this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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I was listening to the New Year's Day concert by the Vienna philharmonic and wondered who one of the composers was so used a popular song recognition app. (I expected it would make some fuzzy match on the piece and give me the name + composer). To my amazement it did give the name and composer but as played by the Vienna philharmonic in 2005 in the same location. The orchestra does not have the same members as 19 years ago, nor was it the same conductor, so it seemed the piece was matched on the acoustics of the Musikverein where they were playing, which I found astonishing.

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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 47 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

My cancer medication for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.

I don't have to have chemotherapy. I take a single pill once daily. There are side effects, sure. My life isn't as full of pep as it used to be, sure. I'm still in pain all the time, sure.

But I've seen cancer, and I've seen how bad it can get and I'm floored at how much of a real life I'm capable of leading while being treated for this disease.

The cost and risk of losing access to it hanging over my head is very stressful, but I can't deny the actual results, which are life-changing and life-saving to say the least.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Amazing the progress that's been made in that area

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Mobile networks.
It used to be absolutely amazing to get 1.5Mbps into your home with bulky equipment, on a dedicated copper line. Now you can get 100x times that bandwidth, while moving, on a device that fits in your pocket.
Batshit.

[–] mhague@lemmy.world 37 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Diffraction gratings because light is cool, and I like the pretty colors.

Not super modern but you can 3d print in a mold, or even make chocolate, and it will look "holographic." You don't add anything, you just manipulate the surface of the object to have tiny grooves with thickness in the nanometer range. Then light hits it and waves do their thing and we perceive a rainbow effect.

This is from a Reddit post, one of the top homemade "holographic chocolate" posts.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Wow that's cool!

If it's your thing, here's a full on deep dive into how 3d image holograms work. I'd never really appreciated how insane it is to encode a moveable 3d volume onto a 2d surface nor how early the maths for it was developed! (method 1948, first 3d image 1962, nobel prize 1971)

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Presumably you could print a hologram-like portrait on chocolate, which blows my mind.

[–] TehBamski@lemmy.world 30 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Lossless compression Even after reading how it works, it still seems like magic to me.

[–] fool@programming.dev 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Even more magical is the lossless Zstandard ~is~ ~this~ ~a~ ~name~ ~drop?~. It does so much stuff, it's awesome!

  • hella fast compared to similar-leveled compressors (zoom)
  • no matter the zstd compression level, decompression takes equal time! (ux!)
  • zstd can use a user-given dictionary, or train its own on a sample set (wowie)
  • zstd can be used for live compression (compress and decompress as you read and write, not before or after)
    • on ram (install more ram??)
    • in filesystems (2.5x your disk??)
    • saves CPU by not compressing if it's not worth it (efficiency!!)
  • use ALL the cores!

So kool. lol

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Name dropping's fine lol, I just wanted to discourage obvious spammers away from top level comments

[–] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Honestly the lossy compression algorithms are some real magic. The way video can be streamed over wireless networks at all is pretty astonishing and requires many orders of magnitude of compression.

If you ever have time, read up on how JPEG compression works.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Yes, compression has often fascinated me. It was fractal compression (lossy) that got me interested in computation when I was a kid

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[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

White LEDs. Having a light bulb that can last for decades an consume very little electricity is pretty cool.

[–] hefty4871@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 months ago

LEDs kind of blow me away in general. People will look back at this period and be like, "they sure did love putting LED lights on top of and on the sides of their skyscrapers just for show".

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I never used to use my phone's flashlight function because it's so bright, I assumed it would suck the battery dry. But recently I had it on for like 15 minutes and it only used up one or two percent. Amazing.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You know what's wild about the protocol?

Some super nerdy smart autistic dude literally woke up one morning and it's like I'm going to make this.

Programmed it, took a shit and was done for the day.

A little bit of poetic license here but not far from the truth!

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

poetic license

For sure, you left out all the paperwork - he'd had Taco Bell the night before.

[–] dogsnest@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That magnet stuff is like magnets - almost magic.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Magnets are magic. They're concentrated magic. Almost absolutely everything we interact with is the electro-magnetic field (besides gravity).. why we see things, why we touch things, how that touch signal reaches our brain, how our brain even processes it.. all electro-magnetic! It is really hard to not see it as infused with something of the essence of reality. The strangeness of reality is everywhere and in feeling one magnet repel another we're just toying with that magic concentrated in one place.

[–] dogsnest@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

This guy magnets.

[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It might not be current-current, but there's an online encyclopedia where you can literally just hit the front page, click any of the featured articles, and go down a rabbit hole for hours and hours and hours. It's absolutely incredible.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

It is indeed, it's where I spend most of my time! Absolutely amazing.

[–] weeeeum@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago

Smartphones. In the span of a few decades, we've managed to cram literally hundreds of tools and devices into a single, pocket sized notebook, affordably. Its fucking mindblowing you can find full fledged smartphone for 100$. Go back a couple decades and even a rudimentary budget model would be unimaginable

Its fucking insane that my groceries for a week cost more than this ground breaking technology.

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The evolution and utility of drones.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I don't think they meant "blows you away" as in "dropping a grenade on Russian infantry."

[–] crawancon@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago

blows them away tho

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I was unfortunate enough (or fortunate depending on your point of view) to see a video of Russian soldiers having a grenade go off right next to them. I used to think some of the effects at the start of Saving Private Ryan were a bit janky and obviously prop based. But apparently, no, that's exactly what a person being blown up by a grenade looks like.

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[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

COVID antiviral medication.

[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

I was reading a paper on it and was blown away at how they referred to "programming" with mRNA that has very real parallels to computer programming. The encoding of the molecule so that it has sections for production, delivery and transport. It's incredible.

[–] Jimbabwe@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I’m not sure this fits the bill, but I’m blown away by the depth and breadth of available hardware. Not computer hardware (tho that’s amazing, too), but latches, levers, nuts and bolts. I can go down a McMaster-Carr rabbit hole the way most people can go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. It’s just fascinating to me how many highly engineered, precisely machined, perfect, beautiful solutions exist to specific problems. If there’s ever an apocalypse, I’m seriously going to miss the ability to have brilliant mechanical solutions available at the click of a mouse.

[–] higgsboson@dubvee.org 3 points 3 months ago

McMaster-Carr is the 8th wonder of the world.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Man, I'm still hyped that I have a device that fits in my pocket, can carry an entire book library, a giant collection of music, plus selected videos, and if that was all it could do, it would still be a sci-fi dream come true, but it does more than that too.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

I started my game development career in 1996 and we were developing for a brand new system that used "the internet" for touch screen terminals.

At that time of my life, if you told me you could have something the size of a pack of cigarettes that could render 3D video faster than my entire rendering farm, let me talk to any human on the planet like a Star Trek communicator, tell me the upcoming weather... I would have told you you are insane and this will never happen

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

"An iPod, a phone, and an internet communications device."

That quote never gets old.

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Smartphones - multi purpose tool in your pocket, flashlight, phone, navigation, gateway to the internet, camera, etc.., also can summon help when you're in danger (although results may vary).

Quadcopters with GPS auto return feature and position hold (aka: "Drones") - I mean, can you imagine just flying through the air?

I mean, sure, there are planes, but most people don't fly in planes everyday. And you don't really get to be in control, yoi're just a spectator.

Imagine just flying though your neighborhood like a bird. That's whag flying around with a drone feels like. Its throught a screen, but its probably the closest thing to getting the view of a bird.

These days, drones are just like $300 to $1000, basically the cost of a smartphone.

Very fun stuff.

I'm honestly kinda afraid that governments are trying to ban drones because of perceived "national security threats". Politicians always ruining every fun thing 😓

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What better way to demonstrate international simultaneous television broadcasting than with an annual song competition? It's quite literally the only reason why I turn on my telly anymore.

The only thing I hate about it is the fact that it can get quite political, and it certainly results in often very depressing controversy. Last year was a prime example of this.

But still, the tech behind it was and continues to be just so cool. Thanks, Switzerland.

[–] Phoonzang@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What better way to demonstrate international simultaneous television broadcasting than with an annual song competition? It's quite literally the only reason why I turn on my telly anymore.

Oh, they are talking about ESC!

The only thing I hate about it is the fact that it can get quite political,

Awww, not really.

Seriously, ESC is the least political show on whole of television, they are trying to avoid anything controversial as much as they can, just look at how they handled that Dutch singer who fell from grace. There was zero discussion or mentioning, he was just cut from the show.

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Good job. Also, the fact that they couldn't just, idk, play one of his past performances and using that for the final instead of pretending he never even existed is a bit weird.

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Video generators are cool as fuck and I refuse to pretend otherwise. You can tell a robot "make this look more Pixar" and it works. Even if what you feed in is a block of solid noise. Yeah yeah yeah, sometimes you get six-legged dogs who are walking both ways at once, but even those amusing failure cases exist in photorealistic forests pulled from thin air.

This is science fiction technology, and you're mad at it because of... copyright?

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[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 months ago

not sure this counts, but wikipedia always amazes me; I wish we could fashion the world this way, out of voluntary labor that provides commercial or better quality

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Home automation technology and completely free development tools. Arduino and ESP controllers are amazing nowadays and unbelievably cheap. I just got a little $20 module that's a 3" square 480x480 touch display with an ESP32 on the back of it. I haven't even decided what to do with it yet, but it will probably end up as a wall-mounted indoor display/touch panel controller for the heater and vents in the greenhouse I just built in the backyard. I will add outdoor temperature as well, and maybe weather forecast icons. I was going to just use a phone app, but this thing was so cheap and will be readable from across the room at a glance without pulling out a phone. And totally DIY!

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Home Assistant. It's just so good at what it does and makes things like what you are talking about more accessible to people like me.

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[–] FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yes! My ten year old brain would have melted at what's available off the shelf now. A raspberry pi zero is, what, £20 or something? Picos I think are intended to compete directly with Arduino are even cheaper. That's completely nuts

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[–] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Any AI that can learn. Something always seems off when suddenly an AI that can't even hear you claims it "learned" that "hors d'oeuvres" is pronounced "orderbs". Sometimes it gives me mechanical turk vibes.

[–] Resol@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

In spelling, V comes before R. But in pronounciation, it's the other way round. Weird.

I always said "ore-doovers" or even just "hors d"oeuvres" like in French. That's always how it sounded to me.

[–] Aphelion@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I recently found a battery powered device for hot/cold therapy, and it has worked wonders the tendonitis in my arm.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I know the OP requested no brands, but would like to know what these are called?

How hot and how cold.

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