[HN Gopher] Show HN: HN Update - Hourly news broadcast of top HN...
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       Show HN: HN Update - Hourly news broadcast of top HN stories
        
       I feel like it was inevitable, with the recent buzz around
       NotebookLM. I'm just surprised that it hasn't been done yet.
        
       Author : yunusabd
       Score  : 586 points
       Date   : 2024-10-20 07:10 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (hnup.date)
 (TXT) w3m dump (hnup.date)
        
       | seungwoolee518 wrote:
       | Wow... Really great.
       | 
       | Can you add some historical archive to listen n hours ago (or
       | morning briefing like) summary as a feature?
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thanks! An archive shouldn't be too hard to implement.
         | 
         | Would a morning briefing include more of a curated selection of
         | news, like the most interesting/most discussed news of the day?
         | Currently I just take the top 5 posts from the main page.
        
           | seungwoolee518 wrote:
           | Yeah. You're right.
           | 
           | My morning routine is Checking HN with Coffee. So with your
           | service I can minimize some time to click around and figure
           | out what the root cause is.
        
             | yunusabd wrote:
             | I was actually listening to it while making breakfast as
             | well, so the idea of an extended morning briefing resonates
             | with me. I'll look into it, thanks for the follow-up!
        
               | vulcan01 wrote:
               | If you do this, it might be interesting to publish this
               | as a podcast. Hourly is too frequent for a podcast, but
               | daily would be pretty good.
               | 
               | (Podcasts are just RSS feeds.)
        
               | yunusabd wrote:
               | Sounds good, I'll get back to you about that!
        
               | cancelself wrote:
               | Podcast/RSS seems like ideal distribution tool?
        
           | tkgally wrote:
           | I could easily see listening to such a summary once or twice
           | a day. Considering the pace at which HN is updated, how about
           | two to four somewhat longer episodes per day, with an archive
           | of the past week so that people can catch up? You might also
           | want to focus on certain types of stories, such as those with
           | more upvotes or comments.
           | 
           | In any case, it's a great idea, and I enjoyed listening to
           | the current episode.
        
           | Terretta wrote:
           | Not just the top five, more like
           | http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ which also ensures
           | newness.
           | 
           | Because of that, catching up on several days will also be
           | unique stories.
        
             | yunusabd wrote:
             | That's a real useful resource. Thanks!
             | 
             | I was looking into using the algolia API to get the top 10
             | posts of the last day, but those won't be unique over the
             | span of several days.
        
           | supafastcoder wrote:
           | A daily update on the best posts of the last 24 hours would
           | be amazing: https://news.ycombinator.com/best
        
       | pan69 wrote:
       | Nice. Would it be possible to add a link to the actual submission
       | as it is being discussed?
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Definitely! I was thinking to just show a list of all the links
         | under the player, would that work for you?
        
           | shannifin wrote:
           | Was thinking the same thing. Very fun idea, nice work!
        
           | pekim wrote:
           | That would be great. Highlighting each one as it's talked
           | about would be even better.
        
       | synthoidzeta wrote:
       | Really neat! How was the waveform visualization achieved?
        
         | karencarits wrote:
         | Looks like https://wavesurfer.xyz/
        
           | yunusabd wrote:
           | Yep! First time using it, seems really solid and does the
           | job.
        
       | mirrorchair01 wrote:
       | This is really great stuff, love the added "news-station" type
       | music! If something like this we're to be monetized would there
       | be any issues regarding copyright?
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thank you! And that's a really good question. Since it's
         | summarizing the articles, I would assume that there shouldn't
         | be any issues regarding copyright. Regarding the comments that
         | it's using, I think HN generally has some rights to them,
         | although again it's more of a summarization. Generally HN seems
         | cool about these things.
         | 
         | Now, if you were to scan the homepage of the BBC and create a
         | news broadcast from it, they probably wouldn't be too happy
         | about that, understandably. I have no idea how this would fare
         | in court though.
        
           | ewalk153 wrote:
           | Did you add the "hi mom" bit at the end, or was that organic?
        
             | yunusabd wrote:
             | I added it to the prompt for this exact situation. So it
             | was "hard-coded". Tbh it would have been a bit scary if
             | that happened organically. Kind of like animals recognizing
             | themselves in the mirror levels of self-awareness.
        
       | andai wrote:
       | Brilliant idea. I think this has real value as well: as I get
       | older, I find that I have less energy for reading, but I also
       | notice I often miss really cool stuff that was briefly on the
       | front of HN.
       | 
       | I like that it summarizes the comments too. There are often real
       | gems buried in there. (I assume you're only taking a few top
       | ones?)
       | 
       | I think a great improvement could be made with personalization.
       | Most of what's on the front page isn't personally relevant to me,
       | and there's a lot of cool stuff on the new submissions page that
       | never catches on. So it would be nice if a system could learn
       | what kind of stories I personally respond to, and show me (a
       | summary of?) those -- even if they aren't currently trending.
       | 
       | Last.fm came out 20 years ago (proving you don't even need AI for
       | amazing recommender systems), but it seems personalizing your
       | experience never really caught on. (Yeah, the YouTube algorithm
       | kind of does this, but you unfortunately have no real control
       | over it.)
        
         | a13n wrote:
         | agreed on energy for reading. do you think it's that we're
         | getting older or that the friction associated with consuming
         | information is just getting lower and lower over time?
        
           | andai wrote:
           | So my energy levels have declined noticeably from age 20 to
           | 30. I thought it was mostly my own chronic health issues
           | causing accelerated aging, but many of my friends are making
           | similar complaints.
           | 
           | I did notice far before this point (e.g. age 10 to 20) that
           | my patience for reading had gone down significantly. If I had
           | to guess I'd say that in my case it's due to an underlying
           | anxiety that started in early teens and never left me.
           | Drowning it out seems to require something more stimulating
           | than reading (on paper).
           | 
           | (Perhaps meditation or therapy (shadow integration?) would
           | help here. I've certainly had glimpses of inner peace during
           | times when I was meditating regularly. One insight from this
           | time: "holy crap, I always thought I needed to struggle
           | harder, but it turns out I just needed to learn how to
           | relax...")
           | 
           | I can get through audiobooks but I can only consume them
           | while traveling or doing chores. If I'm sitting down, the
           | restlessness is too high and I can't concentrate on the book.
           | 
           | I also have ADHD and heard similar things from others with
           | ADHD, so I'm not sure to what degree this translates to
           | others.
        
             | conductr wrote:
             | I never had ADHD or related attention problems. However, I
             | find the way interwebs has evolved over years and to
             | basically trained our brains to be so focused on super
             | short pieces of simply digestible content has basically
             | turned me off of longer form content. I've noticed my
             | preference for immediate gratification has increased
             | significantly. It feels like I'm developing an attention
             | disorder in my middle age years.
        
               | card_zero wrote:
               | I read a huge amount every day, lots of news articles,
               | chapters of whatever book, random material of interest,
               | people's comments and questions. I rarely read anything
               | "long-form", however, because it has a strong tendency to
               | be a giant self-indulgent bloviating pile of shit. There
               | are exceptions: I've read every story on damninteresting,
               | because it's true to its name. (Hi Alan. Post something
               | new.)
               | 
               | I've nearly finished Moby Dick, but I don't know why,
               | it's dreadful, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I guess
               | it's historically interesting.
               | 
               | Possibly you guys are not losing the will or energy to
               | read, you're merely discovering that the things you think
               | you ought to read are terrible. Try only reading what you
               | like. So what if it's short? Maybe your preference is
               | right.
        
               | globular-toast wrote:
               | I can't read long form content from a phone screen or
               | computer monitor. I really don't like it. It might be the
               | scrolling, or maybe the type of screen, or conditioning
               | to expect instant gratification. I do, however, read
               | 20-30 books a year, both paper and on an ereader.
               | 
               | I think it's super important to make reading a habit so
               | one must identify what doesn't work for them and try
               | something else. You lose so much if you don't read.
        
               | andai wrote:
               | Yeah, reading on a screen is ass. What eReader do you
               | use?
               | 
               | I got a Kobo recently and I don't like it much. It's much
               | duller than my last one, which is either due to the color
               | screen having less contrast or me misremembering.
               | 
               | Kobo's main selling point was that it's not botnet, but I
               | couldn't even turn the thing on without making an online
               | account...
        
               | globular-toast wrote:
               | I use a Kobo Clara HD. I think Claras are the second
               | cheapest ones. No colour. I find the contrast about as
               | good as a cheap paperback book. Not as good as good
               | quality printing on acid-free paper, but that's OK.
               | 
               | I actually prefer lower contrast, it gives me less eye
               | fatigue and I've specifically chosen low-contrast themes
               | on my computer for as long as I can remember.
               | 
               | I think there is a way to not create the account if you
               | really don't want to. I put KOReader on mine straight
               | away and never use the built-in software. That also
               | incidentally has an option to adjust the contrast.
        
             | waldothedog wrote:
             | Wanted to share that I also had intense anxiety/depression
             | well into my thirties but was able to finally sort it out a
             | few years ago.
             | 
             | I think your phrase "learn how to relax" is spot-on. I was
             | chronically under-slept and chronically over-focused on
             | school, university, career, side-hustle(s), etc.--without
             | much great effect I might add. My brain was so wound up
             | from a decade-plus of hyper-vigilance that I had actually
             | forgotten how to relax.
             | 
             | Obviously, I am not you and n=1, but hopefully it is
             | encouraging to know that you might not always need to drown
             | it out.
        
           | progmetaldev wrote:
           | When it comes to online reading, there are quite a few things
           | that cause me fatigue that I don't feel I used to experience.
           | Advertisements have been there for a long time, but often
           | these are woven into the content, either as literal text
           | placed in the article, or as visual ads that you need to
           | scroll through to continue reading the article. Relying on
           | different JavaScript and CSS techniques to "enhance" the user
           | experience often cause me issues when I'm just trying to
           | focus on reading. Those include overriding scrollbars,
           | dynamic loading of content when the text is small enough to
           | have been included in the page, and displaying some kind of
           | alternative action when highlighting text. I'll often
           | highlight text to keep track of where I'm reading, and some
           | sites will pop up a dialog with share actions, or the ability
           | to add annotations, etc. This is distracting and makes it
           | more difficult to follow along with a longer article.
           | 
           | I'm 45, and got my start on BBS pre-internet, but I feel like
           | if I find an article without the distractions I mentioned
           | above, I actually have more energy to complete an article
           | than I did in my 20's and 30's. Having access to the article
           | without distractions helps me to focus, and when I focus, I
           | tend to consume more content than I normally would. Most
           | likely one of the reasons we're drawn to HN.
        
             | andai wrote:
             | You've just made me realize why I usually avoid clicking
             | the actual article link on HN. It's usually a very
             | unpleasant experience, unless it's clear that it's a
             | smaller website.
        
             | mylastattempt wrote:
             | Perhaps a small help for you might be "reader mode" or
             | "focus mode" or whatever your browser of choice calls it.
             | 
             | It's usually embedded in the url bar (probably a hotkey for
             | it), and gives you only the text. A major step forward in
             | not having to subconsciously ingest and then choose to
             | ignore all the ads, related links, etc.
        
               | progmetaldev wrote:
               | Thank you, I'm not sure why I always seem to forget that
               | feature. Although I don't like the Google lock-in, on
               | certain sites I can also visit the AMP version of the
               | page, and have fewer ads while also getting the images.
        
           | andai wrote:
           | Partly lower energy in general, though it would be
           | interesting to try a "low information diet" and see what
           | effect that has.
           | 
           | If you're eating snacks all day, you won't have a healthy
           | appetite for proper meals.
           | 
           | I noticed on vacation I spend far less time online, and a lot
           | more time reading books.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thanks for the comment, I'm really enjoying the discussion it
         | has sparked.
         | 
         | Yes, I'm just taking the top comments, along with a few child
         | comments, in order to not exceed the context window of the
         | model.
         | 
         | Regarding personalization, there's definitely lots of
         | potential. HN can be so random though, sometimes you find
         | things that you didn't even know you needed (intellectually). I
         | guess as with most recommender systems, it's about a balance
         | between exploration and exploitation. Maybe an MVP could filter
         | for specific keywords and add those posts to the model input.
        
         | pests wrote:
         | > Yeah, the YouTube algorithm kind of does this, but you
         | unfortunately have no real control over it.)
         | 
         | You do, indirectly. Just need to curate your last watched
         | videos.
         | 
         | Sometimes I feel like I got put into a certain genre or bubble
         | or if things autopplay a when I sleep I'll not ice my front
         | page being taken over.
         | 
         | I just go delete some of those videos from my recent list I can
         | see visible improvement.
         | 
         | Or just start a few video on the topic you want to see and then
         | it's all you'll be recommended.
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | This is possibly an interesting extension [1]. I just
           | generally don't follow recommendations. But my kids love it,
           | and they use my account (Premium, else they get all kind of
           | inappropriate ads (which is even illegal)), so I have to be
           | careful. So the other day I wanted to look into what the
           | other political side had to say about something. You know, as
           | a matter of broadening my view to gain some understanding.
           | Boy, did I regret, as I was getting sucked into some kind of
           | conspiracy bubble. My wife asked me what on earth I watched.
           | So I ended up trying to have YouTube profile me as little as
           | possible (via settings). Didn't fully solve it, but it is
           | much more clean now. And if I do watch something which I
           | don't want to be remembered: private browsing mode. I do this
           | for porn, but unfortunately they do profile my IP address (so
           | I should use a VPN).
           | 
           | [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
           | US/firefox/addon/regretsreport...
        
           | andai wrote:
           | I just deleted my account and switched to an old account and
           | the quality of my recommendations improved by an order of
           | magnitude.
           | 
           | It's probably because I last used that one 10+ years ago when
           | it seems things were a little more lighthearted (at least in
           | my digital world). Going back to that recommendations page in
           | current year was a truly magical experience.
           | 
           | Of course it didn't last though, within a few weeks algorithm
           | was onto me, and went back to showing me the same stuff as on
           | my old account.
        
         | neilv wrote:
         | > _as I get older, I find that I have less energy for_
         | 
         | Side comment: When a person says something like that, they
         | might be speaking of only themself, but there's a different
         | parsing that many will hear.
         | 
         | Ageism is a real problem in our field, and one thing we can do
         | is to not accidentally feed it.
        
         | tusharnaik wrote:
         | > Yeah, the YouTube algorithm kind of does this, but you
         | unfortunately have no real control over it.
         | 
         | Wouldn't that argument hold true even if it was implemented
         | here?
        
         | anonzzzies wrote:
         | > as I get older, I find that I have less energy for reading,
         | 
         | As I get older (50 now), I have 0 patience for anything else
         | than reading; it's _much_ faster than listening and rereading
         | stuff I didn 't get the first time is easier and faster. I
         | listen to stuff (including zoom/calls) to stuff that doesn't
         | hold much importance/value; maybe it triggers something, then I
         | go read about it instead.
        
           | nxpnsv wrote:
           | Actually, I used to love reading, but the last years I've
           | felt exactly like I had no energy to read any more, and have
           | switched to audiobooks and podcasts. I then checked my eyes,
           | and it turns out I need glasses. So as you get older, check
           | your eyes!
        
             | anonzzzies wrote:
             | I have had glasses since I was 7... A year after my father
             | brought home a 'portable computer' (luggable) [0] with a
             | tiny monochrome screen. Not sure if that was related, but I
             | guess it could be as the screen was very tiny (see pic
             | below).
             | 
             | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1
        
               | nxpnsv wrote:
               | But he... what? :)
        
               | keyaray wrote:
               | Apparently, has no patience for writing too...;p
        
               | nxpnsv wrote:
               | Very retro cool though, destroying your eyes in style!
        
           | dguest wrote:
           | I think people have different definitions of "reading":
           | 
           | - Skimming: In my day job this is 95% of "reading". I think
           | this is unavoidable, since (even if the material is well
           | written) there's very little chance that two consumers need
           | the same information. In papers I read the abstract, jump to
           | the conclusions, maybe go back to the intro if I'm confused,
           | or check out the methods if that's what matters to me. I get
           | frustrated with any medium where skimming isn't possible, and
           | similar when search isn't possible.
           | 
           | - Reading as in reading a book: this is more for fun or to
           | cool down. Video / podcast seems like a drop-in replacement
           | here. I don't read HN this way. Does anyone?
           | 
           | I think people who create content should be aware of this
           | dichotomy. If you are communicating with experts, make sure
           | your information is well structured. If you are writing
           | literature focus more on the flow.
        
             | anonzzzies wrote:
             | > I don't read HN this way. Does anyone?
             | 
             | I skim HN, when I like something, I dive in & read it
             | carefully and sometimes even implement it. The rest is just
             | chewing gum; nice maybe but not serious.
        
         | hunter2_ wrote:
         | > Last.fm came out 20 years ago (proving you don't even need AI
         | for amazing recommender systems)
         | 
         | What makes that recommender system not AI? Wikipedia say it
         | uses "collaborative filtering" which Gemini says is a form of
         | AI. AI started nearly 70 years ago.
        
       | pugio wrote:
       | Love it. Reminds me of the also useful Hacker News Recap from
       | wondercraft but it looks like that stopped updating as of October
       | 1st (https://www.wondercraft.ai/our-podcasts/hacker-news).
       | 
       | Would be great to have a playback speed button as well. (I can't
       | sit through any audio at 1x.)
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Same boat re: audio speed. I actually speed up the voice in the
         | backend by 1.16x . Above that I was getting too many artifacts
         | in the audio. The nice thing about doing it at that point is
         | that I can handle the music and the voice separately, i.e. the
         | speed of the music stays unchanged.
         | 
         | Speeding it up in the player will also speed up the music,
         | which is not very zen. But I guess I'll just add it to the
         | player and let people decide how fast they want to go.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | I added a basic speed setting, hope 3x is enough ;)
        
           | pugio wrote:
           | Excellent, thank you. This is something I can listen to!
        
       | knowaveragejoe wrote:
       | I like this idea a lot. Archived entries would be nice as others
       | have suggested. It would also be nice to be able to control
       | playback speed.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | I added a basic speed setting, have a look! Also looking into
         | the archive idea, which will be a bit more involved, since my
         | current infra is kind of minimalist.
        
       | srik wrote:
       | Neat! Personally hourly feels a bit much but a daily briefing
       | that can fit inside a commute or on a short walk would be
       | perfect. Might be the first ai podcast I'd subscribe to.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | That seems to be the general consensus, I think it makes sense
         | to move in that direction and beef it up a little.
        
       | olup wrote:
       | I did https://radio-hn.pages.dev/ last year in the same idea,
       | just once per day. Posted it somewhere here at the time.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Interesting, I actually did a search before submitting mine,
         | but I narrowed it down to the last year only. Yours being 2y/o
         | didn't show up. You were ahead of your time!
        
           | olup wrote:
           | There was also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35831177
           | some times after mine. Indeed a bit before the one year
           | period from now.
        
             | yunusabd wrote:
             | Interesting, thanks for sharing! Looks like this one has
             | stopped publishing since the end of September though.
        
         | andai wrote:
         | Damn, looks like you beat NotebookLM by a year and a half!
         | 
         | Is the code for this available? I'm particularly curious how
         | you did the multiple speakers and voices.
         | 
         | NotebookLM has the issue that they keep switching sides, like
         | one will be the student and the other the teacher on a subject,
         | but then they'll suddenly switch in a way that makes no sense.
        
           | olup wrote:
           | I did not release the code but it's incredibly basic, and I
           | believe OP's one is just the same.
           | 
           | You collect N links from HN api with any heuristic you want,
           | then scrape those urls - preferably using pupeteer-based
           | tooling or online equivalent (think Jina).
           | 
           | I then ran each url's content in an LLM to get a summary,
           | then from all the results ask a LLM to create the
           | conversation (and give it a tone). Then decide on the voices
           | and characters and feed each turn into 11labs (or any tts).
           | And finally, concatenate all audio parts, add music and
           | effects.
           | 
           | If I remember correctly, mine could perform all that from a
           | single Cloudflare worker. The catch is it can become a bit
           | pricey because of the TTS. I remember toying with making it a
           | product (podcast everything) and quickly discovered there's a
           | couple of company already offering this.
           | 
           | NotebookLM is slightly different on the TTS front, I think
           | they are using the amazing model google showed off a year or
           | so ago (without giving it public access) that can generate
           | actual multi speakers conversations with "hums" and cutting,
           | and talking at the same time.
           | 
           | Added : someone just made a python lib for the usecase (also
           | found on HN 5 days ago)
           | https://github.com/souzatharsis/podcastfy
        
             | andai wrote:
             | Thanks!
        
       | kelsey98765431 wrote:
       | Frankly this is super fantastic. Thank you. Any possibility to
       | make this longer, and split it into sections with updates on
       | previous stories at the end? I love this concept a lot.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thank you! Most of the people here seem to prefer a longer
         | form, so I think I'll move in that direction.
         | 
         | > split it into sections with updates on previous stories at
         | the end
         | 
         | So basically, if a story comes up that has been reported on
         | before, it references the older story and gives some context
         | and the update? Something like "just last week, the Internet
         | Archive had been the victim of another cyber-attack, in which
         | [...]"?
        
       | cchance wrote:
       | Next step heygen avatar's doing desk presentations with small
       | videos overlayed to show the websites etc.
        
       | 8organicbits wrote:
       | "although details remain sparse due to issues extracting content
       | from the linked resource"
       | 
       | Unfortunate that it adds stuff like this, which doesn't seem
       | helpful to the listener.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Yep, some pages can't be read for some reason or another. I
         | already added support for PDFs, I guess I'll handle more error
         | cases as they pop up.
        
       | yunusabd wrote:
       | Did anyone notice it reporting about itself now? This will
       | definitely go into the archive :)
        
         | liamYC wrote:
         | Haha yes!!
        
         | gitaarik wrote:
         | Haha indeed, got it as a last story
        
       | personjerry wrote:
       | "First up a webgpu wifi simulator has emerged, although details
       | remain sparse due to trouble extracting data from the linked
       | resource"
       | 
       | Sounds about right
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Yeah, if you look at the page source, there's actually no text
         | in the document body. At one point I will have to use a JS-
         | capable browser, to capture pages like this one.
        
       | jonahx wrote:
       | The AI voice is good. What are you using to generate it?
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | It's openAI's voice generator.
        
           | fullstackchris wrote:
           | Not affilliated, but if you want a large selection of
           | _really_ good text to speech voices, check out eleven labs.
           | Only problem is it's not cheap :/
        
           | celltalk wrote:
           | How much each hourly update costs? OpenAI pricing table says
           | $15.000/M characters.
        
       | breck wrote:
       | Fun stuff. It does feel like NotebookLM (and others) are hurtling
       | us toward a future that seems inevitable: all content is public
       | domain, and people consume it in many transformed ways.
       | 
       | Those that get ahead of the curve and make their content publicly
       | available and semantically well structured will see their ideas
       | thrive.
       | 
       | Here's my user test:
       | https://news.pub/?try=https://www.loom.com/embed/9e8b8d454ee...
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thanks for the video, it's really interesting to see a user
         | test like this!
        
       | syntaxing wrote:
       | This is awesome, I wish it did a rolling 8 hour instead that is
       | updated once a hour if that makes sense.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | So the best of the last 8 hours, with a new episode every hour?
         | I think that makes sense, you could check in every 8 hours or
         | so and have a fresh set of stories.
        
       | wg0 wrote:
       | Unrelated but reminds me of GTA V's radio channels in cars. The
       | news talking about what you just did.
        
       | frays wrote:
       | Great idea! I've always wanted to catch up with tech news while
       | walking/driving, particularly from HN.
        
       | the_arun wrote:
       | Fantastic idea! I really liked extracting meta information from
       | Comments as well. Good luck!
        
       | cylinder714 wrote:
       | Wow--this is indistinguishable from an NPR piece.
        
       | neonsunset wrote:
       | This is so good! I could use that mixed in together with a
       | spotify station for modern Radio experience. I miss the days
       | where you could just do something else and listen to the radio
       | host. Streaming partially supplanted it but not to the same
       | extent, sadly.
        
       | throwaway0665 wrote:
       | Pretty neat but it seems to make stuff up. It took a meta comment
       | from this post[1] about the website formatting and suggested the
       | community was worried the C++ memory safety proposal would make
       | code hard to read on mobile. It is hard to trust the other
       | summaries after hearing that.
       | 
       | 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41899828
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | True, that is not a good look.
         | 
         | > This formatting and font mixing is difficult to read on
         | mobile.
         | 
         | I guess for us it's obvious that it's a meta comment, but I can
         | understand the confusion. Still, it could have figured out that
         | "readability on mobile" doesn't really apply to C++, a
         | programming language.
         | 
         | I'll add a section to the prompt reminding it that comments can
         | be meta or even non-factual (gasp), so that it doesn't try to
         | shoehorn meaning into comments like this one.
        
         | Zopieux wrote:
         | AI making stuff up? Unbelievable.
        
         | andai wrote:
         | Apparently you can add "don't make stuff up" to the prompt and
         | it helps. I'm not sure the exact phrasing but probably
         | something like only using what's in the text given.
        
       | hammock wrote:
       | Next step- create an HNN news network with chyrons and AI news
       | anchors that you can have running on the TVs in your office 24/7
       | the way banks have CNBC and Bloomberg News running
        
         | noman-land wrote:
         | I hate it but I also love it.
        
         | laidoffamazon wrote:
         | Im reminded of the talking heads in Batman Beyond that were
         | presumably AIs.
        
         | sen wrote:
         | I would actually use that, especially if it had hourly
         | summaries of the days news like some real news networks do, so
         | you don't have to watch all day but could just chuck it on when
         | convenient.
         | 
         | The best part about these AI-reads-content things is the
         | potential to let users do things like choose the voice, the
         | talking speed, etc. As a non-American I hate listening to those
         | American talking-head news channels because it's jarring for me
         | when I'm used to my own accent, even if I do want to catch up
         | on some current events or something.
        
       | ag8 wrote:
       | I started listening to it after this very submission became #1 on
       | HN, so it was very meta to listen to it talk about how it might
       | be making stuff up...
       | 
       | Great project!
        
       | n2d4 wrote:
       | Hah! Here's what it had to say about itself this hour:
       | 
       | > In a more self-referential turn, we examine the launch of HN
       | Update itself. This initiative aims to provide hourly news
       | broadcasts, summarizing top stories from Hacker News. While
       | listeners appreciate the concept of curated news, there are
       | concerns about the accuracy of the summaries and the potential
       | for bias in representation. Community discussion suggests that
       | while the value of such a service is evident, trust in the
       | accuracy of the content remains a critical issue.
        
         | kcrwfrd_ wrote:
         | > in a more self-referential turn
         | 
         | :o wow, the AI is becoming self-aware!
        
           | yunusabd wrote:
           | Tbf, there's a section in the prompt for this exact
           | situation. Worth it just for this little wow moment.
        
             | zhobbs wrote:
             | is the prompt available somewhere?
        
         | dash2 wrote:
         | My version added "and yes, to our listeners... hi mom!"
         | 
         | Very cute and kind of impressive.
        
         | ugh123 wrote:
         | Actually makes me think if its possible to embed prompts into
         | story headlines and/or content to do nefarious things...
        
       | waldothedog wrote:
       | Enjoyed this a lot! Particularly enjoyed the meta update about
       | this thread. There are some neat suggestions here, but if this
       | could come up on my podcast feed as-is I would listen to it.
        
       | tristenharr wrote:
       | Would be cool to create embeddings for historical HN posts, and
       | then use a users favorite posts to personalize the post selection
       | by averaging the embedding vectors for a users favorite posts
       | then doing a cosine similarity search to select stories most
       | likely to be of interest to a user.
       | 
       | Although it would be even better to use a users like history, but
       | I'm not sure if/how those can be accessed.
       | 
       | Speaking of, I'm curious how other folks use embeddings. I know
       | you can average multiple embeddings together, but is anyone else
       | doing other translations and having success? Thinking of King -
       | Man + Women = Queen, It seems a lot of the time I see questions
       | being directly used as inputs for semantic search/RAG. I wonder
       | if it might make sense to create a large set of question-answer
       | pairs and embed them and then determine the average translation
       | to move from "question space" to "answer space", then when you
       | embed questions you apply the translation on the embedding to
       | move it into "answer space" before performing RAG, or maybe this
       | would just add too much noise?
        
         | vunderba wrote:
         | hmmm, I can't speak to people using _word2vec_ in conjunction
         | with RAG, but the other use case is actually pretty common.
         | (you don 't need to generate answers though in my experience).
         | 
         | For each document intended for ingestion into a vector
         | database:
         | 
         | - Use an LLM to generate a list of possible questions that the
         | document is capable of answering (essentially equivalent to
         | generating a quiz)
         | 
         | - Map these question embeddings back to the original documents
         | 
         | - Store document, document chunks, question 1, question 2, etc.
         | into the vector database
         | 
         | So now when a person queries your RAG, you have the direct link
         | from user query -> doc chunks, but additionally the
         | transitionary link from user query -> similar query -> doc
         | chunk.
        
         | withinboredom wrote:
         | This assumes that favorites have some kind of meaning.
         | Favorites are public (IIRC) and I basically use them to track
         | and share interesting/funny comments. Upvotes on the other
         | hand, are private and are more inline with the things I care
         | about.
        
         | andai wrote:
         | I wonder if dang uses embeddings, or it just comes naturally.
        
       | graycat wrote:
       | Sounds good. Listened to some of it -- good.
       | 
       | Suggestion, have better audio:
       | 
       | (1) Enunciate the words more clearly.
       | 
       | (2) To help with (1), slow down and speak fewer words per minute.
       | 
       | (3) At the end of a sentence, don't drop voice volume and
       | enunciation clarity.
        
       | nurettin wrote:
       | I wonder what it will do when it encounters a (year) postfix.
        
       | interestingsoup wrote:
       | This is so neat. I been wanting to build something for HN and
       | can't believe I didn't think of this. It was also cool too hear
       | the update with a mention of HN Update as well considering it's
       | treanding! :)
        
       | nilslice wrote:
       | cool. and, a neat side effect of catching this late is that the
       | HN Update broadcast I heard (labeled "10/20/2024, 9:59:47 PM",
       | assuming Pacific time) included & described itself in the audio.
       | at the time of writing, it's a top story currently on the front
       | page!
        
       | nabaraz wrote:
       | On a related note, what are some cheaper alternative to Open AI's
       | text to speech? Last I checked it came out to ~$9/day for their
       | text-to-speech.
        
       | TekMol wrote:
       | Why is it that some people can accept - even like - music behind
       | a voice that tells something?
       | 
       | I strongly dislike it. It makes it harder to listen to the voice.
       | 
       | Am I the only one?
        
         | confused_boner wrote:
         | should add option to turn off background music
        
         | pegasus wrote:
         | Not at all, I feel the same. In fact, last time I had that
         | reaction was yesterday, listening to an audiobook which was
         | employing the same dubious technique.
        
         | anonzzzies wrote:
         | No, it's pretty annoying really; I don't know why people do
         | that. I don't like it on youtube/podcasts either. It adds
         | nothing at all at best and distracts at worst.
        
         | flakes wrote:
         | Totally agree.
         | 
         | There used to be a commercial that would play on Canadian TV
         | stations. It showed the view of a river, once with calm and
         | tranquil sounds and then played again with ominous sounds like
         | from a horror movie. When you are presented the river with
         | tranquil sounds, you are happy and calm. When you are presented
         | the river with eerie sounds, you dislike it. The message at the
         | end of the video was to inform Canadians to think more
         | critically about the media they consume, and to question if
         | they are being led down a forced narrative rather than being
         | given facts to question for themselves.
         | 
         | When I see modern day Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, etc, almost
         | all of the videos are backed by music which is trying to bias
         | the user. It makes me uncomfortable.
        
         | andrewstetsenko wrote:
         | +1
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback, looks like you're not the only one.
         | Personally I enjoy it, but I can understand that some might
         | find it distracting.
         | 
         | I just need to figure out a way to implement a toggle for the
         | music, while also playing nicely with the playback speed etc.
        
           | mmoustafa wrote:
           | I enjoy it as well. Makes it easier to listen for me, voice
           | alone is droning.
        
           | johnneville wrote:
           | the music is more distracting at higher speeds for me and i
           | usually listen at 1.5x when walking or at the gym. you could
           | have the music be a separate audio track where the playback
           | speed doesnt impact it and the toggle plays it simultaneously
           | with the vocal track or not.
        
             | yunusabd wrote:
             | The issue is that the voice track will be shorter than the
             | music track if you speed it up. So you'll have the music
             | playing until the end, but the voice track ending before
             | that. It's definitely possible, just a bit more complex to
             | implement. Maybe when I have the feature to mute the music,
             | I can just mute the music when the speed is changed?
        
         | weinzierl wrote:
         | No, you are not the only one, background music is pretty common
         | though.
         | 
         | Often the background music is just too loud compared to the
         | voice. Professional productions use a technique called
         | _ducking_ , where the music is dynamically made quiet in
         | relation to the volume of the voice.
         | 
         | Personally, I prefer no background music at all, and I wonder
         | if there is a case to made for the professionally balanced
         | case?
        
         | riiii wrote:
         | It causes sensory overload for me, I abhor it.
        
       | digitcatphd wrote:
       | This is probably the coolest use case I have seen of HN API
        
       | alwinaugustin wrote:
       | This is awesome. I like it
        
       | Guest9081239812 wrote:
       | Lots of positive feedback here, but after a quick listen, I'm not
       | a fan. To summarize my thoughts...
       | 
       | 1. The experience just feels too sluggish. For example, I opened
       | the HN homepage, skimmed all of the headlines, read the comments
       | on the top post, and it probably took about 30 seconds. I was
       | done, feeling like I got all the information from HN that I
       | needed, with the intention of checking for new posts later in the
       | day. This tool took an entire minute to brief me about a single
       | post.
       | 
       | 2. It's not very practical. Usually 1 or 2 posts catch my
       | attention on the HN homepage each day. This tool is most likely
       | going to give me information about the wrong posts. You could
       | improve this with some type of algorithm that learns what
       | information I listen to and what I skip, but it's not ideal. Or,
       | perhaps I could click the headlines I'm interested in, and a
       | custom audio summary is generated.
       | 
       | 3. Lastly, I think it removes the human experience of HN. I like
       | to read exactly what people are posting. Everyone is unique, and
       | it's interesting to see how people interact, along with their
       | choice of words and tone. Erasing all of that and listening to a
       | robotic summary just sucks the soul straight out of the
       | community. It reduces the connection to the people here, which I
       | think is the best aspect of the site.
       | 
       | Thanks for sharing though, it's interesting to see this idea
       | brought to fruition.
        
         | lynx23 wrote:
         | You're mostly hinting at a very obvious shortcoming of
         | synthesized speech: Its sequential. The phenomenon is most
         | obvious if you look at screen readers using speech synthesis.
         | Its a fundamental problem of the medium, which some devs will
         | discover independently, now that tts has a new surge.
        
         | loveparade wrote:
         | Agree and I would add,
         | 
         | 4. Skimming HN is useful in text-format because you can go
         | deeper on something that catches your eye by following the
         | link. The podcast format removes this because you can't click
         | on something you hear and dive deeper into it. Skimming without
         | the ability to dive into something is not useful, see next
         | point.
         | 
         | 5. High-level summaries are not my use case for HN, or any
         | social media. They don't provide real value, just the illusion
         | of value. What I want to dive deep into stories I am curious
         | about. That can be done with TTS, but I would need to curate my
         | feed first, and then use the podcast format to dive deeper into
         | my curated stories.
         | 
         | I almost feel like this product would be more useful if you
         | remove the LLM aspect and instead let me paste a list of HN
         | threads into it and just TTS all of them, including the full
         | comments. Then I could listen to this long-form content while
         | driving or doing something else.
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | Or lean into it and have it speech-to-text as well you can
           | interrupt it when it's reading a post you don't like so it
           | can move onto the next one.
        
         | highwaylights wrote:
         | I think it's a case of this not fitting your use case.
         | 
         | It wouldn't replace reading the front page for me but I could
         | really see it replacing a podcast on my morning walk.
         | Especially given the absence of news spin or adverts. I'll
         | definitely be giving it a try tomorrow.
        
           | Guest9081239812 wrote:
           | I think you're right here. I'm forgetting about
           | "entertainment".
           | 
           | This will never replace my visits to HN because it's not
           | efficient. Unless it uses neurolink to beam the information
           | into my mind, that's always going to be the case. It fails in
           | that way.
           | 
           | However, let's consider a podcast. You get 5 people that are
           | entertaining, knowledgeable about technology, well spoken,
           | and have differing opinions, and get them to spend 30 minutes
           | talking about the top HN posts. It's slow, they would most
           | likely not even discuss my favourite posts, but yet, I would
           | consider listening. Is it possible to replicate that with AI?
           | Could AI digest the content and all of the comments, and turn
           | it into an entertaining and educational discussion and debate
           | between a few different AI voices?
           | 
           | I think it's possible, and it changes the idea from being an
           | inefficient method of summarizing content, to a form of
           | entertainment. That could be the right direction to go with
           | this kind of project. However, even if AI perfectly
           | replicates a great podcast, how would I feel listening to it?
           | I think this question applies to most AI content. How
           | important is the human process in the content we consume? Do
           | people only care about the end result, or do they want read a
           | book written by a person, view photos taken by a person,
           | listen to songs performed by a person, and listen to a
           | podcast by real people?
        
             | highwaylights wrote:
             | This isn't what I had in mind, but now that you've
             | suggested it I would absolutely listen to this. In fact,
             | I'm convinced having read it that this is where we're going
             | good or bad (I can see a lot of YouTube gurus suggesting
             | this as the new get-rich-quick scheme for "creators"). A
             | high quality version of this would absolutely work though
             | if that can be achieved.
             | 
             | I was thinking more in terms of the way you can get morning
             | news briefs on a nest hub. The AI summarising the top posts
             | on HN would have value to me as something to listen to in
             | the morning not because I expect a really interesting
             | debate, but mostly just to get a quick update on what the
             | buzz is on HN on a given day so I can decide if I want to
             | pick up the thread from any of those topics when my day
             | starts at the desk.
        
               | hunter2_ wrote:
               | > the new get-rich-quick scheme for "creators"
               | 
               | I wonder if the person executing the scheme would still
               | be referred to as a "creator" in this case: they're
               | creating a creator, and it's not so useful to have the
               | same label for multiple layers (factory factories all the
               | way down?). I could see possibly "engineer" (taken from
               | "prompt engineer") or other technical terms being used
               | instead of art terms.
        
               | highwaylights wrote:
               | Senior Bullshit Engineer
        
           | afavour wrote:
           | I don't want to overindex this point because at the end of
           | the day this is just a fun hack project... but I do think
           | it's worth considering the behaviors our work encourages.
           | 
           | Much like I think the 24 hour news cycle is detrimental to
           | just about everything, an _hourly_ HN summary strikes me as
           | excessive. No one needs that much HN in their lives. But as
           | you say, a daily summary you listen to the place of a
           | podcast? That feels like the right fit.
        
             | bloomingkales wrote:
             | Depends. There's no such thing as too much news during ww2
             | or Industrial Revolution.
             | 
             | This is news about how news as we know it is going away,
             | and there's more news on that coming 24/7. And that's just
             | the news on the news.
             | 
             | Idea for OP:
             | 
             | If you treat an HN post and it's comments as a hivemind,
             | you could do something like 'Interview with the Hivemind:
             | (insert post topic)", have the AI ask interview questions
             | where the hivemind can respond from the entire thread. This
             | is to get any post into some kind of known podcast format.
             | 
             | If you intersperse talk about Big Foot throughout that
             | interview for no good reason, you could become the #1
             | podcast in the world.
        
               | wholinator2 wrote:
               | What do you mean there's no such thing as too much news
               | about war or capitalism (my interpretation of ww2 and
               | industrial revolution)? I can't imagine your saying that
               | interspersing your entire life with hourly updates on the
               | deaths of millions of people is a... good? healthy?
               | survivable thing? What about every 15 minutes? What about
               | every second of every day? "No such thing" is certainly a
               | strong phrase.
               | 
               | I can certainly say that consumption of news above around
               | 1-2 hours a day in myself and everyone I've had the
               | pleasure to discuss this with is an increasingly bad
               | thing. Especially war! If you spend all of your time just
               | consuming news about things when do you have time to do
               | things like live a fulfilling life or enjoy peaceful
               | human existence. Continuous news is the opposite of
               | peace.
               | 
               | Maybe you're saying in general rather than in one
               | person's life but i'd counter that a mass amount of news
               | in general _is directly_ a mass amount of news in a mass
               | amount of people's lives. Why would there be tons and
               | tons of news unless people were actively consuming more
               | and more of it?
               | 
               | How many hours a day do you spend reading current events
               | and news? Why don't you spend more? Your answer to that
               | question is my rebuttal
        
         | etewiah wrote:
         | Wow this is awesome. I've actually been working on something
         | very similar. In my case though I focus on individual stories.
         | Like the commenter above I feel audio doesn't work so well for
         | general overview.
         | 
         | I haven't done a showHN yet because it's not quite ready but
         | you can see where it's at here:
         | 
         | https://news.gipety.com/hn/10842381/k/218/s/three-years-as-a...
         | 
         | I think it would be quite a nice way to give a second life to
         | classic episodes of past showHNs and askHNs.
        
           | dsmurrell wrote:
           | I like your project a lot! Please release it.
           | 
           | I've been 'summarising' a lot of articles using NotebookLM's
           | new feature and publishing them as podcasts episodes here:
           | https://open.spotify.com/show/0C8DGPdYwZQ1cbvQsnvO6t
           | 
           | I've been using their service to easily draw out the key
           | points and if the episode is a good one then I publish it on
           | the feed.
           | 
           | I do think that for specific content, that a lot of gold is
           | stored within the comments sections and reading those
           | actually gives more insight than the article itself so I've
           | been planning on doing a few which draw off comments from
           | either a reddit or hacker posts which link out to some post.
           | I'll probably do one from reddit first. Probably science
           | focused.
        
             | etewiah wrote:
             | Thanks - I hope to be able to release it in the next few
             | days.
             | 
             | Finding the right content to use for the podcast is quite
             | important and I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to
             | involve the community. Currently I host the audio files and
             | GitHub and anyone is invited to contribute to that.
             | 
             | I checked out your Spotify and there is some good content
             | there but I imagine it will be hard to rank on there.
             | 
             | Would you be interested in collaborating? I am based in the
             | UK and I have some ideas around location based podcasts as
             | well.
        
               | brandonchi wrote:
               | I like it too. I enjoyed listening to it for 15 min
               | straight.
        
               | etewiah wrote:
               | Great to hear - thanks. I will add several more over the
               | coming days.
        
         | fragmede wrote:
         | Re: 3. The problem with reading HN on your phone is that it's
         | generally frowned upon to do it while driving a car.
        
         | smusamashah wrote:
         | https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/e7c9ed3936ba69e522f8cb38...
         | This userscript (can use as a bookmarklet) lets you catchup to
         | all _unseen_ stories quickly. Open HN, click bookmarklet, any
         | new stories will be appended with a  "(NEW)". Old stories, will
         | show much their rank was changed. Can set a flag to hide seen
         | stories, or set comment and points threshold to hide/show old
         | stories.
         | 
         | To me it makes it very quick to catchup. I just go over a few
         | pages and can quickly see every new story that I have not _seen
         | yet_.
        
       | Hashex129542 wrote:
       | Excellent Idea
        
       | devops000 wrote:
       | I see lots of generated content with AI, would be interested how
       | much of this is actually listened by a real human after the first
       | days of excitement.
        
       | mazzystar wrote:
       | Last week I had a similar idea as you. I created a webpage called
       | https://zeli.app that automatically helps you parse the content
       | of posts from the HN homepage, rewrite the titles, and generate
       | abstracts.
       | 
       | So, I ended up with these post fragments, and I tried feeding
       | these title + abstract lists to Claude 3.5 Sonnet to string them
       | together into a 5-minute English podcast, emphasizing on making
       | these fragments flow cohesively.
       | 
       | Honestly, I wasn't completely satisfied with the results because
       | the topics switched too quickly, and each post only had 2-3
       | sentence introductions, making it sound less interesting.
       | 
       | Anyway, it was exciting to find someone with a similar idea as
       | me, but I still think the lack of interesting content is the main
       | issue.
        
         | mazzystar wrote:
         | Sample here:
         | 
         | "Tech enthusiasts, welcome to 'Claude's Crazy Tech Emporium'!
         | I'm your old friend Claude. Today, we're taking you on a
         | fantastic tech journey, from the maze of subscription services
         | all the way to nuclear-powered data centers. Fasten your
         | seatbelts, we're taking off!
         | 
         | First, let's talk about those love-hate subscription services.
         | Ever tried to unsubscribe and couldn't find the exit? Like
         | being stuck in a maze, looking everywhere but finding no way
         | out. Don't worry, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has heard
         | our cries! They've recently introduced the 'Click to Cancel'
         | rule. Imagine canceling a subscription as easily as deleting an
         | ex's contact. Ah, the sweet taste of freedom! But don't get too
         | excited, because...
         | 
         | Amazon is tempting us again! They've just launched a series of
         | new Kindles, including their first color Kindle and the all-new
         | Kindle Scribe. Now you can not only read color e-books but also
         | write and draw on them. It's the perfect gift for those who
         | love doodling in paper books! But book lovers, beware, this
         | isn't a license to scribble in library books. Speaking of
         | which...
         | 
         | Have you heard about the 'Transition Year' in the Irish
         | education system? It's like a 'dream school year' for students!
         | During this year, students can try various courses, from
         | aeronautics to art, from programming to car maintenance. Isn't
         | this like a real-life 'Hogwarts'? I even wonder if they have a
         | course on 'How to Create Magic Books on Kindle'. But if you
         | really want to experience magical technology, then...
         | 
         | You must check out the Apple Vision Pro! Someone recently used
         | this device that looks like it came straight out of a sci-fi
         | movie on a plane. Imagine wearing this high-tech headset,
         | watching 3D movies at 30,000 feet - fellow passengers might
         | think you're a time traveler from 2050. Just a reminder, don't
         | scream out loud if you're watching a horror movie, or the
         | flight attendant might think you've spotted a UFO! Speaking of
         | unidentified objects...
         | 
         | Recently, someone benchmarked so-called 'AI PCs'. The results
         | show that these computers might not be as intelligent as we
         | imagined. It seems AI still prefers to roam in the cloud,
         | reluctant to move into our computers permanently. Maybe AI
         | thinks our computers are too cramped? But don't worry,
         | because...
         | 
         | Amazon is finding a new home for AI! They've recently quietly
         | invested in a nuclear power developer. Looks like they're
         | planning a 'nuclear' upgrade for their data centers! Imagine,
         | every tweet you send might have a hint of nuclear energy. Don't
         | worry, this won't turn your phone into a mini nuclear reactor.
         | Although, if it did, we'd never have to worry about low battery
         | again, right?
         | 
         | Finally, let's look at the 'nuclear' war in the WordPress
         | community. The dispute between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine is
         | more dramatic than 'Game of Thrones'. It seems even in the
         | open-source world, court intrigue is unavoidable. Developer
         | friends, besides coding, learn some workplace politics too. But
         | remember, in the programming world, the one with the most
         | beautiful code usually wins, not the one best at playing
         | politics.
         | 
         | Well, that's the end of our 'Crazy Tech Emporium' tour. From
         | the maze of subscription services to nuclear-powered data
         | centers, to power games in the open-source world, we've
         | experienced quite a lot, haven't we? I hope you've had a good
         | laugh and learned something on this crazy journey. I'm Claude,
         | see you next time! Remember, in this crazy tech world,
         | curiosity and a sense of humor are the best survival tools.
         | Bye-bye!"
        
         | andai wrote:
         | Lack of interesting content?
        
         | etewiah wrote:
         | I like what you've done with zeli!!
         | 
         | It is a shame it did not get so much traction when you did your
         | showHn.
         | 
         | One thing that I think would be useful alongside your summaries
         | would be tags for each item. Have you considered that?
        
       | Timwi wrote:
       | I have two super nitpicky things to say.
       | 
       | 1) The website is slightly wide on my phone, so it wiggles left
       | and right when I scroll. I usually fix this by pinch-zooming out
       | the tiny amount necessary to align it to my viewport width, but
       | your website apparently suppresses zooming.
       | 
       | 2) The AI announces itself as having the name "Jane Doe". What's
       | the point in this? I know that American news with real anchors do
       | this (having the anchor announce their own name), but this is not
       | universal so it feels foreign to me. Since AIs don't have names,
       | it feels like this was shoehorned in just to sound like American
       | commercial news.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback!
         | 
         | 1) That's strange, I don't do anything to prevent zooming.
         | Although I could provoke a situation where I interacted with
         | the player and it somehow captured all subsequent touch inputs,
         | so zooming was blocked. Maybe that's what happened? Reloading
         | the page should fix it.
         | 
         | 2) I like it because it adds a bit of personality. And I felt
         | like the generic name "Jane Doe" would be fitting for an AI.
         | Kind of hinting at the fact that it _seems_ like a human, but
         | it 's not. Also low-key telling you that the whole thing is AI
         | generated, in case you don't pick up on it immediately.
        
       | Adachi91 wrote:
       | Interesting project, I think it would be nice to also have a
       | volume slider as well as a speed slider. I manually set the
       | volume via wavesurfer.media.volume = 0.10; to keep from hurting
       | my ears.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | I just had the biggest "duh" moment. Thanks for bringing it up.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Now with state-of-the-art volume control for all your volume-
         | control needs!
        
       | redbell wrote:
       | Pretty interesting project. I have a special, yet weird,
       | emotional attachment to these HN-based projects because they act
       | like _extensions_ or _add-ons_ that could improve HN in one
       | dimension.
       | 
       | While I don't feel like using this tool when I sit in front of my
       | computer or when starting _doom scrolling_ on my phone, I
       | certainly would like to use it when I need to _quickly_ check HN
       | while being busy.
       | 
       | Some quick feedback:
       | 
       | 1. First, regarding the UI/UX:                 - The title and
       | subtitle don't tell much about the app.       - In the audio
       | track, while you can see the progress of the playing audio, it
       | doesn't show the total time nor the current time.       - It
       | would be useful to highlight the audio track into segments, each
       | one representing a story.       - It would make sense to mention
       | how many stories are being summarized (seems to be 5 right now).
       | 
       | 2. For a better use case, I believe it would make more sense to
       | have this tool as a mobile app or a PWA to easily access it even
       | from your car's infotainment system while driving.
       | 
       | 3. Tightly linked to (2), having this tool as a mobile app and
       | making it available as a _widget_ , with a _Play_ button, would
       | reduce the number _taps_ needed to play the broadcast.
       | 
       | I hope this serves as a _constructive critic_.
        
         | yunusabd wrote:
         | Thanks a lot, all very good points!
        
       | pjmq wrote:
       | It was pretty cool to hear the broadcast reference this. 100%
       | think it should be more concise and have a greater depth of
       | personality.
        
       | cengizhanbasak wrote:
       | I would love to have a transcript of the generated podcast.
        
       | ck2 wrote:
       | vaguely related someone also made a Hacker News bot on Bluesky
       | 
       | https://bsky.app/profile/newsycombinator.bsky.social
        
       | crossroadsguy wrote:
       | Is there a way to filter out certain type of stories/submissions?
       | 
       | Or is there any HN filter or web-reader (if any) that can help me
       | do that? I know HN doesn't do submission tags but still if
       | something allows some kind of "type/kind" hiding/removal.
        
       | cthellla wrote:
       | its actually been done, but in slightly different manner
       | 
       | https://t.me/hninsights/836?comment=441
        
       | ProllyInfamous wrote:
       | Can you make one of the playback speeds 1.25x (it jumps from 1.0x
       | to 1.5x)?
        
       | gigatexal wrote:
       | I would like this except for it to be a daily podcast of the
       | unique set of links and things that made it to the front page
       | with more than 5 comments ordered by points and then comments and
       | then have that read out to me with a summary of the comments. Now
       | that. That would be amazing.
        
       | bangaroo wrote:
       | i think this is cool, i'm happy you did it... i really listen to
       | podcasts for the hosts, though. i think the banter and the
       | personality and the perspective are things that i really enjoy.
       | getting to know people through what they choose to talk about or
       | how they frame things is part of the whole charm.
       | 
       | if i want a fast rundown of HN, i'll read HN. you did make me
       | kind of crave a 15 minute weekdaily "morning news" style podcast
       | with some tech journalists that runs down the most talked about
       | HN posts, though.
        
       | mvdtnz wrote:
       | AI slop generator.
        
       | aanet wrote:
       | Fantastic idea, good implementation. Very valuable and useful!
       | 
       | Do not listen to the chattering nabobs of negativity in the
       | comments!
       | 
       | Your impl is valuable; gives a quick summary of top-n stories.
       | Useful for somebody who dips in/out of HN now and then. It may
       | not be for everyone (indeed, as various commenters have
       | suggested), but its useful for me. And it;s a great example of
       | marrying AI-generated summary with podcast style quick 5-min
       | summary. Just like listening to BBC news summary.
       | 
       | A few suggestions: - perhaps make it personalizable (based on HN
       | user?) or atleast provide an option to summarize top 15 (or 10 or
       | 20?) stories - offer a way to go beyond the first page of HN -
       | offer a way to summarize the most-commented stories
       | 
       | Good job! Happy to contribute if its on Github
        
       | nostoneunturned wrote:
       | Amazing, I would love to do a version of this for more niches.
       | Any pointers on how you built this?
        
       | tarwich wrote:
       | I'd love to see a list of the articles covered so as I'm
       | listening I could jump to an article and get more data.
        
       | ugh123 wrote:
       | Can the speed slider support .1 increments? I'd prefer 1.2x :)
       | 
       | Also, it would be useful to have an index of Stories on the side
       | for each segment and possibly locators within the horizontal
       | audio segment where index/story items are located.
        
       | rstat1 wrote:
       | Not sure this is something I'd regularly use just because I
       | prefer reading the news to listening to it, but I still found it
       | pretty cool.
        
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