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Mechanical typewriters have different physical mechanisms to feed forward a line or make the carriage return. I think it doesn't turtle much further back than that.


Well around the time of the first typewriters (late 19th century) there where mechanical typesetters, automating the laborious task of typesetting for the printing press. Of course the mechanics of printing where different but as far as I know this is the source of the "keyboard with buttons" type interface for producing literature.


I find it a bit depressing that this list is tied so closely to individuals. Obviously these individuals did great things, but it is typically by standing on the shoulders of giants (Isaac Newton) that any of this has been possible.

It might be a nice exercise to describe the larger waves of ideas that follow certain cultural currents. To list some random examples, capitalism has spurred many developments, as did religion. Setting up universities, introducing law, being able to replicate documents, all seem more relevant than some individuals taking credit for the cherry on top.

To contradict myself once more, where is Gutenberg in this list?


Well, there are at least two presuppositions to a post like this:

1. That individuals are capable of unique achievements separate from their context, trends, etc.

2. That doing some intellectually impressive thing is "great", in a values or ethics sense. There are many things listed here that other intellectuals have argued as having extremely negative consequences for human society, culture, etc.

Which is why I think a list of the "greatest" is inherently a bit flawed, and you're better off looking at a list of "influential" people or ideas instead.


Humans are also, possibly apart from dogs, the only beings that think humans are incredible. If we take any other entity in the universe, then chances are they think pretty lowly of humans and their cherished intelligence, if at all.


We don't have a frame of reference. Compared to similar creatures we could be pathetic or impressive.

Personally I'm very impressed how much we've accomplished with our crappy intellect and destructive nature.


This seems to be an ad for a fairly expensive book on a topic that is described in detail in many (free) resources.

See for example: https://rlabbe.github.io/Kalman-and-Bayesian-Filters-in-Pyth...

Is there something in this particular resource that makes it worth buying?


That's a fair question. My goal with the site was to make as much material available for free as possible, and the core linear Kalman filter content is indeed freely accessible.

The book goes further into topics like tuning, practical design considerations, common pitfalls, and additional examples. But there are definitely many good free resources out there, including the one you linked.


i haven't seen much from other kalman filter resources, but i can say that this book is incredibly detailed and i would highly recommend it

if you dont want to buy the book, most of the linear kalman filter stuff is available for free: https://kalmanfilter.net/kalman-filter-tutorial.html


Huge +1 for Roger Labbe's book/jupyter notebooks. They really helped me grok Kalman filters but also the more general problem and the various approaches that approximate the general problem from different directions.


There are not many good resources on Kalman filters. In fact, I have found a single one that I'd consider good. This is someone who has spent a lot of time to newly understand Kalman filters.


Link to that good one?


It was a typo. I meant to say I haven't found a good one yet.


That link is a classic!


This is great news for those of us looking for baby names. So far my list includes: Pascal, Ada, Dylan, Crystal, Lisa, Julia, Ruby, and now Lisette.


Horrible news for me, I quite like the idea and syntax, but it also reminds me of my wife which I am currently divorcing.

Not sure I'd like the constant reminder.


What, an article on typing and keyboards, and no mention of Dvorak or Colemak? Let's have that eternal discussion again!

Swap Caps and Ctrl, use Emacs or vi keybindings, and save your wrist from moving to the arrow keys!


>no mention of Dvorak or Colemak? Let's have that eternal discussion again!

I prefer Workman. Used to use Dvorak. Did not see much point to Colemak or its Mod DH variant by the time I was open to switching again, Workman set out to solve those issues in its original design. To anyone coming from Qwerty these days (Workman only came out in 2010), I would just recommend skipping over Dvorak and Colemak. You can find even more esoteric layouts, but Workman is in a bit of a goldilocks zone where it's available in some OSes/keyboards by default and isn't impossible to find keycaps for (often the "colevrak" kits cover it).

>Swap Caps and Ctrl

I never liked binding caps to Ctrl or Esc, but I do bind it to Compose in my OS these days. What I'd instead recommend is getting an ergonomic keyboard with a thumb cluster, like the Pinky4 or Iris, and putting your modifiers there. My Ctrl, Alt, and Super keys are all thumb keys now and even the leftmost of them is offset a similar amount to where Alt is on a traditional keyboard, so all very comfortable to press. I also have backspace, space, and enter on thumb keys.

>use Emacs or vi keybindings,

Strongly agreed, this is huge. Vi especially as you can avoid most chords, a bit like Sticky Keys in Windows, except not awful and not something you activated by accident. I spent considerable time with Spacemacs as well as evil-mode in my own config at one point. Back to (neo)vim now, but all great choices, all better than using nano or a CUA binds editor.


Colemak objectively better than workman for same finger bigrams. Also installed by default on more computers.


I don't bother with a dedicated capslock key. I set it up so hitting left and right shift at the same time is caps lock. Also have an arrow layer under my right hand with home/end and pgup/pgdown within easy reach. Could never get used to vi cursor navigation.


I use Colemak DH for many years and Dvorak before that and I am of an opinion that alternative layouts are way overrated. I even somewhat regret inventing so much time in learning them. QWERTY is just fine!

The matter I want to preach about tho are split ortolinear keyboards. I believe absolutely every typist should use them. Conventional keyboards are just bad from ergonomics perspective and eventually it’d have a toll on your wrists health. And many of these keyboards stores key mappings directly on the chip so no need to mess with weird mapping software.

Having said that, my split keyboard is one of the best investments I did in my life.


I have opposite opinion, that using an alternative layout on a standard keyboard is a greater improvement that a split keyboard. Coming from someone who uses colemak on a split column staggered aka as ergo as it gets. When I have to use my laptop keyboard its not so much worse.


Why ortholinear and not split column?


Because of my ignorance, I thought it’s the same thing.

What I actually meant to say is “not staggered”.


Thank you for creating the containment thread.


If you swap caps for left control, do you swap return for right control? I've been taught not to type modifier + key with one hand.

Dvorak + Emacs user here, by the way. In my opinion mouse use is okay, but I think a drawing tablet is better than a mouse.


Do you even use two hands for shortcuts like copy and paste?


I use ctrl-c and ctrl-v for those. Right hand presses right control with palm of hand (just below pinky). Left hand types the letter like normal.

I just kind of roll my hand to the ctrl key, I don't use a finger to press it.

Same thing with right-ctrl.


Yes. And even considering the locations of C, X, and V on the QWERTY layout, I wouldn't type Control with any of those with one hand.


I could never see the need to rebind Ctrl to Caps Lock (and I do use Emacs). Whenever it's time to press Ctrl, I curl my pinky and press that key with my pinky's distal joint. I did, however, swap Fn and the Global key on my Mac.


I think that's reason enough to rebind Ctrl to Caps Lock. I used to do the same, but why go to the trouble when I can remap Caps Lock once and be done with it?


I think this is mostly about existing legislature, not about technology.

In any other context than when your paycheck depends on it, you would probably not be following orders from a random manager. If your paycheck depended on following the instructions of an AI robot, the world might start to look pretty scary real soon.


> If your paycheck depended on following the instructions of an AI robot, the world might start to look pretty scary real soon.

That's already the case, minus AI, for gig workers. Their only agency is to accept or decline a ride/delivery, the rest is follow instructions.


AI actually has to follow all rules, even the bad rules. Like when autonomous car drives super carefully.

Imagine mcdonald management would enforce dog related rules. No more filthy muppets! If dog harasses customers, AI would call cops, and sue for restraining order! If dog defecates in middle of restaurant, everything would get desinfected, not just smeared with towels!

Nutters would crucify AI management!


There's a lot to being a manager

- Coherent customer interaction

- Common sense judgements

- Scheduling

- Quality control

All which are baked into humans but not so much into LLMs

Even if it were legal to have an LLM as a GM, I think it would fair poorly


And what tooling do you use with that? In my experience, there is quite a bit of difference between using, say, OpenCode, or the commercial offerings.


No tooling, just manual use. When doing these comparisons I gather and format all the data they need to figure out the problem, and paste the same thing into all models so it's a pretty even eval.

I doubt Kimi would do well with most harnesses, its outputs are pretty chaotic in terms of formatting but the inteligence is definitely there.


We need a website with refutations that one can easily link to. This interpretations of LLMs is outdated and unproductive.


No. AlphaGo does search, and does so imperfectly. It does come up with creative new patterns not seen before.


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