davidzweig

Language REACTOR

REMOTE mostly, but I travel often (Europe, Asia) and it's good to work in person time to time.

We make software for learning languages. The focus is on making tools, rather than content. But actually, the line between code and content is blurring with LLMs.

I am the main coder on the project and I'm looking for a coding partner to help spread the load and allow more ambitious scope. Project is solid financially.

Most of the codebase is fairly decent Typescript. Backend knowledge a plus.

I need someone with sound judgement and taste that can plan and execute independently, but that also can communicate and coordinate complex changes well. Ingenuity and resourcefulness.

I use Claude/Cursor extensively.

I'm quite interested to hear from you if you have a project that overlaps in scope with Language Reactor.

dioco@dioco.io

I've got the first boards on my desk for a media player based around the Sifli 58 chip. 1.8" amoled display and 16 buttons.

https://imgur.com/a/45GuaEA

https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,55419.0.html

Anyone want to help with porting Rockbox?

MobX autoruns happily call jQuery functions.

And huge selection of frozen meals. These I actually found better than expected.

I've got some idle servers in my basement in Bulgaria with lots of GPUS. I'm actually in Cambodia at the moment. I've actually been playing with some similar ideas. Message me if you like. :)

I'd be surprised if more 'hackable' watches didn't pop up around the Sifli chips. Lilygo have an upcoming device with Sifli 52 chip. There's the SF32LB52-ULP smartwatch development board.

0.1" header holes slightly staggered to grip inserted headers can work great and you don't need to have a special expensive cable on hand to use it.

I bought a sit-on electric Chinese cargo scooter from an importer in Bulgaria because I liked how it looked, and it's handy for going around town. They are everywhere in China. They are assembled by hundreds (probably thousands) of small factories. A big center is Wuxi. I visited a few factories there last year. The scooters cost about $350 USD in China.

There seems to be a sort of loose standardization around components, that are also churned out by countless factories. Wheels/motors are generally 10" or 12" size. Brake disks have either a certain 3 or 4 bolt pattern. I'm sure the electrics likewise follow some patterns.

I had the thought that it would be fun to 3d scan parts, measure and document some of these scooters, and make a database of suppliers. Then, who knows, start to make the frames and assemble in Bulgaria.

But you really need to be spending time in China to do that, and it wasn't really the right time for me then.

Another thing to note: branded scooters (niu etc.) are becoming more popular, better quality, extensive plastics, and you can probably order parts from the manufacturer.

Any tips for models that can restore speech quality on aged cassette recordings (often the higher frequencies are partially lost)? There's different approaches to noise reduction, and also audio super-resolution, but I didn't find anything geared towards old tapes specifically.

I'll drop this here: If anyone wants to work on Language Reactor (well compensated), my email is in my profile. I'm planning to start open-sourcing much of it soon.

I use Firebase SDK with the FirebaseUI library on languagereactor.com. When users access the /login page, if the extension is detected, the signInSuccessWithAuthResult callback triggers getFirebaseSignInToken to obtain a custom token. This token is then passed to the Firebase SDK running in the extension’s background worker via messaging, where signInWithCustomToken() is called. The SDK in the background worker has an onAuthStateChanged() callback that notifies any listening tabs when the authentication state changes.

However, some users had been reporting issues related to third-party cookies and a few other minor problems. Recently, oeffectively running a 'DROP TABLE' on 400GB of Firestore data ended up costing $2,000.

I'm looking for an auth replacement. 2 million users, mostly free users. The system needs to support Google sign-in and email authentication, possible to integrate with React Native Expo, ability to issue API keys (thats probably separate). No vendor lock-in, under $500/month, happy to self-host. Any recommendations appreciated.

I have Nreal Air glasses (they changed name?), they aren't useable for programming really, image is too soft, but neat for watching Netflix on the train etc.

Also many Iranians speak 'Turk' and understand Turkish from watching Turkish telenovelas on satellite TV.

Tried the demo, looks similar to the Rosetta Stone method. Very nice execution. We also make a language app.

I haven't been following closely the last few weeks, but you can check the issues in this repo, for example: https://github.com/distubejs/ytdl-core

The security against downloading audio from YouTube has been upped recently with 'PO tokens'.

Whisper is only a few tenths of a cent per hour transcribed if transcribing on your gpu though, at about 30x real-time on a 3080 etc. with batching.

I was trying this with the original llama model. I guess the model didn't really know it's meant to be a 'knowledgeable ai assistant', but rather simulated chats it had seen. If you asked it, 'how to make brownies', it might reply, 'idk, can't you google it?'.

Did anyone try to check how are it's multilingual skills vs. Gemma 2? On the page, it's compared with LLama 3 only.

Language REACTOR

Me and Ognjen are based in BULGARIA / Serbia. Most of the time REMOTE, but, generally we like to meet up 2-3 times a year for a few weeks in a nice location.

We make software for learning languages. The focus is on making tools, rather than content. It's a competitive field. That means understanding learners' needs, and relentlessly applying ingenuity and resourcefulness to make something of value. We manage well though, and the financial side is solid.

We run bare metal servers at Hetzner, and a number of big GPU machines in Bulgaria.

Salaries are ~Western European. Additionally, special effort will not be unrewarded. I can help arrange an EU Blue Card / VISA if needed. Bulgaria is Schengen now, taxes among the lowest in the EU, lots of mountains and pine trees, cost of living still relatively low. No hard rules around work hours or vacation. If you are reliably helping the project progress, and are available during critical weeks, I don't mind what time you drink your coffee or what timezone you are in.

As a minimum:

-- Thoroughly comfortable writing Typescript (or experience with similar language)

-- Familiarity with HTML/CSS

-- ..and linux terminal.

There's a substantial amount of mostly decent code, some even pretty good. It will take some time to become familiar. Noone will be standing over your shoulder, you need to be able to make yourself useful. You will be creating new features. Somewhat open-ended, rather than just taking bug tickets. Things need to be polished and hardened before launch, and some older code needs rewriting from time to time.

Other skills that would be highly useful:

-- Backend skills (linux admin, ZFS backups, postgres tuning etc.)

-- Knowledge around ML/DL, Python, NLP, fine-tuning LLMs, ASR and TTS.

-- Strong React and CSS skills (we use MUI for our website, and have an unfinished RN Tamagui prototype).

-- Doing some server hardware maintenance or upgrades (server hardware is mostly like PC hardware with some extra bits).

-- Not adverse to occasional travel to meet a potential collaborator, or some occasional non-code work.

-- Experience or connections in highschool/university language education.

-- Knowledge of languages, particularly East Asian.

-- Electronics design and manufacture (yes).

I'm not adverse to teaching what I know, but then it's probably going to need to be more in-person then.

I'll be honest here: this could be a dream job for some, and rather demanding for others.

dioco@dioco.io

Update, I checked with the case company, toploong, they say that board is a 5mm too big or so for the case.

Is it possible a similar patch would work for P2P on 3090s?

btw, I found a Gigabyte board on Taobao that is unlisted on their site: MZF2-AC0, costs $900. 2 socket Epyc and 10 PCIE slots, may be of interest. A case that should fit, with 2x 2000W Great Wall PSUs and PDU is 4050 RMB (https://www.toploong.com/en/4GPU-server-case/644.html). You still need blower GPUs.

You can fit a SAS card (like LSI 9207-8e) and hook up external disk shelves (like ds4246). This gear is on ebay and is mostly plug and play on linux.

iirc the os needs to have processor specific task switching code in assembly, Freertos must have tons of ports already. Nim supposedly has nice FFI for C. The niceness of freertos is then mostly about it's.. system call design. If it's good, then you could probably progressively rewrite freertos in nim.

Never used nim and been a while since I did any embedded.

I think it's a speech to speech model, I know about seamlessm4t: https://www.google.com/amp/s/about.fb.com/news/2023/08/seaml...

Interesting, but what inference engine supports it to run at decent speeds?

Check PLX chips are getting enough airflow, assuming you have them?

plenty of countryside, birds and grass in Romania and Bulgaria. Write me a mail, I'll sort you out.

"In 2022 alone, the South Korean company sold almost 260 million smartphones worldwide."

Say there's a model that sold 10m total. I think it's fair to say Samsung could reasonably increase the price by $1 (~0.75c minus tax) for 10 years of support instead of ~3 years.

That's $7.5m. I used to flash Cyanogenmod on my phones (motorola defy etc.), IIRC it was often a single guy making the roms, I guess part time, doing a decent job of it. $1m/year for years 4-10 should cover a team of 5.

I think difficulties arose when newer kernals wouldn't work with the older hardware drivers that were available. But there's fewer SOCs than smartphone models.. I guess maybe $0.10 to Qualcomm for every SOC sale should cover updating drivers.

Not sure I'd want to be using a 10yo (2013) phone now, but a 5yo (2018) phone with fresh software would be fine. Todays higher-end phones should still be usuable beyond 5 years.

Here's Android 12 on Samsung S4 (2013), looks okay but probably marginal once you put a few chonky apps: https://youtu.be/lySu841rNgg?si=LyONyyUP8mcCa67L&t=783

I really liked the product video, can someone advise how to make something similar for our project?

EDIT: Oh, I guess After Effects with some stock background video and audio track mostly.

Burning logo effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkP-IYmPzpI

Glitch effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eOMSuPdbok

Simulated monitor recording (this doesn't show the monitor border though..) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOYdGtyxMkI

Animated font effects - surely these are possible if the rest is.

At 1:04, I think they made a custom graphic to that overlays the stock video below.

Heh that's mine and Ognjen's project. :)

The mobile version? What's the biggest complaint? :)