Posts

[March 17] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

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1. LocalSend : On its website explains what it is, in a minimalist way with just two lines written there Share files to nearby devices. Free, open-source, cross-platform. This is all this product does My Take : This is an incredible app which works across different platforms. I tried it on Android and Linux and my experience was super boring, which is great. This process there is always a market for simple products which just work. I hope this app becomes like VLC player which is another great open source software which just works across different platforms. 2. Arduino GIGA R1 WiFi : A 3.6kW, Arduino controlled, single-axis tracking, ground mount solar system   My Take : Amazing work and all of it is open source. I guess anyone working to setup solar panels should look into this for better efficiency.  3. Oxygen Production at Europa : NASA's Juno mission has found that the ice-covered Jovian moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours – enough to keep a million humans b

[March 10] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

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1. Kitten - The Streaming HTML framework - Kitten is a small, JavaScript-based web framework designed for people who want to build web applications easily. It is designed to be easy to use and fun to work with. Kitten accomplishes this by using plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Additionally, Kitten supports features like WebSockets, htmx, and Alpine.js. A starter tutorial for it is at https://ar.al/2024/03/08/streaming-html/ My Take:   This is a new framework that I find it very interesting, and it's worth keeping an eye on. It introduces some intriguing concepts, including streaming HTML and a JavaScript Database (JSDB). While this approach seems more suited for small web applications rather than web-scale ones, it might not be relevant for large organizations. However, for hobbyists like myself, it presents an exciting opportunity to try something new. I'll definitely be following this closely.   2. Radicle Heartwood Protocol & Stack -  Heartwood is the third ite

[March 03] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

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1. New Prompt Engineering Technique using Star Trek references : This is a very interesting and pretty long article which goes into how talking about star trek makes LLM spit out better results.  My Take: The idea of using Star Trek references to enhance LLM performance is certainly intriguing. However, it also serves as a stark reminder of just how much we still have to learn about the inner workings of these complex models. While we can observe and utilize their outputs, the actual mechanics behind their decision-making processes remain shrouded in a degree of mystery. This lack of understanding doesn't deter me from seeking new ways to explore and understand LLMs. In fact, this unique approach only strengthens my curiosity and compels me to delve deeper into their capabilities and limitations. Ultimately, uncovering the secrets behind LLM operations could pave the way for even more innovative and effective applications in the future.   2. StreetPass : StreetPass is a browser

[Feb 25] Interesting Things I Learnt This Week

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1. How a group of birds got their names - This is an article about the collective names of groups of birds. It discusses how these names came to be and how they have changed over time. The names are often based on the birds’ characteristics or behavior. Some examples are a “murder of crows” and a “parliament of owls”. The article also mentions a book called “ The Boke of Seynt Albans ” which contains a list of many of these collective names. My Take: The evolution of names across centuries is a fascinating journey, often revealing a captivating rabbit hole of linguistic transformations. At times, it strikes me that we may become overly fixated on specific details that are destined to fade with the passage of time. In doing so, we risk losing sight of the broader picture. This phenomenon is particularly evident when exploring historical instances that highlight the intellectual contributions of women. Unfortunately, history illustrates how their brilliance was often stifled through fo

[Feb 18] - Interesting things I learnt this week

A few interesting things I learnt about this week are 1. Coffee Stains in LaTeX - This package provides an essential feature that LaTeX has been missing for too long: It adds coffee stains to your documents. A lot of time can be saved by printing stains directly on the page rather than adding them manually. My Take: There is too much fun to be had with LaTeX. I guess the rest of the world missed this wonderful piece of tech completely. These small and sometimes pointless tools are what really make any technology platform stand out among others, not because of the tech but the fact that its users are emotionally invested to build these kind of tech nuggets 2. Meshtastic - Meshtastic is a project that enables you to use inexpensive LoRa radios as a long range off-grid communication platform in areas without existing or reliable communications infrastructure. This project is 100% community driven and open source. LoRa uses license-free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands EU868 (863–87

[Feb 10] - Interesting things I learnt this week

This is second of my experiment series to compile a few interesting things which I read about during the week. I hope I can continue this for this year at least. 1. Eagle 7B   - The race for better models is on. Gemini from Google is there but its another closed source one. But this one is open source. It claims to have transformers with 1 Trillion Tokens Across 100+ Languages.  My Take: Models are going to be get better in the open source world with each passing day. Very soon we will have GPT4 level models running on our local laptops and phones. The open source is going to be a big part of it. How people build on top of these models is going to become even more interesting. I have not tried this model yet, but I am guessing it will be faster than llama2  2. Text Generation WebUI - This is an amazing tool which starts a webservice on your machines and makes loading and configuring various LLMs a breeze. It will autodownload models once you have given hugginface project name.  My T

[Jan 28] - Interesting things I learnt this week

 This is my experiment to compile a few interesting things which I read about during the week. I hope I can continue this for this year at least.   1. One Pedal Driving : This is an article about one-pedal driving in electric cars. It discusses what one-pedal driving is and the benefits of using it. One-pedal driving allows you to accelerate and brake using only the gas pedal. This can help extend the life of your brakes and increase your car’s range. It also reduces stress while driving. The article also details how one-pedal driving works and how to use it safely.  My Take: This is really nice idea. I drive a smart hybrid which I kind of drive in a one pedal mode. Not sure if I am getting most bang for the buck, but I kind of am used to leaving the accelerator and the car slowing down and coming to a stop where I want (obviously I need to brake for complete stop) ever since I learnt driving first, thanks for my trainer.    2. Reading QR Codes manually - This guide teaches you