How to Build a Quantum Supercomputer: Scaling Challenges and Opportunities
Abstract:In the span of four decades, quantum computation has evolved from an intellectual curiosity to a potentially realizable technology. Today, small-scale demonstrations have become possible for quantum algorithmic primitives on hundreds of physical qubits and proof-of-principle error-correction on a single logical qubit. Nevertheless, despite significant progress and excitement, the path toward a full-stack scalable technology […]
A Walk with LuaJIT
The following is a chronicle of implementing a general purpose zero-instrumentation BPF based profiler for LuaJIT. Some assumptions are made about what this entails and it may be helpful to read some of our other work in this area. One major change from prior efforts is that instead of working with the original Parca unwinder […]
How to Build a Chess Engine and Fail
What is the current state of chess engines? A Chess-AI is something of a rite of passage for every software engineer, as is a snake clone or a calculator console application. If you did not try to build one yet, you are certainly missing out (or preserving your own sanity, whatever you prefer). Between the […]
Batched reward model inference and Best-of-N sampling
Reward models have been a key part of reinforcement learning on top of LLMs, used broadly in techniques like RLHF and as LLM-as-a-judge critics in evals. They have also been used in the data preparation phase of preference optimization methods like SimPO, where a reward model was used to create the preference data used to […]
Retro beige PC case goes from April Fools’ joke to retail
Cases, cooling, and power specialist SilverStone has announced that a desktop PC case that it previously showed off as an April Fools’ joke is heading to retail. An unashamedly beige SilverStone FLP01 pre-built system was on display earlier in the week at the firm’s Japan Expo. Japanese tech media reports that FLP01 cases will be […]
Engineers Discover a 132-Year-Old Message in a Bottle in a Scottish Lighthouse
Mechanical engineers inspecting a lighthouse found a surprising message: a handwritten missive from workers of another age. Mechanical engineers found an old glass bottle with a message in a cavity in a wall at Corsewall Lighthouse in southwest Scotland.Northern Lighthouse Board After two centuries of faithfully guiding sailors around a blustery headland in southwest Scotland, […]
Rats Learned to Drive–and They Love It
We crafted our first rodent car from a plastic cereal container. After trial and error, my colleagues and I found that rats could learn to drive forward by grasping a small wire that acted like a gas pedal. Before long, they were steering with surprising precision to reach a Froot Loop treat. As expected, rats […]
Hyrumtoken: A Go package to encrypt pagination tokens
hyrumtoken is a Go package to encrypt pagination tokens, so that your API clients can’t depend on their contents, ordering, or any other characteristics. Installation go get github.com/ssoready/hyrumtoken hyrumtoken.Marshal/Unmarshal works like the equivalent json functions, except they take a key *[32]byte: var key [32]byte = … // create an encrypted pagination token token, err := […]
Sequin: A powerful little tool for inspecting ANSI escape sequences
Human-readable ANSI sequences. Sequin is a small utility that can help you debug your CLIs and TUIs. It’s also great for describing escape sequences you might not understand, and exploring what TUIs are doing under the hood. There are lots more use cases too, like inspecting golden files such as the ones used by teatest […]
Why I hate the index finger (1980)
Abstract “Why I Hate the Index Finger” by William L. White, M.D., was originally published in Orthopaedic Review, Volume IX, No. 6 (June 1980) pp. 23–29. “The article is reprinted in HAND courtesy of Quadrant HealthCom, Inc., the publisher of The American Journal of Orthopedics (formerly Orthopaedic Review). A related article can be found at […]