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603 by kiyanwang | 238 comments on Hacker News.
Friday, 30 September 2022
Thursday, 29 September 2022
Tuesday, 27 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
569 by Hadjimina | 266 comments on Hacker News.
Hi everyone, Let me introduce you to Quazel, where we want to enable people to talk their way to fluency. We have all tried various language learning apps and tools, however, one aspect of language learning current services are really bad at is conversational practice. You might get a chat-like interface, but in the end, the conversation partner will only respond with a predefined "if the users say X I say Y". With Quazel that's completely different. In completely dynamic and unscripted conversation you can talk about pretty much anything you want. For example, you can try ordering food at a restaurant and even hold a philosophical discussion with Socrates. Additionally, you can analyze the grammar of your responses or use hints to help you out when you get stuck. We want to change how languages are learned from a grammar-centric approach to a more natural, conversation-focused one.
569 by Hadjimina | 266 comments on Hacker News.
Hi everyone, Let me introduce you to Quazel, where we want to enable people to talk their way to fluency. We have all tried various language learning apps and tools, however, one aspect of language learning current services are really bad at is conversational practice. You might get a chat-like interface, but in the end, the conversation partner will only respond with a predefined "if the users say X I say Y". With Quazel that's completely different. In completely dynamic and unscripted conversation you can talk about pretty much anything you want. For example, you can try ordering food at a restaurant and even hold a philosophical discussion with Socrates. Additionally, you can analyze the grammar of your responses or use hints to help you out when you get stuck. We want to change how languages are learned from a grammar-centric approach to a more natural, conversation-focused one.
Monday, 26 September 2022
Sunday, 25 September 2022
Saturday, 24 September 2022
Friday, 23 September 2022
Thursday, 22 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
624 by TurkishPoptart | 549 comments on Hacker News.
It's buggy, and it crashes more often than any other app I use. God forbid you try to change the audio device from speakers to headphones in the middle of a call. And then if you try to just call back on your phone, and they want to share their screen, and you go back to your PC and try to join the call from your PC so you can see the screenshare (it's not going to work). Seriously, with all the money and resources thrown at this company and this app, you'd think it'd be a little more stable, faster, and reliable. I am literally forced to use this app at work...
624 by TurkishPoptart | 549 comments on Hacker News.
It's buggy, and it crashes more often than any other app I use. God forbid you try to change the audio device from speakers to headphones in the middle of a call. And then if you try to just call back on your phone, and they want to share their screen, and you go back to your PC and try to join the call from your PC so you can see the screenshare (it's not going to work). Seriously, with all the money and resources thrown at this company and this app, you'd think it'd be a little more stable, faster, and reliable. I am literally forced to use this app at work...
Wednesday, 21 September 2022
Tuesday, 20 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Somebody implemented something I wrote a blog about
Tell HN: Somebody implemented something I wrote a blog about
540 by rexfuzzle | 148 comments on Hacker News.
So a while ago I wrote about how 2FA was missing a key feature: https://ift.tt/P5aFQNb... Having not had any feedback on it in a while and the idea not taking off, today somebody messaged me to say that had implemented it in their product. 1. Obviously I think this is great and more secure 2. Tell people about things you do that they played a part it- it might just make their day.
540 by rexfuzzle | 148 comments on Hacker News.
So a while ago I wrote about how 2FA was missing a key feature: https://ift.tt/P5aFQNb... Having not had any feedback on it in a while and the idea not taking off, today somebody messaged me to say that had implemented it in their product. 1. Obviously I think this is great and more secure 2. Tell people about things you do that they played a part it- it might just make their day.
New best story on Hacker News: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data
I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data
614 by kristintynski | 158 comments on Hacker News.
Almost 3 years ago, I posted a story of how a post I wrote about utilizing county level police data to "police the police" to r/privacy and hackernews. https://ift.tt/RsajQOz... The idea quickly evolved into a real goal, to make good on the promise of free and open policing data. By freeing policing data from antiquated and difficult-to-access county data systems, and compiling that data in a rigorous way, we could create a valuable new tool to level the playing field and help provide community oversight of police behavior and activity. In the almost 3 years since the first post, something amazing has happened. The idea turned into something real. Something called The Police Data Accessibility Project. ( https://www.pdap.io ) More than 2,000 people joined the initial community, and while those numbers dwindled after the initial excitement, a core group of highly committed and passionate folks remained. In these 3 years, this team has worked incredibly hard to lay the groundwork necessary to enable us to realistically accomplish the monumental data collection task ahead of us. Let me tell you a bit about what the team has accomplished in these 3 years. Established the community and identified volunteer leaders who were willing and able to assume consistent responsibility. -Gained a pro-bono law firm to assist us in navigating the legal waters. Arnold + Porter is our pro-bono law firm. -Arnold + Porter helped us to establish as a legal entity and apply for 501c3 status -501c3 status granted -We've carefully defined our goals and set a clear roadmap for the future -Hired first full-time staff. -PDAP was awarded a $250,000 grant by The Heinz Endowments So now, I'm asking for help, because scraping, cleaning, and validating 18,000 police departments is no easy task. The first is to join us and help the team. Perhaps you joined initially, realized we weren't organized yet, and left? Now is the time to come back. Or, maybe you are just hearing of it now. Either way, the more people we have working on this, the faster we can get this done. Those with scraping experience are especially needed. The second is to either donate, or help us spread the message. The more donations, the more data we can gather. I want to thank the r/privacy community especially. It was here that things really began. TL;DR: I accidentally started a movement from a blog post I wrote about policing the police with data. The movement turned into something real because of r/privacy and hackernews: (Police Data Accessibility Project). 3 years later, the groundwork has been laid, non-profit established, full-time staff hired, and $250,000 in grant money and donations so far! Scrapers so far Github https://ift.tt/1Iyv2Dd... Discord if you would like to join the efforts: https://ift.tt/qOTMu9b *This is US centric
614 by kristintynski | 158 comments on Hacker News.
Almost 3 years ago, I posted a story of how a post I wrote about utilizing county level police data to "police the police" to r/privacy and hackernews. https://ift.tt/RsajQOz... The idea quickly evolved into a real goal, to make good on the promise of free and open policing data. By freeing policing data from antiquated and difficult-to-access county data systems, and compiling that data in a rigorous way, we could create a valuable new tool to level the playing field and help provide community oversight of police behavior and activity. In the almost 3 years since the first post, something amazing has happened. The idea turned into something real. Something called The Police Data Accessibility Project. ( https://www.pdap.io ) More than 2,000 people joined the initial community, and while those numbers dwindled after the initial excitement, a core group of highly committed and passionate folks remained. In these 3 years, this team has worked incredibly hard to lay the groundwork necessary to enable us to realistically accomplish the monumental data collection task ahead of us. Let me tell you a bit about what the team has accomplished in these 3 years. Established the community and identified volunteer leaders who were willing and able to assume consistent responsibility. -Gained a pro-bono law firm to assist us in navigating the legal waters. Arnold + Porter is our pro-bono law firm. -Arnold + Porter helped us to establish as a legal entity and apply for 501c3 status -501c3 status granted -We've carefully defined our goals and set a clear roadmap for the future -Hired first full-time staff. -PDAP was awarded a $250,000 grant by The Heinz Endowments So now, I'm asking for help, because scraping, cleaning, and validating 18,000 police departments is no easy task. The first is to join us and help the team. Perhaps you joined initially, realized we weren't organized yet, and left? Now is the time to come back. Or, maybe you are just hearing of it now. Either way, the more people we have working on this, the faster we can get this done. Those with scraping experience are especially needed. The second is to either donate, or help us spread the message. The more donations, the more data we can gather. I want to thank the r/privacy community especially. It was here that things really began. TL;DR: I accidentally started a movement from a blog post I wrote about policing the police with data. The movement turned into something real because of r/privacy and hackernews: (Police Data Accessibility Project). 3 years later, the groundwork has been laid, non-profit established, full-time staff hired, and $250,000 in grant money and donations so far! Scrapers so far Github https://ift.tt/1Iyv2Dd... Discord if you would like to join the efforts: https://ift.tt/qOTMu9b *This is US centric
Monday, 19 September 2022
Sunday, 18 September 2022
Saturday, 17 September 2022
Thursday, 15 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business
Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business
811 by yaythefuture | 405 comments on Hacker News.
Saw https://ift.tt/3wYNFy8 from a couple weeks ago and figured I'd share my own story. 3 weeks ago, I woke up to a pissed off customer telling me her payments were broken. My startup uses Stripe Connect to accept payments on behalf of our clients, and when I looked into it, I found that Stripe had decided to deactivate her account. Reason listed: 'Other'. Great. I contact Stripe via chat, and I learn nothing. Frontline support says "we'll look into it." Days go by, still nothing. Meanwhile, this customer is losing a massive amount of business and suffering. After a few days, my team and I go at them from as many angles as possible. We're on the phone, we're on Twitter, we're reaching out to connections who work there / used to work there, and of course, we reach out to patio11. All of these support channels give us nothing except "we've got a team looking into it". But Stripe's frontline seems to be prohibited from offering any other info, I assume for liability reasons. "We wouldn't want to accidentally tell you the reason this happened, and have it be a bad one." We ask: 1. Why was this account flagged? "I don't have that information" 2. What can we do to get this fixed? "I don't have access to that information. 3. Who does? "I don't have access to that information" 4. What can you do about this? "I've escalated your case. It's being reviewed." I should mention at this point that I've been running this business since 2016, my customers have been more or less the same since then, and I've had (back when it was apparently possible) several phone conversations with Stripe staff about my business model. They know exactly who our customers are and what services we offer, and have approved it as such. After a week of templated email responses and endless anxiety, we finally got an email from Stripe letting us know that they had reviewed the account and reactivated it. We never got a reason for why any of this had happened, despite asking for one multiple times. Oh well, still good news right? Except nope, this was only the beginning. This morning I woke up to an email that about 35% of my client accounts had been deactivated and were "Under review", the kicker here being that one of those accounts is the same one they already reviewed last week! This is either the work of incompetent staff or (more likely) a bad algorithm. No reasonable human could make this mistake after last week's drama. So currently, my product doesn't work for 35% of my customers. Cue torrent of pissed off customer emails. And the best part is, this time I have an email from Stripe this time: Apparently these accounts are being flagged, despite the notes on our file, and despite the review completed literally last week, as not in compliance with Stripe's ToS. They suggest that if I believe this was done in error, I should reach out to customer support. Oh, you mean the same customer support that can't give me literally any information at all other than "We have a team looking into it"? The same customer support that won't give me any estimates as to how long it's going to take to put this fire out? The same customer support that literally looked into this a week ago and found no issues!? I feel like I'm going crazy over here. These accounts have hundreds of thousands of dollars in them being held hostage by an utterly incompetent team / algorithm that seems to lack any and all empathy for the havoc they wreak on businesses when they pull the rug out from under them with no warning, nor for the impact they have on customers when they all of a sudden lose all ability to make money. And all that for an account that has been using Stripe for nearly 7 years without issue! This goes so far beyond "customer support declining at scale." If lack of customer support means that critical integrations start to fail, that's not a customer support failure, that's a fundamental business failure.
811 by yaythefuture | 405 comments on Hacker News.
Saw https://ift.tt/3wYNFy8 from a couple weeks ago and figured I'd share my own story. 3 weeks ago, I woke up to a pissed off customer telling me her payments were broken. My startup uses Stripe Connect to accept payments on behalf of our clients, and when I looked into it, I found that Stripe had decided to deactivate her account. Reason listed: 'Other'. Great. I contact Stripe via chat, and I learn nothing. Frontline support says "we'll look into it." Days go by, still nothing. Meanwhile, this customer is losing a massive amount of business and suffering. After a few days, my team and I go at them from as many angles as possible. We're on the phone, we're on Twitter, we're reaching out to connections who work there / used to work there, and of course, we reach out to patio11. All of these support channels give us nothing except "we've got a team looking into it". But Stripe's frontline seems to be prohibited from offering any other info, I assume for liability reasons. "We wouldn't want to accidentally tell you the reason this happened, and have it be a bad one." We ask: 1. Why was this account flagged? "I don't have that information" 2. What can we do to get this fixed? "I don't have access to that information. 3. Who does? "I don't have access to that information" 4. What can you do about this? "I've escalated your case. It's being reviewed." I should mention at this point that I've been running this business since 2016, my customers have been more or less the same since then, and I've had (back when it was apparently possible) several phone conversations with Stripe staff about my business model. They know exactly who our customers are and what services we offer, and have approved it as such. After a week of templated email responses and endless anxiety, we finally got an email from Stripe letting us know that they had reviewed the account and reactivated it. We never got a reason for why any of this had happened, despite asking for one multiple times. Oh well, still good news right? Except nope, this was only the beginning. This morning I woke up to an email that about 35% of my client accounts had been deactivated and were "Under review", the kicker here being that one of those accounts is the same one they already reviewed last week! This is either the work of incompetent staff or (more likely) a bad algorithm. No reasonable human could make this mistake after last week's drama. So currently, my product doesn't work for 35% of my customers. Cue torrent of pissed off customer emails. And the best part is, this time I have an email from Stripe this time: Apparently these accounts are being flagged, despite the notes on our file, and despite the review completed literally last week, as not in compliance with Stripe's ToS. They suggest that if I believe this was done in error, I should reach out to customer support. Oh, you mean the same customer support that can't give me literally any information at all other than "We have a team looking into it"? The same customer support that won't give me any estimates as to how long it's going to take to put this fire out? The same customer support that literally looked into this a week ago and found no issues!? I feel like I'm going crazy over here. These accounts have hundreds of thousands of dollars in them being held hostage by an utterly incompetent team / algorithm that seems to lack any and all empathy for the havoc they wreak on businesses when they pull the rug out from under them with no warning, nor for the impact they have on customers when they all of a sudden lose all ability to make money. And all that for an account that has been using Stripe for nearly 7 years without issue! This goes so far beyond "customer support declining at scale." If lack of customer support means that critical integrations start to fail, that's not a customer support failure, that's a fundamental business failure.
Wednesday, 14 September 2022
Tuesday, 13 September 2022
Monday, 12 September 2022
Sunday, 11 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?
462 by rasulkireev | 463 comments on Hacker News.
This questions has been asked before [0][1][2], but I'm thinking that in the last 4 years something new and exciting has been created or discovered. If you could describe in a couple of words why you mentioned what you mentioned, that would be fantastic. [0]: https://ift.tt/OVMLzuF [1]: https://ift.tt/zKahs2J [2]: https://ift.tt/1pIe78q
462 by rasulkireev | 463 comments on Hacker News.
This questions has been asked before [0][1][2], but I'm thinking that in the last 4 years something new and exciting has been created or discovered. If you could describe in a couple of words why you mentioned what you mentioned, that would be fantastic. [0]: https://ift.tt/OVMLzuF [1]: https://ift.tt/zKahs2J [2]: https://ift.tt/1pIe78q
Friday, 9 September 2022
Thursday, 8 September 2022
Wednesday, 7 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Quake 1 ported to the Apple Watch
Show HN: Quake 1 ported to the Apple Watch
544 by myownclone | 163 comments on Hacker News.
I ported Quake 1 to the Apple Watch, building on top of existing ports for iOS and Mac. Some features: * uses Quake SW renderer + blitting to WatchKit surface (~60 fps, 640x480, larger res can run on lower framerate, tested up until 1024x768) * touch + gyro + digital crown controls * new AVFoundation audio backend (quake to Watchkit audio buffer copy logic), as Watchkit does not support CoreAudio * high pass audio filter to remove clicking on Watch speaker for some of the low frequency quake .wav samples * some smaller modifications and code updates to glue Quake 1 c code to Objective C and Watchkit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPC2o262TfQ
544 by myownclone | 163 comments on Hacker News.
I ported Quake 1 to the Apple Watch, building on top of existing ports for iOS and Mac. Some features: * uses Quake SW renderer + blitting to WatchKit surface (~60 fps, 640x480, larger res can run on lower framerate, tested up until 1024x768) * touch + gyro + digital crown controls * new AVFoundation audio backend (quake to Watchkit audio buffer copy logic), as Watchkit does not support CoreAudio * high pass audio filter to remove clicking on Watch speaker for some of the low frequency quake .wav samples * some smaller modifications and code updates to glue Quake 1 c code to Objective C and Watchkit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPC2o262TfQ
Tuesday, 6 September 2022
Monday, 5 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Wavvy – web-based audio editor (Audacity port)
Show HN: Wavvy – web-based audio editor (Audacity port)
509 by ahilss | 109 comments on Hacker News.
I originally developed a WASM port of wxWidgets for https://dj.app/ . When it came time to open source wxWidgets-wasm, I decided to port another complex app as a test case, and Audacity seemed like the obvious choice. In the process, I also needed to write a new host API for PortAudio for playback and recording in the browser. https://ift.tt/daVjReP https://ift.tt/iQ1kUm7 https://ift.tt/4lORPMJ
509 by ahilss | 109 comments on Hacker News.
I originally developed a WASM port of wxWidgets for https://dj.app/ . When it came time to open source wxWidgets-wasm, I decided to port another complex app as a test case, and Audacity seemed like the obvious choice. In the process, I also needed to write a new host API for PortAudio for playback and recording in the browser. https://ift.tt/daVjReP https://ift.tt/iQ1kUm7 https://ift.tt/4lORPMJ
Sunday, 4 September 2022
Saturday, 3 September 2022
Friday, 2 September 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon
Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon
625 by theturtletalks | 175 comments on Hacker News.
A couple of years ago, I had an interesting idea. What if there was a marketplace where all the underlying tech was open-source? The order management system, the storefront, customer support, etc. The marketplace would simply connect to the seller’s infra instead of locking them in. If, for some reason, the seller is removed from the marketplace, their software stays with them and they can continue accepting orders directly. This model can be used to disrupt any marketplace from AirBNB to UberEats: building tech for home renters and restaurants and later, leveraging that to build a competing marketplace. In 2019, I started building the first piece, Openship, an order management system that lets you source orders and fulfill them from anywhere. Now that that’s in stable release, next up is Openfront (an e-commerce platform for storefronts) and Opensupport (ticketing software for customer support). Together, they provide the staples for any modern business: sales, fulfillment, support. Let me know what you guys think of the idea and if you see any potential pitfalls.
625 by theturtletalks | 175 comments on Hacker News.
A couple of years ago, I had an interesting idea. What if there was a marketplace where all the underlying tech was open-source? The order management system, the storefront, customer support, etc. The marketplace would simply connect to the seller’s infra instead of locking them in. If, for some reason, the seller is removed from the marketplace, their software stays with them and they can continue accepting orders directly. This model can be used to disrupt any marketplace from AirBNB to UberEats: building tech for home renters and restaurants and later, leveraging that to build a competing marketplace. In 2019, I started building the first piece, Openship, an order management system that lets you source orders and fulfill them from anywhere. Now that that’s in stable release, next up is Openfront (an e-commerce platform for storefronts) and Opensupport (ticketing software for customer support). Together, they provide the staples for any modern business: sales, fulfillment, support. Let me know what you guys think of the idea and if you see any potential pitfalls.
Thursday, 1 September 2022
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