HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

random_moonwalk

1,018 karma · joined July 20, 2015

submissionscomments
random_moonwalk··on Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock
"If only I'd put all my money on red before they span the roulette wheel!"
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
This is a cool idea, but you can switch between major, minor, chromatic and pentatonic scales so the interval between notes changes depending on how many there are so having fixed clicks wouldn't work in that case.
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
I am very lucky in this regard, my partner is amazing indeed! Most of the work was at night, so I hopefully didn't disrupt her too much.
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Ah the Cloudflare outage has hit my form!
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
I've been reflecting on this a bit. I found it very useful to have a well-defined project and focus the learning time on things that are necessary for completing it. Having a background in coding was useful because I find you end up developing a knack for isolating parts of systems and figuring out how to work on small parts that end up fitting together.

I therefore focused initially on simply getting readings from a single potentiometer; if I could do that then I felt pretty confident I could read from four of them. If I could generate a midi message I was pretty confident I could send it to something that could read it etc.

When I started on the PCB design I had a simple circuit already so it was a case of translating that onto a board.

I didn't get too deep into any of the various parts but I found that it gave me a birds-eye view of the whole process and I now feel confident in isolating parts of them and 'zooming in' to them and refining them, building on the foundation I've developed.

random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Thanks, I've responded :)
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Thank you!

I didn't know that was a thing - I'm going to look into it.

random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Thanks so much! Please drop your email here and I'll keep you updated with any next steps: https://tally.so/r/Y55dXv
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Thanks for all the kind words and feedback. There are some comments expressing interest in supporting a Kickstarter etc. If you're interested in receiving updates you can leave your email here:

https://tally.so/r/Y55dXv

Thanks again - this was a bit of a surprise!

random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
I trained as a classical guitarist, so I maintain some longer nails on my right hand :)
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
This sounds like a lesson I’m going to be learning the hard way
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Thanks! Yes it's a little digital synth that receives MIDI.

I used Chroma Cap knobs: https://store.djtechtools.com/products/chroma-caps-knobs-and...

random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
That's what the drum machine module is for.
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Can confirm, they're my first child
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Thank you! Unfortunately I decided to save that feature for v2!
random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Hi, your mental model is essentially correct, though it took me a good few evenings over a couple of weeks to get the workflow down in fusion 360. The electronics retailer will usually have the footprint and 3d model available on the component page. You can then import it, define which pins you want connected to each other in the footprint and in the PCB editor you can drag the routes (wires) to connect them.

Printing is way cheaper than I initially thought it would be - I paid £35 or so, including delivery and 5 of them arrived in 5 days. You can get cheaper delivery though. Also most of that cost is shipping and the setup fee - the marginal cost for each additional PCB print in the order is on the order of low single digit dollars.

Tbh my circuit was fairly simple so I just took a bit of a chance (and some extra care wiring things up). I think there’s a subreddit where people give feedback though I haven’t submitted anything.

random_moonwalk··on Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
Yes exactly, it would be great to be able to sync the clocks so they all ‘just work’ together. And maybe also a module that gives all the other synth parameters for the more advanced user too. I say it’s for my daughter, but I actually would love this too.
random_moonwalk··on Cormac McCarthy's personal library
Thanks, these are great! A link to some scans of David Foster Wallace’s annotations in the New Yorker piece too. For the curious: https://archive.ph/o/M2H3s/www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases...
random_moonwalk··on Cormac McCarthy's personal library
Are there any collections of annotated pages from books belonging to well-known authors that have been made available online? I'd be interested to get some impression of how they engaged with the material, whatever it is.
random_moonwalk··on Ask HN: What Are You Reading?
Fiction: It by Stephen King

Non-Fiction: The Spy and the Traitor by Ben MacIntyre. It's about the KGB spy-turned-MI6 agent Oleg Gordievsky and reads like a thriller.

random_moonwalk··on Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?
I recommend finding a good teacher who specialises in Flamenco if that's where your interest lies. They can help you navigate the various rhythms and techniques which are quite particular to the style. In-personal ideally, though I'm sure you can find someone who can teach via video call too.
random_moonwalk··on Ask HN: Moving to London from California
'you'll realise it's quite small really and get to know the place.'

I've been here for ~10 years and feel like I'm familiar with a fairly narrow slice of it (mostly north/north east a little bit). A good mental model imo is to see it as a collection of smaller towns, each with distinct urban centres, that have grown into each other. This makes it endlessly interesting to me and I feel like I'm unlocking new parts of it all the time.

random_moonwalk··on Ask HN: How will you try to observe/photograph the comet in October?
Do you mean this asteroid that's about to orbit the Earth? https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/earths-new-mini-...
random_moonwalk··on Ask HN: What reasonable person would work as a founding engineer?
A "Founding Engineer" is usually someone who's too late to the game to be a founder but so early that they'll contribute virtually as much value as the founders over time but only take home ~1.5% equity and a sub-market salary.
random_moonwalk··on How I listen to music
A gift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OosoIH6osS0
random_moonwalk··on Mistral Le Chat
Thanks. At the mercy of Chrome's translation it says 'Cat' everywhere.
random_moonwalk··on How the codpiece flopped
Hi from E17!
random_moonwalk··on On-disk HNSW index for Postgres with pg_embedding
Thanks - how much RAM is required to serve from the index in that case?
random_moonwalk··on On-disk HNSW index for Postgres with pg_embedding
This looks very cool.

I'm interested in how many vectors are indexed/how large the index is that corresponds to the latency chart? If we have an in-memory HNSW index of 10M vectors at ~20GB (512 dim), say, what are the RAM requirements when using the disk-based version?

random_moonwalk··on Extracting training data from diffusion models
I think there's a concern also that smaller companies can gain a competitive edge via resistance to reputational damage. As Yann LeCun recently tweeted:

'By releasing public demos that, as impressive & useful as they may be, have major flaws, established companies have less to gain & more to lose than cash-hungry startups.

If Google & Meta haven't released chatGPT-like things, it's not because they can't. It's because they won't.' (https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1617908306420600833)

Page 1 of 3Next →