wlesieutre's favorites

		morninglight 17 days ago \| parent \| context \| on: How Not to Buy a SSD Amazon's problems with fraudulent memory products were well documented in 2023 when GRC published their test results for a dozen such drives purchased from the site. In response, GRC developed a free program, called "ValiDrive", to scan and test drives for this growing problem. ValiDrive performs a quick, random-sequence spot-check across the drive's entire declared storage space. At every location it verifies the successful storage and retrieval of random (unspoofable) test data. https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm The program has been extensively tested, is freely downloadable and comes from a well respected site with a long history in the security business. Steve Gibson announced this development in 2023 and it has been downloaded over 600,000 times. https://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm In addition to this effort, Steve has been creating an in-depth weekly podcast called "Security Now" for over 20 years. An archive of all 1039 podcasts and transcripts can be found online where they are freely downloadable. https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
		zoogeny on Feb 28, 2024 \| parent \| context \| on: Look, ma, no matrices One of my favorite math/graphics YouTube creators Freya Holmér did an excellent intro to Geometric Algebra not that long ago [1]. If you have any interest in 3d graphics (especially but no limited to splines/Bezier curves) then be sure to check out all of their videos. I personally have always struggled with linear algebra and I tend to find these Clifford Algebra approaches much more intuitive. 1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htYh-Tq7ZBI&ab_channel=Freya...
		eurekin on Nov 24, 2023 \| parent \| context \| on: Generative AI for Beginners I watched things mentioned in sibling comments, but didn't help. Until I found this: https://www.youtube.com/@algorithmicsimplicity Instantly clicked. Both convolution and transformer networks. EDIT: for the purpose of visualization, I highly recommend following channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMXuk97NeSI&t=207s It nicely explains and shows concepts of stride, features, window size, input to output size relation - in convolutional NN
		zen_1 on Aug 8, 2023 \| parent \| context \| on: I would rather see my books get pirated than this cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough
		swighton on Aug 7, 2023 \| parent \| context \| on: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've m... I made a baseball bat that uses explosives to add a bunch of energy to your swing and hit a baseball really far. It uses the explosive blanks normally used to shoot nails into concrete (e.g. ramset). It worked way better than I expected, didn't have a kick, and turned out to be just a really neat thing to look at while sipping a frosty beverage. I also made a video about it if you're interested: https://youtu.be/Puo6Vgcbxps
		Oarch on July 7, 2023 \| parent \| context \| on: Why are there no startups in the real estate const... There's loads! Historically it's not seen much investment, there are definite cultural issues but I see the sector as a sleeping giant that's often overlooked. Here's a long lists of startups: www.aecplustech.com Regular Conferences: NXT DEV, AEC Tech run by Thornton Tomasetti, MIPIM NY is a big PropTech event I work for a construction tech startup (KOPE.ai) which is building a platform to bring the world of construction system manufacturing closer to that of architectural design.
		strogonoff on June 27, 2023 \| parent \| context \| on: macOS command-line tools you might not know about You can use sips together with iconutil to generate a complete .icns file for your app from a single 1024 by 1024 PNG without any third party software: mkdir MyIcon.iconset cp Icon1024.png MyIcon.iconset/icon_512x512@2x.png sips -z 16 16 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_16x16.png sips -z 32 32 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_16x16@2x.png sips -z 32 32 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_32x32.png sips -z 64 64 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_32x32@2x.png sips -z 128 128 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_128x128.png sips -z 256 256 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_128x128@2x.png sips -z 256 256 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_256x256.png sips -z 512 512 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_256x256@2x.png sips -z 512 512 Icon1024.png --out MyIcon.iconset/icon_512x512.png iconutil -c icns MyIcon.iconset As a bonus, generate .ico with ffmpeg: `ffmpeg -i MyIcon.iconset/icon_256x256.png icon.ico` Incidentally, does anyone know enough about the way sips scales PNGs to confirm that it makes sense to create the 16px version straight from 1024px, as opposed to basing it off 32px (and all the way up)? I.e., is it better to downscale in fewer steps (as currently) or in smaller steps?
		ggambetta on Aug 4, 2022 \| parent \| context \| on: Ask HN: What HN post made you money? This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19584921 And it wasn't even my post! A long time ago I found myself teaching Computer Graphics at my alma mater. Over the following years my approach to the subject evolved, and I really got the hang of it. After I stopped teaching, I took my notes, handouts and slides, and made them into a series of articles that I put on my website, where they remained in relative obscurity. Hacker News managed to find it every once in a while, and it was generally well received, but nothing came out of this. Until April 2019, when that post made the HN front page again, except this time it caught the attention of an editor in No Starch Press. Long story short, my materials are now a book, Computer Graphics from Scratch, sold by No Starch Press [0], and also available for free on my website [1]. This genuinely wouldn’t have happened without your support. THANK YOU, HN community :) [0] https://nostarch.com/computer-graphics-scratch [1] http://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch
		f38zf5vdt on June 2, 2022 \| parent \| context \| on: The Hidden Worlds of the Klein Tools TI250 Thermal... > The camera is great but the Seek Thermal app is a privacy spyware tracker. It won't run without location and microphone access. At all... Non-starter for me. FYI. You can just buy FLIR thermal sensors directly and throw them onto a board then use that as a webcam. There's a whole company dedicated to that: https://groupgets.com/manufacturers/getlab
		Banana699 on April 22, 2022 \| parent \| context \| on: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history? >But how does the COMPUTER know what to do? Ben Eater is amazing, but his series in my very humble opinion isn't the best answer to this question. I found the emphasis on the breadboard and the particulars of physical implementation getting in the way of a clean pedagogical introduction to logic circuits as a DAG of abstract computational elements implementing function from {0,1}^n -> {0,1}^m (which we then implement with real circuits in whatever medium and form we choose), it's very "DIY" and maker-oriented in nature. This doesn't negate it's status as a masterpiece of educational vlogs, I just feel it leaves a first-time learner hanging on some very important questions. The single best answer I have ever seen to this question is the outstanding The Elements Of Computing Systems[1], better known as the NandToTetris course[2][3]. You literally start with Nand and build a computer, an assembler, a VM, a compiler, a simple runtime library, and - finally - Tetris running on top of all that. It's one of the best introductions to computers and computer science I have ever seen in my life, at once a textbook and a work of science communication. It comes with it's own software suit[4], and the first 4 chapters of the book (from Nand to a fully functional computer capable of running machine code) are gamified in [5]. [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elements-computing-systems [2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrDd_kMiAuNmSb-CKWQqq... [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrDd_kMiAuNmllp9vuPqC... [4] https://www.nand2tetris.org/software [5] https://nandgame.com/
		rspoerri on Dec 13, 2021 \| parent \| context \| on: Reimagining projections for the interactive maps e... Maybe check out Mia's Worldmapgenerator: https://www.worldmapgenerator.com/ The first version of this project is from 2013, this version is afaik from 2017 and covers this topic the best way i've seen.
		mellavora on Dec 6, 2021 \| parent \| context \| on: Ikea Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Review and Ac... I'm a fan of the airgradient, they offer a very nice DIY. You can build a quality sensor for under $50. https://www.airgradient.com/diy/ Components: `Wemos D1 Mini USD 2.24 Wemos OLED display USD 2.47 Plantower PMS5003 PM Sensor USD 13.89 Senseair S8 CO2 Sensor USD 28.00 SHT30 or SHT31 Temperature and Humidity Sensor Module USD 2.55` I think the lead article was posted by the founder of airgradient. I've had some email exchanges with him, he is supportive and helpful.
		blutack on Sept 22, 2021 \| parent \| context \| on: DIY RGB Icosahedron WLED is also fantastic if you are using WS/APA/STK style addressable LEDs. You just need a dirt cheap ESP32/8266 and you get a wifi connected lamp with a lovely web ui, cool animations, android app, timers, home automation integrations etc etc. https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED
		ignoramous on Sept 7, 2021 \| parent \| context \| on: MangaDex infrastructure overview > Twitter's a good example. Mike Cvet's talk about Twitter's fan-in/fan-out problem and its solution makes for a fascinating watch: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/WEgCjwyXvwc
		dublinben on March 9, 2020 \| parent \| context \| on: The Warby Parker clones are imploding You can buy full-quality Essilor lenses on EyeBuyDirect.com with very little markup. They're still part of the EssilorLuxottica empire, but at a fraction of the price.
		hv42 on Feb 28, 2020 \| parent \| context \| on: Ant Design 4.0 The previous version was not really good on the accessibility side of things. See this article for example: https://darekkay.com/blog/accessible-ui-frameworks/ Maybe it has improved now?
		linuxlizard on Dec 24, 2019 \| parent \| context \| on: My Business Card Runs Linux Start with an Arduino and the Adafruit tutorials. Very gentle learning curve. https://learn.adafruit.com/category/learn-arduino From there, can decide where your interests might be. To continue with Arduino hardware but without the IDE, I'd recommend _AVR Programming_ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/make-avr-programming/97... For other low level programming, Atmel's AVR Studio and their dev boards are incredibley newcomer friendly. Their source level debugger (with the debug coprocessor) is a miracle. If you'd like to get into "big iron", Embedded Linux is amazing. Raspberry Pi is a great start (lots of GPIOS programmable from userspace). To get into embedded linux kernel programming, start with a loadable module on the Ras-Pi. Also, build/load your own Ras-Pi kernel. Other folks suggested the ESP8266 which is also great fun to use. Edit: Learn C. Lots and lots of C. Embedded dev is almost all C. A teeny bit of ASM, sometimes C++. But almost all of it will be in C.
		aaronbrethorst on Dec 5, 2018 \| parent \| context \| on: Samsung used my DSLR photo to fake their phone’s “... Sidebar: Lightroom catalogs are simply sqlite3 databases with a different file suffix. If you ever have corruption issues with them, you can open them up in sqlite3 and export or repair as you see fit.
		adamnemecek on Jan 19, 2017 \| parent \| context \| on: A trip down the League of Legends graphics pipelin... Few things consistently blow my mind as insane graphics demos https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dfGzS (or basically anything on that site) How is that 400 lines of code. Or this one which even generates the sound on the GPU https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ts3z2 With the wide adoption of WebGL, it's a good time to get involved in graphics. Furthermore, GPUs are taking over esp. with the advent of machine learning (nvidia stock grew ~3x, amd ~5x last year). The stuff nvidia has been recently doing is kinda crazy. I wouldn't be surprised if in 15 years, instead of AWS, we are using geforce cloud or smth, just because nvidia will have an easier time building a cloud offering than amazon will have building a gpu. These are some good resources to get started with graphics/games # WebGL Programming Guide: Interactive 3D Graphics Programming with WebGL https://www.amazon.com/WebGL-Programming-Guide-Interactive-G... Historically, C++ has definitely been THE language for doing graphics but if you are starting these these, you would have to have really compelling reasons to start with C++ and not JavaScript and WebGL. And that's coming from someone who actually likes C++ and used to write it professionally. # Book of Shaders https://thebookofshaders.com/ # Game Programming Patterns http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Patterns-Robert-Nyst... HN's own @munificent wrote a book discussing the most important design patterns in game design. Good book applicable beyond games. # Game engine architecture https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Architecture-Second-Jason-Greg... # Computer graphics: Principles and Practice https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... This is more of college textbook if you'd prefer that but the WebGL one is more accessible and less dry. # Physically Based Rendering & Real-Time Rendering These discuss some state of the art techniques in computer graphics. I'm not going to claim to have really read them but from what I've seen they are very solid. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Third-Impl...