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meerab

44 karma · joined December 31, 2011

https://videotobe.com https://PresenterPrep.com https://pitchdecklive.com
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meerab··on Ask HN: I need some advice on which CMS to go for Ghost, Framer, or WordPress
No CMS necessary if you don't have massive number of pages. Write content in Markdown and use Windsurf or Cursor to beautify.
meerab··on Buffett to step down following six-decade run atop Berkshire
Warren Buffett’s decision to step down as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO is both wise and timely, capping an incredible career that transformed the company and inspired investors worldwide.

Check out transcription of his speech:

https://videotobe.com/play/youtube/or0rgxnkOfE

meerab··on Video Capability for Google's Gemini 2.5
Multimodal (Specifically Video) testing for Gemini 2.5
meerab··on Gemini 2.5
The Gemini 2.5 model is truly impressive, especially with its multimodal capability. Its ability to understand audio and video content is amazing—truly groundbreaking.

I spent some time experimenting with Gemini 2.5, and its reasoning abilities blew me away. Here are few standout use cases that showcase its potential:

1. Counting Occurrences in a Video

In one experiment, I tested Gemini 2.5 with a video of an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Could the model accurately count the number of shots fired? This task might sound trivial, but earlier AI models often struggled with simple counting tasks (like identifying the number of "R"s in the word "strawberry").

Gemini 2.5 nailed it! It correctly identified each sound, outputted the timestamps where they appeared, and counted eight shots, providing both visual and audio analysis to back up its answer. This demonstrates not only its ability to process multimodal inputs but also its capacity for precise reasoning—a major leap forward for AI systems.

2. Identifying Background Music and Movie Name

Have you ever heard a song playing in the background of a video and wished you could identify it? Gemini 2.5 can do just that! Acting like an advanced version of Shazam, it analyzes audio tracks embedded in videos and identifies background music. I am also not a big fan of people posting shorts without specifying the movie name. Gemini 2.5 solves that problem for you - no more searching for movie name!

3. OCR Text Recognition

Gemini 2.5 excels at Optical Character Recognition (OCR), making it capable of extracting text from images or videos with precision. I asked the model to output one of Khan Academy's handwritten visuals into a nice table format - and the text was precisely copied from video into a neat little table!

4. Listen to Foreign News Media

The model can translate text from one language to another and give a good translation. I tested the recent official statement from Thai officials about an earthquake in Bangkok, and the latest news from a Marathi news channel. The model was correctly able to translate and output the news synopsis in the language of your choice.

5. Cricket Fans?

Sports fans and analysts alike will appreciate this use case! I tested Gemini 2.5 on an ICC T20 World Cup cricket match video to see how well it could analyze gameplay data. The results were incredible: the model accurately calculated scores, identified the number of fours and sixes, and even pinpointed key moments—all while providing timestamps for each event.

7. Webinar - Generate Slides from Video

Now this blew my mind - video webinars are generated by slide decks and a person talking about the slides. Can we reverse the process? Given a video, can we ask AI to output the slide deck? Google Gemini 2.5 outputted 41 slides for a Stanford webinar!

Bonus: Humor Test

Finally, I put Gemini 2.5 through a humor test using a PG-13 joke from one of my favorite YouTube channels, Mike and Joelle. I wanted to see if the model could understand adult humor and infer punchlines.

At first, the model hesitated to spell out the punchline (perhaps trying to stay appropriate?), but eventually, it got there—and yes, it understood the joke perfectly!

https://videotobe.com/blog/googles-gemini-25

meerab··on Show HN: I Built and Ran a DIY Transcription Service from My Home
For the past 6 months, I've been running VideoToBe.com, a simple transcription service using a single machine hosted in my house. My DIY setup is small, yet functional. I use the OpenAI Whisper Model to convert audio to text and send the transcript via email. You can try my service at VideoToBe.com.

First, I had to upgrade my desktop to one with a GPU. I had been exploring LLMs and generative AI, but my old hardware was not enough - in my upgrade, GPU is the most expensive component. I opted for the NVIDIA 3090 GPU, 62GB of RAM and AMD's Ryzen 9.

My Kitchen Table Tech Stack A GPU computer running in my home network

A front-end that uploads files to a Storage Bucket and adds the task to a queue.

A cron job that downloads these files

OpenAI's Whisper model create the transcripts.

A simple email system to deliver results

The service runs on my home internet, using residential AT&T Fiber. Since traffic is still low, my home internet can handle the traffic. Requests are added to the queue and processed one by one by server. The machine can run Whisper Large Model. The Transcripts are delivered via email. Since the delivery mechanism is email, I have wiggle room in terms of performance. So far, I am able to delivered most transcripts requests within 30 minutes.

What Did I Learn? - Scaling is overrated: My small setup has worked fine for 6 months. One day, I may need to scale — but that day is not today. Over engineering kills more projects.

- Users are nice: I used to think users were demanding and unreasonable. But when you set clear expectations and deliver, people are kind. Some have even given me marketing tips and encouragement!

- Monthly Subscription Fatigue: Most of the people hate monthly subscription!

Where Am I Right Now and What Next? People actually use my service! We recently crossed 10,000 transcripts. Many users keep coming back and send kind emails. Their encouragement keeps me going!

I’m now building a more complete product. My original goal is to build a system with video search, insights, and chat with videos. So far, I have worked only on the audio part — adding visual context is one of my goals and my next step.

Have a big collection of audio or video? Get in touch! I'd love to help you build your video insights media library. Have a feedback ? Feel free to get in touch at meera@videotobe.com

meerab··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)
Her answer - the poster can be female.
meerab··on Deeplearning.ai Courses: Product Demos in Educational Disguise

  A Candid Review of DeepLearning.ai's Short Courses
I approached DeepLearning.ai's courses with high expectations, drawn by Andrew Ng's stellar background as a Stanford Professor and now Amazon Board member. His contributions to AI education through Coursera's pioneering ML course were groundbreaking.

However, most short courses on DeepLearning.ai function more as product showcases than educational resources. For instance:

* "Building Agentic RAG with LlamaIndex” → LlamaIndex walkthrough * "Serverless Agentic Workflows" → Amazon Bedrock tutorial * "Building Multimodal Search" → Weaviate implementation guide * “Evaluating and Debugging Generative AI Models” → How to use Weights & Biases

Yes, these courses are free. But they seem designed to funnel developers toward specific commercial APIs rather than build foundational knowledge. Know what you're signing up for: hands-on product experience, not deep technical education. hashtag#AI hashtag#MachineLearning hashtag#TechEducation hashtag#DeepLearning

Thoughts?

meerab··on [dead]
I approached DeepLearning.ai's courses with high expectations, drawn by Andrew Ng's stellar background as a Stanford Professor and now Amazon Board member. His contributions to AI education through Coursera's pioneering ML course were groundbreaking.

However, most short courses on DeepLearning.ai function more as product showcases than educational resources. For instance:

* "Building Agentic RAG with LlamaIndex” → LlamaIndex walkthrough * "Serverless Agentic Workflows" → Amazon Bedrock tutorial * "Building Multimodal Search" → Weaviate implementation guide * “Evaluating and Debugging Generative AI Models” → How to use Weights & Biases

Yes, these courses are free. But they seem designed to funnel developers toward specific commercial APIs rather than build foundational knowledge. Know what you're signing up for: hands-on product experience, not deep technical education. hashtag#AI hashtag#MachineLearning hashtag#TechEducation hashtag#DeepLearning

meerab··on Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx
"The development process felt natural with Next.js" - the author

What part of this ReactJS syntax you find natural? Familiar Yes, Natural NO.

  useEffect(() => {
    const timer = setInterval(() => {
      setCount((prevCount) => prevCount + 1);
    }, 1000);

    return () => clearInterval(timer);
  }, []);
meerab··on Show HN: Simple API to Compress Large Audio/Video Files for AI Transcriptions
Well done! The project is simple and well documented. Deno deployment and micro service API approach is innovative. And thank you for making it open source!
meerab··on Show HN: YouTube Transcript Optimizer – Turn Videos into Polished Documents
I have been experimenting with making content libraries searchable. I found out that it is relatively easy to build one using a RAG solution (llamaindex or LangChain) and a Vector Database.

-Meera@VideoToBe.com

meerab··on Show HN: YouTube Transcript Optimizer – Turn Videos into Polished Documents
Great tool!

Founder at VideoToBe.com here. I built similar service, and it worked for a while. The moment it started to get traffic, it got blocked by Youtube. Your service may also get blocked when you start to scale. Your next iteration of document-centric version is more promising. It opens door to various use cases and isn't limited to YouTube.

I pivoted to transcriptions and AI summarization for user uploaded content.

meerab··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2023)
Location: SF Bay area

  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: ReactJS/NextJS, NPM, Python, Langchain, OpenAI

  Résumé/CV: https://askus.how/meera-bavadekar-resume/
  Email: Meera.Bavadekar@gmail.com or Meera.Datey@gmail.com
  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meeradatey/
meerab··on Twitter suspends pg's account [fixed]
The sad part was Elon's responded @paulg tweet with two ROFL emojis.
meerab··on California plans to turn the screws on NIMBY cities
This unfortunately true in California. NIMBY moment is strong.

Another perspective.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o (Love this channel!)

meerab··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2020)
Location: Cupertino, CA

Remote: yes

Willing to relocate: no

Technologies: ReactJS, NodeJS, Wordpress, APIs (Frontend focused)

Résumé/CV: Available on request

Email: meera@askteammate.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meerab/

Email is: meera@askteammate.com

Github: https://github.com/meera

I am front end web developer. I am looking for freelance/contracting work.

I am decent at scripting. I have automated workflows by sprinkling API calls resulting into saving countless man hours.

meerab··on Launch HN: Lofty AI (YC S19) – Real estate investment with alternative data
What is role of Real estate agent in your business model? Why would a buyer be willing to shell another 3% for a Buyers Agent?
meerab··on A story about Upwork and freelancers
You offered to pay very little - Increase your budget to get replies.
meerab··on Ask HN: Am I just a wantrepreneur?
Do it 100% was on the first lecture in Startup school.
meerab··on Startup School Advisor Track: You Are In
This is awesome!
meerab··on Startup School Advisor Track: You Are In
Startup school emails are confusing.

First I received a rejection email than acceptance email - I would have rejoiced - but the 'Get Started' Link goes to 'We will let you know by August 20th' page.

meerab··on G Suite Happy Ending
I have good experience with Google Support Staff using online Chat. Chat button is available on Gsuit Admin interface and on GCloud Console.

Google Support staff is well trained and usually quick to resolve the issue.

meerab··on Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?
Hello Pinusc,

About number II - I am in California and school calendar is hard to keep up. I am writing an app for it. I will be interested in knowing how you are approaching this - especially for Chinese schools.

My e-mail is meera.bavadekar at gmail.com Please feel free to drop a line.

meerab··on Sperm Count Dropping in Western World
If this theory was correct the males in India and China would be affected more than males in the western world.
meerab··on Ask HN: Teaching Code to Someone That Asked Me for a Job
One common mistake is to assume that 'only way to solve his job problem is to teach him to program'. If your goal is to make the man stand on his own feet, there are more than one way to do so. High schoolers have career counselors. Their job is to match student's interest and available careers. You are overwriting career counseling step.

You are saying 'Learn to code, that career path worked for me, it will work for you'.

meerab··on Ask HN: How to Hire a Designer from Dribble?
Visually, the middle content looks too bold and over the top compared with header and footer. But the UI looks intuitive. Can you share what technology stack you used (backend and frontend) to build it?
meerab··on Vinod Khosla Wants Californians To Keep Out of Martins Beach
Vinod Khosala should allow public access to the beach with slight modification. Just charge $3000 access fee per person. If state didn't mind previous owner charging $3, charging $3000 should not be issue.
meerab··on After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
I didn't notice person was women until I started reading posts in HN. Why bring gender when others are discussing method of learning?
meerab··on A friend died nearly 2 years ago. I had no idea
One of my coworker died of heart-attach two weeks ago. He had accepted meeting requests few hours before dying and had conversation with fellow co-workers. We couldn't believe that he is no longer alive.

His name is still displayed on my frequently chatted contact list. The thought of pining him or e-mailing him has crossed my mind so many times..

meerab··on The best founders are futurists
This reminds me of a saying in field hockey.

'Don't run towards the ball, run towards where the ball will be'

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