Hacker News: jianshen

New comment by jianshen in "What if no one misses TikTok?"

jianshen — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 07:03:36 +0000

I think what I will miss most about TikTok is its ability to teach me things that I would otherwise never have interest in. I've discovered so many musicians, writers, historians and niche curators it's such a shame that this is going away. I'm still surprised somehow no other company has been able to compete with how well TikTok has done discovery.

New comment by jianshen in "Show HN: AI dub tool I made to watch foreign language videos with my 7-year-old"

jianshen — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:54:50 +0000

Wow this is amazing. If there was a locally running version available, I would gladly pay money for it.

New comment by jianshen in "Notion Calendar"

jianshen — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 18:05:30 +0000

Second this. I've written my own private Google Apps script specifically for this view and I wish more calendar apps would do the same. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

New comment by jianshen in "Kim Jung Gi has died"

jianshen — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 21:20:17 +0000

I'm pleasantly surprised to see his name on HN. He had a table at NYCC this week and people have been leaving him gifts and messages. It's so sad.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeZt8yNWIAE0HEZ?format=jpg&name=...

Edit: Photo Credit to @Leah617

New comment by jianshen in "DreamFusion: Text-to-3D using 2D Diffusion"

jianshen — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 20:01:25 +0000

Did we hit some sort of technical inflection point in the last couple of weeks or is this just coincidence that all of these ML papers around high quality procedural generation are just dropping every other day?

New comment by jianshen in "Show HN: I restored Palm's webOS App Catalog, SDK and online help system"

jianshen — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 20:05:45 +0000

I see an old Sudoku game I wrote in here and it brings back some great memories but now I'm also scared to look at my old code now. O_O

Curious how did you back all this up?

New comment by jianshen in "Ask HN: Did YouTube disable RSS feeds?"

jianshen — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 06:37:46 +0000

Curious if there's more news on this. They came back for a short bit but now they're gone again...

New comment by jianshen in "How to Be Useless"

jianshen — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 19:18:18 +0000

I'm really happy to see ZhuangZi show up on HN and a good reminder to go back and re-read his work from time to time.

New comment by jianshen in "Vaporwave was created then destroyed by the internet (2016)"

jianshen — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 07:31:37 +0000

I never thought I'd see Vaporwave mentioned on HN. Anybody fans of Bandcamp here? I really feel like it's helped keep a lot of these microgenres going even more than Spotify.

The broadband gap's dirty secret: Redlining still exists in digital form

jianshen — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 05:01:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cnet.com/features/the-broadband-gaps-dirty-secret-redlining-still-exists-in-digital-form/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27685063

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

First virtual student 'enrolls' at Tsinghua University

jianshen — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 08:55:54 +0000

Article URL: https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202106/01/WS60b5f5d8a31024ad0bac2dc5.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420455

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by jianshen in "Why Do Virtual Meetings Feel So Weird?"

jianshen — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:20:59 +0000

My response to this will always be: whoever solves live music performance (as in two or more musicians in two different locations happily playing together over the internet) will win the video conferencing wars.

It's not just latency, it's the non-verbal cues, dynamics (including silence that often represents acknowledgement), "energy" and rhythm that I miss about in-person communication.

New comment by jianshen in "Bringing the Mona Lisa Effect to Life with Tensorflow.js"

jianshen — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 18:58:36 +0000

I'm still stunned we're able to achieve all this in a web browser today (not the processing power but how accessible this is to people). Great job, Emily!

New comment by jianshen in "US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days"

jianshen — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 04:32:17 +0000

What is his motivation for this right now? Is it just the distraction of the week or was there a specific incident recently that triggered this?

New comment by jianshen in "Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations"

jianshen — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 19:10:40 +0000

I'm fine with the questions but I still think people are missing my point.

This is NOT for professional videos. The whole point is just regular people showcasing some small talent they might have hidden away and thru the algorithm you start to discover these amazingly talented regular people that the other platforms have failed.

If I want to see the celebs, brands or professionally shot content I have FaceGram/YouTube/Vimeo for that. This app is for the rest of us until the celebs/brands come in and inevitably ruin it. Hopefully by then, one of you HN folks will have built the next one.

New comment by jianshen in "Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations"

jianshen — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 10:45:21 +0000

According to their "algorithm", they show everyone's videos randomly to a small set of people and if people watch all of it (as in don't immediately swipe up), share or comment quickly then they show it to more people implying that the content I made is actually interesting to people. TikTok obv wants to surface good viral content to as many people as possible so the incentives are aligned. Think of it as being able to automate AB testing across hundreds of thousands of pieces of content.

As a result, I don't think traffic was given to me for absolutely no reason but there is a component of luck that they are explicit about which makes it even more compelling to creators. Compared to FB/IG/YouTube where I have to pay influencers or ad networks to get my work seen, they've evened the playing field a bit if my content has enough "inertia". It just motivates me to create better content next time and to try more often. You see how they're getting creators addicted?

New comment by jianshen in "Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations"

jianshen — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 10:28:13 +0000

a) If I'm being brutally honest, it's attention. Human beings enjoy attention even if it's totally dumb luck. I could say for this HN crowd that the traffic translates to revenue or some kind of practical benefit but honestly, it just felt good to get attention for something I created. That triggered a serotonin response in my brain that made me want to come back. I would assume it's similar to a HN post you submit making it to the front page?

b) They're real in that I get tens of thousands of comments and people actually reply. Most of the comments are reactions and jokes but I enjoy the thought that someone took the time to comment just like how I'm enjoying having a discussion here on HN. Whether or not it's meaningful is entirely subjective but probably goes back to my answer in a) - I appreciate the attention.

New comment by jianshen in "Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations"

jianshen — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 07:23:00 +0000

My personal opinion is people don't realize the app/algorithm doesn't just reward the viewers, it rewards the creators. I do video/photo work outside of coding and at first what got me hooked was the effortless video tools (useful realtime effects, non-generic music). Not a video editor? Someone in my feed already posted a 15s tutorial so you learn how to create as you consume. Then after posting a few vids as a joke (cuz 15s videos couldn't be anything meaningful right?) the algorithm rewarded me with 100k's views that IG/YouTube/FB/Twitch/Vimeo COMBINED could never give me. Then they randomly invited me to their Slack where I could get tips on how to use the latest new effect, upcoming hashtags and give feedback to devs. I'm not a full time content creator, I'm old and I'm not a looker but for the first time, I felt like I could be a content creator and all I did was post a few 15s videos. It just works.

I don't want to debate the politics, security issues or your judgement of the content. I want whoever comes up with the next killer app to learn from what they were able to achieve because they hit an amazing product market fit and I'm hoping the HN crowd can at least understand that. /rant

Trump to sign EO suspending work visas through 2020 (H1B, H2B, H4, L1, J1)

jianshen — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 21:40:14 +0000

Article URL: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/503914-trump-to-sign-executive-order-suspending-certain-work-visas-through

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23607097

Points: 41

# Comments: 2

New comment by jianshen in "The Miracle Sudoku [video]"

jianshen — Wed, 20 May 2020 08:46:26 +0000

There is something irreplaceable about the first time you solve a difficult puzzle, especially one that you anticipate to be daunting. As a Sudoku enthusiast (though not at Simon's level) this was surprisingly vicarious to watch for what's usually a silent solitaire experience. Well done!