Hacker News: 4midori

New comment by 4midori in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

4midori — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 01:35:29 +0000

A few tools to de-enshittify/enhance specific websites.

I don't have to tell the Hacker News crowd how junked up the web has become.

* Bookmarklet to cleanly extract lyrics from Genius.com. * Firefox add-on to cleanly display lead sheets and guitar tabs on UltimateGuitar.com * Firefox add-on to show Distance From City on TrustedHousesitters.com. https://versastudio.com/projects

New comment by 4midori in "OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine"

4midori — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:11:56 +0000

In response to a data request, Persona says:

Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out to Persona.

Please note that Persona primarily operates as a "service provider" or "processor" for its customers. We act as a "business" or "controller" only for specific services, such as identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, and Reusable Persona. To learn more about how Persona manages your personal data, please refer to our privacy notices, which can be accessed through the following link: https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-notices

If you wish to exercise your privacy rights related to services where Persona is a "service provider" or "processor," please contact the entity using our service, as they are the "controller" of the data. We will assist the relevant customer to fulfill your data subject rights, but we do not handle such requests directly on their behalf.

For any privacy rights request related to services where Persona acts as a "business" or "controller," including identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, Reusable Persona, and personal data related to our sales, marketing activities, or website browsing on withpersona.com, please use our Data Subject Request (DSAR) available at the following link: https://withpersona.com/dsar

For all other inquiries, we will respond as soon as possible.

###

TL;DR we're not responsible, go talk to LinkedIn.

Up to date local AI tools for direct computer/app interaction?

4midori — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 17:57:32 +0000

Are we at the point now where I can give plain language commands to an AI tool and have it perform an action on my PC? For example, in Photoshop - "draw a red square, rotate right 40 degrees"? What tools should I research/consider?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44695859

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by 4midori in "Social Media Dashboard/Aggregator?"

4midori — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:02:02 +0000

Sorry, I mean I want to view my soc media feeds in this dashboard. I'm familiar with those tools - they are for mass posting of content.

Social Media Dashboard/Aggregator?

4midori — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 20:37:16 +0000

Has anyone built a dashboard/aggregator, that logs into various sites on your behalf and assembles all the desired content? I would love to have filtered content from Reddit, Next Door, and the dumpster fire that is Facebook assembled all in one place, without having to visit the sites individually.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42784924

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by 4midori in "Show HN: I Built an AI-Powered Headshot Generator"

4midori — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 20:55:14 +0000

Worth clarifying what 1 credit gets you. "100 credits per month" is meaningless unless it's clear what that buys.

New comment by 4midori in "How do you reach management/decision makers at companies that hide 'em?"

4midori — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 23:23:46 +0000

Yeah, this can work. Also, hunter.io.

New comment by 4midori in "How do you reach management/decision makers at companies that hide 'em?"

4midori — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 01:22:19 +0000

LinkedIn won't provide contact emails.

How do you reach management/decision makers at companies that hide 'em?

4midori — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 20:53:51 +0000

It's well known by now that many companies have outsourced their entire support/customer service apparatus, allowing only live chat, email, and ticketing systems, while providing no phone support whatsoever - even for urgent matters. These overworked agents mainly parrot information from companies' knowledge base, while possessing little agency to make any kind of decision.

Perhaps you have spent hours or days going back and forth with a polite but clueless and disempowered agent about a matter that could be solved in 30 seconds by someone with decision-making authority.

My question: how do you track down management/decision-makers at these companies in order to escalate a problem and get an actual solution?

A current thorn in my side: Getaround.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38561688

Points: 2

# Comments: 4

New comment by 4midori in "Functional Ad Blocker for Facebook (Chrome/Win 10)?"

4midori — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 18:02:13 +0000

Answer found! https://ask.metafilter.com/373556/Any-way-to-make-Facebook-s...

Functional Ad Blocker for Facebook (Chrome/Win 10)?

4midori — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 19:37:35 +0000

Facebook has become a cesspool of scammy ads and grifter nonsense, but I still use it 5-10 mins per day to keep up with events and community connections.

My ad blocker used to work, but no more. What are people using these days?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36540970

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by 4midori in "Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?"

4midori — Fri, 27 May 2022 21:53:39 +0000

It's called 'State Street Dodge'. You play a bicycle messenger in 1990s downtown Madison, Wisconsin, rushing important legal documents across the isthmus. You ride a super sweet freestyle BMX bike, and you rack up points for doing tricks, jumping beer truck ramps, riding up walls, and dodging the ever shifting throngs of college students, hayseed tourists, and harried bureaucrats. Bonus levels let you switch to skateboard, Rollerblades, and fixie. Soundtrack is awesome. Lots of Easter eggs.

New comment by 4midori in "I need to find an apartment"

4midori — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 18:59:00 +0000

It's sad that this process is so broken that it takes a skilled coder to roll their own, just to get good, organized information.

We were promised jetpacks!

New comment by 4midori in "Ask HN: Is most advice only helpful for a while until too many people follow it?"

4midori — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:41:20 +0000

In many cases, I believe it is. Consider Tim Ferriss' book 'The 4 hour work week' for example. It had lots of creative ideas, and many folks used them successfully. But by the time the book was published, the market had changed. Google Adwords used to be Hella cheap, which is part of what enabled methods described in the book. But they're not anymore, and there's too much of everything.

New comment by 4midori in "Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?"

4midori — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 23:58:09 +0000

OP here. Great comments and ideas, all. A few notes: * Talon is pretty great * I think the market for text to speech and voice control is huge, and maybe Dragon/Nuance rules it because of their patents, but oh, does it suck. Like being stuck on Windows 95 or something. * Voice Recognition is in fact currently good enough to get real work done efficiently * Serious RSI can't be fixed with ergonomics or better devices * If there were a modern alternative to Dragon, it would solve a chunk of the problem

It's true that computer control currently requires a lot of customization, but I see no practical reason why we can't at least make simple commands fast and accurate, i.e., 'create new html document in VS Code'.

Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?

4midori — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 17:05:48 +0000

Like many people who have spent decades behind a keyboard, RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) prevents me from writing code and doing graphic design through the usual keyboard and mouse inputs.

So I have turned to a complex and highly unreliable software stack that provides both voice-to-text, and clumsy but limited control of Microsoft Windows, Chrome, etc. This includes Dragon Voice-to-text, Voice Computer, and Talon, plus a browser extension and heavy customization.

Users of Dragon will acknowledge that: a) The software is a creaky dumpster fire built on archaic code b) There is no viable alternative on the market

My question is: *how is it that no one has built something better?* The market is huge, and the Natural Language Processing of "OK Google" and Siri are quite refined at this point.

References:

Dragon: https://www.nuance.com/dragon.html

Voice Computer: https://voicecomputer.com/

Talon: https://talonvoice.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30117383

Points: 90

# Comments: 119

What is the best deepfake audio software/lab?

4midori — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 17:25:46 +0000

Who is recognized as having the best deepfake audio software, or the most sophisticated research lab for this?

I'm thinking of material on the level of the Tom Cruise videos like this one: https://www.tiktok.com/@deeptomcruise?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29487626

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Lamp stack tool for generating screen captures of a list of websites?

4midori — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 17:09:18 +0000

Firefox and Chrome have the option of showing most recently visited sites in a nice grid, with a screen capture of each site. Is there a tool that will generate a webpage with the same information, given a list of URLs?

Note: I will need to host this webpage myself.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24225645

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by 4midori in "Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?"

4midori — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 19:15:17 +0000

Dragon Pro, voice recognition software. Awful UI, known bugs that never get fixed, incompatible with critical applications like web browsers. Why? It's my understanding that they have no real competition. If you need to "drive" your computer with your voice, Dragon is all there is. In fact, it is pretty limited without the addition of Voice Computer, which allows you to command Windows to do certain things, like switch programs, etc.

Dragon is so important to my workflow, while so shitty a program, that I would pay three or four times its cost for a competing product that actually worked well.

New comment by 4midori in "International Team Develops Open Source Ventilator (Zoom Presentation)"

4midori — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 16:25:59 +0000

Thursday, June 11 at 9AM PDT

RespiraWorks invites you to a conversation with the volunteers who are inventing an open-source ventilator to assist in the fight against COVID-19.

We are a group of over 100 doctors, engineers, web developers, artists, project managers, and software programmers in 6 countries, all working together remotely. We will talk about where we were when the pandemic started, how we found each other, how we came together to design a ventilator, what skills we are using, and how we are collaborating with so many people around the world.

https://respira.works/