Hours alone is not the only thing that matters, but all else being equal it does matter. Someone who works smarter for 20 hours will get ahead of someone who works stupid for 40, but if both people work smart the 40 hours person gets more done

the concern would be that this new ability will actually increase competition and give us less than we had before

this is not something that can just be blamed on the "CEOs/execs/shareholders" of the world. it is evolutionary competition - unless we can ALL join forces to draw the line somewhere, someone will choose to defect from the agreement to "just work less", because doing so will make them succeed at the expense of others. even if everyone from one country agrees, the other competing country that defects and works 996 with agents will "win" and conquer the lazy country.

I wish I knew what to do to fix it, doesn't seem sustainable but I don't know how to make all of humanity cooperate without doing something even worse

- Can't view demo until dismissing cookie banner (which I didn't see since its like ShadCN or whatever like the rest of the site). Thought site was broken for 20 seconds

- Demo step 3 animation looks strange/broken

- Obvious GPT copywriting in site and in this post (turn-off)

Notes:

- I don't think I am your target customer. I run a seed stage startup and am the only sales person. I don't do things like MEDDIC/BANT, although maybe I should

- I use fireflies for sales calls (and all calls) currently - just to have a searchable transcript of the call. I would replace Fireflies if I thought I would get enough of a benefit by doing so, but I currently don't - I don't feel like I need the coaching. I wouldn't want two notetakers in my call

- How could I make sure the bot only joins/analyzes the calls that are sales calls? How does it know which stage of the funnel the person I'm talking to is? Would be worried all I get is slop without the context needed to filter things appropriately

Hope this helps!

My personal favorite approach at the national level would be Ranked Choice [1], as that would preserve the (IMO important) single decision maker in the executive branch, while removing the incentive to vote for someone you hate just because they aren't as bad as the Other Guy. Interested to hear if HN knows of other/better ways to accomplish the same

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...

Magnetic (YC S25) is building the AI tax preparer for accounting firms. We use vision models to extract and structure data from tax documents and automatically populate legacy tax software, saving CPA firms hours of tedious data entry per tax return. Firms are coming to us faster than we can build - our next tax season is already 10x the size of October's, and we have a waitlist for several X more.

We just raised a $5.1M seed round and are building a small, senior, in-person team. We believe in everyone talking directly to customers, and getting into the workflow themselves (i.e. learning how to do tax returns). We like to work together all day, whiteboard new ideas, get lunch together in person, and get drinks after work.

[1] Founding Engineer – https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magnetic/jobs/77FvOwO-...

[2] Founding Tax Expert – https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/magnetic/jobs/eReV8hh-...

Email thomas @ website to apply

Quick search shows that we knew about lead hazards as early as the 1920s/1930s, but it took until the 1970s to get regulation about lead paint and gas - hoping we don't repeat that in this case

https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30776/jobs

These passenger sheets would be automatically sorted and loaded onto aircraft via a conveyor system, optimizing cabin space with a precision-stacked configuration. Without the need for traditional seating, aisles, or security screening, aircraft capacity could increase significantly, lowering ticket prices while enhancing operational efficiency. Upon landing, passengers would be swiftly unloaded, revived from stasis, and ready to continue their journey within minutes.

This system would not only eliminate delays caused by baggage handling and TSA procedures but also enhance fuel efficiency by optimizing passenger distribution within the aircraft.

Hey HN, we're Patrick and Thomas and are building an app that uses generative video to teach languages (currently Mandarin only).

Background: We think the "Comprehensible Input" theory of language learning has a lot of merit - TL;DR: consume native content that you can understand a high % of and pick everything else up as you go with context. For more detail see https://refold.la/roadmap/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis However, it is quite difficult to find content that is interesting to you, at your level, and in a format you can study it. Generative AI can help bridge this content gap.

What we've built: An AI video agent that takes your vocab level and a short prompt and spits out a ~2-minute video. The video will have dialogue that is 85% comprehensible at the given vocab level, making learning the remaining 15% of new words easier and more effective.

For example, this video was generated with a 2,150 word vocab and the prompt “Bringing a pet capybara to the public pool”. https://youtu.be/B7zRNl60hPY

Video Details: From that simple prompt we make a story, break down the characters and environment, write the script and ensure it’s properly levelled, break it down into shots, bring those to life with tts/image/video/lipsync, and stitch it together with music. As far as we can tell, this is the first end-to-end automated story video workflow of its kind, with no manual steps or cherry-picking, no choosing from character templates, etc.

The app is free for watching videos and studying flashcards, and doesn’t require an email to sign up. After the first free video generation, making your own videos is $15/mo for 1 video/day. Excited to hear everyone’s feedback!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248268

Points: 5

# Comments: 4

> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

https://ia600300.us.archive.org/30/items/the-ted-k-archive-t...

Also while naming quality resources I should also mention [Pleco](https://www.pleco.com/) - it's _definitely_ the best Chinese dictionary app - highly recommended.

If you need French Subs + dictionary (and maybe also English subs) you can try using the [languagereactor](https://www.languagereactor.com/) chrome plugin and find a source that has both subtitles (i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZ2gLCkv5Y)

I'm making an app to try to help with low level comprehensible input, posted elsewhere in this thread

The CI community has come a long way in the last ~5 or so years - the general consensus looks a lot like OP’s methods, which I would summarize as:

1. Brute force [premade Anki flashcard decks](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/810519009) for the first ~1k most common words

2. Start watching comprehensible input as soon as you can, ideally for an hour a day or more

3. [Sentence mine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBcQJESGQvc)the comprehensible input and add it to the daily SRS flashcard grind

The best summary of these methods that I’ve found is https://refold.la/

Self plug: I’ve been working on a way to generate Mandarin audio comprehensible input using LLMs/TTS models. The idea is that there aren’t many great CI options between 500 words and ~3k-5k words - OP himself mentions that when he started watching Scissor Seven 刺客伍六七 he barely understood anything, which is pretty hard to “push through” without some hardcore willpower. My project https://plusonechinese.com makes Mandarin audio stories that are 85% comprehensible at any level from 400 words all the way to 8k or more words and then auto-imports the audio snippets into SRS flashcards, which makes a CI workflow like this a lot easier to engage with at a lower level and without advanced willpower. Still working on making the content _truly_ interesting, but would love some feedback!