Show HN: Wunderbar, Learn Language While Working on Your Mac https://ift.tt/nuZpeVR

Show HN: Wunderbar, Learn Language While Working on Your Mac Hey everyone, I've been living in Germany for a while now and struggling to pick up German. Even though I finished a B1 level language course, remembering all the common German words has been tough. I've tried a bunch of apps, but couldn't stick to any of them. Last month, I had an idea. I thought, what if I could see a German word and its meaning on the Menu Bar of my Mac? That way, I could learn new words while working without needing to set aside dedicated time. The app uses a spaced-repetition algorithm, so you'll see the same word multiple times until you've got it down. And even after you've learned it, you'll still see it again to make sure you don't forget. After making the app, lots of people asked me to include other languages, therefore I’ve added languages like Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, and Italian. You can download the app here ($3.99): https://ift.tt/hvUBfNG There's no subscription or anything like that. You pay once and it's yours forever. Let me know what you think! April 11, 2024 at 12:35PM

Show HN: Next-token prediction in JavaScript – build fast LLMs from scratch https://ift.tt/IBlXR9Y

Show HN: Next-token prediction in JavaScript – build fast LLMs from scratch What inspired this project today was watching this amazing video by 3Blue1Brown called "But what is a GPT?" on Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZofJX0v4M - I highly recommend watching it). I added it to the repo for reference. When it clicked in my head that "knowing a fact" is nearly synonymous with predicting a word (or series of words), I wanted to put it to the test, because it seemed so simple. I chose JavaScript because I can exploit the way it structures objects to aid in the modeling of language. For example: "I want to be at the beach", "I will do it later", "I want to know the answer", ... becomes: { I: { want: { to: { be: { ... }, know: { ... } } }, will: { ... } }, ... } in JavaScript. You can exploit the language's fast object lookup speed to find known sentences this way, rather than recursively searching text - which is the convention and would take forever or not work at all considering there are several full books loaded in by default (and it could support many more). Accompanying research yielded learnings about what "tokens" and "embeddings" are, what is meant by "training", and most of the rest - though I'm still learning jargon. I wrote a script to iterate over every single word of every single book to rank how likely it is that word will appear next, if given a cursor, and extended that to rank entire phrases. The base decoder started out what I'll call "token-agnostic" - didn't care if you were looking for the next letter... word... pixel... it's the same logic. But actually it's not, and it soon evolved into a text (language) model. But I have plans to get into image generation next (next-pixel prediction), using this. Overall the concepts are similar, but there are differences primarily around extraction and formatting. Goals of the project: - Demystify LLMs for people, show that it's just regular code that does normal stuff - Actually make a pretty good LLM in JavaScript, with a version at least capable of running in a browser tab https://ift.tt/agRQPE5 April 11, 2024 at 02:57AM

Show HN: We built a no-code tool on top of a spreadsheet (Game of Life example) https://ift.tt/YBdNDWZ

Show HN: We built a no-code tool on top of a spreadsheet (Game of Life example) Hi everyone! I want to share a spreadsheet tool we are building. The main idea is to be able to specify logic for a no code tool inside a spreadsheet. We have automations, data integration, action formulas, dashboards. Linked example: We use our UPDATECELL formula to make a step in a board of game of life. We can also use CHAIN to make it run indefinitely. The actions are exposed as buttons in a dashboard. Our automations work by loading your spreadsheet on the server and running an action specified in the spreadsheet. So the logic could be, pull in data from google sheet, send a personalized email to every row which we haven’t emailed yet, mark those rows as complete. Run this automation on 5 minute schedule, add any other custom logic you need (e.g. test email for deliverability) and you have yourself an automatic email tool. We are leaning into automations to differentiate ourselves from other products in the field at the moment. Technical kinks: - Since our automations make changes to the spreadsheet, we needed a robust multiplayer system. We implemented a CRDT system. This is a topic for a longer blog post, but one fun challenge was to implement CRDT for rows/column which allowed for adding/deleting/reordering performantly while preserving most user intent in the case of offline editing. - Some of our formulas are inherently asynchronous; for example those which fetch data from an external data source. That added an extra kink when writing the spreadsheet engine; e.g. topologically sorting and then evaluating in order can cause you to get stuck on a long running evaluation. - One of our premises is that we do not store your data; it gets pulled when the spreadsheet evaluates. That means everything reevaluates in the browser when you open a spreadsheet. Get this to be performant (we still have a long way to go) was a challenge. Currently, everything runs in a single worker. Let me know what you all think. https://ift.tt/GnuowUr April 11, 2024 at 02:29AM

Show HN: Hacker News Blogroll https://ift.tt/gtqbPJS

Show HN: Hacker News Blogroll This was submitted about 9 months ago as a Show HN ( https://ift.tt/xRZ9Cnb ), people was generally favorable to it, but I never got around to do anything else with it past the first few days. I recently rescued a Github account I had, so I'm putting the source of the Rails app over there in case anyone wanted to do anything with it. The site still runs on https://dm.hn Generates about 2 to 3 GB bandwidth usage every month, and the blogs are still checked every day for new content. I must say, I still visit every week and find interesting entries to read. https://ift.tt/xp7arVW April 11, 2024 at 01:04AM

Show HN: Visualize eBay laptops in bulk with laptopscout https://ift.tt/CgbZpBV

Show HN: Visualize eBay laptops in bulk with laptopscout A bit late in the new diskprices-like website trend, but here's my contribution to the ecosystem. The goal here is to get an instant comparison of the laptops on ebay, using mostly 3 metrics of now: CPU benchmark rank, GPU benchmark rank, and price, without having to scroll through the item description or google the PC model. At the moment there are some parsing bugs, and some components that aren't parsed yet. I also quickly run into the ebay rate limit, making it hard to maintain an hour-by-hour listing. Curious to know what you guys think! https://laptopscout.xyz/EBAY_US April 10, 2024 at 02:04AM

Our Vision Goes Beyond Zero

Our Vision Goes Beyond Zero
By Amanda Eaken

Ten years ago last month, San Francisco proudly became the second city in the United States to adopt Vision Zero, an ambitious pledge to end all serious and fatal traffic crashes. Since I joined the SFMTA Board of Directors in 2018, I have been laser focused on what it will take to get to zero.

Like many of you, I feel very strongly that this must be a top priority for our city. I see the ability to walk, bike, drive, scoot, roll or take transit safely, without fear of harm, as a basic right and freedom that people should expect in our city. A basic right just like turning on the tap and expecting that the water is safe for you to drink — something you just assume the government will take care of for you. And, as I affirmed at the Mayor’s Vision Zero press conference, I share in the feelings of rage, powerlessness and grief whenever I learn that anyone is injured or killed in traffic violence on our streets.

But it wasn’t until recently, at the SFMTA Board workshop in January, that I realized that Vision Zero is not, actually, our vision. Of course no one should die or be injured in traffic on our streets. Great cities are for people, not cars. But we could reach Vision Zero and still fall far short of the city I think we want to be.

Let me unpack this a bit further. I think safety is actually the floor, it’s the minimum. Safety should be a basic right of people trying to get around the city. But as we’ve seen on Slow Sanchez Street or the Great Highway over the last few years, streets can be so much more than just safe. They can be places that uplift and elevate people. I know on some of my toughest days, a walk on JFK Promenade is pure therapy. More often than not these days I run into someone I know out there, and it warms my heart to see so many people enjoying themselves. I love seeing the irrepressible smiles on parents’ faces as they teach their very small family members to safely ride a bicycle, or hearing friends laughing as they lounge in the yellow Adirondack chairs.

Our streets can be blank canvases for local artists, places for communities to express and celebrate their unique identities and histories. As a member of the NOPA community, I recently learned that the San Francisco Parks Alliance is going to bring art to some of our neighborhood Slow Streets. I was asked to fill out a survey about which elements of our community’s history best express our identity, and should be featured in the artwork. I highlighted the Black churches in our neighborhood, NOPA Corner Market, the Panhandle, the University of San Francisco and Divisadero Street.

The community gathering space of JFK Promenade has a soundtrack of its own with pedestrians passing by live, public music and art. Credit: Paint the Void

Great streets should, in my view, create opportunities for joy and delight. Streets can be places that enable play and silliness like the ping pong table at 8th Avenue or the white wobbly chairs kids love to spin around in. They can be community gathering spaces that help to create the spontaneous moments of connection that are why we all live in a city to begin with.

Whenever I ride my bike down JFK promenade on a Sunday and hear the community sing-along around that wonderful old and warped Rec and Park piano, or stroll down Great Highway, take a seat on one of those orange metal chairs and soak in some live jazz with the spectacular Pacific Ocean behind me, I am so moved. This, I think to myself, THIS is the kind of city I want to live in – where the government partners with communities to create wonderful spaces that provide more opportunities for joy and connection.

COVID changed all of our lives, for some of us permanently. I observe — and have experienced — that some of us are still quite isolated, that people are craving more connection. Streets can be places for community members to come together, to combat what our Surgeon General is calling a national epidemic of loneliness.

So as we look to the next ten years of the essential work of making our streets safe, what some are calling Vision Zero 2.0, I want us to pause and ask ourselves whether Vision Zero is the extent of our vision. Vision Zero means nothing tragic or unacceptable happens. But I want to flip that around. Because every day, in thousands of ways, big and small, I hope our streets can do more than just prevent tragedies. I hope our streets can be places people can experience moments of joy and delight on their commutes. Where they can cross the street with comfort and dignity, rather than feeling that they have no option but to become defensive, anxious pedestrians, constantly on the lookout for cars turning right on red creeping into the crosswalk or drivers looking down at their phones rolling through a stop sign. I want our city to be a place that is safe for children to travel independently. When we make these important policy decisions about whether to restrict certain movements of vehicles, I want us to think about our kids — it’s their city too.

So please: join me in both recommitting to and re-envisioning Vision Zero over these next months.

I created the Vision Zero subcommittee of the SFMTA Board of Directors because I wanted us to have a space where we can sit around a table together, to share ideas, to jointly problem-solve, to co-create the city we all want to live in. Bring your vision, passion, creative thinking, as we embark on the journey to chart a course for the next ten years.

The next meeting is Tuesday June 11th at 1 p.m. at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, or you can always attend my virtual office hours on Mondays at 4 p.m. during the first and third weeks of the month.

Amanda Eaken is the Chair of the SFMTA Board of Directors which provides policy oversight for the safe and efficient movement of people and goods in San Francisco in accordance with the San Francisco Charter and the Transit-First Policy. This includes the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), automobiles and trucks, taxis, bicycling and walking. The SFMTA Board of Directors also serves as members of the San Francisco Parking Authority. The SFMTA Board of Directors generally meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 1:00 pm. in Room 400, City Hall unless otherwise noted. Members of the public can attend or view meetings on SFGovTV2.

Published April 10, 2024 at 12:57AM
https://ift.tt/USWfEk3

Show HN: NextJS CMS using Firebase as a DB for creating SSR websites https://ift.tt/ZuBYA4I

Show HN: NextJS CMS using Firebase as a DB for creating SSR websites https://ift.tt/dmNRjTI April 10, 2024 at 12:11AM