CookieOfFortune
@CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 1 day ago:
any system that communicates information is apparently a digital communications system, so long as you can imagine an arbitrary scheme to interpret at least one bit of information from the signal,
This has always been my point since the beginning! There exist very low bandwidth digital communication systems in real life, with less than one bit per second. The bandwidth available should be defined where something is digital or not.
regardless of whether that was the message intended to be communicated.
Seeing the bird in the spectrogram is quite intentional and sufficient to consider this a communications system.
It seems if instead of a bird picture, a random set of bits were encoded and then detected In the spectrogram, you’d consider this more of a digital system since instead of a human doing the check you use an algorithm?
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 1 day ago:
If we’re being pedantic, shouldn’t we consider that it can be a one bit signal? Otherwise you should be specific about what bandwidth you’d consider digital.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 1 day ago:
I thought we were being pedantic here?
Yes, eventually a signal may degrade or be corrupted, but prior to that point the reproduction is literally and exactly perfect.
Modulation schemes are characterized via a probabilistic tolerance, so even when you are within the tolerances, you can get an incorrect value at some expected rate. Note that you can even define a modulation scheme with a high error rate and be ok with that.
That’s why I take issue with the concept of an exactly perfect reproduction. Usually there are layers above the digital modulation to handle these possibility to decrease the error rates even lower.
And no, I don’t consider the PNG to be the data carried. I think the way the author does the bandwidth calculations is incorrect.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
The bird drawing is just a proxy for arbitrary data. In your example, you could convert bitstream into a pattern of black and white squares into a YouTube Video. Send it through the VHS channel, and when you digitize it, you would get back the exact bitstream.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
If your argument is that the bandwidth calculation is incorrect, then sure I think that’s fair.
But I don’t think it’s correct to say it’s not a digital channel juts because it doesn’t have optimal bandwidth.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
The entire point is that the modulated signal can be reconstructed exactly,
But this isn’t true. Just because a signal is modulated doesn’t mean it can’t be distorted.
A spectrogram is just showing that arbitrary data can be sent though this channel. It’s literally a form of modulation.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
My point is that it doesn’t have to be optimal to be considered digital. Which in the general case means basically any communication channel can be digital.
If the argument is that they didn’t correctly calculate the bandwidth, then sure.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
Why couldn’t you have a likelihood function for the bird?
As a trivial case, you can just say: Does the spectrum look like a bird? Then you’d have a digital channel by your definition for a single bit.
The actual channel bandwidth is obviously higher than that.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
- Played through a DAC and speaker to produce an analogue signal (lossy)
Analogue modulation of bit stream played through DAC (lossy)
These steps are literally the same thing. You’re converting some data into sound for the bird to hear.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
That’s not really how it works in the real world. Usually you have both bandwidth and noise constraints.
Sure you can send something like a square wave but this isn’t practical for real communication channels. Typically you’re sending many sine waves in parallel with multiple amplitudes and phase offsets to represent a sequence of bits (QAM). Then on top of that you’d encode the original data with both a randomizer (to prevent long runs from looking like nothing) and error correction. So usually the system can handle some level of distortion.
What you’re hoping is that by the time the data reaches the user (really, Layer 3), all the errors have already been handled and you never see any issues.
The bird is just another type of noisy channel with its own distortion characteristics.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 days ago:
Minor analogue distortion does not change the information content of the signal unless it is so bad as to flip a bit.
This isn’t true in the general case. In the real world, you can have all kinds of distortions: random noise, time shifts, interference from other signals, etc.
You don’t usually see the effects of these because the protocols are designed with the communication channel characteristics in mind in order to reproduce the original signal.
Using birds is just another communication channel with its own distortion characteristics.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 3 days ago:
Every signal is ultimately analog. Voltage along a wire, sound, light, the world is analog and it all needs to be converted into our concept of digital (which is typically binary values).
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 3 days ago:
By your definition nothing can be digital since the world is analog. Even the bits in your CPU are voltages in transistors. As such, every real life signal can be distorted.
- Comment on You no longer need JavaScript: an overview of what makes modern CSS so awesome 4 days ago:
The problem with CSS is that it’s not very intuitive and too flexible. You need to know how display and position works to understand the basic centering a div example. If you forget to change the display to flex you don’t get an error, it’s still valid CSS. You can examine the element in the browser but you’ll need to know to look for the issue there.
Then you’ll need to inline and block elements, etc.
And it’s a pretty unique system in general.
- Comment on redwoods 5 days ago:
Yeah California redwoods are kind of all over Northern California, they’re commonish in backyards. Giant Sequoias on the other hand you’ll basically only see in a park.
- Comment on What is the maximum number of potatoes you could grow in your house or on property you own before it becomes a crime? 3 weeks ago:
I see, at this point there were already large tenant and share croppers (former slave owning plantations) who did not reap the supposed shared benefits of the AAA.
- Comment on What is the maximum number of potatoes you could grow in your house or on property you own before it becomes a crime? 3 weeks ago:
Which industry? At the time of this ruling most farms were individual farmers.
- Comment on One Angry Man 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on One Angry Man 3 weeks ago:
I think you need an extra new line or some other delimiter?
- Comment on Google Assistant Is Basically on Life Support and Things Just Got Worse 5 weeks ago:
Their new icons are so dumb. I think they thought people would get used to them but no, they’re still bad after several years.
- Comment on China advances toward tech independence with new homegrown 6nm gaming and AI GPUs — Lisuan 7G106 runs Chinese AAA titles at 4K over 70 FPS and matches RTX 4060 in synthetic benchmarks 5 weeks ago:
Well Taiwan is fucked.
- Comment on Google AI strikes again 5 weeks ago:
Seems like the text description strips some markdown. It says the “bold” is in bold font but it’s not.
- Comment on ‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing 5 weeks ago:
I’m pretty sure she’ll think I’m about to pop out from behind a car to scare her.
- Comment on oof 1 month ago:
A PhD in engineering oriented industries will not get you more money unless you hit the jackpot (did some early LLM stuff for example).
You just gotta love the research.
- Comment on Drinks shouldn’t be chewed 1 month ago:
We go to boba tea shops several times a week. I just order them without boba. It’s just a smooth tasty drink.
- Comment on Solar powered personal umbrella with battery? 1 month ago:
You could use a Sekiro shield: youtu.be/OCq8adZdKP4 It’d be rigid but… probably quite heavy.
- Comment on Meta to spend hundreds of billions to build AI data centres 1 month ago:
Are they a contractor? $25/hr ~$50k seems quite low when Meta’s median salary is like $400k.
- Comment on holee shiet 1 month ago:
I just realized the saying is “Do the carpets match the drapes” but in my head I was thinking “Do the curtains match the drapes”. Even though curtains and drapes are similar. Brain fart.
- Comment on holee shiet 1 month ago:
Should they match the drapes?
- Comment on holee shiet 1 month ago:
This does happen and it’s an effective way to decrease the temperature:
Might be difficult to implement at scale though.
