[HN Gopher] Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with rand...
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Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN users
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 192 points
Date : 2024-01-20 13:44 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (coffeehouse.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (coffeehouse.chat)
| vegancap wrote:
| If the thought of voice chats with randomly selected strangers
| didn't terrify me slightly, I think this would be an awesome
| idea. For the more out-going among us, can imagine some cool
| conversations and ideas coming out of this
| larodi wrote:
| ... really dare not use this service, might stumble upon some
| guy who just burned 5-10mil of VC money, which would feel very
| awkward.
| vegancap wrote:
| I honestly have no idea what I'd talk to someone who burnt
| more money than I'd ever have in my life about
| otachack wrote:
| The weather?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| could ask about their ketamine hookup
| hkt wrote:
| I'd ask if they now feel it would've been better spent on
| public services
| LoganDark wrote:
| Public services will eat millions and barely do anything
| with the money except line people's pockets. For some
| reason it's just more expensive when the government does
| it.
| fshr wrote:
| maybe "barely doing anything" is better than doing
| nothing, though?
| LoganDark wrote:
| Below a certain threshold, throwing money at public
| services is just going to get it diluted. This may not
| necessarily be a bad thing on its own, but when even the
| smallest public project seems to cost way more, you're
| never going to know if your $10M investment helped, or if
| it just went into someone's paycheck.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Are private projects better? I've never heard of a
| private alternative to SNAP or Medicare or Section 8, nor
| any interest in creating such programs.
| hkt wrote:
| True - the UK's NHS was a product of people realising
| there would never be universal health care if it was left
| to the market.
| hkt wrote:
| Opex is a valid form of public spending. Paying people
| properly ensures they remain as public servants.
| echelon wrote:
| Why would that feel awkward?
|
| What about if they're converting it into success?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Failure is fine
| echelon wrote:
| This, too. It's part of the state space exploration
| algorithm.
| delusional wrote:
| Slightly? I opened the page before completely processing the
| title and panicked like a boy forgetting to close his porn
| before bringing his laptop to school. Don't just invade my
| personal space like that.
| drakonka wrote:
| Hahahah same exact experience here. Clicked the tab and it
| was like touching a stove as my brain caught up with the
| title - noped out immediately. Now reading through comments
| while trying to work up the guts to try it.
|
| Edit: I did it. I spoke with three people and it was really
| cool actually; thanks for sharing this.
| punkspider wrote:
| I'm in the same boat.
|
| I'm also very interested in talking to random HN users, but
| my hesitation comes from the fact that if I start a chat
| I'll really commit because I want to make it meaningful.
|
| I guess now I'm doing a cost-benefit analysis whether I
| should try this out while it's gaining popularity, or I
| should continue what I was working on.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| Omegle for ultra-introverts
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'll just put it out there that if you start talking with
| a random stranger, "... okay, I've got to go now. It's
| been nice talking with you!" is a perfectly acceptable
| kernel panic. :)
| mocha_nate wrote:
| lol
| petecooper wrote:
| >a perfectly acceptable kernel panic
|
| I love this and I can't wait to use it.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I just see a "start" button when I open the page. What made
| you panic?
| vegancap wrote:
| Yeah that's what I got
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| It'd be cool if it randomly threw 10% of the users
| directly into the chat.
| vegancap wrote:
| I saw the start button and got spooked, I'm glad it
| immediately didn't put me in a chat as soon as I opened the
| page though...
| jononomo wrote:
| Are you afraid they might hurt your feelings? Or show you up in
| some way? Or sexually harass you?
| rudasn wrote:
| Or have to deal with this attitude
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| As someone who grew up with OG Xbox live, I find this comment
| pretty funny. HN crowd's got nothing on early COD
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| I went to the site, and backed out too. But after reading all
| these comments took it as a challenge. :)
|
| I'll admit that I'm prob more extroverted than the norm on here
| but it was great. I meant to just jump on, say hi, and jump
| off. But ended up chatting for a while. It was great!
| C0mm0nS3ns3 wrote:
| Why only voice chat?
| shlant wrote:
| I assume because video is hard and/or expensive
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Shouldn't be with WebRTC, right?
|
| I haven't used it a lot but the scalability issues I've heard
| of with are due to the fact that p2p _group_ video is an n^2
| problem by its nature.
| imhoguy wrote:
| It is quite simple with p2p WebRTC, like Jitsi did that, and
| perhaps still do.
| jrexilius wrote:
| No pics of a problematic nature, more anonymous (thus more
| approachable) I'd wager..?
| withinboredom wrote:
| yeah, what about people who cannot talk?
| sourcegrift wrote:
| What would you propose? Video? What about people who are
| invisible? Just because you haven't seen anyone as such
| doesn't mean they don't exist.
| C0mm0nS3ns3 wrote:
| He probably meant text. Which is what I had in mind when I
| asked the question too. Text is way cheaper than audio and
| you can opt in audio after an text ice breaker.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Wow. Mute or deaf people are real, invisible people are
| not.
| hkt wrote:
| Maybe an IRC channel would be good. Libera (nee freenode)
| would seem like a natural home.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Yes. Text to a random person, and, maybe ask for optional
| keywords to match on, for slightly less random.
| skottenborg wrote:
| Interesting. I think text chats would be a nice addition as they
| allow asynchronous conversations which would be beneficial.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Fully agree. If this was a text first, voice if you want thing
| that would be much nicer and accessible too.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| Isn't that... what we have here at Hacker News already?
| fargoth wrote:
| Honestly I wouldn't mind a good ol' fashioned global group
| chat. I know there are moderation issues there, but I miss
| IRC and want more of that feeling elsewhere.
|
| I should just go reinstall my IRC setup...
| agent008t wrote:
| Actually, that's a good point - why is there no HN IRC?
| poisonborz wrote:
| Um no? Not one on one, not instantaneous, nobody expects an
| answer to any reply.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Surprise!!!
| poisonborz wrote:
| \(.*_*.)/
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Well-played, sir/madam.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| I agree partially but I think a lot of people - myself
| included - don't necessarily check back to their own
| comments. And there's no notification- which I'm sure is a
| feature more than a bug.
|
| But I do think a chat would be a nice addition.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Sooo you could check back?
|
| I guess your texts being public is a matter that affects
| the nature of conversation. But I'm sure we could hack this
| together with a "post your phone numbers" post
| pknerd wrote:
| there used to be a site like hnchat
| stephenitis wrote:
| start button recaptcha not working on iphone chrome.
|
| I feel like there should be a more interactive visual space
| rather tha n just an expresso. What if I'm on tea?
| tempodox wrote:
| _espresso_
| notnaut wrote:
| While it's almost never useful to correct irregularities in
| spellings and pronunciations, this is a particularly poor
| correction.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/espresso-vs-
| expresso...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Muphry's Law [0] strikes again!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
| BirAdam wrote:
| Both versions find their origins in Latin: exprimere. Both
| have the same meaning. More importantly, the purpose of
| language is communicate. If the sender and recipient achieve
| mutual understanding then language has been used effectively.
|
| Spelling and grammar are meant to be descriptive and not
| prescriptive.
| stephenitis wrote:
| I started to think about this. I feel like I lean toward
| pronouncing this as expresso more often.
|
| I think it's a slightly southern expression in language
| that I hear when people say Axe
|
| Ask Axe Ess Ex
| stephenitis wrote:
| Thanks
|
| Went from a autocorrection of expression and lazily went back
| to edit into expresso.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Because it's not a button. Afaict Apple attests iPhones so
| captcha is skipped. You can start chatting right away.
| stephenitis wrote:
| In the age of replicated AI voices and security it seems like
| this would be a bad idea. How much voice sample is needed to
| decently replicate someone's voice?
| explorigin wrote:
| See whisper-speech posted yesterday.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| WhisperSpeech - An open source text-to-speech system built by
| inverting Whisper
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39036796
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Anyone could record you for this purpose at any time.
| thfuran wrote:
| But first they'd have to sneak into my house and somehow
| trick my into talking.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Or, you know, find your LinkedIn or phone number and offer
| you an incredible work opportunity.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Or have you visit a convenient website that streams your
| voice to the internet?
| thfuran wrote:
| No one could be that dastardly.
| hackernewds wrote:
| and do what with this exactly?
|
| technically the author could record all audio here, and use
| it for model training or snoop into the conversation
| echelon wrote:
| Well tuned zero shot models can use 5 seconds of audio, but the
| results aren't perfect. You won't capture prosody information,
| for example.
|
| The human voice isn't as unique as you might think, though. You
| can encode a lot of information about a voice in about 100Kb.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wish I had a decent way to calibrate my paranoia about stuff
| like this.
|
| I don't want to miss life's nice opportunities just because I
| was too worried about this kind of thing. But I don't want to
| be too lax either.
| kaba0 wrote:
| So you also don't go to the shopping centre because they could
| have a mic recording you?
| nomilk wrote:
| Matching was fast (almost instant). I just had a brief chat with
| a HN'er from China who is currently in Japan. I am in Australia.
| That was fun. Well done to the author of this project!
| donkeysquid wrote:
| Very cool - I chatted with someone in NYC, another in
| Switzerland, and a third in Mumbai, and a few others I didn't ask
| where they were - there are fascinating people everywhere!
| punkspider wrote:
| How'd you guys end the conversations & after how much time?
|
| I find it difficult to break off conversations because if I
| meet a new human being I'm interested in I'll want to
| meaningfully connect and perhaps form a light friendship.
| cvhashim04 wrote:
| "Well it was great meeting you, going to try and chat with
| some other folks now!"
| aizyuval wrote:
| I talked with someone over an hour. It was great!
| hackernewds wrote:
| Instead of thinking about the speed bump, you could also just
| climb over the speed bump. it's not a mountain as it might
| seem :)
| clbrmbr wrote:
| Whoah! Thanks for this. Was fun to connect with another hacker
| over morning coffee.
| l1ambda wrote:
| Tangent: anyone else remember the
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217395 post? A handful of
| HN people were on the CB radio on https://4m3ric4.com and were
| voice chatting and musing about what if something like that were
| added to HN.
| Arjuna144 wrote:
| Hahaha, the comments on this really make me feel right at home,
| in this family/subculture.
|
| We all long for such kind of close interaction with like-minded
| and bright people, but are a bit of the socially awkward kind
| :))) luv u guys
| shaarmar wrote:
| Definitely skeptical at first but I can attest that I've had some
| interesting conversations already. Have to say I prefer this over
| to text chats by a mile. Very fun start to my morning
| aa6ll wrote:
| Amazing site :))
| aizyuval wrote:
| I talked with the one who build it over it, it's great. He's a
| very nice guy and we had a great conversation.
|
| I if an hacker news inspired discord server would be a good idea.
| andrewtbuss wrote:
| Had a great conversation here. Thanks!
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Love this. I do think there should be more opportunities to
| connect people across the world. I think if more people connected
| directly there be less faith in the filtered messages we get from
| our media and politicians.
|
| To the creator of this: - Thanks for creating!
|
| - A small recommendation: maybe a little text paragraph on the
| landing page explaining it might warm people up a bit as to what
| to expect. Doesn't need to be much and doesn't need to be
| paragraphs of marketing babble. Actually, please def no to
| marketing babble... lol. But I think we're conditioned to get a
| little explanation before jumping in.
|
| Not a critique at all! I love this. And its just my 2 cents.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Agreed! I ended up talking with someone halfway around the
| world for an hour.
|
| We discussed what we did, some interesting differences... and
| it also turned out that everyone everywhere has at least a few
| gripes about their project management system (whatever it is).
|
| We're all more alike than we are different. :) Thanks to author
| for making this!
|
| PS: If HNers are uncomfortable talking to strangers via voice,
| maybe write out a script with some discussion prompts. It's a
| learnable skill, and something you can absolutely get better
| at! (Said as someone who started with crippling fear of talking
| to strangers, into my 20s)
| tbwriting wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| If voice chat isn't your thing: talkkshopp.com
| pknerd wrote:
| Seems it's down now. But I was able to talk another karachiite in
| Toronto
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| I am absolutely terrified of informal "coffee chats"... One
| company I worked for had a policy to do it "few hours every week"
| with some random person.. completely hated that.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Some people would be happy if they're paid just to talk to
| somebody _few hours_ during worktime about non work-related
| stuff.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| The kind of people who work in HR (which is why these schemes
| get set up)
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I get the impression that many extroverts see introversion as a
| flaw / limitation that should be corrected, rather than an
| equally valid personality type that they should accommodate.
|
| Apologies if I'm painting with an unfair or inaccurately broad
| brush. I may be vastly overestimating the prevalence of that
| attitude.
| ikari_pl wrote:
| can we have a version for the ones with "phone call phobia"?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| What would that look like?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| The same, but without matching
| loceng wrote:
| Is it surprising or unsurprising to see such amount of social
| anxiety in the comments?
| punkspider wrote:
| For me it's surprising. Based on the regular discussions I read
| on here, I assume that most are accomplished and confident.
| praptak wrote:
| You'd probably call me accomplished and maybe even confident
| (I learned to muster enough confidence to give a public talk)
| but I still have phone phobia.
| macintux wrote:
| On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| For me, commenting on HN is a low-risk activity:
|
| - Nobody knows who I am
|
| - If I'm attacked, I can usually write it off as random
| Internet people being jerks or having bad days.
|
| - I don't accidentally say stupid stuff because the clock is
| running out for a timely response.
|
| - If I say something rash or nasty, I can often delete it
| before many people read it.
| UltimateEdge wrote:
| > I don't accidentally say stupid stuff because the clock is
| running out for a timely response.
|
| For me this is the biggest reason.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| I want a feature where I can see any comments of mine that I
| deleted in the last 24 hrs. Just in case.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| I just shared a nice chat with a gentleman from Detroit working
| on some interesting LLM stuff. If you see this, great to meet
| you!
| parakoopa wrote:
| hey was me! Nice to meet you too.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| Hey, cool! Would love to stay connected. Feel free to hit me
| up on LinkedIn (but no worries if not!):
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamcginnis/
| michaelaiello wrote:
| Spoke with folks in Brazil, Switzerland and Minnesota. So much
| fun.
| pknerd wrote:
| A mobile app for this would be awesome, even if a browser control
| sdrothrock wrote:
| This is really neat! I thought I'd try it out before bed (in
| Japan) and I was talking to someone from Dallas (hi, if you see
| this!), but it disconnected us. :(
| asadbek_n wrote:
| Can't hear any voice
| hackernewds wrote:
| Privacy policy? Are chats private?
| svkris_18 wrote:
| This is an awesome idea.I just had a brief chat with a HN'er from
| Ontario (hi, if you see this) and I am from India. Kudos, to the
| author of this project.
| wiihack wrote:
| Just had a talk with some people. Very cool concept :)
| pknerd wrote:
| It'd be nice to add some bell notification when someone gets
| connected. I just can't stare the screen all the time.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I feel old. I remember when this used to be called "Ham radio."
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Be nice if we could page people to text-chat with, here on HN.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Agreed. A CW random-chat client would also be amusing.
| Xorathena wrote:
| What audio system does this use?
|
| Is it E2EE directly between you and the other person?
|
| The website doesn't say much before you click the Start button.
| Everything has tradeoffs, and implementation details matter.
| imhoguy wrote:
| I have no means to check this page on my mobile now, but if it
| was me making it I would have used WebRTC, plus some backend to
| pair random peers. I think E2EE can be implemented on the
| stream.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN
| users_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179883 - June
| 2023 (4 comments)
|
| _Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN users_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957389 - July 2022 (20
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN
| users_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31376125 - May 2022
| (6 comments)
|
| _Show HN: Coffeehouse, one-on-one voicechat with random HN
| users_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30179355 - Feb 2022
| (123 comments)
| enjeyw wrote:
| It's times like these I'm so glad we allow resubmissions. This
| is such cool piece of work and the HN-specificity of the
| audience means that the only real path to success is via a
| submission that makes the front page
| Dowwie wrote:
| Really enjoyed my chat.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| In days of voice cloning, this seems less wise.
| jll29 wrote:
| Brilliant, thanks!
| skali_skalarius wrote:
| Neat stuff, this really throws me back to just chatting with
| random people on TeamSpeak/Mumble which is a thing I haven't done
| in a while. I'd of course appreciate being able to read the app's
| source code, though.
| kreeben wrote:
| Daniel from "mid-western Germany", very nice to have virtually
| met you. I'm "the guy from southern Sweden".
|
| Pretty darn cool service, this. Thx so much to the creator for
| showing this to HN.
|
| Never thought I'd do a Omegle-like encounter with anyone. But
| here I am having done it and feeling quite enriched by the
| experience :D
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| I also met Daniel!!! Unfortunately my phone/mic/whatever
| crapped out right we started talking about genealogy
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| iOS Firefox drops connection when phone locks itself
| seeknotfind wrote:
| Great chats. Privacy policy? Lol. Also, this is probably a good
| source of LLM training data.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Bummer I got cut off. We were talking about Legos. Still no
| solution.
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