markdeloura

You are Internet King for the day, this is amazing! Not sure if there is a gyro keeping the seat stable and upright, didn’t seem necessary until he ended up on his butt when going too fast hahhahaha Love this!

When CoPilot showed up in my Word, I was writing a pitch doc that asked me to also describe whether I was using GenAI for anything for this pitch. It made me realize I didn’t know whether this doc was getting auto-pushed to CoPilot and would be used for training in some way. Dislike.

There is a Duolingo for Music, worth a look! https://blog.duolingo.com/music-course/

I feel this as well, and increasingly as I get older. It drives me to simplify my office over and over, or at least add storage elements that can hide clutter. Our dystopian future visions for AR always include an extreme visual chaos of ads — maybe the killer app future for AR is actually to remove extraneous visual noise, much like noise-cancelling headphones.

Thanks for your comment back… I clicked on it for game market Steam as well, but I learned a few years ago that my great grandfather built some steam cars in Rochester around 1900, so I found this fascinating. Thanks!

How much less energy does a query against an 8B model take, vs a 70B model? Can we get more clever about using smaller, more specialized models?

NPR listener for 30 years and I'm having a similar reaction to many of you in this thread. For the first time, I'm finding myself turning off the radio once I'm awake.

It seems like Berliner breaking the rules (or norms) and throwing bombs by way of another media outlet was his last-ditch effort to break through and be heard. In that, at least, he's getting attention, and now let's hope it leads to change.

The examples he gave in the FP piece all seemed very political, focusing on not covering "the other side". Honestly I don't want any of that crap coming at me in the morning, I don't want "other side" coverage just like I don't want "my side" coverage. I can get that anywhere. I listen to NPR because I want good journalism, not both-sidesism. I hope this event can lead coverage back there. With the new CEO, perhaps there's an opportunity.

japanese!

Thanks for your great work on this! As with a number of other folks here, I too have been playing with using LLMs for language learning. Primarily I've been using the Voice Control for ChatGPT extension with custom GPTs, learning Japanese.

One of the things I notice right away about your app is that your learning arc is moving from saying simple things to saying complex things, as opposed to aligning with increasing grammatical complexity. One of the things Duolingo does well is start with simple verbs, simple nouns, then slowly introduce language complexity over time: new particles, new tenses, new grammatical structures, etc. So the learning arc follows the complexity of the grammar, not the complexity of what I'm trying to express. I'm not sure I'm communicating that well :-) But for Japanese, as an example, there is a series of proficiency tests that do a good job of laying out a rough learning arc, which makes it easier to scaffold someone in, meet them where they are, and then start building on the knowledge they already have. When I futz with LLMs it's largely been to box the LLM in at a particular language level and then use it to practice language concepts at that level: for example, use JLPT N4 vocab and grammar and let's have a conversation about my day at university using formal language. If there was some way to roughly align the Univerbal conversation against tiers in language learning and then help me progress along that arc, it would be even more valuable.

My actual expertise is in games for learning though, and I appreciate what I saw you doing with "goals" in the "meeting a new friend" stage. Gamification is primarily about engagement, keeping me motivated, keeping me involved, keeping me coming back. Duo does a ton of gamification and uses it to good effect even though I know it does drive some people bonkers. But am I about to break my 500-day streak? No I am not. Gamification works! :) With the capabilities that you already demonstrate you could probably walk closer to making it an actual game, if you wanted to: the primary difference being that you'd need to add learning elements in there beyond the suggestions you have now (which are great, btw). Think of the way Zelda teaches you a new control mechanic through the individual shrines and bosses (formative and summative assessment, essentially), and adds the control details to your options menu once you've learned them (like having a grammar guide or vocabulary list once you've demonstrated mastery). What your game would be would be something very different from Zelda, but... it is fun to think about!

Love what you're doing!

So happy to hear it. The closed-not-closed state of LCM was exasperating for several years and I know several groups of folks were trying to engage to bring it back to life. It was such a great site for informal learning and did a good job of highlighting the region's contributions to computing. Seattle needs a computer museum!

I was working at Nintendo of America in the 90's and remember hearing that the Rare guys were working out of their barn. For years they had an email address for the chickens as a joke. Wonder if it still works :)

Insurance companies should get behind Right to Repair. We've so far waited three months and have an $11,0000 price tag to the insurance company on a minor collision that bent our car's front fascia and broke a sensor -- no frame or metal damage. I would have happily repaired on my own if possible just to avoid being without the car for so long. If only I could get those parts and have a decent service manual.

Thanks for sharing that info on Neall... It had been a few years but he was great to work with on ps3 rollout and other tech fun back in the day. Sorry to hear it :(

Starbucks cups are lined with plastic on the inside too aren't they? Mmmm tasty microplastics.

Agreed! But it's always so much easier to ban and get credit for "protecting Americans" than do the work and build a solid base for the future. We should hold our politicians to a higher standard.

It was, admittedly, already pretty bad when the industry was mostly in the valley and peninsula. SF has been expensive for quite a long time.

Editor wars are right up there with tabs vs spaces, right? I too was an Emacs devotee once upon a time. On of the CS professors at our school in the late 90's was even more so, known for doing all his work from inside of Emacs. But these days VS Code is really making life easy. It's impressively feature-rich with a minimum of futzing.

If you click on the videos link, it throws this YouTube error:

This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.

CoPilot didn't "learn how to program", it is reproducing blocks of code from other projects, some of which explicitly state that using their code requires attribution or other forms of acknowledgement. It is facilitating infringement of their licenses.

The one I think of immediately is CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience. Saw it in Games for Change Awards nominees and it has stuck with me to this day. 2D side scroller. Well worth your time. https://www.delveinteractive.com/change Definitely a topic which could really benefit from further exploration through games!

I find myself wondering whether a useful testing step between mice and people might be the community of small dogs with IVDD. French bulldogs, dachshunds, and corgis seem particularly susceptible and many of them wind up with rear paralysis. https://www.thedogsdown.com/how-can-ivdd-cause-paralysis/

This subthread highlights one of the things that seems true about RSI: what works for you may not work for me. I find that having longer key travel works better for me - typing on laptop boards or those shallow Mac keyboards tears up my forearms. I use Cherry switches without the tactile bump and they work great for me.

Great work! I'm a big fan of this idea, and as others have mentioned, it's a little reminiscent of the promise of VRML back in the day. Or even of PlayStation Home or Second Life, but more accessible, since it's right there in your browser.

I've seen some comments about the performance, and I just wanted to comment that I just tried the site out on an old Chromebook Acer R11 (Celeron N3150) and while the perf on the opening environment is a little bit hitchy, the Balloonski room for example ran perfectly well. Little machines are capable of a whole heck of a lot these days! Even in the browser!

Nice work!

CircuitPython (derived from MicroPython) is objectively pretty excellent, and running on an increasing number of platforms. It's been a really great platform for education.

I'd rather repair it myself, or be able to take it to someone local with particular expertise. What's important is that we have a choice!

Sorry to hear about your RSI troubles! The comments in this subthread sure highlight how many different experiences people have with RSI. I had a years-long bout with bilateral tenosynovitis 25 years ago and have had issues that I manage ever since. For me, the mechanical keyswitches (no bump) clearly help, as does tenting, splitting the board, and angling each half. I can't type on laptop keyboards for long durations without forearm pain, but on a Kinesis Freestyle Edge with MX Reds, I'm good to go as long as I take breaks every hour or two. YMMV!

Jenova Chen's game? Yes! Flower is another great relaxing game by him and his team.

One of my favorite recent games too. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the link! It's a great discussion to have and should be a topic for all learning, not just CS Ed. If you look at the K-12 CS Ed standards defined at the state level, you'll find a generally coherent approach to staged learning of CS, both in terms of computational thinking structure (teach sequential behavior before conditional behavior) and language complexity (Scratch first, Java later). It's also worth considering playful or project-based approaches vs rigorous curricula-based learning... we're lucky to start with playfulness in CS because of the history of Logo. But what about for example, aeronautics? You might really enjoy learning to build and fly a rocket in Kerbal Space Program, but at some point you might yearn for more and benefit from a deep dive into some scaffolded traditional curricula. Then you can come back to Kerbal and apply what you learned, etc etc. Perhaps there's some sort of optimal cadence, different for each person and their interests. What's the analog for CS Ed?

That's exactly what hooked me - I worked in a VR research lab while an undergrad and then grad student, and Myst came out just as VR was fizzling out. It was the most immersive thing I'd ever experienced without a headset - I would turn off all the lights and crank up the audio, and lose myself for hours.