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- Hacker News
- Cool software keep it upby razashaikh92
- In Y2K I built a Linux on PC104 solution with GPS, bonded dual-channel mobile 9600 baud data links, and a (slow) image feed. It was kind of special to see the data coming over the mobile network in those days: this was before mobile data using basic PSTN modem tech! Very lossy and slow, as the algorithms did not account for mobile voice compression.
- The author says:
"It used Voronoi Cells and reduced most math to 8- and 16-bit integer calculations with one or two single-precision floating-point calculations."
I wonder if it can be used to speed up LLM inference.
by JPLeRouzic - That's what quantization and stuff is, basically. So yes. Been done for years on all neural net types not just LLMs.by Neywiny
- One of the things I discovered a while back is that even fairly crude trig approximations don't put that much error into your position, over a small enough distance.
To calculate things like straight-line range from where you are now to where you need to put a unit for an emergency, you're probably not working over an area of more than a couple of hundred kilometres radius and the error will be within a few dozen metres. And once you get within about half a k, you're driving towards the column of smoke anyway ;-)
- A bit related - I tried if I can push Fable to write a Garmin map renderer that would be comparably fast (or faster) on Fenix 8 than the one they claim is possible on Fenix 9 only. I think I got very close, rendering detailed topographical vector map at over 15 fps on QEMU simulated single core simple CPU comparable to actual Fenix 8.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/1vzaz4w/we_live_in_...
by tomaskafka - "real-time GPS-driven moving map display"
Not the IMHO more interesting analog tech which lifts signals out of thermal noise.
by guenthert - That looks interesting, what technology "lifts signals out of thermal noise"?by JPLeRouzic
- I believe the library mentioned in the article should be this one https://geodyssey.github.io/overview/overview.html and here https://www.lukatela.com/geodyssey/by svag
- I once worked on a handheld garmin gps that used a 386 ... not sure if it ever became a product, though. It definitely had moving map... 1MB of it.
- IIRC, the Garmin eMap had a 386: https://www.gpsrchive.com/eMap/eMap.html.
I think it was one of their first models that had a map, earlier ones would just display coordinates/tracks/waypoints.
Edit: here's a teardown of an older model where you can see the CPU: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/garmin-gps-12map/, and the wiki for the CPU has a clearer picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386EX
by palmotea - I built one, tracking fleet vehicles with a custom box, using tiled maps, on behalf of Vodafone, back in 2002. I still remember I wrote a basic trans-mercator library too!
Of course Mercator projection may go out of fashion soon https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/world-map-eq... :)
Hope I'm called back to update the library ;)
- Probably not if navigation is involved:
> This is why most online mapping platforms like Google Maps or Apple Maps rely on a variation of the Mercator projection to provide directions. Using the Equal Earth projection for navigation would not be as effective as the Mercator projection.
> What the UN did was endorse the broader message that Equal Earth is a fairer projection that more equitably displays the true size of the Earth’s land
You are right about this though - it's a moral fashion. Who cares about land size on a map unless you've got the priorities and advancement of a prehistoric king? People with plenty of spare time who constantly talk in an echo chamber[0], that's who.