Earlier quoted context omitted.
Will the graph ever change? Is this a one-time computation?
One time.
Also... is it possible for you to add nodes? Ie split a N>40 node into two nodes.
Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
371–380 of 486 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am building a project ( https://linklonk.com ) that does information discovery in a way that respects your attention. In short, when you upvote content you connect to other people upvoted that content and to feeds that posted that content. So to get your attention other users need to prove to be a good curator of content for you. I'm planning to do a "Show HN" post next week for it and would appreciate any feedback…
Bug report: the UI on interacting with posts in the “From feeds and users that recommended this” section is broken.
Thank you! Indeed, the upvote button on those item-based recommendations didn't work. It is fixed now.
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#373Yeah, this week I've restarted my scanning tunnel microscope that I'm failing to make work for years... The current one is a standard pair of long metal bars with the piezoelectric component on one end, with 2 screws, and a 3rd screw on the other end. My problem is that it doesn't matter how I design the thing, either the screws offer too little precision so I can't help but to crush the tip into the sample every tim…
It sounds like you need to add a "stage" to help position your sample. Flexures are systems that bend to perform motion, and can do surprising things that you can't do with joined together machined pieces. Here's an open source stage project using flexures that will likely help https://openflexure.org/projects/blockstage/ Also, see Dan Gelbart's 18 video series about building prototypes https://www.youtube.com/watch?…
I'm a fan of this project, but flexures are antithetical to an STM assembly. And STM needs very rigid components, the smallest vibration can interact with the height adjustment and push the tip into the sample.
But it's a great assembly for anything that doesn't have a feedback on the positioning.
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#374Economically sustainable and ethical monetization of user-generated-content games. The closest most known example of this kind of game nowadays is Roblox, but I'm thinking of things more like Mario Maker or the older-generation Atmosphir/GameGlobe-likes. Unlike "modding platforms" or simulators/sandboxes/platforms such as Flight Simulator, VRChat or ARMA, these games' content are created by regular players with no te…
My favorite Microtransaction systems are in Counter-Strike Global Offensive and Planetside 2.
Planetside 2 has very slight pay to win mechanics in the form of subscriptions for more xp, but it doesn't feel bad to play without pay.
Counter-strike on the other hand (and I think so other valve games too) have just about the perfect model in my mind. There are no advantages you get by paying, only status. The skins that you can buy and sell look cool but are purely cosmetic.
Even with this in mind people spend quite a lot of money (we're talking hundreds of dollars for one gun skin in some cases). It always seemed like a great way to generate revenue ethically.
One thing I will note with that model is they still have the gambling mechanics with the "crates" that open random skins. You could probably crank it up one more ethical notch by getting rid of those or trying to make them less addictive.
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#375I’m working on a MEMS problem. I need to be able to 3D print micron (or even sub micron) scale features for a very high aspect ratio MEMS which uses electromagnets to actuate. Only problem is the leading candidate technology EFAB (electrochemical fabrication) only works with conductive materials. Does anyone know of a technology which provides similar abilities to EFAB but can also print features with non conductive…
Could you use a conductive material, then deposit an insulating coating on top, or oxidize the material on top, making it an insulator?
Aluminum can be anodized, then sealed. As can a number of other metals.
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#376Working to enable users of https://www.DreamList.com to record audio of any length and see it transcribed, ideally at the same time as the recording, while the recording is also saved. The goal is for grandparents to save stories for loved ones and not worry about quality of the transcription - just talk. When the recording is saved, the transcription can be redone or tweaked if needed later, but the memory is not lo…
I worked on this for a couple years during a previous startup attempt.
I designed a custom STT model via Kaldi [0] and hosted it using a modified version of this server [1]. I deployed it to a 4GB EC2 instance with configurable docker layers (one for core utils, one for speech utils, one for the model) so we could spin up as many servers as we needed for each language.
I would recommend the WebRTC or Gstreamer approach, but I wouldn't recommend trying to build your own model. It's really hard. Google's Cloud API [2] works well across lots of accents and the price is honestly about the same as running your own server. If you want to host your own STT (for privacy or whatever), I'd recommend using Coqui [3] (from the guys that ran Mozilla's OpenSpeech program). Note that this will likely be much, much worse on accents than Google's model.
[1]: https://github.com/alumae/kaldi-gstreamer-server
[2]: https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text
Edit: Forgot to mention, there's also a YC company called Deepgram that provides ASR/STT as a service, you could give them a shot: https://deepgram.com/
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try the 28hour day. Once your kids are sufficiently tired, they'll go to bed by themselves. https://xkcd.com/320/
... not a parent? (The only thing worse than trying to get a child who isn't tired to go to sleep is a child who is too tired to go to sleep.)
... I've got two! (0.3y, 2.7y)
Apparently I also still have a sense of humor. Or maybe I don't, because perhaps pretending one doesn't get the joke of doubling down on xkcd silliness is perhaps a joke in itself, which I didn't get.
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#378Yeah, this week I've restarted my scanning tunnel microscope that I'm failing to make work for years... The current one is a standard pair of long metal bars with the piezoelectric component on one end, with 2 screws, and a 3rd screw on the other end. My problem is that it doesn't matter how I design the thing, either the screws offer too little precision so I can't help but to crush the tip into the sample every tim…
Adding another step (not a problem, just maybe a solution), a quick estimate says that if I place a few kHz signal at the sample, it will induce enough current at the tip to be detected by the preamp when the distance reaches the micrometers. That's the same range you want to stop the approximation, so it may be a nice proximity signal. I've got to try this on my next attempt.
Sounds good!
In the future, if you'd like even more precise measurements, theoretically you could use 2 different frequencies or a reflected source, and look at the interference or superposition of the waves.
I'm by no means an expert in this, but I've heard that optical measurement (eg: laser + Michelson interferometer) could theoretically take you down to the nanometer range.
But it's easy to go overboard with this, haha.
https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-20-5-56...
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0957-0233/9/7/004
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#379I could really use some help with adversarial attacks. If there's someone trying to use CV to recognize stuff and we are trying to prevent it (basically, a black box situation) - is it viable to use adversarial attacks at all? Will it work long term? Can they overcome our AA by downsampling and adding noise? Can we make another AA that would still prevent them using CV? If it's better to chat elsewhere - my Twitter i…
If you have access to their model it's possible, and adversarial attacks can be made to survive different sorts of processing. But like all piracy prevention tools it's a game of cat and mouse so if you're working against an intelligent adversary it'll come down to how many resources each of you can contribute to this fight. (Btw your twitter is not in your profile. Not that I have anything to add in private, just th…
No, the case is not having their model. I understand it's a game of cat and mouse, but this one case is gonna have a very quick iteration cycle, so I'm not sure if it's worth trying at all, it's not the same thing to test an adversarial attack on a self driving car once.
Thanks, it didn't update my profile for some reason, fixed!
Re: Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a software problem? There are a lot of open sources (with their differences) platforms. From old forums, to more modern, etc. I think the problem is that people don't want or don't know how to use a forum. This is based in my experience: - Old people: They started to use internet recently so they are used to social networks (Facebook, Instagram), and newspapers websites. - Young people: Hard to make them use…
The value of a forum is not to get everyone. It is actually in limiting a community to the most mature voices and thoughtful people. There's little upside to having teenagers in a forum, for example, unless you're looking to monetize.
I used many old school forums in the pre-social media days. "Mature voices and thoughtful people" were quite rare.