Learnings From Pet Projects

  1. I tried to build a voice cloning from English to German. I wanted to translate a podcast to an “easy” B1 German, here’s the result. I was using f5-tts-mlx, and tried to train a duration prediction model so the speed of the speech is consistent. You can make a version of this in English way quicker - read Voice Cloning.
  2. For this I spent some time searching where to find a cheap GPU. Spent lots of time trying to make pytorch work for intel cloud, but without a success. They really should invest more resources into a software stack and integrate their support with accelerate and lightning! In the end I followed this guide, Cost-Effective Cloud Platforms for GPU Machine Learning
  1. Interesting discussion about a founder that did an IPO and know doesn’t know what to do anymore.
  2. There’s a foundation that invests a lot into biology. Very curious about their work with AI!
  3. Nice podcast on the ideas generation, a good discussion on how the view of brainstorming and applying it changed over time.
  4. Another podcast about workaholics and people that choose to “live to work” instead of “working to live”, their view on the world.
  5. And the last podcast on the philosophy of “Demons”, that also discusses western liberalism and “Good times create weak men” part. Had lots of connecting dots to a recent US election and Berlin downfall.
  6. Very good review of the book about SpaceX, especially relevant now, when people have a polarized opinion on Elon Musk. Also watch this video of a Starship blowing up, looks like something from a movie!
  7. A primer on machine learning in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Very interesting to learn about this field, now even more interested into figuring out if AI can help to speed up the research there more.
  8. Very relatable article on the broken processes. I haven’t seen things to be that bad, but I heard so many similar stories personally. Always reminds me of this book, though I read a good thought that maybe these bullshit jobs are actually luxury jobs when companies are too rich to compete properly?

And lastly a joke I heard:

What linux users and cyclists have in common? They both worry about drivers