I came across a similar concept in the shape of a kid toy in the early 90s.
Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the game (my parents got it on a trip to France), but it definitely got me hooked.
I don't remember snap circuits when I was a kid, it was all about the spring terminal kits.
I didn't really get anywhere with any of it until I started doing microcontrollers though. I don't think I really made an effort to really learn and improve in the analog era, I followed along with instructions but never did anything nontrivial on my own
Occasionally things just didn't work, pretty sure broken components or bad connections or some other dumb trivial problem was happening, so I kind of got a sense that these analog parts were mysterious unknowable things.
I think I would have probably learned more if I'd had the Falstad simulator or something.
With microcontrollers, the path forward is much clearer, once you know the basics of coding and how to use libraries, whatever idea you have seems possible, and it's more obvious what the next step is and what you should be learning.
With analog work it's all like doing math, everything interacts in ten different ways, and the application itself is one side of an equation you sometimes have to change to make it all work.
Growing up watching tech in the movies, you almost never see anything that's possible without microcontrollers. You have to be really smart to even come up with any ideas that you can do with analog.
Just wanted to add, completely unrelated to the line of business and the moral judgement on what Mr Beast Production does, that I really cherish seeing such a well written onboarding material.
The sharpness in articulation, the consistency in the leadership vision, and the cultural undertone is of very high level.
For comparison, any tech company I've worked for, doesn't get even closer, drawing in acronyms, micro-cultures and personal interest.
This post well summarises everything that is wrong with the current domotic / home automation space.
You either waste a tons of money on consumer grade product, and spend even more when they break, or you become a domain expert, hacking your way through it and running HomeAssistant (or similar)
Those are valid points, but irrelevant for the context of this research.
Yes, the computational cost is ridicolous compared to the original game, and yes, it lacks basic things like pre-computing, storing, etc. That said, you could assume that all that can be either done at the margin of this discovery OR over time will naturally improve OR will become less important as a blocker.
The fact that you can model a sequence of frames with such contextual awareness without explictly having to encode it, is the real breakthrough here. Both from a pure gaming standpoint, but on simulation in general.
I suppose it also doesn't really matter what kinds of resources the game originally requires. The diffusion model isn't going to require twice as much memory just because the game does. Presumably you wouldn't even necessarily need to be able to render the original game in real time - I would imagine the basic technique would work even if you used a state of the Hollywood-quality offline renderer to render each input frame, and that the performance of the diffusion model would be similar?
Well the majority of ML systems are compression machines (entropy minimizers), so ideally you'd want to see if you can learn the assets and game mechanics through play alone (what this paper shows). Better would be to do so more efficiently than that devs themselves, finding better compression. Certainly the game is not perfectly optimized. But still, this is a step in that direction. I mean no one has accomplished this before so even with a model with far higher capacity it's progress. (I think people are interpreting my comment as dismissive. I'm critiquing but the key point I was making was about how there's likely better architectures, training methods, and all sorts of stuff to still research. Personally I'm glad there's still more to research. That's the fun part)
>you could assume that all that can be either done at the margin of this discovery OR over time will naturally improve OR will become less important as a blocker.
OR one can hope it will be thrown to the heap of nonviable tech with the rest of spam waste
1) the model has enough memory to store not only all game assets and engine but even hundreds of "plays".
2) me mentioning that there's still a lot of room to make these things better (seems you think so too so maybe not this one?)
3) an interesting point I was wondering to compare current state of things (I mean I'll give you this but it's just a random thought and I'm not reviewing this paper in an academic setting. This is HN, not NeurIPS. I'm just curious ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯)
4) the point that you can rip a game
I'm really not sure what you're contesting to because I said several things.
> it lacks basic things like pre-computing, storing, etc.
It does? Last I checked neural nets store information. I guess I need to return my PhD because last I checked there's a UNet in SD 1.4 and that contains a decoder.
1) yes you are correct. the point i was making is that, in the context of the discovery/research, that's outside the scope, and 'easier' to do, as it has been done in other verticals (ie.: e2e self driving)
2) yep, aligned here
3) I'm not fully following here, but agree this is not NeurIPS, and no Schmidhuber's bickering.
4) The network does store information, it just doesn't store a gameplay information, which could be forced, but as per point 1, it is , and I think it is the right approach, beyond the scope of this research
1) I'm not sure this is outside scope. It's also not something I'd use to reject a paper were I to review this in a conference. I mean you got to start somewhere and unlike reviewer 2 I don't think any criticism is rejection criteria. That'd be silly since lack of globally optimal solutions. But I'm also unconvinced this is proven my self-driving vehicles but I'm also not an RL expert.
3) It's always hard to evaluate. I was thinking about the ripping the game and so a reasonable metric is a comparison of ability to perform the task by a human. Of course I'm A LOT faster than my dishwasher at cleaning dishes but I'm not occupied while it is going, so it still has high utility. (Someone tell reviewer 2 lol)
4) Why should we believe that it doesn't store gameplay? The model was fed "user" inputs and frames. So it has this information and this information appears useful for learning the task.
you can look into 'Precision Agriculture' and find quite a few solutions. Deere is pretty much at the front of the game with automation and data that provide farmers with the ability to make super informed decisions.
I always wondered why we cannot find hot filled appliances in the old continent.
Also, I wonder why compressors in heatpumps are not multi-speed (basically energy consumption can be modulated). If you are an expert please let me know I'd love to talk more.
> I always wondered why we cannot find hot filled appliances in the old continent.
You can find them but they'll be in the semi-professional space and above (relatively expensive high-duty).
They're very rare in the consumer space because
- it requires running more hot water lines / extensions, historically houses are built with lots of cold water lines but hot water lines only where required
- for their heating requirement, a normal electric plug is more than sufficient in the land of 230V, this is is a similar issue to kettles basically
- they require an internal heater anyway as residential water circuits come nowhere near the high temperature cycles: 50-53C is common to avoid risks of scalding but some are set as low as 45, the standard high temp cycles for washing machines are 60 and 90, and dishwasher commonly have a heavy cycle around 65
- it makes the machines more convoluted since they needs more inlets, a mixing valve, etc...
- they're not really compatible with hot water tanks: you don't want your dishes or laundry to empty your shower water, plus hot water tanks are commonly electrical so there's no real gain given per the above the machines need a heater anyway
Also, in quite a few houses, the initial run of water out of the hot tap is cold for quite some time until the hot water has either made it round from the hot tank, or if you have a combi boiler system then after that has fired itself up, got up to temperature, and then the hot water has made it round the pipes from there. It may be that the washing machine uses so little water that most of the water it gets from the hot supply is cold, wasting all that energy.
For me indeed it takes >30 sec to get hot water in the kitchen (modern kitchens have small boilers), but the washers are near the boiler, so hot fill would be more efficient. The boiler supplies 60 deg C water though, so that is not enough for the 90 deg C program for example. And then you need a heating element anyway...
These days most washing cycles run a lot cooler. My washing powder/soap recommends 30 but I usually run at 40. I know that I need to do the occasional high temp wash too though.
Dehumidify method is an often missed part for dryer. On heat pump system, it's done by the other end of heat pump. On heater system, it's done by exhausting hot moisty air or use cold water for dehumidify. I don't know what method is used for average dryer in each country.
For most people, running a 240-volt circuit requires an (expensive) electrician. In some cases, it requires drywall work. And maybe a utility service upgrade.
American homes already have 240V circuits for large electric appliances and electric water heaters. If you want to convert one of those from gas to electric or just want an extra appliance for some reason, sure it’s going to be more expensive than just plugging it into the wall but you’re also buying a fairly large, expensive extra appliance. And many of those appliances need work done anyway: water heaters, dishwashers, and washing machines need plumbing, gas appliances need gas lines, dryers need dryer vent ducts, and ranges need range hoods which ideally also require ductwork.
Besides, it’s not like European homes actually have more heavy appliances than American homes. Americans are much more likely to own clothes dryers, despite the fact that Europeans could easily just plug one into any normal outlet.
The odds a random US plug will be 240v is essentially zero, unless you’re standing next to an electric range/stove/dryer. And those plugs typically have one outlet and it’s already in use.
Unless the prior owner was a welder anyway. Then you might have a few in the garage.
Maybe I should make the obvious reason more explicit. If you have something designed to operate on 120V and plug it into a 240V outlet, there will be safety issues. It might even catch on fire. So the two voltages have to use different outlet and plug shapes for safety reasons. An outlet is not “randomly” going to be one voltage or the other because that would be a terrible idea.
And yes, the 240V outlets are set up for heavy appliances rather than small countertop appliances. Remember, we were talking about washing machines and dishwashers, and the claim that European appliances don’t need to consume hot water because they have 230V circuits. American appliances have 240V circuits and they still consume hot water so that’s not a satisfying explanation.
It’s true that Americans don’t plug electric kettles into a 240V plug. There are a few reasons for that:
* Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. So the tea kettle is usually a lower priority in an American household compared to a British one.
* Stovetop tea kettles and microwaves are both perfectly fine at boiling water. Are they as optimal? Maybe not but it’s not a priority. (Microwaves might be just as fast actually.)
* Electric kettles work totally fine on a 120V circuit anyway. I have one. Is it as fast as it would be on a 240V circuit? No, but it’s not a priority. We probably make up the time difference by having faster dishwashers and washing machines that consume hot water in addition to using 240V power.
Upon inspection, the American Breville kettles are 1/2 the wattage with a 1 liter boil time of 4 minutes at 1500 watts.
The UK versions from the same brand are 3000 watts, but only reduces the boil time by 1 minute.
I'm not sure about efficiency one way or the other, but it's interesting to note that double the power does not yield one half boil time.
Additionally, at this elevation I would estimate my morning coffee, Americano (Italian coffee that requires boiled water), takes less time to make than it would at higher wattage at sea level. I'm only guessing.
I think it comes down to practicality more than either culture's love of tea or coffee.
> I think it comes down to practicality more than either culture's love of tea or coffee.
Yeah, come to think of it a coffee machine is solving a very similar problem to an electric kettle. Whats more, I’ve even used a drip coffee maker as a makeshift electric kettle before. So that was just a dumb argument on my part. Thanks for bailing me out with actual data on the diminishing returns of dumping more power into an electric kettle!
Could this be due to American washers being bigger? I don’t see why American washers would be designed to use more water if less water technology exists.
If water consumption isn't something the customer or government cares about, then the customer will choose on other metrics. Americans aren't generally going to buy a European washing machine that takes an hour longer to clean their clothes.
Europeans are going to look at the energy efficiency sticker that by law must be displayed with the machine, either out of altruism, to reduce the running cost, or because the machine with A must be better than the one with G. See the coloured symbols on [1] and the more detailed information if you click one, showing capacity, water use per cycle and typical annual electricity use.
Walmart's site [2] doesn't show this information anywhere.
Walmart does not sell washers, those are all resellers using the Walmart website as a platform, and almost no on would buy an appliance there.
All the energy usage and other details would be on the website of a retailer that actually sells appliances, like Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Costco/etc.
> A modern European washing machine uses 30-50 litres per wash, vs 75-100 for a modern American one.
Maybe we just have bigger washing machines? You need to control for washer capacity to make a fair comparison here. If you need to do twice as many loads of laundry because you can only fit half as much laundry in each load, you’ve gained nothing. And it’s not like having a bigger washing machine requires every load of laundry to use the full water capacity of the machine even if you only do small loads. On older machines you can set a dial for load size while newer ones have sensors for that.
Uh, you might want to reconsider who you’re talking to. I’ve run 40 amp 240v split phase and 3 phase in North America (permitted) for personal projects. I’m well aware.
No one installs L30R/L6-30R receptacles in the US for ‘normal’ (as in used by a human for random stuff) use as standard practice, because yes - most of the time no one needs it. Maximum power for a normal 120/20 amp branch circuit is 2.4kw, and that’s 7.2kw. The most I’ve ever actually had a use for in a residential building was 50 amp @ 240v (arc gouging), but I did setup 50 amp @ 480v for a massive CNC milling machine once.
And when someone does, it’s a special case.
Most of Europe and Asia, they have receptacles that can handle that kind of load. And many other wiring changes.
But they also don’t really use them to capacity very often either.
But it is convenient to be able to run a decent welder off a normal house outlet in Germany or Singapore if you want.
"Normal" high power portable devices in Europe are 2-3kW electric heaters (generally an expensive way to heat a house, but OK if you're heating a single room) and older and less efficient vacuum cleaners (2kW).
Maybe also a very high spec gaming PC, which here could run (monitors and all) from a single outlet. Would tripping the breaker have been a concern at a 2000s LAN party in the USA? I have no idea.
In some countries it's common to have a 400V (3 phase) socket in the garage. Excellent for car charging, but that is also OK from 230V. That is probably by far the biggest current benefit of 230V everywhere. Charge the car at a decent speed at that holiday cottage in the mountains.
> Uh, you might want to reconsider who you’re talking to. I’ve run 40 amp 240v split phase and 3 phase in North America (permitted) for personal projects. I’m well aware.
Sorry about that, but I’m not sure how you expected me to know that about you or why we’re arguing about tea kettles. I think I inferred more disagreement from context than we actually have. Do we actually disagree about anything here or are we all good? At the very least I think we’re on the same page about washing machines, which was the original point of contention here.
And yes, the point about welding is a good one; higher voltage standards are a lot more convenient for that.
Generally there is no option to do this in a US residence. The drop to the house coming from the transformer only provides two single phase 120V to neutral circuits, which can be combined to provide 240V. Commercial and industrial sites will often have higher voltage 3-phase available.
In practice, this isn't an issue. Induction devices sold in the US for residential use simply are designed to work on 120V or 240V. The heat output for the 120V ones too limited for some purposes, but once you are up to 240V it's generally not a limiting factor.
> 50-53C is common to avoid risks of scalding but some are set as low as 45
Wait what, isn't the minimum temperature where Legionella will die around 60°C? Are you talking of a country where they (noticeably) chlorinate the water? I thought that was very uncommon, except for Southern Spain and Italy. If you set your boiler to 45°C in a country with (nearly) unchlorinated water you'll have a nice Legionella culture after your 3 week vacation.
My water tank and hot tub had "self-cleaning" cycle that would heat up and circulate water to prevent bacteria buildup regardless of what temperature it was set to.
Oh yes, what's up with that anyway? I recently noticed laundry detergent companies making some magic "wash in 20 degrees Celsius" product, and heavily advertising it on the grounds of energy savings. I wonder how that works. I'm not sure my washing machine can even go as low as 20 degrees.
Makes sense - high pressure to minimize loss of heat in transmission. Like with high voltage lines. Though this would be like skipping the final transformer and feeding 40kV straight into your house wiring, which I don't think anyone does...
From the US perspective, I have trouble understanding most of these.
> - it requires running more hot water lines / extensions, historically houses are built with lots of cold water lines but hot water lines only where required
Don't you need hot lines almost everywhere anyway? Every sink, bath, and shower has both cold and hot lines. So you're simply running two extra hots...one for the washer, one for the dishwasher. But usually dishwasher supply is run off the kitchen sink supply, so the "extra" hot line is just a couple feet. Actually, there's no cold line at all to our dishwashers, only the hot, come to think of it. So there's zero extra piping for the dishwasher in the US, and yes, one extra run for the washer.
> - for their heating requirement, a normal electric plug is more than sufficient in the land of 230V, this is is a similar issue to kettles basically
As other comments mentioned, the US does have 220V plugs for heavy appliances. It's already standard to have 220 in the laundry room and kitchen anyway - the dryer and oven use them. So this doesn't seem to explain the difference. It would be very easy run a 220 to your washer in the US, you'd need maybe two feet of cable and an outlet. Indeed, I don't know if it's code or not, but a lot of laundry rooms especially probably have the 120 outlet the washer uses actually wired up with four conductor cable, with the extra hot unused, because the cable for the dryer is right there next to it and why run the three conductor cable from elsewhere, when it's easier to use the four conductor. So they could literally just pop in the 220 outlet and be done with zero extra work instead, if washers were on 220.
> - they require an internal heater anyway as residential water circuits come nowhere near the high temperature cycles: 50-53C is common to avoid risks of scalding but some are set as low as 45, the standard high temp cycles for washing machines are 60 and 90, and dishwasher commonly have a heavy cycle around 65.
This is incorrect. My washer doesn't have any heating element. The dishwasher does to superheat the water, since at the maximum settings it boils water. (The steam cycle.) The thermistor is set during normal non-steam operation to run at around 130F/54C, which is the temperature of my water heater heater supply, but it's true that inlet temp is not guaranteed; different people will have different settings and the pipe run entails some heat loss. Plus it does need the heating element for the dry cycle.
> - it makes the machines more convoluted since they needs more inlets, a mixing valve, etc...
Dishwashers only have one inlet in the US. It's true that the washer has two, but it's not much more complexity. At least on mine, it just opens both valves at the same time, there is no "mixing valve." If you select hot it only opens the hot valve, warm opens both, and cold opens only the cold.
> - they're not really compatible with hot water tanks: you don't want your dishes or laundry to empty your shower water,
How are they "not really compatible" when it's bog standard? Your dishwasher uses a pretty minimal amount of water (mine fills with 1 gallon.) Washing machines use ~10-20 gallons. The standard hot water tank in the US is 50+ gallons. People do sometimes run out of hot water, but it's not from running the dishwasher at the same time.
It isn't code to run 120V receptacles off of a 240V circuit. That's a recipe for a fire that your insurer will not cover. You can do a shared neutral to two 120V loads in limited circumstances.
It doesn’t surprise me that it’s not code but it’s common and I’ve never heard of an insurer doing anything at all to verify your electrical isn’t a total disaster.
Either way GPs point that the lack of 240 stopped / stops US washers from having water heaters is unfounded. There’s almost always a cable with 240 not two feet away.
Another thing I didn’t think about is that a lot of people (not me) have sinks in their laundry rooms, so there’s also cold and hot run there anyway. I wonder if some Europeans aren’t running hot to all their sinks.
edit: I’m not sure it is against code? When I google it it seems to be fairly common advice and allowed under NEC.
Actually I thought of a case where this is just not just common but practically universal: welll pumps. Basically all the pumps are 240, and a 120 receptacle or light is almost always installed off the same (240) circuit.
There are 120VAC units in the U.S., but there are also 240VAC units in the U.S. You just have to get the right unit for your available power, or have the appropriate power run for your unit.
My dishwasher is European and is hot-fill. It doesn’t even have a cold water connection. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cold fill dishwasher in the US.
I personally hate dishwashers that don't heat up their water. I've been to multiple places where "hot water" stats being hot only after 5-10 minutes. It greatly reduced dishwasher efficiency.
