the problem space of phase 2 is way bigger (permutations are coordinates 0 to 40k, orientation [phase 1] coordinates are just 0 to 2k)

time to find solution might even out though, since there are less available moves for phase 2 search

time will tell

May 30, 2024

phase 1 done

it is really fast too, i am so hype

it should be easy from here, since all i need to do is add move/prune tables for the rest of the coordinates and write phase 2 search(which is basically the same thing)

rn i am just using the first solution i find, when phase 2 is done, if solutions are too long, i can go back and find better solutions for the whole thing

but for a scrambled cube i am getting solutions around 7 moves, which is totally fine

May 29, 2024

now i can generate the move tables, so i could theoretically do phase 1

it would be insanely slow though, because the tables don't use the symmetries yet, and i haven't done the pruning tables

ok im gonna ignore symmetry for now and just do pruning on the normal coords

then i should be able to write a version of phase1, which will tell me if i really need to implement symmetry(if solving phase 1 takes a really long time)

theoretically adding symmetry shouldn't even be all that much faster, it just reduces the table sizes

i think

ok pruning table are finished

May 28, 2024

the coordinates for the cube got me buggin

am having a hard time wrapping my head around the symmetries

fortunately, seems like once i finish that, i can compute the tables for everything, which is probably most of the way there

May 27, 2024

got the coordinates + moves working (basic cube sim)

now i can begin on the actual search algo (the hard part)

no way this project is going to take me over a month

i need to lock in

May 25, 2024

looking like kociemba algo is the move

(korfs algo finds optimal solution, not ~solid solution quickly)

ok im gonna try to implement the alg, will probably end up being more challenging than extracting colors, but will be fun

May 23, 2024

ok now i have a simple threejs 3d rendering of the cube so you can verify the scan was correct

thing is you have to scan the face in a certain order(rotate cube right x3, down x1, down twice x1)

if i make a little animation it should be simple enough to use though

ideally you'd be able to show the faces at random, but that would require having to keep track of each piece (have i seen the orange/white edge? if so, then i need to rotate the face)

maybe better left for a future iteration

when it comes to solving, ideally i would not only write the notation of the moves, but actually show it as an animation on the user's cube

but that means i need to have an actually good way of rendering the cube and moves, not just a threejs cube shape with a single texture on each face

before i do that i am just going to implement solving the cube and showing the moves in notation form

interesting that solving cubes in fewest moves is not a fully solved problem

korf's algo seems to the best, but it is from 97

i wonder if deep learning techniques could work

well it is a "solved" problem in that you can always find the optimal solution, it just might take days(even on insane hardware)

May 20, 2024

ok extracting colors is probably good enough

now need to figure out how im gonna scan in entire cube, not just single side

May 19, 2024

can now extract colors of each sticker

this is basically where i got with python version

need to figure out better way to normalize colors so they are just one of six

May 18, 2024

re: cube solver

web version can now find center of each sticker

should be relatively straightforward to adapt the python code from here

might be a challenge when i have to eventually create a representation of the entire cube, not just a single face

time will tell

May 16, 2024

ok finally have object detection working in js

next step is to use opencvjs to extract colors

theoretically this should be simple because the api for js is similar to python, but getting the detection to work took me like 5 days so

never mind the detection works weird when the cube is near the edge of the screen

May 12, 2024

converting pytorch to tensorflow(so i can use tf.js) through onnx has been the worst experience of my life

ok i finally have the equivalent tfjs model for locating the cube(i think), but parsing the output is torture

i cant tell if the model is wrong or if i am parsing it wrong

probably both

May 10, 2024

once i get home i’ll finish the js refactor for rubiks cube

then im going fully indie dev

not interning anywhere => b2c saas

i hate to say it, but b2c saas is good way to get better at applied AI stuff

i barely even know what a KV cache is, i need to become an inference demon

I have fallen victim to the lies of webdev frameworks

reject modernity(nextjs) embrace tradition(jquery)

like i straight up have no idea what react does behind the scenes

May 7, 2024

can now extract colors of stickers and put them in the correct order, except sometimes my grid is flipped from how it should be

which seems to happen when cube is rotated

will fix tomorrow

can now extract the colors in the correct orientation

that took way to long

now, need to turn average sticker color into something like "red" or "blue"

ok that is done now too

next it to save each face and construct the full cube, but am gonna leave that until i convert it to web (in python rn)

converting should be relatively straightforward since opencv has a js library

May 6, 2024

getting center of each sticker is 90% perfect

sometimes a single frame will miss a sticker

sometimes a frame will put a point not even on the cube

definitely looking good though

ok getting bounds/center of individual stickers is done

now, need to get color of sticker and assign it to distinct color ("red","green",etc.)

May 5, 2024

for cube solver, i can get bounds of individual stickers, but only if cube is directly facing camera

which is probably fine, it is just a little less cool

looking pretty good right now, can ~fairly reliably get center of each sticker

definitely need to work on it a bit though, still looks a little glitchy

May 4, 2024

i should do some computer vision stuff

have been wanting to make a rubiks cube solver

its been done tons of times, but would be fun regardless

re: cube solver

currently annotating data, is there a standard annotation tool people use?

rn i am using cvat.ai, but seems like there should be a local alternative (having to upload images to website seems unnecessary)

should i become a vim goblin

ok i have realtime cube detection from the webcam working

next step: time will tell

May 2, 2024

ok school is over, time to start actually doing things

April 25, 2024

April 17, 2024

April 7, 2024

may dabble in some crypto trading this summer

seems fun

April 5, 2024

Feynman’s lectures came in🙏

soon I will know whether I should do pure math or physics major

April 4, 2024

every time i try to write an essay for my website or substack, i just get to a point where i think every point i make is so obvious that there is no point of writing the essay at all

and i have no idea if that is actually true or if it is just a result of me thinking about a specific subject for a while

April 2, 2024

listening to most recent dwarkesh pod, interpretability is so interesting

i did not realize that there was this much progress, i feel like i only ever hear about papers about novel architectures

strong ideas loosely held

April 1, 2024

dwarkesh liked my tweet🥲

March 31, 2024

i am going to start posting on substack, writing the first essay rn

March 30, 2024

March 28, 2024

it should not be the case that i can learn an entire exam's worth of content in ~4 hours

need to find good stats and physics textbooks for this summer

March 27, 2024

gonna make a lil project to talk in french back and forth with model

openai's tts sounds really good, it's just expensive

March 26, 2024

language learning apps are so bad

i could easily build a better one

finally finished the steve jobs bio

re: nonfiction, im gonna try to go broader in scope

i feel like most of the nonfiction i read is business/tech/startups, which is fine, but i feel like im missing out

israel book is a good start

maybe ill work through a physics textbook this summer

college classes are just wrappers on textbooks

March 24, 2024

roon liked my tweet🥲

March 21, 2024

im just gonna use random forest, im desperate

ok im at 70% validation accuracy with random forests

its finished

4am, bracket is not even bad

lgtm

March 20, 2024

i have spent all day, nothing is working

anytime loss goes down, test loss goes up

maybe ill ditch the player stats, and just use team-wide stats instead

ok i've given up on player level stats

March 19, 2024

model not training :(

one day a model of mine will start learning first try

new pg essay

model is over fitting like crazy

might need different architecture

tomorrow is the deadline, i need to lock in

March 18, 2024

rate limited on the stats website :(

there may be a python package

why did i not look for that before

rate limited on that too :(

wondering if it would be illegal to host/publish the ncaa data, since it seems like most places make it hard to access en masse

ok found some data

first attempt is just getting average stats for top 10 players with most minutes played for each team

will feed two teams into basic model with mse error

there are probably some cool architectures I could use, but will save those for later

March 17, 2024

i wonder if there is a big collection of college basketball stats

could be fun to do some visualizations for march madness

tonight am gonna get average stats of every team in past ~20 years

March 16, 2024

mootr is pretty much finished

mootr is pretty much finished

thank god

March 15, 2024

finishing mootr this weekend

i should have more time now to work on projects

March 14, 2024

March 11, 2024

i need to watch more Bresson

ranking movies is becoming too difficult

maybe i should just sort alphabetically

ranking them feels contradictory somehow

energy models are lowkey confusing

how are you gonna tell me you have gradient descent during sampling

doesn't that require crazy compute during training

would be really fun to try to implement, although algorithm at the end of the paper is really scary looking

great lecture:

March 10, 2024

March 9, 2024

well i guess oai implemented it first

this was posted by some anon with like 200 followers though, so idk how reliable it is

jimmy_apples follows it🤷‍♂️

guess i should learn what an energy based model is

March 8, 2024

i should read hpmor

what lecun talks about in the latest lex pod is exactly what i said about an architecture where models think before they speak

pretty cool

maybe i should stop dismissing my ideas for ml as dumb

what he says at 1:18:00 is almost what i said verbatim

the “thought” would just be a single vector of some fixed length, and the model slowly optimizes that vector, instead of adding a single token each step

then, after n iterations, you have a refined thought, which can be translated into English

as you write out a paragraph, the “thought”, updates too, just like how our brains work

i guess you’d have to decide between these two options:

the first one is probably easier to implement, would be fun to try it

I really ought to do some work on the music generation though

and I REALLY ought to finish mootr

here's how i think it could work:

March 4, 2024

I like the idea of some architecture allowing models to “think”, where they aren’t just spitting out the next token based on everything before, but spit out some ideas or excepts, then translate that into English

then during the first step you can do some search to generate the ideas, and do unmasked attention on that to do the “translation”

February 22, 2024