articles and talks about a method for finding the radius of the earth based on a single photograph of a sunset over a large, calm lake. Vanderbei’s analysis is an elegant and subtle exercise in classical trigonometry. In this post, I would like to present an alternative analysis in a different language: Geometric Algebra. I believe that ...

Arbitrary-Scale Super-Resolution with Neural Heat Fields

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A hypernetwork estimates parameters for local neural heat fields, combining components with phase shifts and thermal activations. This results in a blurred, continuous field that's rasterized for a final output image with guaranteed anti-aliasing.

Sketch-Programming: A Minimalist Paradigm for Code Design

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Sketch-programming (or simply "Sketch") is a revolutionary approach to writing software that prioritizes simplicity, readability, and expressiveness. Unlike traditional programming languages or frameworks, Sketch is not a specific language but a meta-programming paradigm—a set of principles, conventions, and syntax patterns designed to abstract away boilerplate code, reduce cognitive ...

So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

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We're celebrating Douglas Adams' 73rd birthday by honoring his legacy as a comedic genius who taught us to laugh at existential terror. His works continue to inspire our podcast, which merges quantum physics with office politics, reminding us to find humor in the absurdity of existence.

Transformers Without Normalization

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Researchers introduced Dynamic Tanh (DyT) as a normalization layer replacement in Transformers, achieving similar or better performance without hyperparameter tuning. DyT is effective across various tasks and architectures, challenging the conventional understanding of normalization layers in neural networks.

RubyLLM: A delightful Ruby way to work with AI

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RubyLLM is a Ruby library that simplifies working with AI by providing a single API for multiple providers and a consistent format. It allows users to ask questions, analyze images and audio, generate images, and more with minimal dependencies.
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Cradle – Open-Source Collaborative Threat Intelligence Hub

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Latest version: v1.5.3 CRADLE Intelligence Hub Batteries included collaborative knowledge management solution for threat intelligence researchers.

Briar: Peer to Peer Encrypted Messaging

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Briar is a secure messaging app that synchronizes messages directly between users' devices, protecting against surveillance and censorship. It uses Tor, end-to-end encryption, and decentralized design to keep information flowing even during internet blackouts.

Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

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Intuitive Machines' Athena spacecraft landed on the Moon but failed to operate due to a power shortage caused by regolith on its solar panels. Despite this, the mission was considered a success as it validated the spacecraft's propulsion system and communications technology.

Kerning, the Hard Way

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The font uses a vertically striped background with reversed letterforms, inspired by Schaefer Versalien. Kerning is achieved through GSUB lookups, splitting letters into pieces and recombining them with a joiner glyph.

Deepnote (YC S19) is hiring to build a better data science notebook (Europe)

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Deepnote aims to create collaborative tools for data teams, making data work fun and efficient. It's building a notebook that integrates analytics and data science into workflows, empowering teams to work together seamlessly.

A look at Firefox forks

We're bad at marketing We can admit it, marketing is not our strong suit. Our strength is writing the kind of articles that developers, administrators, and free-software supporters depend on to know what is going on in the Linux world. Please subscribe today to help us keep doing that, and so we don’t have to get good at marketing. Mozilla's actions have been rubbing many Firefox fans ...

Is our universe trapped inside a black hole? This JWS Telescope discovery

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The James Webb Space Telescope found that most galaxies rotate in the same direction, contradicting random expectations. This discovery could support the theory that the universe was born inside a rotating black hole.

Mayo Clinic's secret weapon against AI hallucinations: Reverse RAG in action

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Mayo Clinic uses a novel technique to address AI hallucinations by linking data points back to their original sources. This approach eliminates data-retrieval-based hallucinations in non-diagnostic use cases.

Decrypting encrypted files from Akira ransomware using a bunch of GPUs

I recently helped a company recover their data from the Akira ransomware without paying the ransom. I’m sharing how I did it, along with the full source code. To clarify, multiple ransomware variants have been named Akira over the years, and several versions are currently circulating. The variant I encountered has been active from late 2023 to the present (the company was breached this year). ...

Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

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Transit agencies are misled by hydrogen bus claims due to cognitive biases and flawed analyses from credible organizations. They overlook battery-electric buses' reliability and falling costs, investing in costly hydrogen infrastructure instead.

Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

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A critical security incident has compromised the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action, exposing secrets in over 23,000 repositories. Users are advised to stop using the Action, review logs, and use Harden-Runner for real-time security monitoring and anomaly detection.

I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

You'll be available for 6 hours and want to discuss recent changes and potential changes in U.S. immigration law, policy, and practice. You'll provide factual information and avoid giving legal advice on specific cases.

Ask HN: Any insider takes on Yann LeCun's push against current architectures?

Yann LeCun suggests LLMs may never fix hallucinations due to token choice errors. He proposes an 'energy minimization' architecture to minimize overall response 'energy' during training.

Peirce Edition Project

“Before all else, let me make the acquaintance of my reader, and express my sincere esteem for him and the deep pleasure it is to me to address one so wise and so patient.” Welcome to the home of the Peirce Edition Project! Our online doors are always open. Come inside, don’t shut your eyes, but open your mouth perhaps, and on each page Peirce will give you something pithy to make you wise. ...

'Once in a Century' Proof Settles Math's Kakeya Conjecture

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Mathematicians Hong Wang and Joshua Zahl proved the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, establishing a limit to how small a pencil can move in midair. Their proof has significant implications for the field of harmonic analysis and may lead to breakthroughs in related problems.

Using a graphics tablet as a programming tool (2018)

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User recommends Milton drawing software for note-taking and problem-solving, especially with a graphics tablet like Wacom Bamboo. It helps stay motivated by visualizing thought process and planning.

The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants

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US restaurant labor productivity surged 15% during the COVID pandemic and persisted post-pandemic. The surge is linked to reduced customer dwell time, particularly take-out customers spending 10 minutes or less.

Show HN: Web Audio Spring-Mass Synthesis

This web audio toy is part of my research into sparse representations of musical audio and the decomposition of audio signals into systems of resonances and sparse control signals. Code for this experiment is here

Block Diffusion: Interpolating between autoregressive and diffusion models

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Researchers introduced block diffusion language models that combine benefits of autoregressive and diffusion models, enabling flexible-length generation and improved efficiency. This approach sets a new state-of-the-art performance on language modeling benchmarks and allows for arbitrary-length sequence generation.

Why do some birds mimic the sounds of other species?

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Some birds, like Northern Mockingbirds, continue to learn and add to their song repertoire as they grow older, possibly to impress potential mates or deter rivals. Mimicry can serve various purposes, including attracting mates, defending territories, or warning off predators, but learning the wrong songs can be detrimental to a bird's survival.

An Egyptian Temple Reborn

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The temple of Khnum in Esna, Egypt, features a well-preserved entrance hall with vibrant colors and intricate reliefs depicting Egyptian gods and astronomical phenomena. A team of conservators has cleaned the hall, revealing previously hidden images and inscriptions that provide insight into ancient Egyptian theology and culture.

Exo: Exocompilation for productive programming of hardware accelerators

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To use Exo, install it using pip and ensure you have Python 3.9 or above. You can customize the output with optional arguments and use a virtual environment for development.

It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life

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Foreign aid has greatly reduced diseases like polio, malaria, and HIV, saving millions of lives, and a small increase in aid could deliver many more vaccines and treatments. Personal donations and advocating for increased foreign aid can make a significant difference, especially when focused on cost-effective causes.