Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

I made three neat sound toys/audio tools, and bluesky is giving me absolute hell trying to post my URLs! Let's try one at a time:

0π.guru/guess - Plays a random frequency, guess what hertz

A screenshot of a frequency guessing game webapp. It features the ability to listen to a frequency and input your guess.

November 27, 2025 at 3:52 PM

Reposted by evan@0π.guru

modula t.

@modula-t.org

apparently new research shows that ultrasound can be used to trigger the experience of arbitrary(?) scents. this would not only be useful for VR, but for other effects that scents can have, such as awakening people who have fainted. could potentially even use it to "write information to the brain":

screenshot of text:

The reason stimulating olfactory sensations is interesting is not just "VR for smells", as one might initially assume. The nose has 400 distinct receptor types, and we can distinguish subtle combinations of their activations, so they could serve as a channel of writing directly into the brain, as a means of non-invasive neuromodulation.

The olfactory system potentially allows writing up to 400, if not 800 due to two nostrils, dimensions into the brain. That is comparable to the dimensionality of latent spaces of LLMs, which implies you could reasonably encode the meaning of a paragraph into a 400-dimensional vector. If you had a device which allows for this kind of writing, you could learn to associate the input patterns with their corresponding meanings. After that, you could directly smell the latent space. A bit of ultrasound, a breath in - and you understood a paragraph.

People are able to develop synesthesia - being able to hear colors and see smells, and it might be possible to extend that to semantics. However, at this stage it is speculative.

One could try to make a similar argument for the eyes: take 400 cones on the retina, hijack them, and you've got yourself a 400-dimensional channel. But we think the nose is better. The olfactory system is much simpler and more directly interfaces with core brain regions, like the hippocampus. The signal through the olfactory system is simply less filtered and processed. If you tried to write arbitrary light intensities into a patch of cones, the next step of the processing would be a convolutional neural network-like structure in the visual cortex, and the signal would get averaged out. The embeddings you'd write would never make it into the higher levels of processing in the brain. You can try to encode the information in a more easily perceptible way, such as Chernoff faces, but it would reduce the bandwidth, and learning the remapping would still be very difficult.

November 23, 2025 at 4:04 AM

Reposted by evan@0π.guru

Tabatha Southey🇨🇦

@tabathasouthey.bsky.social

Massive shoutout out to whoever handles the Royal Canadian Air Force’s social media account. They responded to every single comment on their already very solid Trans Day of Remembrance post and they responded like this…

A screenshot of a Facebook post where a person named Andy ask the Well now “What the hell is transgender?”
The Royal Canadian Air Force account response with “That’s a pretty big question asked in a pretty small way, Andy.

‘Transgender’ putting describes someone whose gender – who they know themselves to be – doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not a fad. People have lived this experience for as long as people have existed; we’re just finally talking about it openly.

You don’t have to fully understand it right away, most learning takes time, but we can always start from a place of respect. That’s how decent folks handle things they’re still getting used to.”

November 22, 2025 at 1:03 AM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

why yes, i did order my coffee with light ice just to take it home and add more ice

November 20, 2025 at 1:44 PM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

every time i unlock my phone i give Face ID a cute lil smile

November 19, 2025 at 11:41 PM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

one of my cats always races past me to beat me to the bathroom and i'm starting to feel like my privacy is being invaded

November 17, 2025 at 4:08 PM

Reposted by evan@0π.guru

c0nc0rdance

@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social

The elongated snoot on this fish gives it the name 'elephantnose' (Gnathonemus petersii), but the weirdness doesn't end there.

The nose contains a structure called a 'Schnauzenorgan' that lets it see with electricity, creating whole models of the world in its giant brain based on electric fields.

A dark blue/grey fish with a long thin nose like an elephant's trunk, a dark ocelli covered anal fin area, and some greenery in the background.

I've lost where I stole this, but I think it was an aquarium forum.

November 17, 2025 at 1:51 PM

Reposted by evan@0π.guru

-𝚖𝚘𝚡 ❆ ☃︎︎ ❆

@moxiest.art

okay look, it's saturday again.

the world is at a point where we feel fucking gross actively trying to pay bills while people are a lot worse off than we are.

we also still need to try and pay bills.

support us if you can, but please also provide direct aid to other people in need.

thank you.

-𝚖𝚘𝚡 ❆ ☃︎︎ ❆ @moxiest.art · Sep 6

good morning, beautiful people!

it's ✨Shameless Self Promotion Saturday✨ once again

buy some stuff if you want. help us pay bills if you can. tell a friend if you're willing.

either way, have a good weekend.

late stage capitalism is a disease. voluntary profit is the cure.

November 8, 2025 at 3:39 PM

Reposted by evan@0π.guru

Luke Steuber

@lukesteuber.com

When the manic episode ends and I'm deleting comments on six websites

A person wearing a formal suit and bow tie stands on what appears to be a red carpet. Their head is covered with a brown paper bag that has rough cutouts for the eyes and bold black marker writing that reads, “I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE.” In the background, photographers with cameras and flashes point toward them.

November 12, 2025 at 4:32 AM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

is it okay for my thumb knuckle to “click” every time i scroll on my phone

November 9, 2025 at 12:14 AM

Reposted by evan@0π.guru

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

this week meta restricted me from posting on threads and instagram, also ATT shut down my home and mobile internet then threatened to cease service entirely

i'm over here just posting pictures of laser-excited bismuth crystals and trying to host a website like ????

November 6, 2025 at 2:39 PM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

this week meta restricted me from posting on threads and instagram, also ATT shut down my home and mobile internet then threatened to cease service entirely

i'm over here just posting pictures of laser-excited bismuth crystals and trying to host a website like ????

November 6, 2025 at 2:39 PM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

music haptics on iphone is one of the best phone features since we got touchscreens

November 3, 2025 at 9:27 AM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

oh nooooo

A screenshot of my bluesky name, below it says "! Invalid Handle"

November 3, 2025 at 2:37 AM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

i wish i understood a bit more about my my networking and domains, but switching over to cloudflare nearly killed me! i don't know why i love doing things the hard way

November 3, 2025 at 2:32 AM

evan@0π.guru

@evan.dornbus.ch

@janelleshane.com howdy! Your bio says laser scientist, and I was wondering if you could help me understand why there's so much "texture in the light" when I shone this several watt blue laser on a bismuth crystal. I also noticed a strange pattern that resembles morse code! Any ideas?