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kregasaurusrex

1,113 karma · joined February 11, 2014

Competitive programmer & senior full stack (Python, C#, React) engineer. Follow me on X @myhnusername
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kregasaurusrex··on Apple, Google, Facebook's AV1 standards group under EU antitrust investigation
So a standard for interoperability developed with 'patent ceasefires' saying party X won't sue party Y if both share their patent portfolios with one another is considered to be anti-competitive behavior? In the US this is fairly common among tech companies that perfom this sharing under FRAND terms with one another, and saves a lot of headache in avoiding litigation.

The most popular existing codec AVC/H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 is owned by the MPEGLA group with ~5500 active patents[0] in its portfolio, and the royalty sharing agreements[1] involved are free in small volumes yet become expensive at scale. A multi-tier fee structure for both hardware OEMs (think like the MPEG-2 license fee on the raspberry pi) and video distributors (Netflix et al) exist, where several large tech companies decided to band together in order to create a codec which isn't at the mercy of paying these license fees.

However, Sisvel wants to make their case against AOMedia's goal of a widely distributed free codec and extract up to 32 cents per device[2] based on their pool of a couple hundred patents[3] for both VP9 and AV1 codecs. We'll likely see this go to court and possibly drawn out over a long stretch of time if FRAND terms aren't able to be agreed upon between these parties.

Having a uniform royalty-free standard would be a net win for everyone involved- chip designers can add in an AV1 encoder/decoder without paying a license fee, software companies can freely encode & distribute AV1 videos, and end users have access to free video editing tools that wouldn't need to pay MPEGLA/Sisvel either. The alternative is waiting for the patents to expire and continue rewarding the rent-seeking behavior of NPEs/holding companies created to extract value at every possible step.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding#Patent_h...

[1] https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avcweb.pdf Slides 7 & 8

[2] https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programs/audio-and-video-co...

[3] https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programs/audio-and-video-co...

kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: Games which will help increase my appetite for risk?
+1 Online poker was very popular in the late 00's/early 10's (Omaha hasn't had AI dominated play - yet.) where people would self-publish and distribute their tips & tricks to new players if you bought their DVD & PDF set. Decisions made at every stage impact how other players interpret and play the game, and forces you to quickly learn situational awareness in order to best adapt in a changing environment. You could start out with memorizing the starting hand probabilities, read what the strongest 5-card combo on the board could be, and then aspire towards playing GTO to maximize the number of hands won. Even though you'd only be playing with a few dollars, the human element of stubbornness kicks in when having to top up your chips after losing a big hand, and that reward mechanism "spins the same gears" in your brain as the endgame in an RTS video game does. Not to mention the boost it gives to real-life skills of dealing with imperfect information events.
kregasaurusrex··on Uber Eats Nationwide Shipping
This sounds like a nightmare in cold chain logistics waiting to happen, where Uber brokers the deal between the end user and restaurant, then subcontracts the necessary steps out. An example from the meal kit services industry is where a truck is required to stay below 40F so that raw meat doesn't grow bacteria during transport, or else the entire truck is deemed a total loss and the affected parties have to create an entirely new shipment. There's some insulative material between the your food and the outside air but the handoffs will have to be timed well especially in LA during the summertime.

My guess is that shipping companies like UPS have built out excess cold chain capacity intended for vaccine rollout during the pandemic, and now are sitting on a lot of empty subzero-capable freezers in their warehouses that Uber is renting for pennies on the dollar. As far as how excited people are to get a glorified TV dinner of leftovers not designed to be frozen then eaten a week later? The entire idea has a bit of silliness in that you could get prime ribeyes for 2 at a high end steakhouse locally versus a stale spaghetti dinner at the same price. And the bonus of not frivilously contributing to climate change in the process.

kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: Is fake GitHub profile data a thing?
I'd say you could accomplish the same goal by making an auto-commit script to make your contribution history green (which can be done retroactively as well!) and get recruiters that are none the wiser to see what a stellar shipper you are. Heck, I can even name someone who was eventually hired at Github who did this and said it led to more conversations during interviews about how exactly it was done.
kregasaurusrex··on Electronics Flea Market
These types of meetings are more targeted towards electronics whose primary functions aren't governed by software- think like an oscilloscope that runs directly off of a series of chips instead of modern ones composed of an fully virtual stack on top of an operating system. So long as said components fall within reasonable specs (analog is typically much more forgiving than digital) and chips replaced with facsimiles these units can have a second life.
kregasaurusrex··on US Federal Reserve raises interest rates for first time since 2018
Not-quite Fiscal Theory: the fed mints a $1 trillion dollar platinum coin and lends it to congress to allocate the year's budget. The coin may not have any value beyond spot, but everyone can see that congress has a rare piece of metal!
kregasaurusrex··on Popular Patreon creators are being hit with Vimeo price hikes
I've had one creator move all their hosting over to Mega- sure they might miss out on the analytics tools/dashboards, but if your audience is mostly desktop users then they generally won't see much difference in having to unzip a video file instead of playing it from Vimeo. It's generally niche enough that a portion of monthly Patreon subs can make up for a YouTube video being demonetized because of various arbitrary reasons while not disrupting their main income source.

Heck, it's probably saving money being on the 10€/mo tier providing 2 TB of bandwidth while Vimeo wants to charge an order of magnitude more for essentially the same functionality, maybe only an inconvenience for those that want to watch on their phone during a commute or something similar.

kregasaurusrex··on Lootboxes in FIFA now allowed by highest Dutch court
As a kid I used to play the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game a lot, and the odds for getting cards of certain rarities were published on the packaging so you knew how many packs on average it would take to hit a super rare/ultra rare card. There were 8 commons and one rare slot per pack which had a 1:5 chance of being a super rare, 1:12 for an ultra rare, and 1:23 for a secret rare.[0]

Additionally the cards had actual utility where the rarest cards often had better effects than commons and decks would be built around these rarer cards to be used in a duel. For games like Fortnite where the items in the lootboxes are purely cosmetic, the kids who are playing know that they aren't getting any competitive advantages with different skins in playing. However this becomes a bit murkier in games like FIFA and Star Wars Battlefront 2, where the rarest items from lootboxes contained items that were better than those obtained through leveling up alone. The article says that "92 percent of the FIFA boxes are not bought with real money, but unlocked via football matches and are therefore simply part of the game of skill." which implies players can expect to get a reasonable number of good players to build a team with and a team constructed of said players on aggregate would not provide a significant competitive advantage.

My opinion is that players should spend time in games because they consider it to be fun rather than to be the best for the sake of being the best, and the in-game whales who spend the most $ on a game shouldn't be overpowered to the point where free to play players should feel they need to spend money to win.

[0] https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Booster_Pack

kregasaurusrex··on Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
It's boilerplate stuff, but my only experience with Bandcamp is buying a couple FLAC quality albums from artists that are too small to be signed onto a structured record label, or don't want to have additional middlemen between them and their fans. Was thinking something akin to Patreon with a well-functioning desktop app that goes beyond only having music offerings, like live shows or additional interviews with the band. Though other comments saying artists may need to have an exclusivity agreement in place to get this revenue sharing arrangement may be valid, the overhead of having to go through the traditional record label/publisher model is essentially rent seeking with providing no additional value.
kregasaurusrex··on Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
When shopping for content around didgital platforms, the #1 decision that I take into account is how much of my purchase price actually goes back to the creator. Bandcamp seems to give the best cut for music, aside from directly purchasing from an artist's website, and Epic's acquisition might end up being a net positive for getting new users & overall growth. Personally I think it's a good fit and look forward to their success.
kregasaurusrex··on Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright infringement
From 1998 no less!
kregasaurusrex··on Best Wordle guessing strategy
Looks like fun!
kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: Do you have to use LinkedIn to get hired?
Disappointed to have gone through the thread only to discover there's really no middle ground- either you're going to be inundated with low-quality recruiters whose signal is arguably no better than random chance, or a recruiter glances at it to source a candidate they already know about. It's probably better to go the route of making a personal technical blog and building interesting connections through it and your Github.
kregasaurusrex··on Welcome to Waifu Labs v2: How Do AIs Create?
Ah that's alright then, thanks for the quick response. I was so happy to see your guys' booth there and own an obscure piece of internet history! https://storage.cloud.google.com/waifus-images/6b94c2ea-51be...
kregasaurusrex··on Welcome to Waifu Labs v2: How Do AIs Create?
I purchased a waifu from your vending machine (loved the blog post!) at Gen Con in 2019, but can't see the saved model in my account. Is there a way for me to get a v2 generation?
kregasaurusrex··on Show HN: Evil Wordle
One additional feature I was looking at for a personal implementation was picking the target word- how is it being chosen from the remaining letters after the player's first guess? Are you using a word that purposely uses fewer common letters from the set of remaining words?
kregasaurusrex··on Nocom – 2b2t Minecraft server exploit using Monte-Carlo localization
Thanks for the clarification!
kregasaurusrex··on Nocom – 2b2t Minecraft server exploit using Monte-Carlo localization
The code used in the exploit itself itself looks rather harmless, as it was created to be a mitigation against finding players based on previously loaded chunks. https://github.com/PaperMC/Paper/blob/ver/1.12.2/Spigot-Serv...
kregasaurusrex··on Clumps of human brain cells in a dish can learn to play Pong faster than an AI
Full paper on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.02.471005v1
kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2021)
Location: Cleveland, Ohio

Remote: Yes or Onsite

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, SQL, Numpy, Pandas, AWS, GCP, OpenCV

Github: https://github.com/kriegersaurusrex

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w4vGfcsh0lvsTvccoecYviZc...

Email: kregasaurusrex@gmail.com

I completed a bootcamp specializing in data science, and have recently been working on Leetcode & algorithm problems to broaden my job search to include data science, data engineering, python development, or more generalized software engineering. Looking for a recent grad/mid level role where I would optimally be paired with a more experienced team of coworkers. My background is in Windows IT support for the past decade and have 2 years of python coding experience.

kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: How do you start a new career with minimal qualifications?
I was in a similar situation two years ago putting in 60+ hour weeks including holidays at an IT helpdesk job, and still felt like my student debt barely had a dent to the point where my full repayment date would extend beyond 2030. My choice was to learn programming by doing challenges like HackerRank & save up to attend a coding bootcamp instead of making some numbers in some institutional bank account look slightly lower than actuarial tables would have predicted. It's a bit surprising to see most comments say to finish college where I think you would benefit more from upskilling in a trade program that has a much shorter time horizon than college to finish, where most employers do want some sort of accreditation beyond a GED instead of taking a chance on someone that's fully unproven. That said, non-traditional paths upwards exist but would likely require relocating from Indiana and networking through outreach to find what it would take to advance in a lateral career move, maybe at an industry conference or local group meetup.
kregasaurusrex··on Receiving Starlink Beacons with a HackRF Supercluster
Very cool, I didn't know there were better models available than the HackRF & LimeSDR!
kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: Integrating Fortran technical analysis stage in Python trading pipeline
Personally I've been looking for an API that includes the option greeks and doesn't cost hundreds of dollars per month. A good starting point I'd recommend is the $30/mo plan from https://twelvedata.com/pricing where you can pull down indicators that are pregenerated for a specified timeframe, and can move order execution to a faster language/platform. My background is in python which is good for EDA but there's likely to be tools made for more mature languages to interact with brokerages, and perform said signal analysis/TA with a higher throughput as well. Been busy with leetcode & interview prep so I haven't put in as much time into side projects as I could be, feel free to send an email.
kregasaurusrex··on IBM achieves quantum computing breakthrough
Article is a bit light on details, I'd wait until we see more results published and how they measure against other quantum computers like D-Wave's processors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quantum_processors
kregasaurusrex··on Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
I'm a Lambda School data science graduate that's currently looking for a job, have been doing plenty of leetcode problems and DS&A studying recently. Resume & contact info is available on my profile if your company has any openings or if you just want to chat.
kregasaurusrex··on TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do
In practice, they want to be the first people to experience the price movement on newly public information, so you're right it wouldn't be front-running, my (incorrect) interpretation was that they would 'get in front of the trade made by C*O of fictional company before anyone else notices'. It's also not considered tailgating since they have no financial relationship with any of the executives, and acting on these fully disclosed positions would be completely legal.
kregasaurusrex··on TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do
Front-running is nothing new, this is simply a game of follow-the-leader where copying a group's investment strategy is done until larger players learn to frontrun or adversarially trade against the aforementioned frontrunners entering in. For example, a scanner may pick up an SEC filing published at 4:01 PM saying that the CEO, CFO, and CIO all purchased shares in their company, and traders would buy shares aftermarket before most institutions/derivative traders would see the report tomorrow morning. I'd guess that today's active investing crowd is a lot more interested in seeing outsize short-term returns based on information asymmetry than members of congress who more likely to hold in order to get long term capital gains tax applied.
kregasaurusrex··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2021)
Location: Cleveland, Ohio

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, SQL, AWS, Numpy, Pandas, C#, OpenCV

Github: https://github.com/kriegersaurusrex

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w4vGfcsh0lvsTvccoecYviZc...

Email: kregasaurusrex@gmail.com

Looking for a data engineering/analyst position (remote preferred). I completed a bootcamp specializing in data science, and am currently working on getting an AWS certification. My background is in Windows IT for the past decade and have 2 years of python coding experience.

kregasaurusrex··on Watch Windows 95 crash live as it exceeds 49.7 days uptime [video]
Looks like the integer overflow had the system time try to start back over at zero, but that caused everything else to hang right after it did. Neat stream.
kregasaurusrex··on Vaporwave was created then destroyed by the internet (2016)
Italodisco is super underrated- it has a lot of the upbeat analog electronic dance music that many of the *waves try to recreate; and did it 40ish years ago. Always felt it was more poppy and fun than the Eurobeat songs that came afterwards like those featured in the anime series Initial D.
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