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With all the bad stuff happening in the world like politics war racism homophobia etc. What is some good news that isI happening that we don't read or see about?
  • COVID research made generic sequencing for viruses and bacteria incredibly cheap. You can run a PCR test for most things now for $10 (USD) or less. This opens a whole world of highly specific diagnostics and cheap, hyper-personalized treatments.

    Also, MRNA vaccines are being tested for several other diseases and it seems very promising.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • and my point was explaining that that work has likely been done because the paper I linked was 20 years old and they talk about the deep connection between "similarity" and "compresses well". I bet if you read the paper, you'd see exactly why I chose to share it-- particularly the equations that define NID and NCD.

    The difference between "seeing how well similar images compress" and figuring out "which of these images are similar" is the quantized, classficiation step which is trivial compared to doing the distance comparison across all samples with all other samples. My point was that this distance measure (using compressors to measure similarity) has been published for at least 20 years and that you should probably google "normalized compression distance" before spending any time implementing stuff, since it's very much been done before.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • I think there's probably a difference between an intro to computer science course and the PhD level papers that discuss the ability of machines to learn and decide, but my experience in this is limited to my PhD in the topic.

    And, no, textbooks are often not peer reviewed in the same way and generally written by graduate students. They have mistakes in them all the time. Or grand statements taken out of context. Or are simplified explanations because introducing the nuances of PAC-learnability to somebody who doesn't understand a "for" loop is probably not very productive.

    I came here to share some interesting material from my PhD research topic and you're calling me an asshole. It sounds like you did not have a wonderful day and I'm sorry for that.

    Did you try learning about how computers learn things and make decisions? It's pretty neat

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • You seem very upset, so I hate to inform you that neither one of those are peer reviewed sources and that they are simplifying things.

    "Learning" is definitely something a machine can do and then they can use that experience to coordinate actions based on data that is inaccesible to the programmer. If that's not "making a decision", then we aren't speaking the same language. Call it what you want and argue with the entire published field or AI, I guess. That's certainly an option, but generally I find it useful for words to mean things without getting too pedantic.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • Yeah. I understand. But first you have to cluster your images so you know which ones are similar and can then do the deduplication. This would be a powerful way to do that. It's just expensive compared to other clustering algorithms.

    My point in linking the paper is that "the probe" you suggested is a 20 year old metric that is well understood. Using normalized compression distance as a measure of Kolmogorov Complexity is what the linked paper is about. You don't need to spend time showing similar images will compress more than dissimilar ones. The compression length is itself a measure of similarity.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • Yeah. That's what an MP4 does, but I was just saying that first you have to figure out which images are "close enough" to encode this way.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • Then it should be easy to find peer reviewed sources that support that claim.

    I found it incredibly easy to find countless articles suggesting that your Boolean is false. Weird hill to die on. Have a good day.

    https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=computer+decision+fairness&oq=computer+decison

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • Agree to disagree. Something makes a decision about how to classify the images and it's certainly not the person writing 10 lines of code. I'd be interested in having a good faith discussion, but repeating a personal opinion isn't really that. I suspect this is more of a metaphysics argument than anything and I don't really care to spend more time on it.

    I hope you have a wonderful day, even if we disagree.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • computers make decisions all the time. For example, how to route my packets from my instance to your instance. Classification functions are well understood in computer science in general, and, while stochastic, can be constructed to be arbitrarily precise.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probably_approximately_correct_learning?wprov=sfla1

    Human facial detection has been at 99% accuracy since the 90s and OPs task I'd likely a lot easier since we can exploit time and location proximity data and know in advance that 10 pictures taken of Alice or Bob at one single party are probably a lot less variant than 10 pictures taken in different contexts over many years.

    What OP is asking to do isn't at all impossible-- I'm just not sure you'll save any money on power and GPU time compared to buying another HDD.

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • Definitely PhD.

    It's very much an ongoing and under explored area of the field.

    One of the biggest machine learning conferences is actually hosting a workshop on the relationship between compression and machine learning (because it's very deep). https://neurips.cc/virtual/2024/workshop/84753

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    Is there any way to save storage on similar images?
  • Compressed length is already known to be a powerful metric for classification tasks, but requires polynomial time to do the classification. As much as I hate to admit it, you're better off using a neural network because they work in linear time, or figuring out how to apply the kernel trick to the metric outlined in this paper.

    a formal paper on using compression length as a measure of similarity: https://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0111054

    a blog post on this topic, applied to image classification:

    https://jakobs.dev/solving-mnist-with-gzip/

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    I use Qobuz for music. Recommendations don't exist. What are the best sources for creating playlists with suggestions?
  • There's a python application for managing the meta data better than lidarr called beets. You need to be familiar with a terminal, but it has a ton of plugins and options. If you want a GUI, try MusicBrainz Picard, but it's old and not great on really big libraries. For playlist suggestions, plexamp can do that, but only for music you already have.

    https://beets.io/

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    The Netherlands's urban planning is very well known but what about other EU countries?
  • I'm hedging my bets against the 2nd American civil war and getting the 2nd passport, but I also live in a country with a king and that's pretty silly in 2024.

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    The Netherlands's urban planning is very well known but what about other EU countries?
  • Barcelona is kinda famous for their pedestrian transformation over the last decade or two and the hiking and trains were excellent.

    https://learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/overview/barcelona-superblock-initiative-barcelona-2016/

    I just think an American would find the salaries for the kinds of jobs that get you visas (healthcare, tech, finance) to be pretty underwhelming, especially if OP has student loans or other debt in dollars.

    Glassdoor says €66k/year for a doctor in Barcelona vs $154k/year in NYC. I assure you that anyone who can get a work visa to Spain would come out financially ahead in the US by a long shot. It also becomes pretty hard to travel to the US, even if it's comfortable to live on the salary in situ. That's not to say it isn't totally doable. I do it.

    Are public health are and vacation time nice? Yeah, but anyone with a visa-worthy job with an American passport isn't worried about the cost of employer based healthcare and pay substantially less taxes in the US. It's great to be rich in the US, but really sucks to to be poor. I just think the unique position of people who can get work visas raises serious questions about whether or not it's "worth" it.

    If a doctor can pocket an extra $50k/year (after college, healthcare, taxes) from the higher paying American job at the expense of paying for some human rights out of pocket, it's hard to say that doctor shouldn't hustle in the US for a few years first before finding a way to retire in Spain in 10 years vs working in Spain for the next 30. Visas for owning property or starting a small business are far more flexible and less scary than something attached to a particular employer, city, etc (work visa).

    source: I am expatriate American in Europe struggling with this question daily

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    The Netherlands's urban planning is very well known but what about other EU countries?
  • I specifically didn't mention it because it's the singular country in Europe that doesn't really have work permits for non EEA nationals. As you've said, wages are high and the government is great, so it's naturally a desirable place to live. I've got a PhD in AI from a respected European university and I straight up do not qualify for a Swiss work visa, but OP might have better luck if they work in healthcare or attend school there.

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    The Netherlands's urban planning is very well known but what about other EU countries?
  • Yeah. Super impressive considering the track changes with Denmark, France, Switzerland, and Poland (what about Austria? I don't remember changing tracks). I've had delays of 45 mins on 30 minute NYC subway commutes and Sweden's trains stop running in the winter because they didn't bother to get the kind that work in snow.

    You can keep arguing, but you're not gonna convince me DB is bad which is where this discussion started.

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  • https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption

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    Scandinavia often has these three-walled cabins available on a first-come, first-served basis. In Swedish, they're called vindskydd, or wind shelter. This particular one is northeast of Umeå, Sweden. No guarantees on what they're called elsewhere, but I have seen them in Finland as well. And I have heard of but not seen of them in Norway. In general, the freedom to roam is quite strong in these three countries as long as you are respectful and stay out of obviously private spaces like personal gardens or farm fields. Happy travels!

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