Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
473 by transpute | 270 comments on Hacker News.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Saturday, March 30, 2024
Friday, March 29, 2024
NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++
NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++
426 by Brajeshwar | 263 comments on Hacker News.
426 by Brajeshwar | 263 comments on Hacker News.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring
Show HN: I made a cheap alternative to college-level math & physics tutoring
359 by eltonlin | 163 comments on Hacker News.
Hi everyone! I’m the founder of Explanations (https://ift.tt/ZbNFp9P). I’m building a website where students can get college level math & physics help for 1/10th the cost of private tutoring. You’d type a question, and your teacher replies by drawing a Youtube/KhanAcademy-style video; and this happens asynchronously throughout the week. When I was studying at MIT, I often had to wait 40-60 minutes in line just to get 5 minutes of “help” from a TA - when I needed 1-2 hours. I understood that TAs can’t spend all their time helping me. That’s understandable. But what made me bitter was that, the school went the extra mile to ensure I don’t have the resources to learn on my own, 1. Blocking access to solutions for past problems (to prevent cheating) 2. Purposely not recording explanations to increase attendance: https://ift.tt/Jf2CizX 3. Insisting that Office Hours is a 1-by-1 format even when crowded (to prevent solutions from leaking) These policies have good intentions - it’s to encourage a synchronous, in-person learning experience. But in practice, it had side-effects: 1. Help resources become inefficient - because so much material is restricted, and so much time is spent on delivering live lectures, there’d often be 40 students competing for help from 2 TAs in a 2-hour Office Hours 2. Because help resources are inefficient, it’s very hard to catch-up: once you fall behind, you have no way to review past material efficiently enough to compensate the difference - like credit card debt 3.Every day, I’d wake up, go to a lecture I don’t understand, go to Office Hours so I can hopefully ask for a review (which’d would take a few hours), realize TAs aren’t willing to do that, then realize there is nothing I can do to recover. I fell into a depression for many years, and my bitterness fueled me to work on the early versions of explanations.app It turns out that universities succeed by being prestigious, not by teaching well. To win at prestige, be highly selective (by keeping supply low), keep a huge endowment (because it affects school rankings), and hire the best researchers (not teachers). This is actually the fundamental reason for the odd incentives in higher education, and something felt wrong. So explanations.app is completely inspired by KhanAcademy and Youtube. The mystery to me was - why weren’t there more Youtube teachers & KhanAcademy videos? I believe it’s a combination of: 1. People who teach college subjects well often have better opportunities e.g. work, research 2. Lack of rewards: even Youtubers with 100K views and 10K subscribers would have at most 1-5 paying members on Patreon On the one hand, there are all these free resources, where teachers changed the world way more than they ever got rewarded for. Then on the other hand, there is private tutoring - very effective - but very expensive e.g. $100/hour for college level subjects. I believe the balanced solution is a system where lots of students pay $10/week to a few teachers who make videos, like a paid, Q&A Youtube/KhanAcademy, so it’s personalized, effective, but still affordable. There are currently 2 teachers on explanations.app - Ben & Esther - both MIT grads, teaching physics & math for subjects like linear algebra and electromagnetism. 3 students - Laquazia, Lidija and Chandra from US, Serbia and Korea joined this month following r/physicsStudents launch: [https://ift.tt/3m7fPV4] While explanations.app is focused on college-level math and physics, the platform is completely open for anyone to learn and/or teach. I hope you can try it :^) and give me the chance to work with you.
359 by eltonlin | 163 comments on Hacker News.
Hi everyone! I’m the founder of Explanations (https://ift.tt/ZbNFp9P). I’m building a website where students can get college level math & physics help for 1/10th the cost of private tutoring. You’d type a question, and your teacher replies by drawing a Youtube/KhanAcademy-style video; and this happens asynchronously throughout the week. When I was studying at MIT, I often had to wait 40-60 minutes in line just to get 5 minutes of “help” from a TA - when I needed 1-2 hours. I understood that TAs can’t spend all their time helping me. That’s understandable. But what made me bitter was that, the school went the extra mile to ensure I don’t have the resources to learn on my own, 1. Blocking access to solutions for past problems (to prevent cheating) 2. Purposely not recording explanations to increase attendance: https://ift.tt/Jf2CizX 3. Insisting that Office Hours is a 1-by-1 format even when crowded (to prevent solutions from leaking) These policies have good intentions - it’s to encourage a synchronous, in-person learning experience. But in practice, it had side-effects: 1. Help resources become inefficient - because so much material is restricted, and so much time is spent on delivering live lectures, there’d often be 40 students competing for help from 2 TAs in a 2-hour Office Hours 2. Because help resources are inefficient, it’s very hard to catch-up: once you fall behind, you have no way to review past material efficiently enough to compensate the difference - like credit card debt 3.Every day, I’d wake up, go to a lecture I don’t understand, go to Office Hours so I can hopefully ask for a review (which’d would take a few hours), realize TAs aren’t willing to do that, then realize there is nothing I can do to recover. I fell into a depression for many years, and my bitterness fueled me to work on the early versions of explanations.app It turns out that universities succeed by being prestigious, not by teaching well. To win at prestige, be highly selective (by keeping supply low), keep a huge endowment (because it affects school rankings), and hire the best researchers (not teachers). This is actually the fundamental reason for the odd incentives in higher education, and something felt wrong. So explanations.app is completely inspired by KhanAcademy and Youtube. The mystery to me was - why weren’t there more Youtube teachers & KhanAcademy videos? I believe it’s a combination of: 1. People who teach college subjects well often have better opportunities e.g. work, research 2. Lack of rewards: even Youtubers with 100K views and 10K subscribers would have at most 1-5 paying members on Patreon On the one hand, there are all these free resources, where teachers changed the world way more than they ever got rewarded for. Then on the other hand, there is private tutoring - very effective - but very expensive e.g. $100/hour for college level subjects. I believe the balanced solution is a system where lots of students pay $10/week to a few teachers who make videos, like a paid, Q&A Youtube/KhanAcademy, so it’s personalized, effective, but still affordable. There are currently 2 teachers on explanations.app - Ben & Esther - both MIT grads, teaching physics & math for subjects like linear algebra and electromagnetism. 3 students - Laquazia, Lidija and Chandra from US, Serbia and Korea joined this month following r/physicsStudents launch: [https://ift.tt/3m7fPV4] While explanations.app is focused on college-level math and physics, the platform is completely open for anyone to learn and/or teach. I hope you can try it :^) and give me the chance to work with you.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Two open source projects with great architecture documentation
Two open source projects with great architecture documentation
356 by johnjago | 35 comments on Hacker News.
356 by johnjago | 35 comments on Hacker News.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Aegis v3.0 – a free, secure and open source 2FA app for Android
Aegis v3.0 – a free, secure and open source 2FA app for Android
345 by microflash | 160 comments on Hacker News.
345 by microflash | 160 comments on Hacker News.
Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language
Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language
346 by jonathanb88 | 150 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, For over two years I've been working on an App to learn languages (currently French, Italian and Spanish), together with my partner, a language teacher. I think it is finally ready to share with this community! The idea is to introduce vocabulary and grammar whilst you read eBooks in your own language. I've found that it is easier to remember vocabulary 'in context' and with regular repetition. Plus you don't have to carve out dedicated time for language learning. Other apps require you to build a habit around various exercises or ‘games’, whereas lots of people already read books. From testing with early users so far it's proving effective for building a basic understanding of a language and quickly getting to the point where you can read and broadly understand text in the target language. It’s even better in combination with other apps that help with listening/speaking like Pimsleur. There were lots of technical challenges making this. It turned out to be (reassuringly) hard to get accuracy to an acceptable level, requiring a rabbit-hole into machine translation. There was a lot of testing required to optimise the engine that chooses the translations to show and to reduce the friction when reading books. And the backend to support uploading books is a beast in itself. I’d love to share details if there is interest. Roadmap - Accuracy - 100% accuracy is the target, but at present there can be errors. Feedback from users will be important here so that accuracy issues can be generalised and solved at scale. Errors can be reported within the app - please do so if you spot anything! - Dynamic difficulty - rather than have a progression of difficulty levels I’d prefer to introduce vocabulary and grammar automatically in response to user progress, balancing against the friction of seeing unfamiliar words. There’s a lot ‘under the hood’ to manage this today, but plenty of room to improve. - More practice features - to reinforce vocabulary/grammar and support writing, listening and speaking. - Better eBook support - improving the formatting of eBooks within the app and providing more methods for finding good books to read. Use of AI - LLMs provided a step change in accuracy and have enabled a feature that explains translations and grammar to the user - vastly improving the utility versus a year ago. - I believe apps like this, which use AI to enhance or scale functionality rather than simply acting as a wrapper over APIs, will be the major beneficiaries as LLMs improve. Take a look, and let me know your thoughts or questions!
346 by jonathanb88 | 150 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, For over two years I've been working on an App to learn languages (currently French, Italian and Spanish), together with my partner, a language teacher. I think it is finally ready to share with this community! The idea is to introduce vocabulary and grammar whilst you read eBooks in your own language. I've found that it is easier to remember vocabulary 'in context' and with regular repetition. Plus you don't have to carve out dedicated time for language learning. Other apps require you to build a habit around various exercises or ‘games’, whereas lots of people already read books. From testing with early users so far it's proving effective for building a basic understanding of a language and quickly getting to the point where you can read and broadly understand text in the target language. It’s even better in combination with other apps that help with listening/speaking like Pimsleur. There were lots of technical challenges making this. It turned out to be (reassuringly) hard to get accuracy to an acceptable level, requiring a rabbit-hole into machine translation. There was a lot of testing required to optimise the engine that chooses the translations to show and to reduce the friction when reading books. And the backend to support uploading books is a beast in itself. I’d love to share details if there is interest. Roadmap - Accuracy - 100% accuracy is the target, but at present there can be errors. Feedback from users will be important here so that accuracy issues can be generalised and solved at scale. Errors can be reported within the app - please do so if you spot anything! - Dynamic difficulty - rather than have a progression of difficulty levels I’d prefer to introduce vocabulary and grammar automatically in response to user progress, balancing against the friction of seeing unfamiliar words. There’s a lot ‘under the hood’ to manage this today, but plenty of room to improve. - More practice features - to reinforce vocabulary/grammar and support writing, listening and speaking. - Better eBook support - improving the formatting of eBooks within the app and providing more methods for finding good books to read. Use of AI - LLMs provided a step change in accuracy and have enabled a feature that explains translations and grammar to the user - vastly improving the utility versus a year ago. - I believe apps like this, which use AI to enhance or scale functionality rather than simply acting as a wrapper over APIs, will be the major beneficiaries as LLMs improve. Take a look, and let me know your thoughts or questions!
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland Has Collapsed
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland Has Collapsed
484 by repelsteeltje | 337 comments on Hacker News.
484 by repelsteeltje | 337 comments on Hacker News.
Monday, March 25, 2024
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Game of Life, simulating itself, infinitely zoomable
Game of Life, simulating itself, infinitely zoomable
728 by surprisetalk | 159 comments on Hacker News.
728 by surprisetalk | 159 comments on Hacker News.
Friday, March 22, 2024
Show HN: Memories – FOSS Google Photos alternative built for high performance
Show HN: Memories – FOSS Google Photos alternative built for high performance
684 by radialapps | 201 comments on Hacker News.
Memories is a FOSS Google Photos alternative that you can self-host (it runs as a Nextcloud plugin). Website: https://ift.tt/6S5QeNt GitHub: https://ift.tt/2CVmhuY Demo Server: https://ift.tt/aoWEFZk (demo runs in San Francisco on a free-tier cloud vm) Memories has been built ground-up for high performance and is extremely fast when configured correctly. In our testing environment, it can load a timeline view with 100k photos in under 500ms, including query and rendering time! Some features to highlight: * A timeline similar to Google Photos where you can skip to any time in history instantly. * AI-based tagging that runs locally on your server, identifying and tagging people and objects. * Albums and external sharing. * Metadata editing support * A world map of your photos, supported both on mobile and the web * Did I mention it's extremely fast? Would love to hear feedback from the HN community! :)
684 by radialapps | 201 comments on Hacker News.
Memories is a FOSS Google Photos alternative that you can self-host (it runs as a Nextcloud plugin). Website: https://ift.tt/6S5QeNt GitHub: https://ift.tt/2CVmhuY Demo Server: https://ift.tt/aoWEFZk (demo runs in San Francisco on a free-tier cloud vm) Memories has been built ground-up for high performance and is extremely fast when configured correctly. In our testing environment, it can load a timeline view with 100k photos in under 500ms, including query and rendering time! Some features to highlight: * A timeline similar to Google Photos where you can skip to any time in history instantly. * AI-based tagging that runs locally on your server, identifying and tagging people and objects. * Albums and external sharing. * Metadata editing support * A world map of your photos, supported both on mobile and the web * Did I mention it's extremely fast? Would love to hear feedback from the HN community! :)
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax
Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax
600 by jiripospisil | 99 comments on Hacker News.
600 by jiripospisil | 99 comments on Hacker News.
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Ask HN: Do you also marvel at the complexity of everyday objects?
Ask HN: Do you also marvel at the complexity of everyday objects?
423 by parpfish | 296 comments on Hacker News.
A few weeks ago I was doing some soldering and I started using a spool of insulated 22-gauge wire. Maybe it was the solder fumes, but I started thinking about what it actually took to create that spool of wire -- everything from the geologists and miners extracting ore, through all the metallurgy, industrial engineering, and plastics work. And I started to marvel at all the work and expertise it took to make something that I normally would've just considered a semi-disposable consumable item. It made me wonder whether that spool of wire was actually a piece of technology on par in sophistication with all the software that I build every day. It was such an odd moment, but it's has caused a lasting perspective shift. almost every day I'll look at some commonplace object I took for granted and think "this is actually so complex, no single human has all the knowledge or expertise to create it". I'm curious if anybody else has had a similar experience and/or what are some simple everyday objects that give you pause when you stop to think about their complexity
423 by parpfish | 296 comments on Hacker News.
A few weeks ago I was doing some soldering and I started using a spool of insulated 22-gauge wire. Maybe it was the solder fumes, but I started thinking about what it actually took to create that spool of wire -- everything from the geologists and miners extracting ore, through all the metallurgy, industrial engineering, and plastics work. And I started to marvel at all the work and expertise it took to make something that I normally would've just considered a semi-disposable consumable item. It made me wonder whether that spool of wire was actually a piece of technology on par in sophistication with all the software that I build every day. It was such an odd moment, but it's has caused a lasting perspective shift. almost every day I'll look at some commonplace object I took for granted and think "this is actually so complex, no single human has all the knowledge or expertise to create it". I'm curious if anybody else has had a similar experience and/or what are some simple everyday objects that give you pause when you stop to think about their complexity
Monday, March 18, 2024
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Friday, March 15, 2024
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Monday, March 11, 2024
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Friday, March 8, 2024
Fine tune a 70B language model at home
Fine tune a 70B language model at home
601 by jph00 | 146 comments on Hacker News.
Jeremy from Answer.AI here. This is our first project since launching our new R&D lab at the start of this year. It's the #1 most requested thing I've been hearing from open source model builders: the ability to use multiple GPUs with QLoRA training. So that's why we decided to make it our first project. Huge thanks to Tim Dettmers for helping us get started to this -- and of course for creating QLoRA in the first place! Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts.
601 by jph00 | 146 comments on Hacker News.
Jeremy from Answer.AI here. This is our first project since launching our new R&D lab at the start of this year. It's the #1 most requested thing I've been hearing from open source model builders: the ability to use multiple GPUs with QLoRA training. So that's why we decided to make it our first project. Huge thanks to Tim Dettmers for helping us get started to this -- and of course for creating QLoRA in the first place! Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts.
My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)
My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)
582 by atan2 | 330 comments on Hacker News.
582 by atan2 | 330 comments on Hacker News.
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Cracking Meta's Messenger Certificate Pinning on macOS
Cracking Meta's Messenger Certificate Pinning on macOS
477 by KishanBagaria | 125 comments on Hacker News.
477 by KishanBagaria | 125 comments on Hacker News.
FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor
FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor
701 by bookofjoe | 366 comments on Hacker News.
701 by bookofjoe | 366 comments on Hacker News.
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Monday, March 4, 2024
Sunday, March 3, 2024
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative
Ente: Open-Source, E2E Encrypted, Google Photos Alternative
508 by madmax108 | 195 comments on Hacker News.
508 by madmax108 | 195 comments on Hacker News.
Friday, March 1, 2024
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