[HN Gopher] Hacker News in Slow Italian
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Hacker News in Slow Italian
There are plenty of podcasts to listen to some slow basic Italian,
but often they just talk about random things I'm not that
interested in. Nothing a few hours of tinkering with Python cannot
solve these days! Introducing Hacker News in Slow Italian. Each
episode is generated automatically, using GPT4 API to summarise the
top articles on Hacker News and then fed to Play.ht for text-to-
speech. The (very short) code is available on Github:
https://github.com/laky/hn-slow-italian
Author : lakySK
Score : 29 points
Date : 2023-05-25 16:58 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hn.lingually.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (hn.lingually.ai)
| lakySK wrote:
| Let me know in here if there is a particular language you'd like
| to see for this!
|
| Not gonna lie, the costs run in order of dollars per episode, so
| if you are keen on listening to this, let me know, otherwise it
| would be a waste of money :)
| hugs wrote:
| I would love this for French. How do you want to handle
| modifying the code for other languages on GitHub? A new
| separate project fork per language, or a pull request to the
| current one? Slightly problematic that "Italian" is in the top
| level project name if it's going to be configurable for other
| languages.
|
| Also, add a tip jar somewhere so we can chip in!
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| In the meanwhile, try this to train your ear and practice
| French with current news using easy vocabulary (they do speak
| very clearly, worked wonders for me when I was learning).
|
| https://francaisfacile.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/journal-en-
| francai...
| hugs wrote:
| I do that already and love it. :) But would like to listen
| to more things in French besides updates on foreign wars
| and elections.
| lakySK wrote:
| Good question! Haven't thought that far ahead :D
|
| I'd be happy to rebrand it if there's interest. The main
| issue is that generating an episode is around $3 roughly (~$1
| on GPT4 APU, ~$2 on text-to-speech). So doing a daily episode
| in multiple languages might be a bit costly.
|
| But if there's enough interest, I might be happy to fund it
| to get it going for a bit and see how it ends.
| hugs wrote:
| For the free sample, maybe run it once a week on Sunday?
| (But gate the daily feed behind a paywall?)
|
| Either way, I'd be happy to fund a few weeks of a French
| version right now!
| lakySK wrote:
| Those are not bad ideas and suggestions at all! Thanks!
|
| Let me see if I can get a French episode generated for
| you today or tomorrow and if you like it, I'm happy to
| send some more your way :)
|
| What is your level of French?
| hugs wrote:
| I'm A1 in French and got there primarily with Duolingo, a
| little Pimsleur... and lots of beginner audiobooks. Also
| a fan of RFI's "Easy French Newspaper" daily podcast, but
| yeah, it would be so much more interesting to have a
| tech-focused version of the concept.
|
| On that note, another suggestion: Offering a mobile-
| friendly readable transcript to go along with a the
| audio. (RFI does this.) Reading along with the the audio
| is my preferred way to "listen" to French audiobooks.
|
| Also, presenting the transcript in a readable form is
| another way to gate content behind a log in and/or
| upsell. Of course, yeah, would rather it all be free, but
| your costs are real!
| ageitgey wrote:
| Would be really cool in Spanish!
| lakySK wrote:
| Ok, let me try and generate one episode for you when I get
| home. Curious to hear what you think afterwards :)
| user7894635 wrote:
| Would love to hear Russian! Been working on it for awhile but
| similarly struggle to converse
| hyperkewb wrote:
| same here.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Why Italian? What is Slow Italian? [Hi from Argentina!]
| lakySK wrote:
| Because I'm learning Italian and need it slow and in simple
| words & sentences.
|
| There are a bunch of podcasts that are called along the lines
| of News in Slow Italian, Stories in Slow Italian, etc that
| are targeted to the language learners. So just taking a fun
| twist on that :)
|
| Can be done for any language though. And I'm sure the prompt
| can be tuned for different levels of difficulty.
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| This is great! I didn't see an option to slow the playback down
| to 0.5 as 1.0 is still fast for a beginner.
| lakySK wrote:
| Hm, good point. Perhaps I need to use a different podcast
| platform for that. Might look into that!
|
| Are you learning Italian as well? What have you tried so far?
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| Yep I'm also a beginner but I haven't found anything
| similar to this project. In terms of learning materials I
| found classes that follow the CEFR system (A1, A2, B1 etc)
| have been more helpful than Duolingo and also this free
| resource https://www.languagetransfer.org/
| lakySK wrote:
| If you want, DM me on https://twitter.com/LukasPlatinsky
| and I can send you a link to try a POC for a language-
| learning text adventure game. The main concept is to tell
| a story through conversations with NPC chatbots. Would be
| curious to hear feedback or any suggestions on how it
| could be graded to increase the complexity of the
| language over time.
|
| It's briefly mentioned on the site as well:
| https://hn.lingually.ai/#two
| lakySK wrote:
| Heard great things on Language Transfer and started
| listening to it.
|
| I've mostly been doing Duolingo, recently some tutored
| classes on Preply. Trying to get to a level where I can
| converse with my Italian partner.
|
| And I think GPT has tremendous potential for this. Seen a
| few projects exploring this besides mine. Can't wait to
| see where it goes. It would be a shame if we can't figure
| out some great ways to use the new generative AI algos
| for education!
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| Agreed! Especially how easy it would be to have a bot
| that is aware of your vocabulary level and slowly
| introduces more vocabulary the more you interact with it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'd really love to hear Portuguese. What else did you do to
| immerse yourself in the language you are learning? I have
| trouble to even force youtube to give me content in Portuguese.
| thiagoeh wrote:
| Take a look in the content backlog from Fabio Akita YouTube
| channel. Mostly of it is related to software development
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Akitando
| lakySK wrote:
| I can try and get a Portuguese episode generated for you
| later today or tomorrow.
|
| It's really tough to find such content indeed. I've found
| Netflix shows in Italian and some Italian podcasts and music
| on Spotify.
|
| One thing that also helps is to find a subreddit focused on
| learning the language (like r/italianlearning). When I
| searched the subreddit for books / movies / podcasts /
| youtubers, I found a lot of fun stuff. Many are not targeted
| for language learners though, so are a hit tough to follow.
| And the ones targeted to language learners are often quite
| generic and not that entertaining. Hence, this effort.
| tehrob wrote:
| European Portuguese from Portugal!
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Unrelated to the product but if you ever want to practice your
| Italian while chatting about web related stuff hit me up. More
| than happy to help.
| lakySK wrote:
| Thanks a lot! That's an amazing offer. What web related stuff
| are you most interested in? I've been playing with React a bit,
| but not sure if I could have a conversation in Itaian on it yet
| :D I'd be happy to chat on GPT and ML as well.
| antirez wrote:
| It's a shame that Play.ht quality is so bad for Italian, compared
| to English voices.
| Alles wrote:
| yeah, you can hear some english pronunciation forced in
| sometimes but overall is pretty good
| lakySK wrote:
| Oh, 100%
|
| And this is already the best one I've found. Trust me, you
| don't want to hear some of the Italian text-to-speech stuff
| I've come across during this search...
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(page generated 2023-05-25 23:01 UTC)