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Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

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Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#91
post #74

I am going through SICP. I have just begun. I am learning more about Transformers architecture and modern NLP using the Hugging Face API. Building a computer from scratch using nand2tetris on Sundays. Learning to meditate following a detailed meditation guide. This has been working better than I expected. Going on and off with learning classical music online (with a piano). Learning German. I am primarily focused on…

What's the meditation guide you're following?

You can look up "The Mind Illuminated" by Yates (Culadasa) and Immergut.

It is completely devoid of run-of-the-mill pseudo-spiritual stuff, and consists of practical advice that you can follow.

It is a complete guide that provides step-by-step instructions.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#92
Analytic number theory.

I began reading a book on analytic number theory on my own sometime last year. While re-reading some chapters of the book again, I decided I might as well do the re-reading with a group of other folks who are interested in this subject. So I began hosting book club meetings for analytic number theory since March this year. I had made a Tell HN post about it back then.

Those meetings are still going on consistently. We have a tiny but regular group of participants who meet daily for 40 minutes to read the book together. In fact, we now have a small community around it. We call it the Offbeat Computation Club. See https://offbeat.cc/ for more details about it. We plan to add more topics of discussion, such as Common Lisp, SICP, etc., soon.

We will begin reading a new chapter (Quadratic Residues and the Quadratic Reciprocity Law) on Monday. This is a pretty self-contained chapter and quite accessible to someone who has not read the previous chapters but has some basic knowledge of modular arithmetic. If this sounds like fun, you are very welcome to join us. See the link in the previous paragraph to find our IRC channel location, meeting link, and other details.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#93
post #83

Not learning anything just yet, but there’s quite a few things I’ve been wanting to learn when I get the time: • I’d quite like to learn how to do ‘low-level stuff’, particularly microcontrollers — I rediscovered an old Arduino which I’ve had some fun playing around with. I particularly want to get to the point where I can write low-level Forth code and flash it to the microcontroller. Also, I should learn assembly l…

Edit: I'm sorry, that EdX course doesn't seem to be the one I was thinking of. The cool website is https://www.tinkercad.com though. Definitely worth poking around and experimenting.

There’s a great (very low-level introductory) IoT course from Curtin University on EdX[1] that will teach you the absolute basics of circuitry and get you started building things with arduino. MIT also has almost all of their courses available for free (search “MIT OCW” or “MIT open courseware”) if you’re looking for something more technical, given your physics background. I believe their introductory circuits course for EE/EECS students is 6.002.

The EdX course is cool though because it uses a site (I wish I could remember the name) that simulates circuits to let you build things with an arduino right in your browser.

[1]https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-the-internet-of-t...

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#94

Brazilian music. Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, João Donato, Toninho Horta, Yamandu Costa, João Gilberto etc etc. There's a great youtube channel with hundreds of videos of guitarist Nelson Faria chatting and playing music at home with a different Brazilian musician each time, a lot with English captions. https://www.youtube.com/c/umcafelaemcasa/videos

Be sure to check out Hermeto Pascoal. Especially his Som da Aura technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUlbU6CMx0

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#95
Spanish - more relearning at this point and getting practice.

Running - also relearning, which happened quickly this time. I'm already back to running 5ks after just a few weeks (though I also spent 6 months building up my cardio with a rowing machine).

How to be offline and focused. Computers (and smartphones) are fantastic tools of distraction. I'm trying to regain my focus overall. Reading physical texts is helping immensely with this. I've mostly reinstated my personal "no tech in the sitting room" rule, aside from my Kindle Fire which is sufficiently anemic to be useful as a reader and not as major distraction with other media.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#96
Been reading about CI/CD and testing best practices.

I'm an SRE and my company has had these as pain points for years... Might need to learn how to advocate for adoption next XD.

Also looking into ML for time series data (metrics). Greykite and Kats seem to be interesting candidates.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#97

How to make beautiful 3D characters and scenes. I started with Blender and now I'm learning Substance for painting the models because the work flow is creativity focused. The possibilities are truly amazing with today's tools. Working in 3D has opened my eyes to new possibilities. I believe that having skills in 3D will become very important over the next five years with adoption of mixed reality hardware.

Totally agree. I'm working on a mixed reality app and have started learning Blender as well to set up asset pipelines and toolchains, so being sucked into the 3D modeling world also. I've been surprised to find a ton of overlap between 3D modeling and ML-based tools to assist in the process. Would love to trade notes if you're available to chat sometime.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#98
post #94

Brazilian music. Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, João Donato, Toninho Horta, Yamandu Costa, João Gilberto etc etc. There's a great youtube channel with hundreds of videos of guitarist Nelson Faria chatting and playing music at home with a different Brazilian musician each time, a lot with English captions. https://www.youtube.com/c/umcafelaemcasa/videos

Be sure to check out Hermeto Pascoal. Especially his Som da Aura technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUlbU6CMx0

Going to add Egberto Gismonti to the list as well, my favorite Brazilian musician to listen to, even if not necessarily the most well known.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#100

To sleep on my back. Being a life-long side sleeper has caused a lot of shoulder and upper back problems that sometimes make it hard for me to reach out and type. I wish I'd done this ages ago. It's one of the hardest things I've had to learn.

I sleep less deep when on my back.

Believe there's studies on amyloid plaque clearance differing b/n different positions. And I believe back sleeping has less of such than side.

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