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Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

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Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#281

Post by jamestimmins »

natmaka wrote: post #174
thematrixadmin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started training kickboxing now, after 2 years of mma and 1 year break of physical activity. Martial Arts are the best!

I agree. I learn Muay-Thai (Thai boxing), and this is incredibly useful, mainly because I have to (try to) switch from my usual "thinking for hours/days/months to a problem" mode into "flowing, neglecting analysis/systemics/... and letting whatever is left take control and act/react RIGHT NOW".

Do you worry at all about taking kicks to the head or it damaging your body long term?

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#282

Post by jborichevskiy »

Been reading up on DAOs and asnyc collaboration models and learning a little Solidity too.

Feels like there is potential for something interesting to emerge in the knowledge + social graph layer/squad/studio operating models.

Particularly with everyone moving around now and the increasingly fine lines between legal corporate entities, co-living, creative work, and intellectual property.

Open to any recommended readings on the topic, or just to chat about tangential spaces!

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#284

Post by firefoxd »

obiwanpallav1 wrote: post #256
firefoxd wrote: post #131

As a web developer, I'm often ashamed to admit that I knew very little about AI. Especially because I worked on a AI product on my day to day. I was perfectly fine debugging our python code and updating spacy, but had no clue what it was doing internally. So 6 months ago, I quit my job, published a short book, then studied AI. It's funny how so many material makes the vast assumption that you already know so much. Th…

I took the Coursera's Machine Learning course in 2017 just because I had some time then. But I didn't work on any related project, back to square one now. A few weeks back I started to revise the course but it's appears to be boring because I know that I've done it already and I feel that I'll forget it once again. Can you please share how you started and the projects you worked on?

I'm writing an article about it, hopefully I'll post it by next month. What got me started was that when I left my job, I had a hard time explaining how the AI part of the product works. We automated customer service for large e-commerces. I wrote a simple yet buggy neural network in JavaScript and it got me excited. I immediately jumped to building a smart device where I can say "Hey Jaziel" (merged name of my kids) and it can perform a command. My JavaScript model failed.

So I turned to coursera, took the deep learning specialization course by Andrew Ng. In a month, I had a working prototype. Sorry I haven't published it yet, but it will also be posted here. Hopefully it makes it to the front page.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#286

Post by jacquesm »

RickJWagner wrote: post #278
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Piano. I've decided that more programming languages or web stacks are a complete waste of time. Piano is for life and I wished I had started doing this in earnest long ago.

I've been astounded by the number of free pianos I see on Facebook marketplace. I totally get the allure (and used to play a bit myself), but I fear it's a dying art.

Don't underestimate the number of digital pianos that are being sold, they don't have to be tuned regularly which substantially reduces the cost of ownership and they tend to be a lot smaller and easier to move around. The quality of the latest batch is excellent. I have both an acoustic and a digital one and to be fair the acoustic is half a century old and sounds better up close but for practical reasons I find myself playing the digital one much more often using headphones so I don't disturb others.

Even so, you are right, it is definitely not a growth market by any stretch of the imagination, it takes a ton of effort to learn how to play and in a world full of distractions and ready made music more than you could ever listen to in a lifetime the enthusiasm for doing this is waning. There are exceptions to this though, for instance, in Asia where playing the piano is a status thing and still in its ascendancy phase.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#287

Post by jacquesm »

sergiomattei wrote: post #118
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Piano. I've decided that more programming languages or web stacks are a complete waste of time. Piano is for life and I wished I had started doing this in earnest long ago.

ooh! I'm doing exactly the same! I purchased a Casio and started taking lessons. So happy to learn!

I'm assuming that's a PX-S** series and I've looked at those, they are very good value for the money. Track your progress, make some videos and then look at yourself a couple of weeks or months later so you can see in a very concrete sense how you are progressing, this is a huge motivator, and it is easy to keep track of this on a day-to-day basis.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#288

Post by jacquesm »

yboris wrote: post #176
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Piano. I've decided that more programming languages or web stacks are a complete waste of time. Piano is for life and I wished I had started doing this in earnest long ago.

A fun tech-related project is hooking up an addressable LED strip to a digital piano and making the strip respond to your key presses - via a Raspberry Pi. My repository for this (code finished, just need to add photos and add a write up about how to use): https://github.com/whyboris/Digital-Piano-LED I added a feature that the left and middle pedal buttons navigate through sheet music (PDF left/right button). And I'…

Very nice, looking forward to seeing this working. While you're at it ;) How about a modern day version of the Moog PianoBar? That would be a real game changer for people studying using acoustic pianos. They now have to install a very expensive silent piano system in order to get midi-out. If you could just stack a bar against the fingerboard to get midi-out that would be amazing.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#289

Post by acutesoftware »

bckr wrote: post #209
acutesoftware wrote: post #59

Unreal Engine ( + Blender ) - pretty big learning curve for a programmer, but heaps of fun.

What are you focusing on there? C++ scripting or the visual scripting?

I am using the visual scripting, with Python to create a lot of the data tables (loaded manually for now). The hard part is more the animation and 3D work, but it is a lot of fun.

Re: Ask HN: What Are You Learning?

#290

Post by shawn88 »

Natural language processing- trying to build something similar to InspiroBot but with obituaries.

Cooking- trying to make 25 recipes for each of the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese cuisine. Just finished Fujian, doing Cantonese now.

Biking- exploring different markets and bakeries in the city I live in.

GeoGuessr.

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