Hacker News Reader

almostdigitalon Magical SVG Techniques

These are great! I found out recently that GitHub supports SVGs in your profile README so couldn't resist setting up a huge animation on mine[1], you can't run JavaScript in SVGs unless they are inlined with the HTML but maybe it would be possible to setup a GitHub action to automatically generate it periodically.

https://github.com/jnordberg

almostdigitalon I made an AI write a story about AI then I made another AI illustrate it

Thanks! It's mostly written by the AI but I prod it along at critical points to make it more interesting

almostdigitalon I made an AI write a story about AI then I made another AI illustrate it

It's prompted by a premise of the podcast that I wrote and a list of keywords and guests. I also sometimes prod it during the transcript generation to make it more interesting, the ending for example was me injecting a line "I'll leave you with this bit of Vogon poetry".

almostdigitalon I made an AI write a story about AI then I made another AI illustrate it

Thanks! It's TorToiSe: https://github.com/neonbjb/tortoise-tts

almostdigitalon I made an AI write a story about AI then I made another AI illustrate it

I made an AI write a podcast transcript then I made another AI read it :D

https://soundcloud.com/jn2022/lexman-artificial-podcast-epis...

almostdigitalon Accelerated PyTorch Training on M1 Mac

Does torchaudio work for you? I can get torch and torchvision to work but not torchaudio

almostdigitalon Accelerated PyTorch Training on M1 Mac

Anyone actually got this to run on an M1 Mac?

    $ conda install pytorch torchvision torchaudio -c pytorch-nightly
    Collecting package metadata (current_repodata.json): done
    Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.
    Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done
    Solving environment: failed with initial frozen solve. Retrying with flexible solve.

    PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

      - torchaudio

And the pip install variant installs an old version of torchaudio that is broken

    OSError: dlopen(/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/miniforge/base/envs/test123/lib/python3.10/site-packages/torchaudio/lib/libtorchaudio.so, 0x0006): Symbol not found: __ZN2at14RecordFunctionC1ENS_11RecordScopeEb

almostdigitalon Apple says they're removing my game because it's more than 2 years old

I think it has to do with swift runtime deprecations.

I have an objective-c app that is as old as the AppStore and I haven't updated it for 8 years [1], Apple even updated it once themselves somehow to support iOS 11.

Another of my apps was removed with a similar vague explanation as the OP got and it was written using Swift [2].

While I understand that they might want to drop support for old runtimes the 30-day deadline is ridiculous. And if you miss it you need to re-submit the app and lose your ratings etc.

I made nowhere near enough in the ~2 year period my app was available to justify spending the effort to modernize the project so I just let them remove it...

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seismometer/id288966259 [2]: https://github.com/jnordberg/triggy

almostdigitalon OutCast: Outdoor Single Image Relighting with Cast Shadows

Cool! I hope they release the code, I want to create macOS dynamic backgrounds with this

almostdigitalon A few things to try with DALL·E

Try Runtime -> Run All

Or use the huggingface version, that's a simple web ui: https://huggingface.co/spaces/multimodalart/latentdiffusion

almostdigitalon A few things to try with DALL·E

It's interesting to see that Latent Diffusion + LAION 400M does much better with text, it's actually a challenge sometimes to get it to not write the parts of the prompt meant to guide the style on the resulting image.

Try it yourself here: https://colab.research.google.com/github/multimodalart/laten...

EDIT: Here's 36 uncurated renders for "Hacker News - Dang's Dance. R&B Album Artwork" https://johan-nordberg.com/tmp/hn-laion400m.png

almostdigitalon DI-Star (Starcraft 2 AI, Continuation of AlphaStar)

Best of 3 show match vs grandmaster player Harstem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvQF-24IpXs

almostdigitalon Ask HN: Share your personal site

Thanks! No, I just tweaked the implementation that came with the paper, it had a WebGL renderer already.

I ran the GPT-J inference myself but it's not live on the server, it just has a 20mb text file of pre-generated quotes it samples from :)

almostdigitalon Ask HN: Share your personal site

https://johan-nordberg.com

I have random experiments on mine, currently AI generated "inspirational" quotes accompanied by ever changing background textures (don't miss the refresh button in the bottom corner, if you keep going you'll reach some more psychedelic patterns;)

The background is neural cellular automata (https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/) and the quotes is GPT-J (https://huggingface.co/EleutherAI/gpt-j-6B).

almostdigitalon Shader Park: A JavaScript library for creating interactive procedural shaders

Obligatory mention: https://glslsandbox.com

almostdigitalon My friends Instagram was hacked and deep-fake videos posted in less than 6 hours

This account is going to be a heirloom NFT in the metaverse some day :P

almostdigitalon My friends Instagram was hacked and deep-fake videos posted in less than 6 hours

Instagram is a dumpster fire.

I have a 3 letter instagram name and the amount of spam and attacks I get is insane... I get hundreds of password reset emails from instagram daily and constant DMs and follow requests from scammer and bot accounts.

I've tried contacting instagram about it several times but they never respond. Had to blackhole emails from security@mail.instagram.com to prevent my mail server filling up.

almostdigitalon We saved millions in SSD costs by upgrading our filesystem

For the end user, I.e. you and me visiting a website there is very little difference. If heap.io in this case will never figure out they can double the revenue by selling "aggregated" and "anonymized" data their customers collecting the data has the same incentive to sell. Just search for "data onboarding" to get an idea of what's going on.

almostdigitalon We saved millions in SSD costs by upgrading our filesystem

> Read the terms the data does not get shared with anyone - very clearly stated there.

I did read the terms and it was anything but clear on that, it only says that data generated is owned by the customer but also allows them to create "anonymized" versions of the data that they do own.

Even if the terms didn't give them a free pass to share the data (and that they don't sell it anyway like many do) that data is only a company policy change from being sold... The probability of that happening quickly approaches 1 with data brokers sitting on their doorstep with bags of money.

> Does aws share your data with 3rd parties?

Assuming that you're talking about the data stored on rented servers - and not their customer and usage data which they very likely do share with third parties - they have very obvious incentives to keep that data readable only by the customer.

Not that I would be all that surprised to learn that some cloud provider had been mining their customers disk storage for data...

> Google doesn't have to share your data with outside people directly, they are more than enough of a customer for that data themselves

That's what I meant with that they are somewhat incentivized to keep it to themselves. That's marginally less disgusting than having it being sold in bulk to companies that specialize in aggregating, de-anonymizing and re-selling data.

almostdigitalon We saved millions in SSD costs by upgrading our filesystem

I'm using Wipr + StopTheMadness in Safari, for other browsers uBlock Origin is good

almostdigitalon We saved millions in SSD costs by upgrading our filesystem

You'd rather it be a company that sells your data to as many third parties as possible? Because that's what they all do.

Google and Facebook are arguably better because they at least are somewhat incentivized to keep your data to themselves.

Even though that's like arguing about which STD is better instead of using condoms.

almostdigitalon We saved millions in SSD costs by upgrading our filesystem

In case someone else is wondering why this company stores petabytes of data, this is why:

> Heap is the only tool that automatically captures all user interactions on your site, from the moment of installation forward. A single snippet grabs every click, swipe, tap, pageview, and fill — forever.

Revolting... at least my content blocker had their collection script already blocked.

almostdigitalon Apple requires account deletion within apps in AppStore starting January 31

A large meteor would delete it just fine.

almostdigitalon Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

I reject the premise that CSAM scanning is a solution to anything, especially if the goal is to E2EE encrypt the rest of the photos.

My understanding from following this debacle is that law-enforcement don't have resources to investigate everyone who just have CSAM they focus on people who match and have other photos of novel abuse they can track down, and here they will only get an account name and a list of 30 CSAM photos the user had.

All this system will do is drive up Apples numbers on a "total child abuse found" scoreboard and do very little to help any actual children in need.

almostdigitalon Apple’s device surveillance plan is a threat to user privacy – and press freedom

> Apple's solution on this requires client and server communication to flag an image

Well of course it does, would be a very pointless surveillance system if it scanned for stuff and then threw away the result.

I've also read the technical papers and all other info put out by Apple so far and my takeaway is that the system is generic, it's not designed specifically for images but can be used with any old fingerprint and arbitrary data can be uploaded in the "security vouchers".

It does not take much imagination to see how it could be used to mass-surveil E2EE communications, hook it into Siri's intent system, add a bunch of banned intents and throw the message into the voucher. If a threshold of bad intents is reached a reviewer will check your messages to verify that you actually had some bad intent before dispatching a patrol to your location.

almostdigitalon Apple defends anti-child abuse imagery tech after claims of ‘hash collisions’

It's clear now that Apple is never going to back down. It's bittersweet, I'm sad to see them go but also excited for what I think will be a FOSS renaissance.

almostdigitalon Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

Maybe not if you assume Apple is evil but for the case of Apple being good intentioned but having its hand forced, they will have a much harder time resisting a 1 line change than a mandate to spend years to develop a surveillance system

almostdigitalon Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

> I really don't understand this view. You are using proprietary software, you are always an N-line change away from someone doing something you don't like. This situation doesn't change this.

And I don't understand why it has to be black and white, I think the N is very important in this formula and if it is low that is a cause for concern. Like an enemy building a missile silo on an island just off your coast but promising it's just for defense.

All arguments I see is along the lines of "Apple can technically do anything they want anyways so this doesn't matter". But maybe you're right and moving to FOSS is the only solution long-term, that's what I'm doing if Apple goes through with this.

almostdigitalon Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

For me the standard is that I don't want any 1-line code change between me and near-perfect Orwellian surveillance.

almostdigitalon Security Threat Model Review of the Apple Child Safety Features [pdf]

Yeah that's true, although to do some sort of mass scanning stealthily they would need a system exactly like what they built with this, if they tried to upload everything for scanning the data use would be enormous and give it away.

I guess it comes down to that I don't trust an OS vendor that ships an A.I. based snitch program that they promise will be dormant.