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euvin commented on At a Loss for Words: A flawed idea is teaching kids to be poor readers (2019)   apmreports.org/episode/20... · Posted by u/Akronymus
twotwotwo · 24 days ago
For any parents of small kids here, I have to mention the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We went through it while my kid was in kindergarten, and after that, I absolutely believe what I've heard from parents who did it successfully a bit earlier. And it didn't prevent my kid from figuring out how to use context or recognize full words. Reading English is a lot, and kids are resourceful; if we teach the 'slow' but reliable way to read, they'll be happy to feel out shortcuts.

The toughest thing was getting a reliable bit of time each day to sit down and do it. Routine, cajoling, and rewards were all involved. So was keeping it lighthearted; the kid has to be on board! Each lesson has straightforward exercises then a brief story, very short at first, longer later in the book. We'd do the exercises and one read of the story, then kid would read the story to my partner. We started in September, and I remember by Halloween the kid was reading candy wrappers. After finishing it, the next big thing was finding stories the kid genuinely liked to keep it going. Continuing to read together after the lessons ended helped: for a while, kids will keep running into lots of new exceptions to the usual rules, etc.

English spelling and pronunciation are a lot, and the book is also, implicitly, a catalog of the tricks English plays on kids and other learners. Part of the book uses a semi-phonetic alphabet where e.g. ee and sh/ch/th have distinct glyphs, but it all still looks enough like English that the jump to regular writing later in the book is doable for the kid. Even with that alphabet, the book has to teach common words like "is" and "was" as exceptions (with s sounding like z). Decades later one can forget little kids deal with all this and eventually handle it like second nature.

The book's originator thought that you could teach math with a broadly similar approach--breaking things down into very small steps and practicing them in isolation then in larger tasks--and doing that was part of his career, but I haven't found similar teach-your-kid book for arithmetic/basic math. If such a book did exist I'd've given it a try!

euvin · 24 days ago
It's not a book, but you might find this interesting: https://mathacademy.com

It's a (paid) online platform that breaks down mathematics (from 4th grade to university level) down into very small steps/skills, makes you drill them periodically, and also integrate them in increasingly advanced skills. The platform tracks your successes and failures to give you just the right amount of training at just the right time (in theory). You can see the exact skills they train as these really huge interconnected graphs, all created manually.

I read their pedagogy https://www.mathacademy.com/pedagogy and it seems to line up a lot with that philosophy. To use their language, they emphasize "finely-scaffolded steps" and "developing automaticity".

I always love to see more projects or initiatives in this area. I also know of https://physicsgraph.com that was inspired by it, but for physics.

euvin commented on Face it: you're a crazy person   experimental-history.com/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
AznHisoka · a month ago
When you post something publicly, first rule of thumb is to never read the comments. Or just read the ones from people you know personally.
euvin · a month ago
In many cases, the comments can be filled with people agreeing with the creator, the people who follow the creator, the people who would defend the creator.

If you're gunning to be a creator with an audience, I don't think the answer is to completely ignore your audience. It's to learn how to cultivate a target audience, how to not engage with malicious people, how to be strategic about your messaging, outreach, branding...

Of course, if you're not interested in those (truthfully tiring) things, then your rule of thumb is a pretty good one for most people.

euvin commented on Face it: you're a crazy person   experimental-history.com/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
pavel_lishin · a month ago
To focus on one very small part of this article:

> For instance, shortly after college, I thought I would post a few funny videos on YouTube and, you know, become instantly famous2. I gave up basically right away. I didn’t have the madness necessary to post something every week, let alone every day, nor did it ever occur to me that I might have to fill an entire house with slime, or drive a train into a giant pit, or buy prosthetic legs for 2,000 people.

That's not the hard part.

The hard part is dealing with all the negative comments. My buddy posted a few videos on Tiktok a few weeks ago. Would any of you like to guess how many comments are straight up telling him to kill himself? Here's a hint: whatever you guess, it's likely much lower than the actual number.

euvin · a month ago
Death threats are always inexcusable & unjustifiable; that said, what exactly did he post? Perhaps some forms of content attract way more spite and hate than others?

I think in this day and age, with the combination of a young & unruly audience plus the edginess allowed on many platforms, you're going to be exposed to shockingly unfiltered behavior.

I also think there are specific forms of content (and your strategy of engagement online) that can mitigate this, e.g. posting political content versus some non-topical artwork.

Deleted Comment

euvin commented on     · Posted by u/kevinhacker
jsheard · 3 months ago
I think you probably meant to use a different stock photo for "Sarah Martinez".

(who even falls for these fake testimonials?)

euvin · 3 months ago
I really can't express enough how much I hate this trend of fake testimonies with fake people with fake pictures. OP has other projects with blatantly fake testimonials too (one with the same "people"! https://viidure.app)
euvin commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
suncemoje · 3 months ago
You think current AI could create such a knowledge graph? And use it?
euvin · 3 months ago
I did write about that! tl;dr I think it'd be really cool as an augmentation, the only thing steering me away from solely AI-generated graphs are hallucinations. But I think it definitely has a place in some capacity for anyone who wants to discover "what they don't know that they don't know", to find the prerequisite skills they don't realize they're missing.

https://euvinkeel.github.io/tart/Traversing-Knowledge-Graphs

euvin commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)    · Posted by u/david927
euvin · 3 months ago
Inspired by MathAcademy, I'm developing:

1) a note-taking workflow in Obsidian (you take bite-sized notes about a topic, then connect "prerequisite" notes in Obsidian's canvas editor)

2) a tool that uploads each note and graph data to a database

3) a webapp that presents those notes algorithmically using spaced repetition. This enables you to allow others to "traverse" your note graph in a guided and self-paced manner.

You can add "challenge presets" to each note so that your mastery of each piece of knowledge can be tested with simple flashcards, multiple choice, free response, or some visual/actionable task to force active recall. An algorithm uses your success rate and spaced repetition data to introduce & drill more advanced notes into your long term memory.

Here's some more reading I was inspired by:

https://www.mathacademy.com/pedagogy

https://www.justinmath.com/individualized-spaced-repetition-...

Even if there are a lot of imperfections and flaws about this project (like the sheer difficulty of curating a good knowledge graph to begin with), I'm hoping to make my note-taking in Obsidian more structured and thorough, replace my Anki routine, and make any of my notes into an automated + algorithmic course. If someone has another similar project (combining note-taking with hierarchal, topological knowledge graphs with spaced repetition and testing all in one platform) I would love to hear more about your approaches. Quick shoutout to one person I've seen who is doing something similar: https://x.com/JeffreyBiles/status/1926639544666816774

euvin commented on Lottie is an open format for animated vector graphics   lottie.github.io/... · Posted by u/marcodiego
cjbgkagh · 3 months ago
They say on https://rive.app/pricing that the Format is OS and MIT, perhaps I have missed something?
euvin · 3 months ago
Oh, my mistake. I shouldn't have used the word "proprietary", but too late to edit. There does seem to be community-made runtimes: https://rive.app/docs/runtimes/community-runtimes
euvin commented on Lottie is an open format for animated vector graphics   lottie.github.io/... · Posted by u/marcodiego
cjbgkagh · 3 months ago
I had never head of Rive before and it looks like something I can use in one of my projects. Thanks, this is the kind of stuff that keeps me addicted to HN.
euvin · 3 months ago
I've used Rive in a small personal project before and I really can't imagine creating or editing web animations in any other way. Apparently they also made their own vector-based feathering technique, which is also amazing:

https://rive.app/blog/introducing-vector-feathering

I do understand the appeal for an open format though. Rive seems to have their own proprietary (documented) binary format: https://rive.app/docs/runtimes/advanced-topic/format

u/euvin

KarmaCake day160May 17, 2022
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i code, illustrate, animate looking for work

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