321–330 of 362 posts
I've tried following the Donut 3D tutorial. Midway, I thought "wow my donut already looks better than anything I've ever done in 3D", and by the end of it I couldn't believe I actually made the donut (sure, following step by step, but anyway that was an amazing feeling). It took a few hours but the result speaks for itself: https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1402267525262491658
This week I've been learning a lot about PDF file format internals, which are a staggeringly complex mix of brilliant and totally boneheaded. The annotations spec alone is more complexity than the whole document format ought to be. I'm working on one PDF parser in C and writing another one in Python to facilitate easier exploration and prototyping. This has led me to think a lot about the serialization/deserializatio…
Recently, I tackled Genetic Algorithms to solve some specific NP-hard problems, and Zero Knowledge Proofs. Now I'd love to pick up Elixir and some frontend development. I routinely keep a web page updated with all my learning projects, both the ones I did and the ones I'd like to do [1]. I found that it keeps me accountable, plus it might be useful for some. This thread is a gold mine of ideas to expand it! [1] https…
https://pragprog.com/titles/smgaelixir/genetic-algorithms-in...
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What resources are you following? How are you learning this in general? In most cases, it's just a big and elaborate grid search done manually.
Deep learning methods university course, along with several online tutorials and examples for using ray tune with pytorch.
And I see that you are learning to use Ray. How is your experience with it so far?
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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.
I started reading this book some years ago but quickly gave up when after the first chapters it was made clear that you would have to put a lot of time into the practice. I don't remember what the book's recommendation was. How much time do you spend on it?
Btw, they just ask 45 minutes per day. It's not much.
I spend anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour learning and practicing.
This week I've been learning a lot about PDF file format internals, which are a staggeringly complex mix of brilliant and totally boneheaded. The annotations spec alone is more complexity than the whole document format ought to be. I'm working on one PDF parser in C and writing another one in Python to facilitate easier exploration and prototyping. This has led me to think a lot about the serialization/deserializatio…
Why do you think HN doesn't value people like you? This whole thread is about learning things, and it seems like you do that quite a bit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502867, where I explained some basic errors in a comment written to rebut one of my own, is downvoted to 0 and has no responses.
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448878, I described the incentive structure of cryptocurrency mining and how it relates to recent developments in the price structure of the energy market. My comments in the thread all have positive vote scores but the responses from others are mostly things like "This is incoherent," and "I've heard this argument 1000 times. It is bogus," apparently because their author is unaware of the most basic relevant facts and unwilling or unable to absorb new information.
When I shared my experience of why people use Bitcoin in Argentina in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448744 I got accused of tax evasion—by someone who openly admits he himself has arranged to avoid paying those same taxes. (Which, as it happens, I am paying, except for those I'm legally forbidden to pay—a problem I hope I can solve this year.)
My comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397765 got flagged and downvoted to -4 and got me called "gross" and "racist" for, apparently, not hating the Chinese Communist Party. I didn't say anything negative about any ethnic or racial group in the entire thread, but evidently, people like tptacek who really, really hate the CPC a lot can't distinguish between anti-Chinese bigotry and unremarkable facts about Chinese popular opinion.
And that's just in the last month.
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An even bigger clue than my own experience, though, is to look at the words people on HN use in a derogatory sense:
"Weird": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646624
"Strange": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646758
But "weird" and "strange" are just synonyms for "novel" or "unfamiliar". Learning is, profoundly, seeking out the things that seem weird and strange to you in order to take them into yourself and become weird and strange. If you detest whatever is weird, strange, and odd, you will sedulously avoid any opportunity to learn, and you will detest anyone who has learned things you have not—most vividly illustrated by the gross racist tptacek incident I linked earlier. And this mindlessly conformist attitude of hatred for the unfamiliar, far from being roundly rejected as it should be on a "hacker" site, is very commonplace here—all six of the noveltyphobic comments I linked above were posted in the last three hours, and those were just the ones that were easiest for me to find. Although many of these comments attracted pushback, in no case was it for the anti-intellectual attitude implicit in this wording; it passed without comment, just as it would in the larger anti-intellectual society.
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Basically, to me, HN is the intellectual equivalent of the slums where I used to volunteer. Eight times out of ten, people silently approve of informed, thoughtful discussion, but don't participate. One time out of ten, they do participate, and it's great. The other one time out of ten, I get pistol-whipped and left bleeding on the sidewalk—in this case, thankfully, only metaphorically. It's not an environment that welcomes people like me, who do learn things quite a bit. It's an environment where the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, where the rule of the day is baseless calumny and casual accusations of criminality and dishonesty (though blessedly "this is disingenuous" seems to have become less common). It's contemptible.
I'm certainly capable of spinning out baseless calumny and casual accusations of dishonesty, but I think of that as the worst aspect of my character, not the best. And it does not create a favorable environment for people to learn things or to share what they've learned—or, especially, what they are in the process of learning.
I've been a private pilot for about 5 years and a couple of weeks ago I was out in crappy weather. I knew the weather would be awful and had the foresight to bring my instructor friend with me. We ended up in cloud, I handed over control to my instructor and spent the next 10 minutes wondering what I would have done if he wasn't with me (hint: not good). So I slept on it, text my instructor a couple of days later and…
Low visibility flight is frequently dangerous even when you have proper training. A lot of people that fly are surprised how easy it is to get disoriented in low visibility conditions.
Learning to use only instrumentation is a great and valuable skill, but don't forget that even if you know what you're doing the best option is to avoid bad weather if you can help it.
Complexity Economics I've been binging books on the topic as well as exchanging dialogs with a colleague over email. Books list: _Completed_ The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1422121038/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics, Cognition, And Society) - https://www.amazon.com…
I learned Japanese for several years and decided to learn something new, but I wanted the same experience I had for learning Japanese. There's just an insane dearth of GOOD learning tools for Japanese.
It turns out there's good stuff for Piano too, but none hit the right spot. So I made my own learning tool called Piano Gym.
Piano Gym is flash cards + midi piano + spaced repetition to teach you music theory and performance using actual sheet music and music theory tools.
It's SUPER cool, and I stream myself using it every day. I have a whole curriculum using a Piano method's book, so it's exciting to know that the content I'm going through is actually made by someone else.
I made a ShowHN post, but this site is weird, so if you're interested you can see that here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27304875
Either way, it's pretty cool to learn using a tool I created. Excited to keep it going!
I've been a private pilot for about 5 years and a couple of weeks ago I was out in crappy weather. I knew the weather would be awful and had the foresight to bring my instructor friend with me. We ended up in cloud, I handed over control to my instructor and spent the next 10 minutes wondering what I would have done if he wasn't with me (hint: not good). So I slept on it, text my instructor a couple of days later and…
My father was a flight engineer in the Navy on P3s. While in-flight his job was to monitor the instruments. If you've never seen the cockpit of a P3, its basically wall to wall instruments. Low visibility flight is frequently dangerous even when you have proper training. A lot of people that fly are surprised how easy it is to get disoriented in low visibility conditions. Learning to use only instrumentation is a gre…
Thanks for your input, I'll bet your father is a cool dude!