Arguably things like Cliff's Notes and "for dummies" books were sating this impulse before that, I wouldn't be surprised if the line can be traced back further.

Since dropping LLMs altogether I've made the connection to the impulse for a superficial jump to the conclusion just by noticing how I use web search, or feverishly scan some text to get to the point.

Theoretically I studied critical thinking and have learned decades ago how to recognize when this is OK and when it's a superficial placation of some addiction to closing the book on a subject or micro-subject... but boy whatever good instincts I might have developed back then have significantly eroded over time. Trying to reclaim that again is pretty humbling.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160582

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

> HERTZ is a web-based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) utility designed for instant vocal polishing.

I appreciate you have aspirations for the project beyond its current form, but this isn't an accurate description of what it is now. It:

- Uses wavesurfer + the wavesurfer regions plugin to display a waveform and allow a subsection of the uploaded audio to be selected

- Loads the uploaded audio into a buffer with the web audio API's decodeAudioData and then cuts the selected region out of it

- Applies a compression to the selection with the web audio API using hard-coded values (based on a screenshot you gave the LLM apparently according to the comment in the source)

- Normalizes the audio with the web audio API

- Encodes the audio as a WAV and then feeds that to ffmpeg to convert it to an mp3 for download

It seems complete for your use case, to me. You might consider asking the LLM to reword the readme and present it as a tool that applies these compression and normalization settings to a section of an audio file in the browser:

  // 1. SETTINGS FROM YOUR SCREENSHOTS
  const COMPRESSOR_OPTS = {
      threshold: -20.0,
      ratio: 3.1,
      knee: 5.0,
      attack: 0.03,
      release: 0.1,
  };
  
  const NORMALIZE_TARGET_DB = -3.0;

Today I suppose this would get clobbered by bots but in 2016 it was fun and I still am in awe of how simple he made it.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49037693

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008440

Points: 442

# Comments: 186

It's the end of history. What could we possibly discover about a series of technologies that are already nearly 100 years old now?

I've heard people say that various things are "solved" now because of LLMs too -- programming included. This implies we've "solved" thinking. I'm worried about these sentiments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_history

I'm sorry to be so negative, it's great you're returning to the material after all these years, but the AI versions I've listened to all have the same smoothed-over quality that loses everything interesting and relatable to my ears in the original versions.

I really appreciate that (it seems to me) your goal is not to replace human tutors, but to raise the general baseline. You emphasize scaling, how does that work in practice if you're trying to target audiences who may not have access to devices that can run your program? What is your plan from the perspective of funding and resources to scale infrastructure as needed to support these audiences?

Edit: I also think of other learning systems like duolingo and the application of tablets and computers in schools which begin from good places, but I'm curious if you are studying these alternatives and what you have learned from them?

I really think your goals are great, and if you're starting your design of this system from research about effective learning methodologies and working backward from there rather than starting from AI and working backward from there that erodes a lot of my personal skepticism about a project like this. I hope you find a way to make this work.

That's the only moment in the video that gave me a sense of what it might be like for a child using this system.

In the blog post you say:

> Imagine a custom story about dragons this week, ice princesses the next — woven with the letter blends your child needs to practice right now.

Have you considered using an automated orchestration system to deliver literature that already exists? This example seems like an opportunity to introduce children to really thoughtful literature like Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking stories but I'm deeply skeptical that generating the stories with an LLM would inspire a similar experience.

Are there other examples of your platform from the perspective of a child using it? I think those are both interesting cases: 1) interactive feedback on a subject they are making an effort toward mastering, and 2) trying to deliver information when it seems relevant. I'd like to know more about how you are approaching these things and other aspects of the learning process.

Can you elaborate on what the experience is like for the child? How does this system help them learn? The article focuses on optimizing for interactivity and engagement, but doesn't discuss how this system challenges or facilitates learning and why AI needs to be the solution.

Something I like to do is funnel the desire to build for something I don't need right now into TODOs and even FIXMEs. Sometimes they just get deleted, but other times I'll come across an old TODO during refactoring and be able to pay down a bit of accumulated technical debt.

Edit: I also tried using it for larger blobs of data (like audio) but ended up only storing a reference to shared memory for larger blocks, anything larger than IIRC 4k that can't be stored in a single node kills performance, but for small values it seems pretty great.

https://catalyticsound.com/artists/

I never thought I'd see anything like that easily accessible on hacker news. (Edit: I say that because this is a project by independent artists that has no real hope for commercial exit -- monetize free jazz, I dare you. Edit: actually don't, please.)

The purpose seems to be to drive traffic to an advertising marketplace website. All the impersonating sites link to the covers.pics website which has no root page, but serves various paths linked in these bandcamp spam pages.

I contacted bandcamp twice in the last two weeks about removing it, but I don't know if there are any humans left there. They just replaced the rest of their engineering team with AI yesterday according to a blog post by one of their former engineers.