Four short links: 24 January 2019
Computational Periscopy, Automating Data Structures, Multi-Stream Processing, and Open Source Bioinstruments
- Computational Periscopy with an Ordinary Camera (Nature) — Here we introduce a two-dimensional computational periscopy technique that requires only a single photograph captured with an ordinary digital camera. Our technique recovers the position of an opaque object and the scene behind (but not completely obscured by) the object, when both the object and scene are outside the line of sight of the camera, without requiring controlled or time-varying illumination. Such recovery is based on the visible penumbra of the opaque object having a linear dependence on the hidden scene that can be modeled through ray optics. Computation and vision, whether deep learning or this kind of mathematical witchcraft, has brought about an age of truly amazing advances. Digital cameras are going to make film cameras look like pinhole cameras because the digital feature set will be staggering. (All requiring computational power, on- or off-device)
- The Data Calculator: Data Structure Design and Cost Synthesis From First Principles, and Learned Cost Models — We present a design engine, the Data Calculator, which enables interactive and semi-automated design of data structures. It brings two innovations. First, it offers a set of fine-grained design primitives that capture the first principles of data layout design: how data structure nodes lay out data, and how they are positioned relative to each other. This allows for a structured description of the universe of possible data structure designs that can be synthesized as combinations of those primitives. The second innovation is computation of performance using learned cost models. I’m always interested in augmentation for programmers. (via Adrian Colyer)
- Confluo (Berkeley) — open source system for real-time distributed analysis of multiple data streams. Confluo simultaneously supports high throughput concurrent writes, online queries at millisecond timescales, and CPU-efficient ad hoc queries via a combination of data structures carefully designed for the specialized case of multiple data streams, and an end-to-end optimized system design. The home page has more information. Designing for multiple data streams is an interesting architectural choice. Any interesting business will track multiple data streams, but will they do that in one system or bolt together multiple?
- Open-Sourcing Bioinstruments — story of the poseidon syringe pump system, which has free hardware designs and software.
