Ask HN: What are you learning? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#821

Post by codekilla » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

koeng wrote: post #725

codekilla wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, checkout Maude--really woefully underutilized. Some fascinating things around pathway logic that are applied to biology: http://pl.csl.sri.com

That's amazing! I've never found that site before but I'm going to read some of their papers. Thank you for linking

Maude fascinates me to no end. Currently I'm actually re-learning kdb+/q as I want to implement some things related to bioinformatics using it, but at some point I'd really like to do some things with logic/dependent types in biology. Happy to chat further grant eonias dot org

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#822

Post by cs702 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #803

cs702 wrote: post #252

* Learning and building a more intuitive understanding of Projective Geometric Algebra (PGA). Looks very disruptive for all kinds of computer graphics applications. PGA replaces the use of Vectors, Quaternions, Dual Quaternions, and the entire machinery of Linear Algebra with a single unified, elegant framework that "just works." Feels a bit like magic. * Exploring and playing with new capsule routing algorithms in d…

Enki (the speaker in the video you posted below) is running a community called bivector for all GA people https://bivector.net/ . Join the discord https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk . Check out a demo https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated-orbits

Yes. These links are shown in the video :-)

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#823

Post by akirakurusu » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

qeng-ho wrote: post #500

akirakurusu wrote: post #476

Cantonese - it is an incredibly rich language with tons of regional differences, slang, and history spanning thousands of years, way more rich than modern Mandarin. The fact that it has fewer resources online to learn it has made me more resourceful at finding good books, academic grammar articles, and has gotten me deep into HK pop culture. I'm a native romance language speaker and Cantonese is so fundamentally diff…

I'm curious; are you studying Cantonese or Taishanese or some other variant? Asking simply because Cantonese is pretty mutually intelligible with Mandarin; I'm a native Mandarin and Cantonese speaker and barring some vocabulary (and pronunciation which is often just slightly "off-sounding" Mandarin), they're almost identical.

Been studying standard HK Cantonese for almost 2 years at this point, can understand a wide variety of written Cantonese, news, stories, but cannot even read a basic mandarin sentence I see on wechat. Cantonese having 6 tones (with 9 in some regional variants). There are over 2200 different syllables in Cantonese, more than twice the number in Mandarin: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chinese-languages/Standard-....

I'd argue the majority of daily vocabulary is completely different, both in writing and in pronunciation, than its mandarin counterpart, such as some of the most commonly used words 而家，頭先，邊個，喺唔喺係，佢哋，講，有冇，點解，佢同佢講，畀 as in 我講畀佢聽，聽日，尋日，嗰陣時，嗰個，嗰啲， I could go on and on. Even after all this time, I didn't know the characters 是 or 哪里 until learning them a few weeks ago. Likewise, if I were a native mandarin speaker and heard the relatively simple, common sentence 佢哋而家喺邊度呀 spoken to me, I would understand exactly 0% of it. Grammar is significantly different with word placement, nuance of ending particles, usage of adverbial comparisons using Noun + V + 得 + 過 + Noun, using 畀，未。。。添, etc. I cannot understand a shred of mandarin when spoken to me, despite being able to communicate conversationally and understand most of spoken Cantonese from others. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1211. There are varieties of sources analyzing the etymology of words in sinitic languages as well as their grammar structures and phonologies. Both languages are far from being mutually intelligible for monolingual speakers. Perhaps being a native speaker in both has allowed you to have a comprehensive mental-map of their isomorphisms.

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#824

Post by thomas2718 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

I have a cranky uncle who sends an email newsletter with links. Most of the links are conspiracy theories in my eyes. Some of them are about the climate. So to be able to make reasonable judgements, I've decided to learn about the science of climate. The IPCC makes all their reports available. I've started with the technical summary (84 pages, two-column). Most parts of it are well written and understandable with some basic knowledge of physics and chemistry. Nevertheless, it took several man-days to read it. As there is high confidence that the current warming is caused by humans, I've joined Citizens' Climate Lobby to contribute to the right laws to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.

The same newsletter made me read a book about motivational psychology (The Righteous Mind). A very interesting topic, that I would love to learn more about, if I had more time.

Last year I've (re-)read Category Theory for Programmers. I had tried it once before, but gave up after a third, as the notation didn't make much sense to me anymore. I would like to read it again, creating flash cards for the most important concepts along the way.

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#825

Post by wigl » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #799

wigl wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot water encourages hydration of the flour and gluten development, resulting in a more elastic/homogeneous dough. IMHO, the hottest water from the tap should be good enough for that purpose.

True, but hot tap water doesn't always taste very good. If you've ever had seen the inside of a water heater, you will never want to consume hot water again. It's often full of rust and scale.

You and the other commenter are correct. Just meant that temp ~120F as a reference. Have lived in a calcite water area, no fun.

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#826

Post by Nabi » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

CameronNemo wrote: post #426

Nabi wrote: post #146

Audio programming and all jungles surrounding it - C++, plugin frameworks, Fourier transform, filters design etc. Step by step, often hard but also rewarding.

You might be interested to check out sushi, which is a headless DAW written in C++.

Thanks! Haven’t heard about it before, will check. Although I’v heard about Elk - looks like by the same guys. Recently started playing around with Bela as it has Eurorack kits.

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#827

Post by jdminhbg » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

koeng wrote: post #728

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. This subject is on my list and will probably approach it through Clojure's Core.Logic (a logic library inspired by both prolog and miniKanren) [1] 1: https://github.com/clojure/core.logic

I've heard Datomic was made by Clojure people and is really good software too, though unfortunately proprietary.

All of those things are true. If you want to check out Datalog-using DBs in Clojure that are open source, here are two alternatives:

* Datahike (similar to Datomic but similar): https://github.com/replikativ/datahike

* Crux (a bitemporal graph database): https://opencrux.com

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#828

Post by jpgvm » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

I've 2 main things going right now. IRL I am working on my culinary skills. Cooking has always been my passion but doesn't pay bills hence I write code. Been mostly working basics, learning proper knife skills, focusing on doing recipes from scratch and experimenting a bit to gain intuition about how things like emulsification work.

On the code side I am building a logs database in Rust. I have previous experience building databases and in particular time series databases so most of the learning here is mostly about Rust which I have used before but not for this type of project. Also getting deeper into regular expressions, query languages (parsing/lexing/AST) and query optimisation than I have in the past.

Rust is growing on me more than it did in the past. I think a) because it's a much better language than it was when I used it previously and b) my experiences since I worked with it last have garnered me more respect for it's design decisions and type system.

Feeling like I am learning lots of stuff right now despite being trapped inside so that is good. :)

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#829

Post by vinay_ys » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

ankit70 wrote: post #710

shivekkhurana wrote: post #464

I have lost my contract as a developer and am helping a non-profit [1] streamline their operations. The organization aims to provide food and heath kits to the marginalized. We have already distributed over 600 kits and are on track to reach a 1000 in this week. Each kit is designed to support a family of 4 for 1 month. I was introduced to them by a friend who was helping them build an open platform [2], open in the…

Wow! I think why most people don't donate in India because they think their money doesn't make any impact. https://open-data.karuna2020.org this is game changer. I wish more NGOs in India would do it. And good luck!

That's changing. People in India did donate in flying colors in the last one week. To help with Covid19, PM-CARES fund was announced by Prime Minister Modi on March 28th. In a week since then, it has raised almost a billion USD. The super rich did donate well. But so did the common people - via UPI digital payments. See news coverage here: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/pm-cares-fund-her...

Re: Ask HN: What are you learning?

#830

Post by simonsarris » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

japhyr wrote: post #766

simonsarris wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I grew up in Nashua too, at 37 Orange street, if you've ever seen the house (An 1840's house, just at the start of the downtown historic district)

Here's how I tell people how my experience of Nashua has changed: "When I was young, we used to tell people how to get to our house by saying at one point, 'Turn right where the cows are. You'll go over an old stone bridge and then through some narrow curves on a few hills. Then turn right at..." Then it turned into "Turn right where the cows used to be." Then it became "Turn right at the ____ subdivision." When I wa…

That's funny. I was born in 1988, so that world was gone by the time I got here. And even then, when I was a kid there were abandoned buildings to explore like the old tannery, and those are demolished now.

For all the changes they can't get the downtown to "work" and they are really, really bad at trying. I tried too: the mayor appointed me to the downtown improvement committee where I got to watch nothing happen first hand.