dchristian

This is an interesting way to think about how to get to a minimal form of a complex system.

A friend in college told me of a research project that had managed to balance a simulated inverted pendulum in 2D using 25 neurons and back propagation. But I had done this exact problem with conventional state space controls using only 5 summations (the equivalent of 5 neurons).

After I finish patting myself on the back, you then wonder what it would take for that 25 neuron solution to keep optimizing down the theoretical 5 neuron solution? The article is an interesting approach to that problem.

The paper they reference used 3456 input neurons and 9 output neurons, with no hidden nodes. They designed their input and output differently, so it's not a direct comparison. The optimized solution has 17 inputs, 2 outputs, and 2 hidden nodes. That's a massive level of optimization.

No, the bicycle is unstable. PID doesn't work well there.

In addition, it is controlling a coupled 3D system (which is unstable). This is much more than 3 PID controllers.

This sounds like the feed of a single male. Facebook showing sleazy content/ads to single guys predates AI by a lot. Try removing your single relationship status from your profile and see what changes.

Legged robots can be more efficient, in theory.

Whenever you drive/walk in soft terrain, the wheel/leg is constantly climbing the ramp created by it sinking into the terrain. In a perfect system, this determines how much power you need to move. This is why trains are so efficient. A hard wheel on a hard rail has very little deflection -- so excellent efficiency.

Wheels have to climb that ramp for every inch of travel. Legs get to step forward and only take that penalty for each step. If everything else is the same, the legs win on soft terrain.

But everything else is never the same :-). The early legged vehicles used linear motions, which means you have these very long sliding surfaces. This is heavy and the drive system efficiency dominates over the terrain interaction efficiency. Add in the fact that you have multiple axis to drive and the weight and drive losses really add up.

Modern dog and human style walking robots are MUCH better on efficiency than those early designs. However, they require enough sensing and compute to dynamically balance. Legs can do things that wheels can't, but you have to have smart enough software to take advantage of that. The compute available for a high radiation environment is a fraction of what is in your smartwatch. Wheels are still winning on energy efficiency, but at least it's getting closer.

I worked on Dante at CMU and Marsokhod at NASA Ames; and was in the same group that developed Ambler.

the ordered dosage of methylene blue was 1mg/kg/hr

That's 5X what is considered a safe dose.

Up to 2mg/kg/day is considered safe. Double that with care. But they were dosing every hour for days!

Watch out of patent problems. There was a major dust up between Sonos and Google over audio sync technology. Disclaimer: I've worked for both companies, but not on that

Very cool write up! I'm amazed that it's running on AAA batteries.

The introduction to SDR (software defined radio) is much appreciated.

Edit: defined, not designed

Check out: https://ampsortation.com

This talks about the "what" of the code, but you have to also convey the "why".

If you have a well understood problem space and a team that is up to speed on it, then the "why" is well established and the code is the "what".

However, there are often cases where the code is capturing a new area that isn't fully understood. You need to interleave an education of the "why" of the code.

I was once asked to clean up for release 10k lines of someone else's robotics kinematics library code. There weren't any comments, readmes, reference programs, or tests. It was just impenetrable, with no starting point, no way to test correctness, and no definition of terms. I talked to the programmer and he was completely proud of what he had done. The variable names were supposed to tell the story. To me it was a 10k piece puzzle with no picture! I punted that project and never worked with that programmer again.

That depends on if it's in the grass that the cows eat. They first researched iodine in cows because there isn't much iodine in the grass around the great lakes. This area was known as the "goiter belt".

Adding iodine to the cow's food made them healthier and that's how they estimated the dose for humans (mcg / kg).

Talon Speech recognition also includes mouseless options and eye tracking: https://talon.wiki/Quickstart/Hardware/tobii_5

Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux

I keep wondering how this compares to Zig and WASM?

Zig has a nicer syntax with fewer foot guns than C. It can also compile or link with C.

Autel Nano or Lite+.

Some Autel drone are made in the USA, but not all.

Edit: added the Lite and fixed formatting

D3 is really a hormone. You are showing the classic symptoms of it becoming too high. If/when this happens, discontinue supplementing for a few days and then you can resume at a lower level. Once you understand what too high feels like, you can easily adjust.

You may need a different level in different seasons of the year (because the sunlight varies) or if you change latitude (for the same reason). Your needs may be very different to the people around you.

You need to treat D3 as a hormone with an ideal range. When your blood levels gets too high (typically over 100) you have trouble sleeping and might have restless leg syndrome. When it's in the ideal range (60 - 80) you sleep like a baby.

Dr Gominak has done a bunch of research on D3 levels and sleep. Her RightSleep program will walk you through how to properly supplement into the ideal range. She has a few videos on YouTube with all the background info. This is my current favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Qm5x7Lxgc

Having said that, most doctors don't have a clue about D3 dosing. You'll have to do some research.

Most people will overshoot in a month or two if they take 10,000 a day, but I know of people that have taken that level for long periods without ever going too high. It's super personalized.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) runs the research activities on the base. They don't allow anyone random there and they would be immediately obvious.

There are some Antarctic cruise ships that come in and do a day trip. I hear the NSF hates this and makes sure everyone gets back on the boat.

They plan their logistics over a year in advance. Anyone showing up unexpectedly is going to throw that off.

Yes, it's NZ time. Since most of their flights and logistics are through NZ it makes the most sense to use that time zone.

The sun just orbits and never sets. So any normal day/night cycles doesn't exist.

There are other (smaller) bases on the Antarctic peninsula. I don't know what timezone they use. Their supplies are coming in from Chile or Argentina.

I wondered if the C-17 would be a game changer for them. It was just entering service back in 92. They had the land landing strip back then, but it's too short for a C-5. The C-17 was designed to handle shorter and rougher landing strips than the C-5.

The Antarctic Support Contract was a thing back then too. They did most of the day-day operations, while the Navy managed flights, supplies, the mess (cafeteria), and the like. I don't really know the division of responsibilities.

Do you know if they are landing on winter flights, or just doing airdrops? The later is much easier to do. Even in the summer, the C-130s have to fly with enough fuel to return to NZ because there have been times when the winds become too high to land (and NZ is the "nearest" alternate runway).

It's amazing that they have the bandwidth for this. I assume there is a US or NZ based server that serves the world, but still.

I was there in the 92-93 season. We were lucky to have e-mail back then.

We did our own special internet link for a project that used spare bandwidth on a non commercial satellite. We had 1.544mbit up and 9600 down. We sent what would eventually be called motion jpeg for "video". There was no audio. The satellite dish was pointed 3deg below the horizon; but we were on a mountain, so that was fine.

McMurdo is a fabulously weird place. The US Navy manages all the food/fuel/housing logistics. Then you get the researchers coming through to do projects. They may be working from McMurdo, but most are just be gearing up to go out on the ice. These are often grad students, researchers, and faculty. So the average IQ is much higher than your typical ski town.

The staff that works the station is there because they like the environment. You find people with college degrees doing maintenance and safety trainings. Most are just there for the summer season (which is now). Some will winter over.

Most of the fuel and cargo comes in once a year. The ice breaker is at the ice dock, so that can happen any time now.

Everything else is flown in/out from NZ at considerable expense. Early in the season the ice is thick enough to land jets like the C-5 and C-17. While they are in the ground, they have to move them every few hours to keep the ice from cracking under all that weight. By this time in the season it's probably just C-130s doing everything. Once the sun goes back down, all flights cease and there is nothing can get out for 9 months.

The bottom end of the housing market is usually junk or otherwise tied up legally. Just because you get hits, doesn't mean that's a viable option.

I just did a housing search recently and found this out the hard way.

Look at the median for an area and then figure that you can go 10-20% below that for a "fixer upper". Even that isn't an option if you don't have DIY skills.

Let me attempt to explain what I think he meant.

Some families are dysfunctional. Addictions can be big here, but the personalities of the parents can drive this without any alcohol or drug use. Often, the families that look the best from the outside are the most dysfunctional inside. There is a whole rabbit warren that I'm attempting to not dive down here. Suffice to say, it's not uncommon and it's not obvious.

Children in dysfunctional families often become hyper vigilant in order to control their life and avoid conflict. This works to an extent, but they become trained to constantly pay attention to everything, all the time. Which is one way to look at ADD.

If you want to research this more, look up: * Adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families * Complex PTSD by Pete Walker * Patrick Teahan videos on YouTube

I would recommend "why we get fat" by Gary Taubes. Calorie counting has be disproved so many times, but it sticks around despite the science being against it. If you're a doctor or researcher, "Good calories, bad calories" is the same material but at a clinician's level.

Low carb diets get insulin down and ketones up. These factors are more likely to be driving these other changes.

Also, low carb diets generally eliminate wheat and therefore gluten. Gluten becomes gluteomophin, which causes it's own problems (as an opiate). The standard American diet micro-doses an opiate at every meal. What could go wrong?

They have done studies that showed that it "helped" about 60% of the time (sorry I don't have the reference). "Helped" is a far weaker term than cured. I've read some of McCarthy's books and this is often the first thing to be tried. Often there is a long path to finding a workable cure for a specific person.

I went GFCF for other reasons (IBS and excess mucus production) and was surprised when my Asperger's started to go away. My personal theory is that the small, but frequent, morphine effects interfere with learning. When you take that away, low level learning can begin again.

I was "face blind" (i.e. didn't automatically recognize familiar faces) and didn't pick up on social cues. Both problems when away after 6-12mo on GFCF. A lot of social awkwardness comes from not picking up on these fundamental inputs.

A reference would be helpful :-)

Gluten and dairy are in almost all packaged foods. They drive cravability in a big way. So I'm guessing any "debunking" was funded by someone making money from this.

There are a few people who are immune to the effect. You can pick them out because they either dislike or simply don't care for cheese (which is mostly casein).

Autism is a wide spectrum. Some would consider ADHD part if it. If nothing else, there is lots of overlap.

Two things that might also work, but be easier.

Supplement MCT oil. This turns into keytones in the body. See The Complete Book of Ketones by Mary Newport for all the science. She's got into it for Alzheimers, but the applicability is wider than that.

Go gluten-free and casein-free. That's eliminating wheat and dairy in your diet. Both of these turn into a form of morphine in the body. Look up glutomorphine and casomorphine. A slightly easier diet to stick to than keto. This cured my aspergers.

You might look up Dr Gominak on Youtube. She figured out that higher levels (60 - 80) of D3 correspond to much better sleep. It worked for me and that first night when you get good sleep is just amazing. Her website has all the specifics.

Let me suggest an option that I haven't seen others bring up. One source of depression is that your expectations of what life and relationships should be like is all messed up. This comes from having a dysfunctional family growing up. There are many families that just weren't able to give emotional support in the way that the child needed. This leaves you with a twisted view of who you are and what you need in life.

As an aside, if you think talking about depression is hard, try getting people to admit that their parents were less than perfect. We were completely dependent on our parents growing up and we idolize them. People are imperfect. Parents are people. You can do the math from there, but it's still super hard to say out loud.

Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (commonly called ACA or ACoA) is a twelve step support group that focuses on this. They started because children of alcoholics were having a number of problems, even though they never touched alcohol themselves. Addiction was an obvious way for parents to be emotionally unavailable, but there are many other dysfunctions that affect children in a similar way. Search for the ACA Laundry List to see the common characteristics. If you relate to even half that list, then ACA will probably help you.

ACA is a support group. You can learn a lot just from reading the books, but there is more value in regularly talking to people who have dealt with the same issues. There are local groups in most areas (search for ACA groups), as well and zoom/phone groups.

There are many different approaches to therapy. If you are in the ACA category, then looking for a therapist that understands childhood trauma and neglect can be much more effective then the common CBT approach. Asking around at a group meeting can be useful to get references. A good group plus good therapy is more powerful than either alone.

I dealt with depression my whole life. I had some improvement with St John's Wort (a herbal SRRI), Vitamin D3, NAC, sleep, and exercise as others have already written about. But I had to discover ACA to get at the core issues.

If there is interest, I can post my list of ACA related books.

How far along are you on getting FAA approval for beyond visual line of sight operation? Or will there be a pilot on the full scale version?

You might check on how New Horizons was implemented. They initially wanted to fly LISP, but (I think) they eventually used the LISP to generate C++. This was to allow dynamic, model based re-planning when the craft was in the outer reaches of the solar system.