luckystarr
- www.bitsofwonder.co A Revolution in Biology
how developmental biology might contain the secrets to life, intelligence, and immortality
- aethermug.com The Beautiful Dissociation of the Japanese Language
An extra dimension that you can play with.
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A Curious Phenomenon Called 'Etak' (Map Happenings)
maphappenings.com 12 Map Happenings that Rocked our World: Part 9The Map Happenings series on the hugely impactful events that forever changed our world. This week: the story of a little known company called ‘Etak’. I think you’ll find it a fas…
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DIY woodworking projects and plans (Ana White)
www.ana-white.com Woodworking Projects – Free DIY Projects & Plans – Ana WhiteFree woodworking plans from Ana White, a self-taught designer and builder dedicated to helping people create their own furniture. Find the best DIY furniture plans here!
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Lessons after a half-billion GPT tokens
kenkantzer.com Lessons after a half-billion GPT tokens - Ken Kantzer's BlogMy startup (gettruss.io) released a few LLM-heavy features in the last six months, and the narrative around LLMs that I read on Hacker News is now starting to diverge from my reality, so I thought I’d share some of the more “surprising” lessons after churning through just north of 500 million tokens...
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Silent Running: A 1970s Environmental Fable Remains Depressingly All Too Relevant
reactormag.com Silent Running: A 1970s Environmental Fable Remains Depressingly All Too Relevant - ReactorDirector Douglas Trumbull's special effects and Bruce Dern's intense performance anchor this haunting, melancholy classic.
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Fructose - LLM calls as strongly-typed functions
github.com GitHub - bananaml/fructoseContribute to bananaml/fructose development by creating an account on GitHub.
Honestly, this is really cool. I tried building something like this a few month ago but struggled as I didn't have all the concepts nailed down yet.
But this is even better than I imagined. It's so clean and powerful. Look at the example:
https://github.com/bananaml/fructose/blob/main/demos/scraper.py
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DSPy - a framework for programming, instead of prompting, foundation models
github.com GitHub - stanfordnlp/dspy: DSPy: The framework for programming—not prompting—foundation modelsDSPy: The framework for programming—not prompting—foundation models - stanfordnlp/dspy
Supposedly some sort of RAG pipeline optimizer. Will definitely check it out.
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CSS for printing to paper
HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39584654
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The Era of 1-bit LLMs: All Large Language Models are in 1.58 Bits
HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39535800
The paper is coming out of Microsoft Research and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, so highly likely to not be a fake.
This is huge. I wonder when the NVIDIA stock is going to react.
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testcontainers - a set of libraries for integration testing against docker containers
testcontainers.com TestcontainersTestcontainers is an opensource framework for providing lightweight, throwaway instances of common databases, Selenium web browsers, or anything else that can run in a Docker container.
Language specific:
- for Python
- for Rust
- for others, see https://testcontainers.com/
- www.themarginalian.org Alan Watts on Money vs. Wealth
“The moral challenge and the grim problem we face is that the life of affluence and pleasure requires exact discipline and high imagination.”
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How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation (2016)
haseebq.com How Not to Bomb Your Offer NegotiationSo you know the first 6 rules. You’ve maneuvered through the initial offer conversation, you’ve lined up counteroffers from other companies, and now it’s time to move into the actual negotiating. ...
- github.com GitHub - collabora/WhisperFusion: WhisperFusion builds upon the capabilities of WhisperLive and WhisperSpeech to provide a seamless conversations with an AI.
WhisperFusion builds upon the capabilities of WhisperLive and WhisperSpeech to provide a seamless conversations with an AI. - GitHub - collabora/WhisperFusion: WhisperFusion builds upon the capabil...
- www.fortressofdoors.com Four Magic Words
Long ago, in a parallel universe three doors down and one to the left of our own, OpenAI headquarters found itself in chaos. A klaxon blared overhead as red lights began flashing. A message played over a loud-speaker: “Warning! Warning! This is not a drill! Artificial General Intelligence window cl...
From the non-obvious consequences department.
- johnthenerd.com Building a fully local LLM voice assistant to control my smart home
I’ve had my days with Siri and Google Assistant. While they have the ability to control your devices, they cannot be customized and inherently rely on cloud services. In hopes of learning something new and having something cool I could use in my life, I decided I want better. The premises are simple...
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"Attention", "Transformers", in Neural Network "Large Language Models"
Someone doing the hard work of cutting through the jargon for the non-experts. Appreciated!
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Reforming Unix
A very interesting discussion about current vs desired semantics of the OS.
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Electing the Doge of Venice: analysis of a 13th Century protocol (2007)
I didn't know anything about this topic. Its interesting what has been tried before. Something really bad must have happened to them to have to come up with such an elaborate election scheme. I wonder whose actions tipped the scales.
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A similarity between the CAP theorem and our heart (twitter.com/dvassallo)
This is the HN discussion about this lengthy piece on twitter.
The gist of it is that there are a number of pace-making structures in the heart and all of them act independently for maximum availability. If communication breaks down (akin to a network partition) between those structures, they err on the side of availability and trigger a heartbeat.
Ergo, the heart is AP, consistency is discarded for availability and partition tolerance.
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The LISP wizard discovering the Y-combinator (Dall-E 3)
Generated via ChatGPT. Sadly, not many lambdas in the image.
Prompt: Illuminated illustration in the style of ancient manuscripts showcasing a software wizard engrossed in his magical lisp code. He's surrounded by a simple frame crafted from aged wood. In the backdrop, the grand letter 'Y' for Y-combinator is prominently engraved, while the Greek letter lambda glistens with golden patterns and is adorned with mythical creatures and elaborate designs.
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Related: the works by Jared Diamond, especially Guns, Germs and Stell and Collapse.
I like the optimism, but I don't know how to transport it to the masses. Believe in the eventual, ultimate doom is very prevalent.
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No Silver Bullet – essence and accident in software engineering (2016)
An easy to digest summary of all the forces at play in software construction.
Heavily quotes Fred Brooks' "Mythical Man Month" which is strangely still very relevant today.
I guess the saying of people not knowing history are doomed to repeat it holds true here as well.
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"Playable Quotes for Game Boy Games" by Joël Franušić and Adam Smith
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
They built awesome stuff to "quote" software including it's actual state, and allow the quote to be replayed without the need of having the software which was quoted! The quotes can also be used to steer the software at that point in time, e.g. play a game, move the mouse in a spreadsheet, etc.
The quote is limited to the area of memory which got changed while the quote was recorded. Any outside access will restart the quote.
I can't wrap my head around, how this could be used in real-world settings, but this feels important.
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Detect Quakes With “Raspberry Shakes”; Raspberry Pi–based seismometers can supplement existing networks
spectrum.ieee.org Join a community of amateur seismologists using “Raspberry Shakes”Raspberry Pi–based seismometers can supplement existing networks
Now I want one.
- adriano.fyi Choose Postgres queue technology
Introduction Postgres queue tech is a thing of beauty, but far from mainstream. Its relative obscurity is partially attributable to the cargo cult of “scale”. The scalability cult has decreed that there are several queue technologies with greater “scalability” than Postgres, and for that reason alon...
HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37636841
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PID Control Challenges
HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37637006
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Honest Achmed in a radio ad for "Let's Encrypt" by ChatGPT
This is inspired by the Firefox Bug 647959: Add Honest Achmed's root certificate in their bugtracker. Have fun.
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Sure, I'd be happy to create a radio ad for "Let's Encrypt" in the style of a car dealership commercial. Here goes:
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🎶 [Upbeat jingle playing] 🎶
Announcer: "Hey folks, it's your pal Honest Achmed here, but today I'm not selling cars—no, no! I'm here to introduce you to something even BETTER: Let's Encrypt, the FREE Certificate Authority that's changing the game!"
🎉 [Sound of fireworks] 🎉
Achmed: "That's right, my friends! You know how you need a warranty for your car to drive safely? Well, your website needs a certificate for secure browsing! And guess what? Let's Encrypt gives it to you for FREE!"
🚗 [Sound of car honking] 🚗
Announcer: "You heard that right! With Let's Encrypt, you can get your website running securely without emptying your wallet. Why? Because internet security should be a RIGHT, not a privilege!"
🛡️ [Sound of a shield being deployed] 🛡️
Achmed: "And folks, we're not talking about some rusty old certificate. No sir! Let's Encrypt provides top-notch, A-grade certificates that even your tech-savvy cousin Mustafa would approve!"
💻 [Sound of typing on a keyboard] 💻
Announcer: "But wait, there's more! Are you tired of the complicated setup? Let's Encrypt makes it as easy as buying a used car from Honest Achmed! A few clicks and BAM! You're encrypted!"
🔒 [Sound of a lock clicking into place] 🔒
Achmed: "Let's put it this way: if getting a certificate was a car race, with Let's Encrypt, you'd be cruising in a luxury sports car while others are still inflating their tires!"
🏎️ [Sound of a car racing by] 🏎️
Announcer: "So don't wait! Just like you wouldn't drive without a seatbelt, don't let your website cruise the Information Highway without a certificate from Let's Encrypt!"
🌐 [Sound of a globe spinning] 🌐
Achmed: "Call now or visit letsencrypt.org to secure your website today! Be fast, be secure, be FREE with Let's Encrypt!"
🎶 [Upbeat jingle resumes] 🎶
Announcer: "This message is brought to you by Honest Achmed and the Internet Security Council. Remember, folks, encrypt today for a safer tomorrow!"
🎉 [Sound of fireworks and applause] 🎉
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And there you have it—a radio ad for Let's Encrypt, Honest Achmed style! Hope you enjoyed it!
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Asking 60+ LLMs a set of 20 questions
benchmarks.llmonitor.com LLM BenchmarksHuman-readable benchmarks of 60+ open-source and proprietary LLMs.
Interesting overview of capabilities. Some models seem quite capable at low parameter count, others are just dorky.
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ibraheemdev/modern-unix: A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands.
github.com GitHub - ibraheemdev/modern-unix: A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands.A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands. - GitHub - ibraheemdev/modern-unix: A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands.
Those seem fun. I'm definitely checking some of them out.
- m-cacm.acm.org Historic Algorithms Help Unlock Shortest-Path Problem Breakthrough
By revisiting key algorithms from computing, a team unlocked hidden efficiency in a long-standing computer science problem.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37275676