Show HN: Bender – a Deep Learning framework for iOS

by bryant1410 • 9 years ago

81 32 9 years ago

bryant1410• 9 years ago

Hey! I work at Xmartlabs and we have built Bender: a library to build and run Neural Networks on iOS.

As it uses Metal under the hood, it takes advantage of the device GPU, so it runs fast and supports real-time applications.

It also allows to run TensorFlow models, so it should be easy to run your existing model.

If you guys could provide feedback, it would be cool!

brudgers• 9 years ago

If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

krat0sprakhar2• 9 years ago

How does tie in with CoreML that was announced today, which also uses Metal under the hood and supports models built with Tensorflow/Keras and the likes.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml

ajtulloch• 9 years ago

- https://github.com/xmartlabs/Bender/blob/master/Sources/Meta...

- https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/64e52e474/caffe2/contr...

bencollier492• 9 years ago

Ouch. But do these segments come from another, PD, source? Or is it just direct theft from Facebook?

rocky11382• 9 years ago

Why would you want to run this on iOS?

krat0sprakhar2• 9 years ago

At the risk of directly quoting Apple's website -

Running strictly on the device ensures the privacy of user data and guarantees that your app remains functional and responsive when a network connection is unavailable.

fuckemem• 9 years ago

To warm your hands up

FullMtlAlcoholc• 9 years ago

I dont know much about parallel or distributed computing but here's an idea.

If this framework supports multi gpus with data parallelisem, model parallelisem or some hybrid and you can entice people to download ir by packaging it over a game or visualization layer a la Folding@Home, youd essentially have it running at a very large scale without having to pay for any compute power

rocky11382• 9 years ago

Let's go into business together mining coin on people's iPhones.

nstj2• 9 years ago

Looks like a cool project! Any chance you Urban Dictionary'd the name?

rmc4• 9 years ago

I can understand how you got the name from "metal" and Futurama.

But in the UK, "bender" basically means "faggot". Maybe you might want to think on the name,/.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bender

namaemuta• 9 years ago

Well, box in slang means vagina. Should Dropbox (or any other company that has box in its name) reconsider its name too?

fnord123• 9 years ago

Consider the conditional probabilities (with made up values suggesting the relative orders of magnitude):

    P(box=vagina|box uttered) = 0.0001
    vs
    P(bender=slur|bender uttered) = 0.8

Angostura• 9 years ago

It's not a desperately common term though in the UK any more.

... when you say faggot - are you talking about the delicious spiced meatballs, or the piece of fire-wood?

catshirt• 9 years ago

maybe i'm turning into my parents but i think we stopped calling them spiced meatballs in the 90s

DanBC• 9 years ago

Any given word has a chance for slang in the UK for penis, vagina, homosexuality, or being drunk.

bshimmin2• 9 years ago

"bender" actually ticks two of those boxes (homosexuality and being drunk - "on a bender"), which is quite good going for one little word, really!

rmc4• 9 years ago

Not really, there are plenty of words which don't have quite as strong a connection as "bender"

bencollier492• 9 years ago

My favourite instance of this was the reaction of UK cinema audiences to dialogue in "The Last Airbender":

"I could tell from looking at you that you were a bender". Genius.

twhb• 9 years ago

Not British so genuinely asking - to what degree? Greater than "thing that bends"?

Because there's plenty of slang that doesn't inhibit use of the word by its earlier definition. Nobody blinks when you ask for a "box". Teenagers might giggle at Dick's stores, but it hasn't hurt business.

lucideer• 9 years ago

Not British, but Irish, where it's got the same meaning (It would be seen as the inverse of "straight", but always derogatory)

to what degree?

Less and less.

a) homophobic slurs have become generally less acceptable

b) US cultural influence makes people more aware of multiple meanings

c) Futurama is also a thing that people here are aware exists / fans of

hashtagMERKY• 9 years ago

I'm not sure what we'd call a thing that bends (I suppose it would depend on what is being bent and how), but bender is pretty much exclusively used to mean a gay person or a very drunken night.

I agree that it doesn't inhibit its use as a product name though. Git seems to be doing just fine.

bshimmin2• 9 years ago

I'm not really "down with the kids", but I would think most people in their twenties and thirties and older would definitely understand "bender" to mean a homosexual, and "on a bender" to mean "out getting drunk" (though this isn't a derogatory term in any particular sense). I don't think I've ever used the word "bender" to mean "thing that bends", but perhaps that's just because of the other meaning of the term here.

I don't think "box" is understood at all in the UK to mean what it does in US slang, though we do use the word in the context of cricket to mean something quite specific!

rmc4• 9 years ago

Not British so genuinely asking - to what degree? Greater than "thing that bends"?

I'm Irish, not British, but the slangs are similar. "Bender" (on it's own) would mean a gay man. "on a bender" would mean a drunken thing. I'm not sure if people ever need a word for "thing that bends", since that rarely comes up. People might say "bendy bus" for an articulated bus.

As evidence, I give you Ofcom, the British state body which regulates things on TV & Radio. If you say offensive things on TV/Radio, they'll fine you. They did research in 2016 about offensive words[1][2] and have listed them and have advice. For "bender" they say class it as "Strong language, generally unacceptable. Seen as old-fashioned, but derogatory to gay men." [2]p10, and class it alongside: "dyke", "tranny", "homo", "lesbo", "muff diver", "he-she", "tranny", "carpet muncher" or "bum boy".

That should give you an idea of whether it's acceptable to use it now.

"Box" is not on that list, I don't know what that means. "Dick" is listed as "Strong language, generally unacceptable pre-watershed. Seen as vulgar and distasteful by many. Less problematic when used in a humorous context, and generally considered slightly milder than ‘cock’.", which is a similar classification to "bender", or "raghead", "negro", "kike", "slut", "cocksucker", etc

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/91624/O...

[2] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/91625/O...

scallycat• 9 years ago

That and 'going on a bender', that being going out and drinking (or otherwise becoming intoxicated) excessively over a long period of time.

tlrobinson• 9 years ago

Well, the British slang for cigarette is "fag", which is derogatory in the US, so call it even?

rmc4• 9 years ago

Are there any software products from British organisations called "Fag"?

whataretensors• 9 years ago

Perhaps this is part of the way that language heals over time. It's much better to associate this term with Futurama and ML than bigotry. And the name makes contextual sense as well.

nstj2• 9 years ago

I tried to put it more delicately!

Show HN: Bender – a Deep Learning framework for iOS

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