4,295 karma · joined December 8, 2015
Socials: - github.com/mrkev - aykev.dev
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https://github.com/mrkev/webgpu-waveform
Made some updates to this open-source library I wrote to render audio waveforms using the GPU on the browser (WebGPU).
Example on the site. Works without enabling flags on Chromium browsers. There's an example to scrub and zoom in real time on some audio. Feedback welcome!
When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot when looked at from slightly different distances. This is depth information our brains automatically interpret, and it makes easy to tell what is "the glass" vs what is "on the glass".
On a 2D screen both eyes see the same refraction pattern— your eyes are receiving no depth information. It's just up to color contrast and semantics to figure out what's part of the glass vs laid on top of it, so things that might look legible or easy to tell apart on physical glass will look messy on the screen.
Let's be real, sanctions play a big role in the economic decline of Venezuela.
Saudi Arabia isn't a democracy. In fact, it's a very problematic totalitarian regime, where women have limited rights and the royalty has been known to kill enemies. They very much mismanage money, with ridiculous projects, ostentatious lifestyles if you're royalty or the elite, and have the "highest prevalence of modern slavery of all countries in the Arab States region" [1].
Saudi Arabia is doing well economically though because it isn't sanctioned by the USA, and you don't hear bad press about it's totalitarian regime, or corruption, etc. because it's a USA ally.
If the USA cared about how people are treated by their government, they'd be in Sudan or Congo. The USA cares about getting rid of Maduro, so they will make it as difficult as possible for the Venezuelan regime to make money from its oil, while pointing out all that's wrong and blaming Maduro for everything.
I'm not saying things are well in Venezuela, or that Maduro is a good leader. I'm saying this is all part of a playbook that's been successful before, and it's reductionist to not blame the USA for Venezuela's decline.
[1]: https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Maha...
> On May 6, with eight months left before he vacates the White House, Mr. Obama passed a somber, little-noticed milestone: He has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president.
It wasn't all inherited conflicts. He also oversaw the 2011 intervention in Libya, the 2014 involvement in Syria, and the 2014 re-intervention in Iraq after having withdrawn troops in 2011.
[1]: NYT: https://archive.is/diXo5
> Tapper returned to Bolton’s remark about having helped plan coups.
> Bolton said: “I’m not going to get into the specifics.”
> Tapper asked: “Successful coups?”
> Bolton said: “Well, I wrote about Venezuela in in the book and it turned out not to be successful.
> Before Bolton joined the Trump administration, it was widely reported that Trump wanted to use the US military to oust Maduro. In August 2017, Trump told reporters: “We have many options for Venezuela, this is our neighbour.”
> “We want as our principal objective the peaceful transfer of power but I will say again, as [Trump] has said from the outset, and Nicolas Maduro and those supporting him, particularly those who are not Venezuelan, should know, all options are on the table.”
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/former-senior-us-official-j...
[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
She did dedicate this prize to Trump [1]:
> I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!
She is a vocal Trump supporter after all [2].
[1]: https://x.com/MariaCorinaYA/status/1976642376119549990
[2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
As a fully remote engineering contractor I’ve been building my area of expertise, clients and connections, and so far it’s been alright. It does take work and there’s no one to guide you, but in my experience with ambition it’s doable.
Phone method:
* Find phone
* Search for the right app, before finding the right recipe
* Leave my phone on counter, constantly having to move it as I move plates, pans etc.
* Wash and dry hands after each step, before unlocking phone
* Clean it every time gunk gets to it
Meta glasses:
* They're already on, just ask for recipe
* No need to ever wash/dry hands, move a device around, or clean it since one can easily unlock it without touching it
Right? Similarly with cookbooks, the best case is great and the worst case is terrible. There's a reason there's a market for recipe websites, cookbooks, etc.
It's not scale, it's correctness.
> Consider this: electronics engineers routinely design systems with millions of components, intricate timing relationships, and complex interactions between subsystems. Yet they don’t rely on anything analogous to our type checkers.
They do. Verilog gets its name from "verification". The electronics industry has built all sorts of verification and testing software and equipment to essentially do the same things as type-checkers; ensure that inputs yield the right outputs, and some sort of assurance this is true all the time.
> We’ve created systems so intricate and interconnected that human reasoning fails, then declared the tools that help us navigate this complexity to be essential.
That's just how complexity works. We've created cities so large we need maps to navigate them. We've created so much medical knowledge, we need specialists. This last one is a good analogy— our bodies are so complex we still don't fully understand them. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them.
> It’s like building a maze so convoluted that you need a GPS to walk through it, then concluding that GPSs are fundamental to architecture.
As similar as this sounds to the statement I made about cities above, this sentence is flawed in that GPSs in no way fundamental to architecture. They're fundamental to quick navigation. You can live without a GPS, but you'll take more wrong turns if you're not familiar with a place.
CAD is fundamental to architecture, and helps both build cheaper and avoid mistakes.
> The missing piece is programming languages and development environments designed from the ground up for this isolated, message-passing world. Languages where time is a first-class concept, where components are naturally isolated, and where simple data formats enable universal composition. Tools that make it as easy to wire together distributed components as it is to pipe together UNIX commands.
This is a bad conclusion because anyone who was worked with microservices and distributed systems will know– they don't reduce complexity, they just try hide it.
We'd like to believe we can create a big system out of little system— and that is true. That's how programming languages work, and the reason functions, modules, classes, etc exist. Logic can be encapsulated.
We'd also like to believe we can completely decouple these systems, so that when my team works in the "users" service, I can just ship code and not have to worry about any of the other teams' work. This is not true. If my system changes its output, it'll have downstream effects— wether it be in the same, type-checked program or a separate program consuming it. The only difference is in the former case I realize my change will break something and I am told to mind the change as I write the code for it— In the latter, I don't. Independently deployable components come in two flavours— non-typechecked and error prone due to version drift and unintended API changes, or typechecked, which is essentially a mono-system but with extra steps.
it does
That sounds like hedonism, not happiness.
> But the life I choose is hard because doing hard things is good and fulfilling.
Fulfillment is a big component of happiness. Aristotle famously contrasted hedonism (seeking pleasure) and eudaimonia (meaning and fulfillment) in Ethics iirc and mostly agreed with you— happiness is found eudamonia, not hedonism.
I'll also mention, hedonism is most often associated with money, because pleasures can be bought, but eudaimonia is only achieved through meaning, wisdom, action, etc.
That 5%-20% is worth it now because no one else can fabricate competing chips. In a competitive market, 5%-20% can be the difference between having the price edge or not. I understand why the USA wants TSMC to manufacture outside of Taiwan, but perhaps it makes sense to move it not the USA but, say, Mexico?
Chinese car companies seem to be slowly but surely rolling American car companies in international markets with great value at low prices. The move in this market evidently isn't to move manufacturing away from Mexico at a 5%-20% increase in price.
In the chip market there's less immediate competition, but I can only imagine it'll come. Hopefully economies of scale would have removed this extra 5%-20% by the time China catches up?
I'm guessing there's no size requirements? If so it might be a good idea to just print four on an A4, and have one folded in your wallet, one tucked in your bag-pack, one in the car, etc.
There's color in nature beyond life, such as in minerals and other chemicals. There's also color in life that isn't necessarily meant to convey something —such as the green of plants or the red in blood— that could be useful for finding food, for example. Interestingly, hemoglobin seems to have come to be > 400 mya too [1].
Moreover, color can help with contrast in vision. Two materials could reflect the same amount of light, but in different wavelengths.
[1]: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/ancient-blood-lines-t...
My guess is whatever system downdetector uses to "detect downtime" relies on either GCP or Cloudflare (also having issues at the moment: https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/)
In the general I kind of disagree with this. I am not a lawyer, so I don't know all the details, but if you look for it, you should be able to find the line since it's generally illegal to mislead customers. There's also a whole set of contractural and perhaps even legal obligations when it comes to investors.
For contracts and the law to be enforceable, they need draw lines as clearly as possible. There's always some amount of details that are up to interpretation, but companies make sure to pay legal counsel to make sure they don't cross these lines.
Now, specifically in this case, I do agree with you. This case doesn't seem to be a legal matter of customer or investor misleadings (thus far). Viola Credit did seize $37 million, so IMO there clearly was a violation of contract in all this, but it seems like that had nothing to do with the whole AI overselling.
Of all people, I would expect him to know this sort of information ahead of time, although maybe the booster failure was planned but he was bummed about some some of the other things that didn't work well.
[1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/army/corporate/ie-map-divisions.htm...
Canada wouldn't keep its arms closed as it looses its most profitable province, connection to its western ocean, and over 11% of its population. Unless the USA vows to defend Alberta, this would certainly mean Canadian troops marching towards Edmonton. It's an existential threat. Looking at the map, it splits Canada in two.
I'm not saying this would mean war. Alberta doesn't have the right geography or military power to fight a war with Canada, unlike, say, the South in the American Civil War. Canadian troops would into Edmonton with little resistance and Alberta would return to Canada.
The only way Alberta could remain independent is if the USA defended it. I don't think this would mean war either— Canada would never go to war with the United States. At most troops from both sides would be positioned on each side of the border, to show they mean business, but Canada wouldn't fire a shot.
Knowing thus, that Alberta depends on them for both trade and defense (reminder, Alberta is land-locked and could only trade with the USA or Canada), and given their recent expansionist rhetoric, would the USA really opt to keep Alberta as an independent country they spent money defending, but get no taxes or land jurisdiction from, or would they expect to eventually incorporate it?
I'm Latin-American, so this doesn't sound at all nutty to me. The USA has long been doing this: from successful attempts promoting separatism in Panama and Texas, to failed attempt in Sonora and Baja California (officially a private citizen acting in his own accord, but conveniently enjoying the complacency of the US Government). It's one of the strategies big powers use, and there's more examples of this in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world.
I think it's worth considering that perhaps this isn't Russian-fueled separatism, but American-fueled. The would gain a lot USA from an independent Alberta. It'd go the way of Texas— independent for about a year and then incorporated into the United States. Moreover, Alberta statehood would create a geographical rift in Canada that would place immense pressure on British Columbia to go independent or join the United States too.
It would also make the future annexation of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon much more likely, which would not only give the USA better access to the North-West Passage [1] and a wealth of resources, but it would connect Alaska to the rest of the continental USA.
[1]: https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/future-northern-sea-route...
The only way this could happen is if the only other country Alberta borders, the United States, strongly supports the separation— strongly enough to break ties with Canada over it that is. And if it does, I suspect Alberta wouldn't be independent very long. All trade and most defense would be with and thanks to the United States. It'd be easy for the USA to annex Alberta.