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mike986

79 karma · joined May 27, 2016

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mike986··on Why we no longer use LangChain for building our AI agents
from the first glance of the example, it seems like the 1st use case is invoking a function (selected by chatgpt) and the 2nd use case is similar to instructor.

can you comment how your library differs from instructor (what yours can do that instructor can't and vice versa?)

thanks

mike986··on Ask HN: Best stack for building a desktop app?
Not a full blown UI kit but lots of cross platform goodies (C++)

https://www.cockos.com/wdl/

https://github.com/justinfrankel/WDL

WDL Virtual Window system:

    Allows the building of dynamic, complex UIs within OS hosted windows
    Included controls for text display, combo boxes, buttons, sliders, list boxes
    Supports full transparency, overlays, controls with shadows/highlights outside of their range
    Fully themeable (uses LICE for compositing)
mike986··on Ugly Avatar
no worry.

maybe i'll explain why, it's like the finding a mate for marriage problem. you dates enough ppl to have a taste of what you like, and then for the next one that comes along that is on par with the best you've seen, you take that.

i guess a 3x3 grid is not necessary, maybe when you click "another", push the old one up (or down) the stack but keep it around so I can always go back and pick the best one I liked so far after the sampling?

Anyway, don't sweat about it, thanks for creating this.

mike986··on Ugly Avatar
very entertaining.

if it's not a lot, can you have another UI that display more than one avatar at a time? say, 3x3 or 4x3 grid?

Thanks

mike986··on Ask HN: What is the, currently, best Programming LLM (copilot) subscription?
A lot of us are already paying for API access from openai/azure/claude

Can double's plugin accept bring your own key like cursor.sh ?

Would love to use an extension with my favorite editor instead of adapting a whole separate editor like cursor.sh

Thanks

mike986··on What if AGI is not coming?
Do you know the average or top human score / SD? Not sure if that data is available on the link or elsewhere.

Just to make sense of your result, can you show your prompt?

When you say 3 prompts and one attempt, what does that mean?

Also regarding 0-shot, did you give the LLM the instruction that is given to human by the game?

If yes, I would count that as one shot as an example of how to properly solve one example puzzle is given.

``` How to Play

Find groups of four items that share something in common.

    Select four items and tap 'Submit' to check if your guess is correct.
    Find the groups without making 4 mistakes!
Category Examples

FISH: Bass, Flounder, Salmon, Trout FIRE ___: Ant, Drill, Island, Opal

Categories will always be more specific than "5-LETTER-WORDS," "NAMES" or "VERBS."

Each puzzle has exactly one solution. Watch out for words that seem to belong to multiple categories!

Each group is assigned a color, which will be revealed as you solve ```

Thanks

mike986··on A mechanical keyboard with programmable knobs and full color screen panel
Wow, I haven't kept up since kbdfans discontinued the kbd75 (with split spacebar), but I'm glad something like this exists in case my kbd75 board dies. (recently I also found https://system76.com/accessories/launch)

So strange that it includes a Home key but not a End key (and there's space for it)

> macro keys assigned to alt-x, ctrl-g, and ctrl-x ctrl-s for Emacs

Wouldn't it slow you down a lot if you have to reach the far left for these?

I just have Shift, Ctrl, Alt all in the split spacebar cluster and sticky key enabled so I'm very comfortable with any key chords (plus I use leader key).

BTW I know you use VIA, and IIRC it doesn't enable the QMK macro recorder/playback keys. I used that a lot outside of Emacs.

Thanks!

mike986··on How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)
if you use emacs:

https://karthinks.com/software/latex-input-for-impatient-sch...

mike986··on Ask HN: What are your Favorite Things?
emacs*

emacs + org-mode

emacs + chatgpt (org-ai)

emacs + evil

* finding a good reference config at https://github.com/bling/dotemacs after declaring emacs bankruptcy multiple times

mike986··on QMK and Keyboards
100% agree with having more keys accessible via the thumb, I used to have the KBD75 (with spacebar 3 way splits, so I have shift and ctrl right under the thumb) but they discontinued it.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1473/3902/files/75_v2_c821...

I recently learned that there are these from system76

https://system76.com/accessories/launch

mike986··on QMK and Keyboards
https://keeb.io/collections/sinc

https://keeb.io/collections/kbo-5000-split-staggered-80-keyb...

mike986··on Show HN: An open-source, self-hostable synced narration platform for ebooks
Super cool project!

> even though there's still a lot more to do

A few have asked on this thread already, but since you're already using AI to transcibe, it would be super cool if we can use AI to generate audio using TTS

I quit audible (signed up a few times) because there are very few high quality audio book, even those spoke by the authors are bad (most of them are not pro narrator)

A good AI would be amazing, as they never get tired speaking for hours, yet maintaining the same energetic voice, intonation and pace.

mike986··on EmacsConf Live Now
If anyone is looking for a solid Emacs configuration, I highly recommend checking out:

https://github.com/bling/dotemacs

This is particularly useful if you appreciate the Vim (Evil) style of text editing but want to adopt Emacs as your operating system (apps) for everything.

Bailey Ling, the creator of this configuration, transitioned from Visual Studio to Vim to Emacs. He has authored several Vim/Emacs packages, including vim-airline.

Here's a video of him demonstrating Evil mode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeVQwYUxYEgu

What makes his configuration stand out is:

He has a multitude of useful packages pre-configured. This is also why people appreciate Spacemacs and Doomemacs (but more on that later).

His codebase is incredibly easy to understand and modify.

I've declared Emacs bankruptcy several times (building from a plain config, Spacemacs, Doomemacs, cloning another high-profile user's config, etc.)

The issue with Spacemacs and Doomemacs is:

They have a massive codebase. You can, of course, just configure the layers and treat everything else as black boxes, but that doesn't truly make Emacs an extension of your own.

There's always some maintenance required to keep up with upstream, especially if you've made a lot of non-surface level changes.

Bling's dotemacs is essentially just one core-boot.el, which sets up a loop to pick up all config/.el and binding/mode/.el files.

To add some features, you simply need to add to config/ and a new binding.

To remove something you don't want, just delete a pair of files (config & binding).

I never realized that my messy config was partly due to having features and key bindings tightly coupled together (like using the use-package macro). Now that these are separated, it's much easier to modify it to my liking.

Also, I don't have to worry about syncing with upstream, since I understand what each and every file does, and I have made massive changes to it.

I have since stolen a lot of features I want from spacesemacs and other users and adapted it to my own config.

mike986··on Ask HN: What's the state of the art for drawing math diagrams online?
In case you are not aware of these awesome posts

https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/

https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/

mike986··on Victor Mono Typeface
It's amazing we have so many high quality open source fonts / independent effort working on them nowadays.

Also a big fan of condensed mono fonts

Oreilly used to use "The Sans Mono Condensed" which is amazing.

Other favorites of mine: PragmataPro (paid), Iosevka Comfy Fixed , M Plus 50 (free).

Anyone has other recommendation for good condensed fonts ? (Especially Serif / Sans)

mike986··on Monaspace
Speaking of condensed font, anyone has a recommendation for a good (paid or free) Serif condensed font?

I'm using "Bell MT" to replace Times in browser (and also using it for variable-pitch font in emacs Org mode), it is good but I wish it had a taller/condensed version.

Also, one of the best condensed mono font is "The Sans Mono Condensed" which first popularized by early Oreilly books (it has since switched to other mono fonts). The downside is that it only has a western character set but I liked it a lot

mike986··on OpenAI releases Whisper v3, new generation open source ASR model
MacOS (hotkey+toolbar)

https://github.com/foges/whisper-dictation

All Platform (hotkey)

https://github.com/doctorguile/faster-whisper-dictation

and if you use emacs

https://github.com/natrys/whisper.el

mike986··on Linear Algebra Done Right – 4th Edition
I have surveyed every LA books out there and a lot of amazons reviews claimed axler’s book is the best LA book.

It might be for case for printed books for sale. But I stumbled upon Terrance Tao’s pdf LA lecture slides on his website and it is so much better than all the books I’ve surveyed.

The writing is super clear and everything is built from the first principles.

(BTW terry’s real analysis book did the same for me. Much more clear and easy to follow than the classics out there)

mike986··on Show HN: Whiz – A copilot for your terminal
All of the alternatives commented so far have the same downside, you got a LLM response and you can either run it or abort.

https://github.com/tom-doerr/zsh_codex

^ This is much nicer as it hook into zsh completion so you got a response that drop right into the shell input (enter to execute or edit away)

Also you can write shell script directly in prompt and use it to auto complete the rest

mike986··on Input: Fonts for Code
For fixed-width serif font, I like bloomberg terminal serif font. It's the same family as Georgia but fixed spaced.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ecd90601a357e090eadf2d...

mike986··on China’s Economy Slows Sharply
> hugely subsidised mail

I noticed this many years ago when ebay vendors from china were able to sell stuff for less that what one has to pay for shipping

What's the implication here in this context?

mike986··on Maintaining code quality when nobody cares
this is very selfish, unless you're the only developer in your shop.

whoever works with you will have to bear the burden that you left behind because you think its a low ROI for YOU

mike986··on Benchmark: Java, Python, PHP, C, JavaScript, Swift, Ruby, Perl, Go, Lua, Rust
they should have included luajit it's almost a dropin replacement for most projects
mike986··on Maze Generator
awesome links, the explanation and visualization is more useful than just having the code thanks
mike986··on Beautiful Online SICP
absolutely beautiful. i have the dead tree version and i've grown tired of the times new roman font.

anyone know how `Figure 1.5: The tree-recursive process' is generated? it's not an image.

http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/1_002e2.xhtml#g_t1_002...

mike986··on Beautiful Racket v1.0
read the first tutorial and I don't think it's lisp/scheme newbie friendly
mike986··on Show HN: Assembly to C code Decompiler
can yours be used to reverse engineering SNES games? Feed it the rom and have it split out c code?