Hacker News Reader

derekmcloughlinon IBM unveils 433 qubit quantum computer

Sabine Hossenfelder has a good summary of the state of Quantum Computing so far:

https://youtu.be/CBLVtCYHVO8

derekmcloughlinon Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue Color Vision Test

Reminds me of Blendoku

https://youtu.be/DGVo26co7N4

derekmcloughlinon Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement

That’s not true. The vast majority of schools (90%+) teach in English.

derekmcloughlinon Batteries Included with Emacs (2020)

Really good stuff here - didn't know about follow mode before - it's not mentioned in the "Mastering Emacs" book I have.

derekmcloughlinon Defunctionalization and Freyd’s Theorem

His own introduction to category theory for programmers is good:

https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-p...

derekmcloughlinon Argos to stop printing catalogue after almost 50 years

Only since 1996. Before that a visit to Argos was a must for people in the Republic who went on shopping visits to Belfast.

derekmcloughlinon BBC Computer Literacy Project 1980 – 1989

'65 here as well. We had the Acorn Atom at school when I was 16, but I found it underwhelming. My interest in computing didn't really start until 1983 when I started using System 7 Unix on a PDP/11 in college.

derekmcloughlinon Ask HN: What does your BI stack look like?

{SQL Server, Oracle} -> ETL to SQL Server (Hybrid graph db)-> SQL Server Analysis Services -> {Power Bi, Tableau}

derekmcloughlinon Peloton Is Spinning Faster Than Ever

Joining a cycling club also has the added bonus of social interactions, which is beneficial to your mental health.

derekmcloughlinon The wrong kind of trees: Ireland's afforestation meets resistance

The words of the Scottish singer Jim Malcolm ring true here:

https://www.jimmalcolm.com/music/sconeward/#BARREN

Last verse:

Slow return to native timber

So they plant the sitka spruce

Only fit to wipe your bottom

No damn good to build a hoose

derekmcloughlinon Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

-- William Faulkner

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kill%20your%...

derekmcloughlinon How to build your own neural network from scratch in Python

I found this very useful:

https://makeyourownneuralnetwork.blogspot.com/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530826608/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_x...

First part goes into what a NN is and how backprop works, second part is an implementation in Python.

derekmcloughlinon Show HN: Designer Lynx – curated links to useful UI design resources

Sorry, I refuse to read white text on a black background.

derekmcloughlinon Linear Algebra for AI

I found that chapter 2 of the Deep Learning book by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville is quite good.

http://www.deeplearningbook.org/contents/linear_algebra.html

derekmcloughlinon Show HN: Vexlio – Create precise, beautiful diagrams

Do you plan to add connectors to shapes - i.e. lines that stay connected to the objects at either ends? Dealbreaker for me.

derekmcloughlinon Practical Deep Learning for Coders

Paperspace (https://www.paperspace.com/ml) have ML instances starting at $0.27 per hour. Their more general GPU offering is $0.60 per hour for an 8-core machine with an 8GB GPU. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13185464 for previous discussion.

derekmcloughlinon Practical Deep Learning for Coders

If you've no experience with ML stuff, you might want to start with Andrew Ng's course, which has a small bit on neural networks (MLP and backpropagation), with examples in Matlab/Octave. I found it useful, along with "Make Your Own Neural Network" by Tariq Rashid. Very good intro to coding MLPs directly in Python.

derekmcloughlinon A Basic Introduction to Neural Networks (2007)

For a good basic intro, this is excellent:

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Own-Neural-Network-ebook/dp...

derekmcloughlinon MacBook Pro

And despite Sterling getting a hammering at the moment, the UK price of the fully-specced out MBP works out 500 Euro cheaper than the price from Ireland.