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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
588 by Hadjimina | 280 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.

New best story on Hacker News: Someone is pretending to be me

Someone is pretending to be me
594 by iBotPeaches | 120 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: A CTO should be technical

A CTO should be technical
555 by catapultis | 319 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Users reporting artifacts appearing in old images stored in Google Photos

Users reporting artifacts appearing in old images stored in Google Photos
567 by duiker101 | 281 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Dear Chess World

Dear Chess World
594 by shreyas-satish | 894 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: 58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere
577 by thunderbong | 195 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used

Mcmaster.com is the best e-commerce site I've ever used
630 by runxel | 239 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar
627 by thunderbong | 475 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Mozilla reaffirms that Firefox will continue to support current content blockers

Mozilla reaffirms that Firefox will continue to support current content blockers
601 by bj-rn | 189 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements
570 by CharlesW | 277 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: The image in this post displays its own MD5 hash

The image in this post displays its own MD5 hash
741 by kstrauser | 128 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health

Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health
593 by giuliomagnifico | 247 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B
602 by april_22 | 434 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?
671 by TurkishPoptart | 612 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...

New best story on Hacker News: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

React I love you, but you're bringing me down
561 by fzaninotto | 440 comments on Hacker News.


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
565 by rexfuzzle | 155 comments on Hacker News.
So a while ago I wrote about how 2FA was missing a key feature: https://ift.tt/AyELrxq... 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’m a productive programmer with a memory of a fruit fly

I’m a productive programmer with a memory of a fruit fly
591 by nalgeon | 308 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
547 by rntn | 310 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: 1Hz CPU made in Minecraft running Minecraft at 0.1fps [video]

1Hz CPU made in Minecraft running Minecraft at 0.1fps [video]
744 by reimertz | 125 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business
792 by yaythefuture | 394 comments on Hacker News.
Saw https://ift.tt/KyVBsQU 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.

New best story on Hacker News: The Ethereum merge is done

The Ethereum merge is done
824 by mfiguiere | 1021 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
924 by caoxuwen | 550 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Patagonia founder gives away the company

Patagonia founder gives away the company
712 by sharkweek | 332 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
596 by irajdeep | 272 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Queen Elizabeth II has died

Queen Elizabeth II has died
1180 by xd | 456 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Reddit's favorite products in one place

Reddit's favorite products in one place
516 by mooreds | 197 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent

Tell HN: Otter.ai bot recording meetings without consent
578 by arcticfox | 164 comments on Hacker News.
I occasionally use Otter.ai to transcribe when I'm multitasking. Recently they made an update, which I carefully opted out of, to automatically join every meeting through my Google Calendar and transcribe it. Screenshots prove I had the feature disabled. The bot proceeded to join two confidential meetings on my behalf and record the whole thing, then email every member an absurd, inaccurate "outline" after. I am not much of a privacy person but I feel completely abused in this situation. I have opened a support ticket with screenshots but there is no response, and according to Twitter they are essentially not reviewing tickets from free users at the moment. So just a heads-up to the HN community! Are there other, more privacy oriented transcription services anyone can recommend?

New best story on Hacker News: WikiHouse – Open source, modular, wood based, zero carbon housing

WikiHouse – Open source, modular, wood based, zero carbon housing
476 by xor99 | 263 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Difftastic, the fantastic diff

Difftastic, the fantastic diff
582 by pcr910303 | 76 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Quake 1 ported to the Apple Watch

Show HN: Quake 1 ported to the Apple Watch
541 by myownclone | 155 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

New best story on Hacker News: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML
529 by feross | 222 comments on Hacker News.


New best story on Hacker News: Why A4? – The Mathematical Beauty of Paper Size

Why A4? – The Mathematical Beauty of Paper Size
438 by casca | 400 comments on Hacker News.


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/K5SyR6l https://ift.tt/nemKZl0 https://ift.tt/aPX2tIL

New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon

Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon
597 by theturtletalks | 169 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.