
Ask HN: What one thing do you want to learn or achieve in 2016? - christopherDam
It&#x27;s finally end of year. We all have high hopes for new year. So what is one thing do you want to really learn or achieve in 2016.
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richerlariviere
I want to setup my life in order to make it stimulant and balanced. You know,
to deal with healthy lifestyle, job, social, contribution on OSS projects and
self-learning.

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swcoders
I want to do something with AI and want to learn AI. Can anyone guide me some
cool beginner projects with neural networks?

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i336_
Agh, I remember there was this little thing that let you interactively play
with neuron width and add and remove nodes, but I can't find it.

Here's what else is in my bookmarks, aka what I've seen go past on here over
the past few months that seemed approachably interesting:

[http://www.wildml.com/2015/09/implementing-a-neural-
network-...](http://www.wildml.com/2015/09/implementing-a-neural-network-from-
scratch/) \- a getting-started guide you can follow along with in IPython

[https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-
netw...](https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-networks-
think-a-panda-is-a-vulture) \- just playing around, but notable

[https://github.com/mbartoli/neural-
animation](https://github.com/mbartoli/neural-animation) \- shows how to
restyle video in manner loosely resemblant of Deep Dream

[http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/)
\- this book is online-only but it's CC so you could legally crawl it if you
wanted a local copy, I haven't rated it for my own use yet

[http://nxxcxx.github.io/Neural-Network/](http://nxxcxx.github.io/Neural-
Network/) \- a static 3D visualization you can zoom around, mostly kitsch but
still kinda fun.

I recommend you go through the cream of the crop and find what suits you the
most though:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=neural&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=neural&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

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danielvf
Learn Elixir. But then I accidentally did that over Christmas vacation for the
stockfighter.io challenge.

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binary_thoughts
Learn to let the good guy win. Both within and outside.

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codenut
Learn a foreign language. Probably German.

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SinomaSo
As someone who speaks 4 languages fluently including German. I can advise the
following:

The first advice is not to use a dictionary and translate from one language to
another. This might sound weird, but I never used any dictionary. You have to
understand words in their sentences and try to memorize a sentence instead of
just a word.

Movies, TV, Youtube were the one I used primarily to learn a new language.
Why?, because you shouldn't be too much focused on "learning" a new language,
but more living it and having fun with it. Getting pen/paper and a dictionary
every time you want to learn a language sounds like a big hassle. Make
learning the language you want a fun part of your life.

Writing in forums/websites very helpful.

If you want to understand a language, you need to understand how people laugh
in that language. Watch comedy shows, buy trash magazines and understand the
pop culture.

Go to meetups/get together where you can find native speakers.

~~~
twoquestions
How do you make sense of that media without already knowing the language?

I can see reading such media to improve fluency to be sure, but I can't see
how a sufficient amount of listening to foreign gibberish somehow makes it
not-gibberish.

I tried this for learning Japanese while I was an anime fan in high school,
and after taking classes in college I could understand every 10th word or so.
I was a C student in those classes, so it's possible I just suck at Japanese.
Is German easier to do this with?

~~~
SinomaSo
Have you seen the movie "13th Warrior" with Antonio Banderas?. In the movie he
keeps trying to understand what the other warriors are saying and
concentrating until one Day he started talking just like them.

To be fair this method doesn't work for everyone. Just like learning a
programming language, some people find it easier to follow a course while
others just start coding for a small project.

You do need to have at least the basics of the language and grammar. But no
more than that. I remember when I learned English 7 years ago, I started by
watching the TV show "24". In the first season I couldn't understand anything
Jack Bauer was saying. I remember saying to myself: "what the hell does he
mean by saying "copy that". I only understood what the show was about. Then in
the second season I started subconsciously memorizing sentences and
understanding their meaning. Just like a baby would learn a language without
using a dictionary. Similarly I started not only understanding English but
also talking and writing in it.

I used this technique for French, German and English. Not sure how complicated
Japanese is though.

Edit: Just to add, that with this method you need to watch a lot and I mean a
lot of TV shows/Movies/Radio/Youtube to get the full benefit.

~~~
i336_
I've always had a dubious view of DuoLingo, the language learning community,
etc; the people that have the loudest voices in those communities have a
specific mental bent that lends them to approaching many languages, but the
style of academic approach they use doesn't work for me, and I wouldn't be
surprised if it's intimidating to the majority as well.

The method you've outlined here sounds a lot more intuitive and natural, and I
definitely want to give a go. I'm having similar bootstrapping questions to
'twoquestions' though; you've outlined how to reach critical mass, but how do
you actually begin spinning the reactor up?

In particular, "I started by watching ... 24" sounds like a workable start,
but if I did something similar with a foreign language right now, as someone
interested in studying other languages but who currently knows approximately
less than zero, I would only get frustrated because I wouldn't understand
_any_ of what I was hearing.

So, how did you get from 0 to 24?

~~~
SinomaSo
Good question. I've had the same question from my two brothers. One of them
couldn't learn the language using the above approach, the other forced himself
to do it with great results. And by that, I mean no subtitles, no dictionary
(or at least very rarely).

So how to get from 0 to 24?. I'm really no scientist, but I think of it as the
same way a baby would learn a language. you get yourself in an environment
where you try to submerge yourself into the language. The "mum" here should be
something you really love, for example a TV show or a movie or a radio show.
The other ingredient would be to get the basics of the new language first in
term of grammar and words. I would say a few hundred words that are important
would suffice at the beginning. The trick is not to learn word by word, but
rather sentences (I think of them as the algorithm of each language).
Subtitles for me at least seem to hinder the brain of connecting speech,
facial expressions, feelings, images etc and blending everything in a perfect
place for the brain to remember. An example: In German "Gift" means poison in
English. However, As a native English speaker your brain is wired to think of
it as something positive, because all of the memories you had when you
received a gift. So instead of translating it, remember it in the original
language with original memories/images/sentences.

Try also to read a lot of pop culture magazines. This is really important
because it helps you understand slang, inside jokes..etc. An example: Would
you be able to understand a joke about Bill Cosby/ Justin Bieber if you didn't
read those pop culture magazine?

Finally, your speaking need practicing by talking to native speaker and going
to meetups/get tog ether's to practice.

Once you get the above, just have a little faith that it will click. Keep
watching/listening and you will at the end understand what the "mum" is saying
:).

Edit: This method is based on Images and Emotions which scientifically have a
bigger impact on us than just words. Can't find a link to an actual study
though.

Hope this helps.

~~~
i336_
I think the idea of just immersing oneself in a language is incredibly natural
and intuitive, and sounds like the least stress-inducing of all the possible
methods one could use.

And I've heard that it works: plunge yourself into a language, and eventually
it starts to "click". You start to think the way the language works, and it
just takes off. But reading this description, I have a bit of decent insight
into the process, and I sorta get how it's possible.

I agree that subtitles are basically chaos and noise; if you're trying to
learn another language, it'll throw you right off. See my other answer to
'mkaziz' one level up.

The context thing is very interesting. On the one hand, it can seem incredibly
intuitive to want a perfectly flat, scopeless index into memory and facts, but
it's functionally impossible (with computers right now too - web and other
large index searches go through MapReduce and similar. When we can directly
search all of RAM in realtime life will be very different!). But, context is
vital to mental organization, and I've observed this to amusing effect when I
have, on many, many occasions realized I've used the same terms or acronyms in
different contexts in technology and not realized the connection :P

I don't read magazines, so scene websites like Reddit-in-whatever-language
will have to fill in there. But the Web moves quite a bit faster than print
(hours as opposed to many days, in some cases) which might help a slow
beginner keep up with trends, but I can imagine it becoming an overload
quickly, especially with places that talk entirely using slang and/or memes.

The bit where you mention how your brother "forced himself to do it" and
succeeded is strongly reminiscent of neuroplasticity literature, which
describes a sort of anti-plateau point where for a short period no progress
appears to be made in spite of continued concerted effort, and then suddenly
(eventually) results begin to snowball. A most curious phenomenon that makes
me think of

