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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.



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.



Unfortunately, he passed away in 2022. I loved his blog posts.


Damn, I remember reading his blog post a few years back when I was an undergraduate procrastinating on lab reports. I was instantly in awe of his writing and latex skills.

RIP Gilles


Do you know why he died? He must have been young.


From someone who apparently knew him personally^1:

> I just want to tell everyone that Gilles Castel, the incredible person that popularized this form of math note taking, has passed away. It's awesome to see that people still use his blog and keep his legacy alive. We lost him at a very young age. Thank you for this video.

On why:

> depression got the better of him.

:(

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOtM1mrWjUo&lc=UgyBCHtOu_8bl...


Probably suicide. This is very unfortunate.


Wow, sorry to hear that. Came across his blog in 2021 and was instantly hooked. RIP


100% this.

I learned about this from the first linked post, immediately tried it and never looked back.


Wow. I wish I had known about this ...


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)


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


Try the "Recursive Mono" or "PT Mono" variants of Iosevka.



Do you know if these implementations also support leveraging the M1/M2 GPU, such as shown here? https://github.com/openai/whisper/pull/382


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)


I believe these are notes that you are referring to

https://terrytao.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/linear-algebra-...


These notes are excellent. One good thing is how often Terence Tao gives real life examples and analogies, contrary to what one may expect from a fields medal winner. From utilitarian perspective, reading Axler's book looks like comically bad use of one's time.


Thanks!


Tao's notes seem to be based on the book Linear Algebra by Friedberg, Insel and Spence. I found it to be one of the best books on Linear Algebra, better than even Hoffman/Kunze. The proofs are extremely clear, it has examples like PageRank, Markov Chains, PCA and the solutions to just about every exercise is available on Quizlet.


Because the poor guy contributes so much to math and math exposition and yet has his name misspelled everywhere, I'll mention that it's Terence, not Terrance.


The Tao that can be spelled is not the true Tao.


I'm not sure that Axler's book is great as a first LA book. I would go with something more traditional like Strang.

Although I really didn't feel like I "got" LA until I learned algebra (via Artin). By itself LA feels very "cookbook-y", like just a random set of unrelated things. Whereas in the context of algebra it really makes a lot more sense.


>I'm not sure that Axler's book is great as a first LA book.

Linear Algebra Done Right is a text for beginners who want to study linear algebra in a proof based, mathematically rigorous way.

So, if you want that I think it's a good fit as a first linear algebra book.


From "Preface to Students":

> You are probably about to begin your second exposure to linear algebra. Unlike your first brush with the subject, which probably emphasized Euclidean spaces and matrices, this encounter will focus on abstract vector spaces and linear maps. These terms will be defined later, so don’t worry if you do not know what they mean. This book starts from the beginning of the subject, assuming no knowledge of linear algebra. The key point is that you are about to immerse yourself in serious mathematics, with an emphasis on attaining a deep understanding of the definitions, theorems, and proofs.

It is definitely a hard text if you haven't had exposure to linear algebra before.


The thing is, by the time you get to this book, most students have probably taken DiffEq or multivariable calculus, and had exposure to linear algebra there. (If not in high school.)


That was my path and that first introduction was awful. Axler made everything finally make sense to me.


Have you seen Macdonald's "Linear and Geometric Algebra"? I found it a much nicer introduction to the subject.


My weekly chance to gripe: unfortunately nobody who writes about GA seems to be bothered by the fact that the geometric product is basically meaningless (outside of a couple of specific examples, complex numbers and quaternions).

If they would just write only about the wedge product and omit the geometric product entirely, it would actually be a great book.


Those two are pretty big as far as specific examples go, definitely worth writing about


There are other models of the two that don't require the geometric product at all. The rest of linear algebra doesn't need it, and recasting all of it in terms of a frankly terrible operation is not helpful for intuition.


talking about amazon, someone suggested me to get gareth williams linear algebra with applications (5 bucks on ebay)

it's a good applied primer, not big on concepts, more about the mechanics, and it unlocked a lot of things in my head because dry textbook morphisms definitions sent me against imaginary walls faster than c


Terry’s book is good, but it’s tedious and wordy. It takes a lot of pages to get anywhere interesting.


Wordy books are great for self study.


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


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...


> 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?


It is essentially abusing the UBU to subsidize trade from China. There was an excellent NPR story about it: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...


Thank you for that link, I am somewhat that it hasn’t become a political issue given the current environment. Do you know if anyone is trying to address this issue?


US announces intent to withdraw from international postal rate system:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/411828-us-announ...


Trump has complained about it publicly and is working to withdraw us while the Democrats spin it as Trump trying to withdraw from a 200-year old treaty - we should fix it instead (but we also tried that once and failed in 2016).

I haven't followed it closely but it is a political issue, albeit a minor one that neither side for whatever reason wants to escalate into a major talking point.

(Not a Trump supporter but maybe on this one...)


It's amuzing how people feel forced to add the "I didn't vote for Trump" when defending his actions that they like. Lest someone think they're monsters. The reality is that business-wise he's actually working hard for America's economy, addressing structural nonsense like the mail post treaty. Why can't that be simply something you support, regardless of who you voted for. Why is it implied that the other party decides whether a position is right or wrong by simply choosing the opposite of what a politician they hate chooses?


“Business-wise”, he’s taking a series of random, poorly reasoned actions, some of which happen to be good. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

The parent is saying that Trump is bad on most things, but good on one particular thing. You’re trying to claim that he’s good on most things in a category.


People do this all the time for everything because it's a cheap way to supposedly increase the value of your commentary since you're otherwise allegedly unpleased by the subject. It also lets you pander to the audience with "I'm not one of those people, but...".

For example, you can see "I don't like {Javascript,PHP,Apple,Google,Facebook,$tech,$website,$thing}, but..." right here on HN, frequently.


Your first sentence was alright. Afterwards you injected a political opinion into your comment.

"The reality is that business-wise he's actually working hard for America's economy, addressing structural nonsense like the mail post treaty." is a statement that a majority of the people in the U.S would disagree with.

If you want to make your comment unbiased to one political party or the other, then you should remove that sentence.


Your opinion is unnecessarily spoiling this discussion.


That's an unwarranted statement. I'm just pointing out that you make comments under the guise of being "impartial" and supporting rational debate, when in reality you're clearly biased towards one political party.

Your comment was framed as "why can't people freely talk about which politician they support", which is a fairly neutral statement. But, afterwards, you proceeded to say that Trump has been beneficial for the U.S, which is a partisan statement (that most people in the U.S disagree with as per a variety of polls), and furthermore, you claimed that a vast majority of the people in the U.S would support Trump if it were not for their bias against Trump/conservatives, which is an incredibly subjective and partisan statement (and also plain wrong - because many people just dislike Trump's policies).

I mean, just look at this sentence:

>Why is it implied that the other party decides whether a position is right or wrong by simply choosing the opposite of what a politician they hate chooses?

You claim that people who don't support Trump's policies do so solely because they dislike Trump, instead of considering the fact that many people just dislike Trump's policies because they are just intrinsically bad.


People need to do that for fear of losing their jobs or damaging their career prospects I think. Is it possible to be a Trump supporter at any of these big bay area tech firms? Many of my friends tell me they pretend to be apolitical for fear of being fired, but I don't know how exaggerated their stories are.


As far as I know, the US is making noise about it. I don't know if any real changes have occurred.


US filed paperwork announcing withdrawal. There's, I believe, a two year period that kicks in for renegotiation. So the process of moving as fast as it can right now.


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