Let’s use Claude to look at how good an approximation a Taylor series expansion is for sin(x). After a bit of back and forth, it has produced these plots for us, and we can immediately see that the “good region” is growing linearly as we add additional terms to the Taylor series. This initially feels surprising, like each additional term is somehow more powerful than I would expect in its ability to correct the distant errors while leaving the inner region relatively unchanged.| David Bieber
This is a snippet for me to experiment with embedding a Claude artifact into a snippet. The main challenge I expect to encounter is that Claude builds artifacts with React, so I’ll have to learn how to integrate webpack or similar into my Hugo setup. Fortunately, I have Claude here to help me with that. Success! The main steps were to set up a webpack config that converts any per-snippet JS, JSX, and CSS files into a bundle. I can then lean on my existing plugins_js setup to pull that bundl...| David Bieber
A persistent theme of my snippets is writing about writing. Thirty-two of my snippets are about snippets themselves, second only in prevalence to the tag taking-silly-ideas-seriously. My snippet writing is often exploratory, thinking aloud and figuring things out along the way. My Go Note Go writing (private writing I do as I drift off to sleep) is that even more so, if you can believe. Over the recent years, my practices of writing have shifted, and so I will now use this space to take stock...| David Bieber
I remember I used to write short snippets just to get something out there. I think that’s what this is going to be. A free-write, with no goal at the outset other than to quickly get a snippet up on my website. I’ll mention there are a handful of ideas I have been thinking about. Travel is one. What a busy summer it’s been. Routines are another, as in my last snippet.| David Bieber
For months I’ve been waking up to the sound of my printer. Brr… Brbrr… Br. brr… It would print me a custom morning routine, following a randomized algorithm I put together. It would always start with the simple instruction “brush your teeth”, followed by a handful of activities. It would suggest an exercise, sometimes HIIT, sometimes yoga, sometimes running or table tennis, etc. It would suggest something more artistic or leisurely.| David Bieber
My new bedtime is 10:15pm. -- This is an update to the bedtime I’ve now held for several years of 10:10pm. What an indulgence. Five extra minutes, every night. An extra hour of wakefulness every twelve days. Think of all I can accomplish. Why? Let’s think step by step. I’m not consistently hitting my 10:10pm bedtime recently. I still think about it. 10:10 rolls around and I acknowledge that it’s bedtime, but at that point I frequently find something else to do in favor of sleeping.| David Bieber
I learn a lot from talking to large language models (LLMs) like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. Frequently I’ll ask the LLM to quiz me on what it’s taught me, in order to test my understanding of what I’ve learned. I find that doing so helps me learn the material better, promoting longer term recall. Even with this strategy in place, however, I still forget a lot of what I’ve learned from these AI assistants.| David Bieber
Over the years I’ve accumulated dozens of strategies for managing my attention, including amazing Chrome extensions from Namu like Intention and Hide feed. Nevertheless, I continue to get sucked into the Internet’s six infinite distractions. So today (well, yesterday really), I’m taking matters into my own hands, and building some Chrome extensions to help me manage these distractions on my own terms. Twitter and Facebook. I’ve noticed that when I’m scrolling on Twitter or Facebook,...| Snippets on David Bieber
I stumbled on this YouTube video today called “Use Strategic Thinking to Create the Life You Want” and surprised myself by enjoying the video. Among other things, it suggested plotting out sixteen different aspects of your life according to how important they are to you, and how satisfied you are with them. Once you’ve done that, you can use this plot to start thinking about any adjustments you might want to make in your behaviors. “Gee, with ChatGPT I could probably throw together a ...| Snippets on David Bieber
Today’s topic is the SWYT in pyd-swyt; cf-bh-din: say what you think. We’ve already covered what it means to me to BH (“be happy”) and to PYD (“pursue your dreams”). Today we dive into SWYTing – saying what you think. This is easily the toughest one for me. I often self-censor. So, I’m going to start this exploration with a quick brainstorming of why this might be. Expand the text below to see the full brainstorm. I include my complete initial thoughts here, though upon review...| Snippets on David Bieber
Here are my food preferences, all typed up nice and neat in a way that Bard or ChatGPT can easily digest. Now when I travel somewhere, I can ask these LLMs to help me pick out restaurants well suited to my tastes! As written by a human 🥗 I really enjoy tomato based sauces. 🥗 Some particularly wonderful foods I enjoy include chicken parm, chicken tikka masala, drunken noodles. 🥗 I enjoy eating at restaurants where they make foods that I wouldn’t easily be able to make myself. 🥗 I...| Snippets on David Bieber
This is an interactive little page. If you have a violin handy, go ahead and play a note or two, and watch the finger diagrams change. If you don’t have a violin on you, you can try singing instead. Scroll down for details about what’s going on here. What is this? Each diagram shows the violin finger positions for a different scale. When you play a note, the page shows the pitch you’re playing as a magenta line. The closest note will be highlighted in dark blue. If the note precisely go...| Snippets on David Bieber
In 2017 I picked up violin again, after a 15 year hiatus. I’d played throughout fourth grade, but then put the instrument down to focus on my studies.1 I’m now plodding away at learning guitar and violin, and playing bits on the keyboard. It would be good to have some goals so I can direct my studies. One candidate goal based on my recent playing would be to produce You’ve Got a Friend in Me on all of these instruments: piano, violin, guitar, and I could even do vocals. I could record e...| Snippets on David Bieber
Greetings! How are you today? How do you like to ask that question? One option is “what’s alive in you?”. The alternatives I have a couple of people in my life who ask this question: “what’s alive in you?”. Aside from the slight downside of elliciting funny looks, I think it’s a solid alternative to “how are you?” as a conversation opener when you are looking to have a meaningful conversation. Of course, often “how are you?” is not intended to introduce a meaningful undi...| Snippets on David Bieber
Trying to reason about the future With all the advances in artificial intelligence, I am trying to wrap my head around where technology is going. (I finally feel comfortable saying I work in AI now, not just machine learning!) I want to think clearly about what the world will look like in a month, a year, a decade. With the rate of advancement happening today, and the wide range of possibilities for where we’re headed, coming up with good projections requires careful thinking. Defining a lo...| Snippets on David Bieber
I write a lot. Every night. Every day. I’m constantly writing. And, unlike many of the people I know who similarly take lots of notes, I also regularly read what I write. However, the nature of how I write leaves my writing messy (full of typos) and disjointed (writing on one topic might be scattered across dozens of pages, with lots of unrelated thoughts interspersed between). About a year ago, I had the idea to hire an editor / writer to help me use all this writing a bit more effectively...| Snippets on David Bieber
Today I used GPT-4 to implement my first ever Tampermonkey script. It took well under half an hour, which is likely many times faster than it would have taken me alone. I am blown away by GPT-4’s programming capabilities. It started with a simple feature request for the Hypothesis browser extension. For context, Hypothesis is a tool for taking notes on the web, including on PDFs. I use it to take notes on machine learning pdfs on Arxiv. It’s a great tool, but it has a limitation: when bro...| Snippets on David Bieber
Whoa! Hello there! Can’t wait to learn what you can do! I say “Can you check the time for me?” and you walk over to a clock and look at it. Can you see how much shampoo is left? Send me a picture of what’s in the fridge. Take out the trash. Check if the milk is spoiled and put it in the trash. Very gently move the jigsaw puzzle into the other room. Quick! Unplug the toaster! Put out the fire. Can you plug my phone in, please? Open the window? Let’s rearrange the furniture – where ...| Snippets on David Bieber
Writing can be challenging. It can feel slow at times. For me, my snippets systems goes a long way toward mitigating this. In this particular snippet, I present a taxonomy of why writing is hard. Difficulty 1: Rereading Rereading slows me down.It can consume significant time, for little benefit compared with writing unwritten sections of the piece. I include here going back and making changes or insertions earlier in the writing. This isn’t meant to diminish the value of revisions or editin...| Snippets on David Bieber
What are some things you can do on the computer to help yourself get off the computer? i.e. How can you “bootstrap” your own motivation? This question is key not just for breaking away from internet distractions, but also for getting up in the morning and doing other things you’d like to do but have trouble finding motivation for in the moment. One thing you can do is set an alarm. Or put on a motivational video, such as a yoga video or other fitness video. The reason these activities m...| Snippets on David Bieber
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Actually, don’t. There’s value in repetition, and more than I think most people realize. This isn’t about the benefits of active recall or spaced repetition. It’s about how hearing things shapes your attention. When someone tells you something that you already know, you aren’t learning something new. But you are devoting mindshare to thinking about the thing. And they’re telling you about the thing for a reason. So, spending a little mind...| Snippets on David Bieber
Go Note Go is a computer keyboard with no screen that I use to capture ideas anywhere, even as I drift off to sleep. This is a complete list of Go Note Go’s features as of January 2023. Expand any of the features for more information about it. The main use cases for Go Note Go are capturing thoughts while sleeping, driving, camping, and showering. Main features (Just the useful ones) Capture typed notesThis is the main feature of Go Note Go. Anything you type on it will show up in your note...| Snippets on David Bieber
The last few nights I have been sleeping with GPT, and oh, it has been a joy. Background: Capturing my thoughts as I drift off to sleep I use a note-taking device that I call Go Note Go. It’s a computer keyboard without a screen that I type on to capture my thoughts everywhere, even as I drift off to sleep. I have one in my bed, and I also keep them on my desk at work and in various spots around my apartment; anywhere an idea strikes, I have a Go Note Go keyboard ready to capture that idea....| Snippets on David Bieber
Background: Ontologies in Note-taking I’ll do my best to get the context for this thought down quickly, but I don’t think I’ll do a good job. Feel free to ask me if you’d like to understand the context better. In a note-taking system like C. or Tana, objects exist in an ontology1. This means that an object can have a type. That type definition can have properties. For example my notes might be full of people. Each person might have a birthday and contact info and a height and a handed...| Snippets on David Bieber
We all live in castles in the clouds. Building our Castles When we are young, we gather bricks. Each of our experiences is a brick. Each thing we learn is a brick, allowing us to build higher. Whenever we learn something new, it is supported by things we already know. The new blocks are laid to rest atop the old ones. Over our long lives, we construct beautiful tall towers using thousands of bricks, representing everything we know. These towers take us to great heights. We find ourselves in a...| Snippets on David Bieber
This blog post was entirely written by me, David Bieber, a human being. I did not consult with ChatGPT or Bieber Bot or any other assistants or conversational agents in the writing of this post. It is likely this will now be a rare occurrence, and that subsequent posts will generally be written with an assistant at my side. Reminder: This is a snippet If this were an ordinary blog post, I might set aside some space to bring you up to speed with what ChatGPT is (it’s a conversational assista...| Snippets on David Bieber
Good conversation is an essential part of human interaction. It allows us to connect with others, share our thoughts and ideas, and learn from one another. But in a world where we are constantly bombarded with information and distractions, it can be difficult to hold someone’s attention and have a truly engaging conversation. One way to improve the quality of our conversations is by using the elements of “salt, acid, fat, and heat”. This metaphor is based on the culinary philosophy of c...| Snippets on David Bieber
Boo! 👻 Ugh Task Night is coming! This is the second year I’m hosting Ugh Task Night, the scariest night of the year. Ugh Task Night takes place in late October, right around that other spooky holiday. At Ugh Task Night, friends come together for an evening to do the scariest thing of all, their Ugh Tasks. We gather (virtually, on GatherTown) and, interspersed with chatting, do the things we dread most of all, generally to a feeling of significant relief. By doing our Ugh Tasks with frien...| Snippets on David Bieber
Ideally I’d have just a single inbox, but in practice I have several. In fact, I have so many that I forget about some of them, and they fade away. Especially if we count all the different Slacks I’m part of, there’s no way I could keep up with all my inboxes. Here’s a quick list of the inboxes I’m currently trying to stay on top of: Personal email, Work email, Texts and Voicemail, a Twitter DMs, Facebook Messenger. In addition to these, there are more inboxes that I check but don...| Snippets on David Bieber
You can log into a Twitter app with OAuth using Twython. First, make sure you have twython pip installed (pip install twython). Then, get the APP_KEY and APP_SECRET from the developer. This is labeled “API Key and Secret” on the app page at https://developer.twitter.com/en/portal/apps/. Next, run the following Python code: import twython client = twython.Twython(APP_KEY, APP_SECRET) auth = client.get_authentication_tokens(callback_url='oob') oauth_token = auth['oauth_token'] oauth_token_s...| Snippets on David Bieber
This is a note-to-self about how the code base for this website, davidbieber.com, is organized. There are several “layouts” files that live in the hugo/layouts directories. This is what each of them does: hugo/layouts/_default/list.html list.html defines how /snippets, /tags, and each of the individual /tags/ pages are rendered. Each of these pages holds a list of links, as well as a Discussion section. hugo/layouts/_default/rss.xml Defines the rss feeds for snippets and for posts. hugo/l...| Snippets on David Bieber
You can also listen to this post. Your browser does not support the audio element. Keyboards, keyboards, everywhere, and not a spot to think. This is take fourteen; I’ve tried to write this piece more times than I can count, but I struggle to merge the various attempts into a coherent whole. This is relevant, because its representative of an inability to focus on a large abstract piece of thought. This is the result of the state of our technology, our collective technology, how it strips us...| Snippets on David Bieber
Focus on the task of focusing on the task. If your breath seems a bit bland to get started, try “focus on this” instead. It’s all the same in the end, anyway.| Snippets on David Bieber
Yesterday I added “Discussion” sections to all the snippets and posts on my website. I wrote a snippet about it as I was doing it. The project morphed considerably during the writing of that snippet. So, today, I’m putting together a shorter snippet that says what I actually did. I created a Discord server for this website (I invite you to join the Discord here.) Then, I used widgetbot.io to embed the Discord server all throughout my website. Every snippet, every post, every tags page, ...| Snippets on David Bieber
I enjoy hosting co-working sessions. Pre-pandemic I used to just go to a coffee shop and invite people to join me. Now, trying to limit exposure to strangers, I’m having working sessions at my apartment. These working sessions are gatherings intended for people to independently work on hobbies, side projects, work, homework, future startups, catching up on emails, reading, whatever. Having other people around can make working more fun and make it easier to stay focused. This is a list of id...| Snippets on David Bieber
Lately I’ve sometimes had trouble focusing. My attention will sometimes drift to one of the internet’s infinite distractions. I’ve made a list of strategies I use to combat this, to better align my attention with my intentions. Using an outliner like Roam Research (see these snippets) Working with another person (e.g. pair programming) Working with another person present (e.g. independent coworking) Running a “distraction detection” program Mentally noting the distraction-kind and r...| Snippets on David Bieber
After thinking through the tension between Go Note Go and snippets yesterday, I now wonder if there’s a good way to write a snippet draft on Go Note Go. I’ve done so once before, when Go Note Go was only two weeks old, so I know it’s possible. But five months later I’ve written many snippet-worthy ideas on Go Note Go, but no additional snippets, which leads me to ask “why?”. The first question I would need to answer is at what point during the writing of a snippet draft do I have ...| Snippets on David Bieber
I love using Go Note Go. Sitting down with no screen, just a keyboard, feels really good. It clears my head, and straightens out my thoughts. I imagine meditation feels similar to some people. In some ways, Go Note Go is fulfilling some of the early objectives of snippets. It allows me to write without hesitation or uncertainty. However, that was not precisely my goal with snippets. My goal with snippets was to be able to write publicly without hesitation or uncertainty. Coming back to write ...| Snippets on David Bieber
Lately I’ve been writing a lot, but not putting up any new snippets. Where has all the writing gone? Into Go Note Go. It has been 150 days since I started Go Note Go. I have written on Go Note Go on 91 of those days, producing 54,000 words. I’ve spent a little over 24 hours total doing so, making my writing speed a bit shy of 40 wpm. I review more of my Go Note Go writing than I might expect, given its volume and that none of it has translated into published snippets. Since turning Go Not...| Snippets on David Bieber
LaLTal – short for “learn a little, teach a little” is a novel learning app from John Cumbers built on the extraordinary power of learning by teaching. I tried it out tonight, and I had a great time learning a bit about blockchain and synthetic biology. I really appreciated the opportunity to practice explaining the concepts that came up in the questions. Coming up with these explanations on the spot felt like exercising an underutilized muscle. I think I’ll be doing more of this. One...| Snippets on David Bieber
I have two new ideas for snippets I want to write. They’re about Go Note Go and Messager Queue, both side projects I’ve been putting a bunch of time into the last few days. The snippet ideas are: Using Go Note Go as an outliner Adding Hacker News to Messager Queue, and then auto-queuing Twitter and HN posts for snippets. The first is about using Go Note Go as an outliner. This is a new feature I’ve added to Go Note Go just in the last day or so. Before yesterday, each note entered via G...| Snippets on David Bieber
The last two years I’ve mostly been writing snippets, but today I wrote a new post. Why? I initially wrote it as a snippet. And the total time it took to write was short, like a snippet, not long like a typical post. So there are reasons to think it is not unlike other snippets. The reason I chose to publish it as a post rather than as a snippet is it seemed more significant. The last few days, playing with all the progress I’ve made in Go Note Go and Messager, left me wanting to share my...| Snippets on David Bieber
This snippet is similar to these related snippets from March 2021: #1#2 I’ve been thinking about the Efficient Minds Fallacy lately, and so I read this as it relates to the EMF. The Efficient Minds Fallacy occurs when someone incorrectly believes in the Efficient Minds Hypothesis or one of it’s consequences. The Efficient Minds Hypothesis is only slightly more silly than it’s namesake, the Efficient Market Hypothesis. The Efficient Minds Hypothesis (EMH) says that if you know $A$ and yo...| Snippets on David Bieber
This snippet was originally going to be about pixel-space automation. Then I found I didn’t need it for what I wanted to do: sending messages to Twitter, Facebook, Slack, and Discord from Go Note Go, Roam Research, and Bieber Bot. Happy New Year! I’d really like to automate Mac apps that don’t expose actions to Automator using pixel-space navigation and clicks and typing to control the automation. This is why and how. (Update from the end of the snippet: By the time I finished writing t...| Snippets on David Bieber
How do we bring back reliable aim statuses? I’d like for folks to know if someone is genuinely available for a conversation. Some options: Could just ask. Could post statuses on social media. Neither of these really appeal to me. They feel kind of heavyweight. I guess, of the two, the former is more appealing. The latter would require rewriting social conventions a bit too much. Maybe if the “asking” felt automated, like if there was a pre-written canned message (that explained that it ...| Snippets on David Bieber
I was watching Lecture 4 of Nancy Kanwisher’s class “The Human Brain”, and it occurred to me that we could use augmented reality to simulate prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia, for those unfamiliar with the term, is “face blindness”. It affects about 2% of the population with varying degrees of severity, and those with prosopagnosia cannot recognize faces. In the in-person version of the course, the students observe demos to show off the importance of motion in vision, and color in vision...| Snippets on David Bieber
Interested in casually learning a bit of neuroscience? I’m gathering a group to watch / discuss these lectures (MIT 9.13 The Human Brain, Spring 2019). Ping me if interested! Here’s how it’ll work. I’ll make a Discord. Each participant will get a channel for dumping notes, thoughts, questions, whatever. You’re free to proceed through the material at your own pace, and are encouraged to share thoughts etc. as you go. Each week I’ll check in with all participants to see how far they...| Snippets on David Bieber
Hello! This is a draft of instructions I intend to send out to volunteers for the contextual flashcard dataset collection project. I would love your feedback on the instructions before I send them out more widely. --- Welcome to the Contextual Flashcard Dataset Project. Thank you for volunteering! By working together, we are assembling a dataset of thousands of in-context flashcards to help evaluate and improve future automatic flashcard generation projects. To get started, install the Browse...| Snippets on David Bieber
The culmination of my thinking on note-taking interoperability so far is that we need BIRDS. 🐦. Allow me to explain. We want an “intermediate representation” for note-taking systems, to allow them to interoperate. Here an “intermediate representation” means an in-process representation of notes that can do bidirectional real-time incremental syncs with any of the popular note-taking systems (any system with a connector written for it). The main reason we want this is it allows appl...| Snippets on David Bieber
When I find articles on the web, often I only read a small portion of an article before browsing away. Instead of giving up on the article, I would like to leave a little visual marker on the page indicating the part of the page that I reached. I’d then also like to automatically add a link to this marker to my notes. So, if I’m ever reviewing my notes, I’ll be able to jump right back into the article where I left off. If I later continue reading the article, I’d like to move the mark...| Snippets on David Bieber
I tweeted about spaced repetition earlier this week, sharing and summarizing my latest snippet on the subject. A bunch of people left thoughtful replies, and I was quite pleased with the discussion. Now I want to look over the discussion holistically, but I don’t see a great way to do this. I don’t even see a way to look at all the replies to my thread in one place. I want to see not just this, but also replies to replies. TweetDeck might be able to help, but I don’t see how. I think wh...| Snippets on David Bieber
Bonjour, hello. Puedo escribir en otras linguas. No necessito escribir todos mis snippetos en Inglés. Como se dice “snippets” en Español? Parece que la palabra es fragmentos, pero la sección es mía, y puedo llamarlo lo que quiero. Por ahora, los llamaré “snippetos”. En particular… želim pisati na hrvatski. Svaki dan učim hrvatski, ali sam još uvijek beginner. Čitam easy-croatian.com za učenje. Radim flashcards i radim spaced repetition, ali ja sum na Chapter 17, a ima 100 ...| Snippets on David Bieber
Let’s consider machine learning first, and then automation. For each we brainstorm the potential value for note-taking. The Value of Machine Learning for Note-Taking Automatic transcription of audio notes Speaker identification during meetings or conversations Resurfacing of action items, surfacing relevant information, and performing actions (e.g running a google search or sending a message) in response to audio cues during meetings or conversations Automatic categorization of notes Automa...| Snippets on David Bieber
Here’s a snapshot of my tags. Just putting this here so I can look back on it later. note-taking (7), roam-research (23), go-note-go (3), spaced-repetition (7), snippets (23), browserflow (10), aspirational-intent (5), attention (23), taking-silly-ideas-seriously (25), table tennis (11), tech-tips (9), virtual reality (4), automatic-video-editing (7), python (16), goals (6), peer-learning-group (7), python fire (4), javascript (5), sql (10), wisdom (2), browser-history (10), thought-experim...| Snippets on David Bieber
Go Note Go is public! I’ve been working on this for two weeks now, and today I made it public! Read all about it here. What is it? Go Note Go is a note-taking system for when you’re on the go, with a focus on driving and camping. In short, it’s a portable keyboard with a microphone and speakers and a beautiful handheld button that you can use to take notes anywhere at all. Driving? Push the button and speak your notes. Camping? Type on the keyboard, powered by a battery pack. The batter...| Snippets on David Bieber
I’d like to be able to embed a Roam Research page on my website so that other people can make spaced repetition cards for me. No luck, though.| Snippets on David Bieber
I envision a decentralized global spaced repetition system (DGSRS). Anyone in the world can participate, submitting entries that they’d like the world to remember. To participate, you both need to review entries that others want reviewed, and submit an occasional entry yourself. There are two main benefits to the individual participating in the DGSRS: You can ensure that the idea you care about is never forgotten. You can be exposed to interesting new ideas Roughly, the system acts like thi...| Snippets on David Bieber
Spaced repetition is great for individual learners, but can we apply it to the preservation of institutional knowledge? What would that look like? Maybe it means dedicating some fraction of some employee time to revisiting old documentation and bringing it up to date. Maybe it involves periodic runthroughs of playbooks to ensure they’re still working. Is there a reason to want the exponential backoff property of individual spaced repetition when applying it to institutions? How many people ...| Snippets on David Bieber
It makes sense now! It was really a Eureka! moment on Tuesday when I figured it out. The stroke ends at the forehead because the stroke is much more forward than I was making it. Recap: All the much better players' forehands end at their foreheads. Mine ends across my chest on the left side of my body. When I try to end my forehand by my forehead, I mess it up terribly. Until now. Two weeks ago I came up with the following reasons / hypotheses for why a good stroke would end at the forehand. ...| Snippets on David Bieber
$X_i$s are i.i.d random variables with finite expected value. $S_n$ is the sum of first $n$ random variables (the sample mean). $\mu$ is the true mean (the population mean). Both the Weak Law of Large Numbers and the Strong Law of Large Numbers say that sample mean likely converges to the population mean as sample size increases. The Weak law guarantees convergence in probability. The Strong law guarantees almost sure convergence. Weak law: $\lim\limits_{n \to \infty} \text{Pr}\left(|S_n - \m...| Snippets on David Bieber
1. Configuring Chrome Log into my personal account and my corp account. Chrome extensions sync automatically. A few of them prompt me to log in. No hassle here. 2. Downloading Staple Software Download Sublime Text. Download Spectacle. Remap modifier keys. Configure Spectacle. 3. Set up Terminal Set theme. Copy in bashrc. Install Brew. Install pyenv. Add ssh key to GitHub. Clone website. Install emacs. Configure git. Commit this snippet. Set up virtualenvwrapper. Clone supervisor config. Subli...| Snippets on David Bieber
I’ve decided to keep my phone in the kitchen while I’m in the house. The goal is to reduce scrolling in the morning and evening, and prevent distractions more generally. By keeping the phone in the kitchen, I’ll be unable to scroll mindlessly when I first wake up (unless of course I go to the kitchen to do so). Hopefully by putting this intention up on my website, by having it in writing, by leaving it in a place where others could theoretically have read it, I am more likely to stick t...| Snippets on David Bieber
A 16 GB 13‑inch MacBook Pro costs $1400. A 4 GB ASUS Chromebook costs $300. An 8 GB 14-inch ThinkPad T14 costs $1300. --- For a 16 GB Chromebook, the Google Pixelbook Go costs $1000. For a 16 GB ThinkPad, Lenovo charges $1600. For a 64 GB 16-inch MacBook Pro, Apple charges $3000. --- Just a little snapshot of the laptop world’s prices these days. Soon we’ll see what tomorrow brings.| Snippets on David Bieber
On Thursday I said I’d resume my “Snippets” and the “After Work Activities” habits today. So, here I am, resuming. Still aiming to sleep by 10:10 tonight though, so not too much to say right now.| Snippets on David Bieber
We have a couple serves: The forehand backspin serve The disguised left- and right-spin with a little topspin serves The key attributes in a serve are: Where it goes How fast it goes Whether it reaches the back edge The spin And the perceived depth and spin I’ve read you should always serve to the front or back third of the opponents side, never to the middle third. The reason for preferring these regions is to force the opponent into a less comfortable stroke and maybe put them a bit off b...| Snippets on David Bieber
If the server moves their paddle from your left top right across the ball, then add the ball cones toward you its trajectory will bend to your left. You’ll want to hit it further left, otherwise it will bounce off your racket to the right and go out. How best to think about this? The ball is spinning to your left; that’s why the trajectory bends to your left. By “spinning to your left”, I refer to the direction the part of the ball leading the trajectory is moving in. Since the ball...| Snippets on David Bieber
Can I put a spreadsheet into Ferdi? I don’t see why not. I think if it works well I would want to put my After Work Activities and Automatic Transaction Log spreadsheets into Ferdi so they’re always available at my fingertips. It’s silly that Chrome doesn’t offer tab freezing. Maybe it does. Ferdi’s hibernation seems less memory hungry than having extra tabs open in Chrome, but perhaps this is wrong. Chrome doesn’t really handle special keyboard-shortcut bound tabs organization su...| Snippets on David Bieber
A torrent of snippets! The reason I’m putting out four snippets all at once is I have time to relax on this plane to Austin. The reason I haven’t been writing snippets in the month leading up to this… I think I was shaken from the habit by the NeurIPS deadline, and then didn’t take the habit back up after the deadline passed. I find this pattern recurring, and I remember I was already aware of it at least as far back as 2013. The pattern is: I develop a habit, I am diligent at keeping...| Snippets on David Bieber
Browserflow is live! Beyond exciting! Congratulations to DK on the launch. For those not familiar, Browserflow is a simple low/no-code browser automation chrome extension that DK’s been diligently working on for over a year (read his journey over at roadtoramen.com; he’s an excellent writer!). You can automate anything in the browser with it, and it comes with a nice typeahead for launching flows from anywhere, as well as a Browserflow Cloud service that lets you schedule your flows to ru...| Snippets on David Bieber
How to qualify for the US Olympic table tennis team. Become the best singles table tennis player in the country, preferably by a significant margin Enter the qualifiers Win the qualifiers This is far more straightforward than I would have expected. Obviously step 1 presents a significant challenge, and step 2 probably involves some paperwork. Still, it came as a shock to me that a single tournament, open to any USATT player as far as I can tell, which only gets 50 entrants, is all that stands...| Snippets on David Bieber
web.dev (former known as Lighthouse) is a tool for measuring your website’s performance and getting tips for how to improve it. I’m in the process of following some of its suggestions right now. Working session… Progress so far: One of web.dev’s suggestions was to enable gzip compression of the pages on my website. Tornado supports this, but only starting at version 4.0 and newer. I’m on an older version. So, I’d like to upgrade tornado. I try to install a newer version of tornado...| Snippets on David Bieber
Recently I added tags to my snippets. Today, I updated the tags page to display the number of snippets containing the tag. Now I can easily see what topics I write about the most, and which I’ve written about only a little. Here’s where the counts stand today: browserflow (7) table tennis (3) automatic-video-editing (7) virtual reality (3) roam-research (19) snippets (20) tech-tips (6) python (16) aspirational-intent (2) goals (6) peer-learning-group (7) attention (21) taking-silly-ideas-...| Snippets on David Bieber
pyd-swyt; cf-bh-din. I’ve written about pyd (pursuing your dreams) before. Or at least I’ve tried; I think it came out as being more about bh (being happy). So, today, in this snippet, I will try once more to explore the idea of pursuing my dreams. What does it mean to me to pursue my dreams? Rereading the existing pyd snippet, everything in there still rings true. I think it’s a fabulous description of what makes me happy.| David Bieber
In this snippet we’re going to introduce the Medical Test Paradox Paradox. First, you may already be familiar with the Medical Test Paradox. It’s a popular recreational math problem that teaches Bayes' theorem and the importance of base rates. It goes like this. Suppose 1 in 10000 people have a certain disease, and there is a medical test that is 99% accurate. This means that if you do have the disease, the test comes back positive with 99% probability, and if you do not have the disease,...| David Bieber
pyd-swyt; cf-bh-din. Today, we focus on pyd. Or maybe bh. Musings on pursuing your dreams. Pursuing your dreams is easier when you know what they are. Figuring out your dreams is part of pursuing them. All of this is of course made more practical when you have the financial and personal flexibility to prioritize your dreams. What are my dreams? Here, I think of my dreams as epitomized versions of the things I enjoy.| David Bieber
Sometimes – usually because of Alex K Chen – I am added to a giant group chat (GGC). Today it was a 200+ person highly active chat with folks talking about AI programming tools, aging, and movies. I love being added to such a chat. It makes me feel thought of, and my opinions respected. So, do keep adding me to GGCs. However, with being added to a GGC comes some struggles.| David Bieber
I don’t have a comments section on my website, but I do like when people reach out to me by email. I am thinking about an idea for adding chat to my website, but the experience I have in mind is different from any chat or comments section that I’ve seen before. Here’s what I’m thinking about and why – please do let me know if it exists. At the end of each snippet there would be a badge for each tag associated with that snippet, as there already is today.| David Bieber
This snippet is about a fake future service that Amazon could offer one day called Amazon Cloud Kitchen. It’s the food analog of Amazon’s existing (real) Amazon Cloud Services offerings. The core idea with Amazon Cloud Kitchen is that users can submit recipes programmatically to the Cloud Kitchen, where a nearby warehouse of robotic chefs will automatically prepare the recipe. Once prepared it will be delivered in less than two hours, still warm, to your residence or restaurant.| David Bieber
The idea is simple, it’s silly, but I think it has surprising depth. It’s Amazon Beans: “only pay for what you eat”. Basically, I envision a new product from Amazon (or any other retailer, but it feels like a very Amazon idea, as you’ll soon see): a special case of cans of beans. What makes it special? You don’t have to pay anything to receive the case. You only pay for the cans of beans that you remove from the case.| David Bieber
Browserflow is great. It’s beyond great. It’s one of my favorite tools, because it is so versatile and empowering. Nevertheless, there’s more that I want from my automation tools. Here’s a summary of what I’d like: OS-level actions Per-application actions Per-website actions Computer vision guided actions Natural language action specification Automatic action discovery Automatic automation extraction User-triggered, event-triggered and time-triggered automations A great sharing expe...| David Bieber
This snippet is about an idea for a new venue for publishing research hypotheses before any experiments have been carried out. We can think of the idea as a “Hypothesis Journal” or “Hypothesis Arxiv”. Similar to how arxiv.org hosts pre-prints for scholarly articles, the Hypothesis Arxiv would be a venue for researchers to submit their research hypotheses for the research community to see and evaluate. As I’m interested in having this venue serve as a place for the community to not o...| David Bieber
Spaced repetition is not super widespread. It’s popular among med school students and language learners, but frequently people find the benefits outweighed by the costs, the friction too high, and they stop. I believe the following are the most pressing issues to solve for spaced repetition to allow for wider adoption: Card creation: Zero friction card creation Card creation: Good cards by default Card maintenance: Eject bad cards quickly Schedule flexibility: Allow people to study more Sch...| David Bieber
I wrote up the idea for Democratic Delegation-optional Voting (DDoV) back in January. This was before I learned about DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). I think the idea is even more relevant in the context of DAOs than it was originally, and I’m intrigued to revisit it now that I am learning about DAOs. The core of the idea is a governance structure that supports ad hoc delegation of votes. Since there are potentially many things to vote on, but not everybody is invested enough...| David Bieber
I’ve put together a hardware guide so you can build your own Go Note Go. I’ll keep a version of this in the Go Note Go GitHub repo too. This one will likely fall out of date, but I’ll try to keep the one in the GitHub repo updated. Raspberry Pi 400 Link: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/ Details: I use the US keyboard. You can purchase from e.g. PiShop. I recommend ordering the following as a bundle:| David Bieber
I’ve recently been learning about blockchain tech including Ethereum, smart contracts, and DAOs (distributed autonomous organizations). With this snippet I want to explore the idea of using a DAO as a substitute for traditional health insurance. Brainstroming here, I’m also intrigued by the ideas of (1) bringing democratic delegation-optional voting (DDoV) into a DAO, (2) implementing a union as a DAO for collective bargaining, and (3) using smart contracts for international agreements to...| David Bieber
Yesterday I mused about the benefits an interoperability standard could provide to note-taking systems. Today, I extract rough requirements for such a standard from that musing. Note entry Note entry projects need to be able to insert notes into a notebase regardless of which note-taking system is storing the notebase. This is critical for projects like my Browserflow note-taking flows (which only support Roam right now) and Go Note Go to be multi-vendor.| David Bieber
What would be a good standard for note-taking software to use to support development of system-agnostic tools like Go Note Go? In this snippet I discuss the value such a standard could provide; I expect it will be useful in future brainstorming for what exactly would go into such a standard. I am building Go Note Go as a note-taking entry point, possibly with some basic retrieval features (e.g. “read back the last two notes I took”).| David Bieber
Previously I’ve written about how I do spaced repetition in Roam Research using Leitner Boxes. I’m still doing spaced repetition daily, but my methods have changed a bit. So, let me give you the update. I’m still doing spaced repetition in Roam, but I’ve moved away from the Leitner Box approach. Now instead I use Adam Krivka’s roam/sr. With this approach, each card has it’s own review schedule instead of being lumped together into a small total number of review buckets.| David Bieber
I’ve been developing and concurrently using Go Note Go for two weeks now, and in that time I have come to love the frictionless way it allows me to dump thoughts into the machine. I don’t have a chance to reread what I’ve written. There’s no going back and rewording something. And more than that, there’s no waiting for the characters to show up, or switching tabs, or spell checking or anything like that.| David Bieber
Lately I’ve been using Browserflow to create spaced repetition flashcards quickly while browsing the internet. To create a card, I highlight a bit of text and press “c”. This copies the sentence containing the highlight into the card, with the part I highlighted masked out. It’s a cloze task, as in a masked language model. If instead I push “b”, it copies the full paragraph containing the highlight, again with the highlight masked out.| David Bieber
Last month I decided to start keeping my phone in the kitchen while I’m in the house. I said I’d evaluate the decision after 6 weeks and decide whether to recommit. It’s been six weeks, and I think it was an excellent decision. I will absolutely continue doing this going forward. I find I get more time in the mornings, because scrolling in bed or on the toilet isn’t really an option.| David Bieber
In the impressive demo of OpenAI’s Codex programming system, the presenters suggest that Codex enables natural language to be used as a new kind of programming language. Here’s how that might look, followed by one problem with the suggestion. A natural-language programmer writes natural language prompts, and Codex transforms them into source code. The Codex model is made deterministic, such that rerunning the model on the prompts always produces the same source code.| David Bieber
Everyone likes their veggies crisp, so who wouldn’t want CRISPR veggies? After reading The Code Breaker, I’ve become progressively more excited about the possibilities that gene editing will bring in the coming decades. Or sooner? The technology has matured remarkably quickly and is developing incredibly fast. I don’t have a full grasp of where things stand today, but this is just a snippet, so I won’t let that stop me from speculating about where we’re heading.| David Bieber
Quick update on the note-taking Browserflow flow I’ve been building: https://browserflow.app/shared/51b5b7af-3124-4989-9771-36e9f236e1e7: How it works When you run it, it injects some js into the page you’re viewing enabling a handful of keyboard shortcuts to enable clipping text into Roam from anywhere on the web. If you navigate to a new page, it will run that js on the new page. So it keeps the keyboard shortcuts active even if you follow links.| David Bieber
In a table tennis forehand, the stroke typically ends at the forehead. The full stroke is a bit like this: Stance The ball is coming toward your forehand side; get in position early. Your body is angled slightly to the right, e.g. forming a 15 degree angle between the back edge of the table and the line through your shoulders. Your elbow is bent at 90 degree. Your wrist is straight, so the paddle forms an extension of the arm.| David Bieber
“Alex TT Barcelona” makes table tennis drills for Eleven Table Tennis. In a recently released batch of drills, he took a point played by table tennis pro Mima Ito and reconstructed it in VR. The ball machine would – endlessly in a loop – play the role of Mima Ito’s opponent. It would launch ping pong balls from the same location and with the same trajectory that Mima Ito’s opponent hit the ball during the point.| David Bieber
Note for potential reader: I’m new to this sport, and my commentary might not be correct or good advice :). What’s the difference between backhand flicks, drives, loops, and pushes? Flicks, drives, and loops all impart topspin on the ball. The backhand push typically imparts backspin. The drive is more of a forward motion, giving a flatter resulting ball compared with the heavier topspin of a flick or loop. A backhand drive done well might result in a flat ball entirely, rather than a top...| David Bieber
Right now the biggest area to work on is having the confidence (and skill) to attack in a match setting. I have this confidence in Eleven Table Tennis (ETT), usually, but in the real world its harder to demonstrate. I guess I become conservative in the real world because you have to be responsible for your balls. In ETT you can try an aggressive shot and if it goes into the stands or out the window, no big deal.| David Bieber
Today I received an unexpected email from Facebook. Subject: “Action needed on your Facebook account”. It starts: “You Have 30 Days to Request a Review”. The email read: Hi David, Your Facebook account has been disabled. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards. If you think we disabled your account by mistake, we can take you through a few steps to request a review.| David Bieber
Remember, David, you’re only writing for yourself. Not even that, actually; you’re writing for no audience. This isn’t meant to be read by anyone. So, don’t worry about your word choice, or whether to call it “word choice” or “diction”. Just get words on paper and get going. This is a snippet about writing in the woods. I haven’t solved it. I’ll start by explaining some of the problems that come up when you (I) set out to write in the woods.| David Bieber