Here's[1] a more concrete source, which summarizes dithering in analog to digital converters as follows:
With no dither, each analog input voltage is assigned one and only one code. Thus, there is no difference in the output for voltages located on the same ‘‘step’’ of the ADC’s ‘‘staircase’’ transfer curve. With dither, each analog input voltage is assigned a probability distribution for being in one of several digital codes. Now, different voltages with-in the same ‘‘step’’ of the original ADC transfer function are assigned different probability distributions. Thus, one can see how the resolution of an ADC can be improved to below an LSB.
In actual film, I presume the random inconsistencies of the individual silver halide grains is the noise source, and when watching such a film, I presume the eyes are doing the averaging through persistence of vision[2].
In either case, a key point is that you can't bring back any details by adding noise after the fact.
One thing worth noting is that this extra detail from dithering can be recovered when denoising by storing the image to higher precision. This is a lot of the reason 10 bit AV1 is so popular. It turns out that by adding extra bits of image, you end up with an image that is easier to compress accurately since the encoder has lower error from quantization.
In X4, the space game[1], they simulate the entire "universe" in the background. That includes ships flying around trading, fighting, stations running short of supplies etc etc.
To have this work on a modest computer, they have multiple fidelity levels, which primarily affects observable stuff. So near the player, all details of flight, collisions, projectiles etc are simulated. Further away certain collision checks are skipped and such.
Really far away, the simulation runs at a much reduced rate, flight simulation is significantly simplified, statistical methods are used for calculating weapon damage and such.
This does have the issue of discrepancies between levels. In the lowest fidelity mode, fleet A might consistently beat fleet B, while at the highest fidelity level it can be the opposite.
That said it's quite fun in the sense that playthroughs are seldom the same, and it allows for the player to make significant impact by simply helping one faction produce more goods that allows them to build more ships etc.
Author uses Chatterbox TTS' zero-shot voice cloning to generate synthetic training data from a single phrase, Whisper STT to verify the generated voice sample to catch generation errors, and then uses the synthetic data set to fine-tune Piper TTS the standard way.
He didn't say "most" he said "a large portion", which is definitely correct since he got almost half of the votes. And he's been very clear about wanting to be a dictator, so it should come as no surprise to his voters.
Under low-heat-pumping, with minimal role of parasitics, TFTEC modules offer four times the Coefficient of Performance (CoP) advantage over bulk devices. As an example, system-level CoP with a 16-couple TFTEC module is ~ 15 for small temperature differentials of 2 °C, pumping about 1.2 W heat load using 80 mW of electric power. Such small-scale high-CoP cooling is relevant for distributed refrigeration or compartmentalized refrigeration as well as for use in future electronic thermal management
They also note that the maximum cooling power density depends inversely on thickness, and this is where the thin-film TECs like this gets most of their improvements from, compared to millimeter thick regular TECs.
Just a quick scan before going to bed, but looks interesting for certain applications.
I've been using Ollama over LAN for a long time, didn't do anything particular. What's new with this? Just installer option that sets the required environment variables?
The gov't here in Norway put $10 million on the table[1] for 2026 as a response to what's going on in the US. Due to reasons they can't direct it solely at US researchers, but the intent is there:
The minister has followed the recent developments in the United States closely:
"Academic freedom is under pressure in the United States, and it is an unpredictable situation for many researchers in what has been the world's leading research nation for many decades. We have had close dialogue with the Norwegian knowledge communities and my Nordic colleagues about the development. It has been important for me to find good measures that we can put in place quickly, and therefore I have asked the Research Council to prioritize grant funding schemes that we can implement rapidly," says Aasland.
The program is meant to last years, we'll see how it goes.
Now I know, $10m ain't much in the grand scheme of things, but we're just 5 million folks over here.
It's an example showing that institutions elsewhere are actually responding to this (a question asked by the parent post), and Norway will very likely not be alone here.
100M NOK is a 1% increase to Norway's annual research budget, but to replace what the current US administration is asking Congress to cut the whole of Europe would have to raise its funding level by 300-400%.
It's worth considering that there's still a chance that the cuts end up being more limited than proposed.
Kind of like the tariffs or the Tiktok ban that's totally going to go into effect after the most recent extended grace period ends.
So it makes sense that the current raises aren't big enough to make up the shortfall. They're aniticipatory in nature, with the assumption that the actual cuts will be a lot less crazy, and increases to take advantage of a talent exodus will take some time to ramp up.
Norway is a small (albeit wealthy) country. For conparables, you want to keep an eye on EU and Chinese science funding, and see if they're taking advantage of it. Norway is a good existence proof of countries reacting to this though.
Yea that's practically nothing, even accounting for your population. It's $2/person compared to NASA's pre-cut budget of about $80/person/year. Where are all these other countries that might pick up the slack? Seems nobody else in the world wants to pay for science. They might complain about American science funding cuts but are happy to keep their already tiny science budgets tiny.
Norway's overall science budget is $1 billion per year, or $200/person/year. US's was $200 billion/year or $600/person/year. So Norway isn't really pulling its weight.
Where did you get that $1 billion figure from? From what I can see[1][2], it's more like $4.6 billion? In that case it would be more like $920/person/year.
The name was originally used as an insult[1], however the followers adopted it, thus rendering the insult moot:
In 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to Fox's autobiography, Bennet "was the first that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord". It is thought that Fox was referring to Isaiah 66:2 or Ezra 9:4. Thus the name Quaker began as a way of ridiculing Fox's admonition, but became widely accepted and used by some Quakers
At least for the Quakers I know, they are very deliberate in not projecting their beliefs onto others. If you ask they will answer, but they will not try to convince you of neither this nor that.
With no dither, each analog input voltage is assigned one and only one code. Thus, there is no difference in the output for voltages located on the same ‘‘step’’ of the ADC’s ‘‘staircase’’ transfer curve. With dither, each analog input voltage is assigned a probability distribution for being in one of several digital codes. Now, different voltages with-in the same ‘‘step’’ of the original ADC transfer function are assigned different probability distributions. Thus, one can see how the resolution of an ADC can be improved to below an LSB.
In actual film, I presume the random inconsistencies of the individual silver halide grains is the noise source, and when watching such a film, I presume the eyes are doing the averaging through persistence of vision[2].
In either case, a key point is that you can't bring back any details by adding noise after the fact.
[1]: https://www.ti.com/lit/an/snoa232/snoa232.pdf section 3.0 - Dither
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision
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