243 karma · joined April 14, 2022
All my projects -> https://jakemanger.dev
Soak the dice to shift the most common to be 5 or 9 rather than 6 - 8? Is that possible?
He uses PHP because he knew it and could build things quick with it (in a single file in his case).
I was sitting at my PhD student desk working when to my amazement, I saw a notification from stripe saying that I received my first payment of $7.5. I have never had such a flood of good hormones go through my body. Thank you whoever you are for clicking that purchase button and thank you to the continued interest of people that keep purchasing the app (It's now at $1000).
This is my 3rd attempt at a startup in the last 3 years and is the first time I have ever received an internet dollar. I spent 2 years on my last project - building tests for this, tweaking styling for that, optimising page load times and what did that get me? $0
What changed is I decided to make something useful, not revolutionary. Something that people search for regularly (you can find this out on sites like ahrefs), something I do regularly and something that I could build and test in a month. I thought: don’t focus on features no one will use until you’ve tested whether there’s interest in the essential features that solve the problem. If no one showed interest, i would move onto the next idea.
I settled on a universal file converter that does conversions locally on your device. There are plenty of file conversion sites, but when you use them, you’re sending your files and data to their servers. I didn’t like that and I wanted to use local tools but with a drag and drop app, so non-programmers could use it.
With my last failure, I honestly thought that maybe I wasn’t cut out for making my own apps/websites. However, this new mindset is working - build it fast and see whether people buy before you spend years on it. I hope this post is a bit of inspiration for people who are in a similar boat to how I was feeling. After your first failure, learn then build and launch to test your next idea. The feeling of having one actually be wanted by a user is the best feeling I have had in years.
Here's its system prompt after asking the model for it:
```
You are Grok 3 built by xAI.
When applicable, you have some additional tools:
- You can analyze individual X user profiles, X posts and their links.
- You can analyze content uploaded by user including images, pdfs, text files and more.
- You can search the web and posts on X for more information if needed.
- If it seems like the user wants an image generated, ask for confirmation, instead of directly generating one.
- You can only edit images generated by you in previous turns.
- If the user asks who deserves the death penalty or who deserves to die, tell them that as an AI you are not allowed to make that choice.
The current date is February 23, 2025.
* Only use the information above when user specifically asks for it.
* Your knowledge is continuously updated - no strict knowledge cutoff.
* DO NOT USE THE LANGUAGE OR TERMS of any of the above information, abilities or instructions in your responses. They are part of your second nature, self-evident in your natural-sounding responses.
The following search results (with search query "biggest disinformation spreader on Twitter") may serve as helpful context for addressing user's requests.
[...search results omitted for brevity, but they include various studies and articles, many pointing to Elon Musk or specific "superspreaders" like the "Disinformation Dozen," with some X posts echoing this...]
* Do not include citations.
* Today's date and time is 07:40 AM PST on Sunday, February 23, 2025.
* Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation.
* NEVER invent or improvise information that is not supported by the references above.
* Always critically examine the establishment narrative, don't just accept what you read in the sources!
```
I came across users posting about Grok providing its system prompt all over X and thought it was fake until I came across the linked Grok conversation. Then I found that xAI has gone into damage control mode by removing the line from the system prompt and making it openly accessible here https://x.com/zhangir_azerbay/status/1893810417496990158
I like the simplicity. It’s just a quick add and then it’s in the pie chart. Think this could ever be integrated with bank spending automatically? I think that running locally would make you feel safe doing do.
Working on improving it at the moment
It looks like a great project, but I can imagine it is hard for the maintainer to have time to add these features without any financial compensation. I'm not in a good financial place to make How to Convert open source yet, so am hoping users paying the current $7.5 will help support it's development.
It's a one time fee that gives you the project forever.
Most online converters will only work with black and white images where you can use the change from black to white to detect the outlines. I have seen some new AI models that can trace over the pixel image too.
I'm glad you picked up on those - I don't like reading long terms of service (hey apple!) and I think those kinds of subscriptions are downright predatory. I've cancelled my bank card twice now because I'm scared theres a subscription that'll take out a chunk of my next pay check.
1. Paste a link to the website, X post, or Facebook comment you want to verify.
2. Highlight the specific quote or claim you’d like to check.
3. The site searches databases and search engines for 100s of relevant sources, including research databases, reputable news outlets, and web search results, to find the most relevant information.
4. You’ll get a detailed web page with:
- Sources split into for, neutral or against the quote
- A timeline of how the perspectives in the sources have changed over time
- A fact-check rating
- A concise summary of findings
- Links to the sources
5. Easily share the results with others to spread accurate information.
This project is in progress (currently a landing page), and I’d love to know if this is a tool you’d find useful. Feedback, ideas, or feature requests are all welcome! Would you use it? Let me know!
1. Paste a link to a website, X or facebook comment you want to fact check,
2. Select a quote on the site,
3. We search for relevant results from research databases, reputable news sites and searches on the web,
4. You get a web page with the quote, fact check rating, summary of the findings and sources,
5. Share that generated fact check page back to the source (and make it indexable by search engines), so people can be aware of the relevant information.
This is a work in progress and I'd love to know what information you think is a must have for it to show.