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holdenc137

81 karma · joined January 22, 2020

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holdenc137··on Mazda suitcase car, a portable three-wheeled vehicle that fits in the luggage
Reminds me of Mike Jittlov's vehicle in Wizard of Speed and Time (1988)
holdenc137··on It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
I assume this is a double-bluff and the blog post WAS written by an AI o_O ?
holdenc137··on JSON River – Parse JSON incrementally as it streams in
I don't get it (and I'd call this cumulative not incremental)

Why not at least wait until the key is complete - what's the use in a partial key?

holdenc137··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)
Currently working on http://untamed.earth

Scratching an itch, the intention is that its a map, centered on the users that shows all (configurable) things of interest near by. Think of Atlas-Obscura but much more local - eg AO doesn't list every prehistoric burial mound on the planet, but I want to know where they are ;)

holdenc137··on BlackLotus malware can bypass secure boot
Perhaps we could ever so slightly dissuade malware actors by assigning less desirable names.

E.g. instead of 'BlackLotus' => 'LameEffort-12'

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
I put an episode up for each star-sign this weekend.

Most of them have had a 40-50 listens but the one linked here has 400+ listens!

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
Listened to a few podcasts, read a few - then tried to come up with some combinations that (I hoped) were funny :)

Here's all of the current 'starts' for the main prediction:

(Note they're all pretty non commital - so anything could come next)

A bite from a wild animal

A financial matter coming to a head

Completion of a long delayed task

A seemingly generous gesture

A sudden realisation

An agreement with a headstrong peer

An unavoidable slowdown

Being pulled between two emotional options

A sudden eruption of feelings

Investigating a proverbial - light in the woods

Involvement with a purely privte project

Making peace with the past

The chance of a big win

Todays socialising

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
The date was my mistake - the 'Aquariums' was for LOLs. (see also 'Librarians' and similar)

It's prerecorded snippets that came out of my mouth ;)

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
Totally agree. I think we're probably only a year or so off TTS that can put some proper intonation into a sentence - hopefully then they'll be indistiguishable from live speech.

I've tried to listen to books with today's TTS and it soon becomes really grating (To my ears at least). It only needs the tinyest slip every few sentences and you can't listen any more.

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
Sure.

For dates etc - you got it. I think from memory it would be 'Wednesday' + 'the 18th' + 'of' + 'may...' + '20' + '22'

For the narrative speech it would be more words in a file. There are plenty of files (EDIT: just checked 350ish files that cover all the variations of script that can be generated at the moment)

In general the TTS - part of the project is the 'art of the almost possible' (if TTS engines sounded really good - I'd have just used one of the shelf)

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
Time to start lobbying for a 'generated'=true/false flag on RSS feeds?

Also, I promise to only churn out inane content for LOLs.

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
Yeah my bad - trust the human in the loop to put date in wrong.

As to the point, its programming practice, perhaps a stepping stone to more elaborate content-generation systems, and jolly good fun too.

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
In a parallel to email spam-bots, we get personal agents which (by your choice) filter out the generated content and make sure you only get the real deal.

The fight is real.

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
The generation of the 'script' uses a kind of L-System - like production rules. There's a big file along the lines of:

[the podcast] = [intro] [main body] [outro]

[main body] = [main prediction] [lucky colours] [alibi] etc

// these rules finally break down to text, eg

[main prediction start] = "A bite from a wild animal" or "A chance encounter"§

So the script has lots of combinations and is semi random - but it should always make sense.

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
Basically it is real. Because the possible scripts that can be generated are known - fragments of speech (eg 3,4,5 word phrases) were recorded (so the intonation is free).

Would be great to do it with an off-the-shelf TTS engine but I don't think there quite there yet. I know my recording skills and microphone technique is rubbish - but if I knew what I was doing on that front - I think you'd be really hard pushed to tell it was stitched together phrases.

holdenc137··on Show HN: A fully automated podcast – actually 12 podcasts
I like your thinking :) I thought horoscopes (Because they are kind of repetitive) was a good first fit - because the scripts could be generated from stock fragments 'A chance encounter' etc...

I think when the little glitches are ironed out of 'real' TTS - we'll be awash with generated content.

holdenc137··on Vex – open-source visual editor for XML
XML you say? Send Vex it to the past, where it is most needed. ;)
holdenc137··on Check If Email Exists
It does exist, I used it this morning!
holdenc137··on Ask HN: I am building a bugtracker. What would you like to see?
Interesting,

Should you dog-food the bugtracker - or while your bugtracker still have bugs, does dog-fooding risk losing info... ;)

holdenc137··on Shirt Without Stripes
Wake me up when I can google "anything but crocodiles"
holdenc137··on Shirt Without Stripes
wake me up when I can google "Anything but crocodiles"
holdenc137··on Friend of a Friend: The Facebook That Could Have Been
Don't forget Solid-Server. Sir Tim's war rages on.
holdenc137··on Friend of a Friend: The Facebook That Could Have Been
Don't forget Solid Server- Tim's war rages on.