Wulfsta's recent activity

  1. Comment on What is China’s DeepSeek and why is it freaking out the AI world? in ~tech

    Wulfsta
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    I recall a leaked memo along the lines of “Google has no moat,” taking about the advances that the open source community were making towards individually accessible AI models. This feels similar -...

    I recall a leaked memo along the lines of “Google has no moat,” taking about the advances that the open source community were making towards individually accessible AI models. This feels similar - the technology is still so new that there is a ton of low hanging fruit left in the field, mostly limited by funding discovery of new techniques.

    13 votes
  2. Comment on US President Donald Trump pardons Silk Road dark web market creator Ross Ulbricht in ~society

    Wulfsta
    Link
    This one was not on my bingo card…

    This one was not on my bingo card…

    3 votes
  3. Comment on Fidget in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link
    Fidget is now "loudly public!" This is exciting for me because I am a huge fan of this manner of representing 3D objects, and have even used Fidget for one of my own projects.

    Fidget is now "loudly public!"

    Fidget is a library for representing, compiling, and evaluating large-scale math expressions, i.e. hundreds or thousands of arithmetic clauses. It's mainly designed as a backend for implicit surfaces, but the library is flexible enough for many different uses!

    This is exciting for me because I am a huge fan of this manner of representing 3D objects, and have even used Fidget for one of my own projects.

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    Well, the core difference is that this format represents volumes rather than boundary surfaces. That is, formats like STL and STEP only hold data about the boundaries of the objects they...

    Well, the core difference is that this format represents volumes rather than boundary surfaces. That is, formats like STL and STEP only hold data about the boundaries of the objects they represent, whereas in this representation you actually have to figure out where these boundaries are (where the equation that represents the surface is satisfied). The arguably best technique used to do this (at least to my knowledge about the state of the art) is dual contouring. Since Fidget is extremely fast at this, it exposes simple manipulations of the representation (as long as the SDF is “correct”) to achieve things like determining the path of a perimeter. In my opinion, these should also allow for extremely simple manipulations for top and bottom surface detection, infill generation (of certain kinds of infill), and interesting opportunities for things like support generation. Broadly, it is interesting to me because I think these manipulations, possibly combined with some post-processing of the generated paths, would be easier to write and maintain than the alternatives that already exist. It is also not necessarily less computationally intense than current slicers, and writing transformations to go from boundary surface representations to correct SDFs is nontrivial, but I think doable. I will likely return to working on it if Fidget implements 2D path generation, so I don’t have to extract paths from generated 3D meshes, with the next milestone to be slicing a benchy.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link
    I wrote an extremely barebones 3D printer slicer for implicit surfaces over the course of a weekend, so here it is, I guess! Much of the reasoning can be found in the README, happy to answer any...

    I wrote an extremely barebones 3D printer slicer for implicit surfaces over the course of a weekend, so here it is, I guess! Much of the reasoning can be found in the README, happy to answer any questions.

    WeekendSlicer

    5 votes
  6. Comment on Man suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO is ordered held without bail after brief court appearance in Pennsylvania in ~news

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    The jerk of change is increasing? /noise

    The jerk of change is increasing?

    /noise

    8 votes
  7. Comment on US officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack in ~tech

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    I haven’t had issues with desktop element, but I agree that mobile clients are lackluster.

    I haven’t had issues with desktop element, but I agree that mobile clients are lackluster.

    1 vote
  8. Comment on US officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack in ~tech

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet: Matrix. It is a federated chat protocol, so you can self host to control your own data. Major projects like NixOS use it.

    Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet: Matrix. It is a federated chat protocol, so you can self host to control your own data. Major projects like NixOS use it.

    7 votes
  9. Comment on MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia in ~tech

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    It’s funny you put it this way; arguably privately held companies are much better at this, but there are few large companies that are privately held.

    I've often mused that a fat lot of the enshittification we all bemoan could be solved if we can just figure out a way to properly incentivize companies to be more interested in the products and services they provide rather than stock price and gross profits.

    It’s funny you put it this way; arguably privately held companies are much better at this, but there are few large companies that are privately held.

    7 votes
  10. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link
    My same70 (Duet3D 6HC) speedup got merged into Klipper! Additionally a new package and module for prometheus-klipper-exporter got merged into nixpkgs/NixOS! My project for the last few days has...

    My same70 (Duet3D 6HC) speedup got merged into Klipper! Additionally a new package and module for prometheus-klipper-exporter got merged into nixpkgs/NixOS!

    My project for the last few days has been getting the LIS3DH accelerometer on my printer working over I2C. The Duet3D Toolboard 1LC has one onboard, and it makes sense to have an implementation. Here is that work, will need some minor refactoring once another set of commits goes into Klipper to get merged. It has been a moderately successful couple of weeks for my 3D printing hobby.

    4 votes
  11. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link
    Following up on my last post, I managed almost four times speedup for Klipper on the same70. Here is the change. Figuring out the DMA hardware was a massive pain. Next I might get the LIS3DH...

    Following up on my last post, I managed almost four times speedup for Klipper on the same70. Here is the change. Figuring out the DMA hardware was a massive pain.

    Next I might get the LIS3DH working over I2C so my toolboard has a functioning accelerometer.

    3 votes
  12. Comment on Kill Bill x Rav x Hatsune Miku - THINGS WILL GET MUCH WORSE FROM HERE (2024) in ~music

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    Yeah - I listened to it when it released and wasn’t liking it initially, but it grew on me after a few closer listens.

    Yeah - I listened to it when it released and wasn’t liking it initially, but it grew on me after a few closer listens.

    1 vote
  13. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    Well, Klipper currently runs my printer, and I (with a decent amount of debugging help from another developer) added the Duet 1LC support to it already - I wanted to try Klipper out rather than...

    Well, Klipper currently runs my printer, and I (with a decent amount of debugging help from another developer) added the Duet 1LC support to it already - I wanted to try Klipper out rather than RepRapFirmware due to some issues I was having with RRF. I just got annoyed that I can’t run higher microsteps on the 6HC and started looking into it.

    And you are not far off - there is a GCC annotation that is also used for hot path functions in Klipper (I think, since the linker mentions RAM functions) that I believe you are talking about. This is a little heavier, since it is not so hardware agnostic as that.

    1 vote
  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    Wulfsta
    Link
    After sitting down for a few hours and going over the microcontroller manual, then confirming with another developer, I realized that the ATSAME70 (Duet 6HC) runs slowly in Klipper because every...

    After sitting down for a few hours and going over the microcontroller manual, then confirming with another developer, I realized that the ATSAME70 (Duet 6HC) runs slowly in Klipper because every instruction is fetched from flash memory, over a bus that is running at half the frequency of the processor. That is, the chip runs at 300MHz, but is really running at a maximum of 150MHz due to the bus (even RAM access happens over this bus), and probably much slower because we have to wait a certain number of cycles to read from flash. I started tinkering with enabling caches, but realized that Klipper is small enough to fit entirely in the Instruction Tightly Coupled Memory (ITCM) on this chip with room to spare. My current plan is to try loading Klipper into flash with virtual memory addresses that point to the ITCM, then using the Direct Memory Access (DMA) controller on the chip to copy the entirety of Klipper into the ITCM before enabling the ITCM. I have to use the DMA hardware because there is a seamless remapping that happens from the ITCM addresses to the beginning of flash memory when the ITCM is disabled, but DMA can write to those addresses without getting remapped. I’m trying to minimize modifications to the linker script as much as possible, to make it easier to merge upstream. After this I will try to enable the Data Cache in the processor, because all of the data should simply fit directly into it, and then everything will be able to run at 300MHz.

    3 votes
  15. Comment on Australians get 'right to disconnect' after working hours in ~life

    Wulfsta
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    How does this impact salaried employees that go on call?

    How does this impact salaried employees that go on call?

    5 votes
  16. Comment on I hate alcohol. Totally hate it. in ~talk

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    I guess I should have clarified that I think this is the average case for folks brewing coffee at home and most restaurants. I also certainly enjoy milk and espresso drinks, so I would be in the...

    I guess I should have clarified that I think this is the average case for folks brewing coffee at home and most restaurants. I also certainly enjoy milk and espresso drinks, so I would be in the category of adding something to my coffee as well!

  17. Comment on I hate alcohol. Totally hate it. in ~talk

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    My point is that you are discounting the size of the market for flavorful alcoholic beverages, this reads as an assertion of that to me. I don’t really want to argue semantics though, so okay.

    Very few people enjoy alcoholic beverages for the taste alone. It's disgusting.

    My point is that you are discounting the size of the market for flavorful alcoholic beverages, this reads as an assertion of that to me. I don’t really want to argue semantics though, so okay.

    3 votes
  18. Comment on I hate alcohol. Totally hate it. in ~talk

    Wulfsta
    Link Parent
    I’d pose that people bury the flavor of coffee with cream and sugar because the coffee itself is not good, either from a bad roast, or bad brew…

    I’d pose that people bury the flavor of coffee with cream and sugar because the coffee itself is not good, either from a bad roast, or bad brew…

    7 votes