dasickis

Loving all the new apps to show me when I need to get to the airport.

We could help you find a pathway there :)

Working on a dog collar that understands dog vocalizations: https://sarama.ai

The current app is being rebuilt as it sucks and the device is under active development.

We've gotten the following to work:

1. Emotion detection with barks

2. Cough detection (Kennel Cough specifically)

3. Identifying a dog from their bark

4. Video analysis of dog behavior

5. Identifying key parts in dog vocalizations (similar to phonemes in people)

6. Some basic intent detection (or what people call translation)

If anyone is good at μpython + TFLite and can help us transferring our models on device that'd be awesome. Currently our set up is super hacky.

Sarama | On-site (San Francisco, CA) | Full Time | Must have a dog | [email protected]

Fullstack Hardware Engineer: Build smart collar hardware stack - PCBs, 3D printing, battery-efficient firmware. We have prototypes; need you to own hardware so we focus on distribution. Need: consumer product experience, 3D printing, firmware skills. Python+

Canine Language Specialist: Ground AI models in real dog behavior. Design training protocols, collect data, teach dogs structured communication (buttons/vocals). Need: dog cognition experience, AAC systems, scientific mindset. Company: Decoding dog communication via smart collars using audio/motion/behavior data to understand what dogs are saying.

Apply: Email work samples, subject "{Dog's name} says {something}," explain what interspecies communication means to you.

Yes exactly! Thank you!

Looking forward to it! Did you sign up?

We might be shipping outside the US before the US depending on how tariffs are when we get off the manufacturing line.

Thank you! Really appreciate it.

Sarama | Canine Language Specialist | On-site (San Francisco, CA) | Full Time | Must have a dog | [email protected]

Company: We’re building smart collars and devices to decode dog communication—using audio, motion, and behavior data. Our goal is to understand what our dogs are trying to say and rethink the worlds of training, healthcare, and companionship as we uncover their language. We've trained models for dog vocalizations and movement patterns, and now we’re integrating behavior and intent.

Role: You’ll work closely with our engineering team to help ground our models in real-world behavior. From structured training sessions to experimental communication techniques (e.g. dog buttons, symbolic vocalization training), your work will directly shape how our devices interpret canine communication. You'll guide the design of training protocols, data collection, and help teach dogs how to speak using structured methods.

You:

+ Experience in dog cognition, vocalization, and training techniques.

+ Familiar with AAC devices or button-based communication systems.

+ Scientific mindset with hands-on experience.

+ Passionate about language and cross-species understanding.

+ Must have a dog (ideally one you’ve trained using vocal cues or buttons)

Apply: Send us an email with a video or write-up of your past work (bonus if it includes your dog using buttons or vocal cues) to [email protected] with subject: “{Your dog’s name} wants {something they want}.” In the body, tell us what interspecies communication means to you.

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If you refer someone to us, tell them to let us know and we'll send you a gift! (we aren't able to give a cash bonus just yet soon though)

Sarama | Hardware Autist | On-site (San Francisco, CA) | Full Time | Must have a dog | https://www.sarama.ai

Company: We’re building smart collars and other devices to translate dogs into our language—using audio and motion data. We want to know what our dogs want and are on a mission to rethink the entire healthcare & training industries as we better understand them. We are mostly software people and have built our own models for dogs (soon expanding to my new cats).

Role: Hardware, firmware, and software. Moving fast will be a mix of LLM, research, hacks, and rapidly typing. Build fast, no hand-holding. First product’s a warm-up. After that, it gets real.

You: Full-stack in the real sense (hardware + firmware + software) Fast, independent, opinionated Move fast, care deeply Must have a dog Culture: Obsessed with dogs. We’re building the interface for interspecies communication. Not just “pet people”— we believe dogs are family members fully including legally (we can discuss the changes in law on our call).

Apply: Send us an email with your portfolio (or something similar) with a picture of you and your dog to [email protected] with subject “{Your dog’s name} likes {something they like}” and in the body include what this tech means to you.

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Sarama | Cultural Savant | Remote | Full Time | Must have a dog | https://www.sarama.ai

Company: We’re building smart collars and other devices to translate dogs into our language—using audio and motion data. We want to know what our dogs want and are on a mission to rethink the entire healthcare & training industries as we better understand them. We are mostly software people and have built our own models for dogs (soon expanding to my new cats).

Role: This isn’t just marketing or vibes. You’ll shape product, brand, and behavior. You know how culture moves before it moves. You understand what dogs mean to us now—and what they could mean next.

You: Fluent in design, language, and social undercurrents Can shape narrative, product positioning, and human-dog interaction Unafraid to challenge Bernays view of the world Must have a dog. You live this. Culture: Obsessed with dogs. We’re building the interface for interspecies communication. Not just “pet people”— we believe dogs are family members fully including legally (we can discuss the changes in law on our call).

Apply: Send us an email with your portfolio (or something similar) with a picture of you and your dog to [email protected] with subject “{Your dog’s name} likes {something they like}” and in the body include how you see culture adapting.

You can set the minimum deployment to iOS 17 & then if someone has iPhone X*, 11 or SE then you can alert them to get a refund when they open the app either with a device check or total memory check. That'll set it so you remove most of the issues of older devices.

Source: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/models-compatible-wit...

Sarama | Fully Remote | San Francisco, CA | Full-time | ML Solutions Engineer, Senior Swift Engineer, & Senior ML Engineer

Sarama is the simplest way to implement multi-modal ML models in mobile apps, we're working with companies from pre-launch to unicorn businesses.

Apply here for Senior Swift Engineer: https://forms.gle/akLfCSo8Dij3KX5bA Apply here for Senior ML Engineer: https://forms.gle/QgLAB7VYZoqyQkPu6 Apply here for ML Solutions Engineer: https://forms.gle/ivCXVfsiUiSNmBRL8

Email any questions: [email protected]

Honestly you need to annotate datasets for barks and we're building this up with our users. Otherwise it's unclear what's happening even with video (we tried to build a YouTube/Instagram scraper and it was very unreliable even with vet tech annotations).

This is an April Fool's joke[1] and really good! We're doing this for real: https://sarama.app.

Reference: 1. https://www.laika.berlin/en/blog/new-client-barkgpt-ai-dog-b...

Correct. Dogs will vocalize and use touch with one another but the buttons are exclusively (at least from what I've observed) used for communicating with people. Though dogs & cats have specific vocalizations for speaking with people. Though we're now seeing vocalizations in new species that we didn't expect such as plants[1] & turtles[2].

1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-record-... 2. https://www.npr.org/2022/10/31/1132951238/what-sound-does-a-...

That's exactly right so you can expand the vocabulary of animals especially dogs with training similar to how they train dogs to press buttons. This research is much more extensive with captive dolphins and now we're seeing the same with domesticated animals.

We've been building tech to translate dog barks to something meaningful for us to understand.

A few things we observed: 1. Dogs are more communicative once they believe you are correctly responsive to their vocalizations 2. Their barks are more differentiated over time and they start to introduce new types of vocalizations or sequences of vocalizations 3. Dogs don't have a structured vocal language as it starts of slightly differentiated and mostly to get people's attention

This isn't true for other animals (based on our reading of academic papers) and a commonality we've seen in the papers: as animals have more individuals they interact with across their life especially not directly related, their vocalizations are more structured. Within family units they tend to rely more on touch, body language, and some intermittent vocalizations. Though marine mammals are very vocal given they operate within acoustic environments in the ocean and it gets dark around 100m - 200m.

Basically, as number of sustained individuals in a group goes up and the number of non-related individuals increases, vocalizations get more diverse. We see cows, pigs, goats, and other herd animals are also very vocal which is how scientists have been decoding their speech recently similar to prairie dogs.

Much of what I've written here is a super simplification but happy to get deeper into the weeds.

SEEKING FREELANCER

Sarama | Bioacoustics Engineer | REMOTE (anywhere)

We're developing a vocal language between dogs & people using ML to analyze barks to decipher which ones convey meaning. We've spent the last few years understanding how to iterate on interspecies communication. We're looking for someone who deeply understands audio data and a huge plus if you've done work with non-human audio datasets.

Working on a new app design and new features to improve adding barks to our corpus.

[email protected]

Sarama | Flutter Engineer | REMOTE (anywhere) | Full-Time We're developing a vocal language between dogs & people using ML to analyze barks to decipher which ones convey meaning. We've spent the last few years understanding how to iterate on interspecies communication. We're looking for someone who deeply understands audio data and a huge plus if you've done work with non-human audio datasets.

We're publicly launching our app with our new design.

[email protected]

Sarama | Bioacoustics Engineer | REMOTE (anywhere) | Full-Time

We're developing a vocal language between dogs & people using ML to analyze barks to decipher which ones convey meaning. We've spent the last few years understanding how to iterate on interspecies communication. We're looking for someone who deeply understands audio data and a huge plus if you've done work with non-human audio datasets.

Our website is still being developed but we have users actively using our alpha product and are rapidly iterating on our beta release.

[email protected]

you'd be interested in joining orcasound slack: https://join.slack.com/t/orcasound/shared_invite/zt-bd1jk2q9...

We basically just talk about orcas and how we can decode their language moving towards bidirectional comm.

For this you can use our membership token (which uses HN profile): https://opensea.io/collection/alumni-gems

Also we verify very similarly to you: https://badge.orangedao.xyz/

We have a solution here, email me: [email protected] and we've worked out all the challenges with integrating with HN.

Fascinating! Going to use this in one of my projects.

SEEKING FREELANCER | $8,000USD (negotiable)

I'm developing software to autogenerate lyric music videos with alignment models. Currently we're using Kaldi under the hood and need some help on training new Kaldi models especially with sung english words. Additionally, we have on-going work afterward for multi-lingual and many-language support in the same song. The first project is to develop a relationship and then work on bigger milestones.

Email: [email protected] with subject: "Kaldi Project Freelance Work"

you can go to a community with high vaccine hesitancy or you know actually click the links I posted

read the papers I linked and you'll realize that these sites have challenges with getting people vaccinated due to lack of trust in government and healthcare in general

it's been 3 months since that clinic and many people here are still hesitant to get vaccinated

these issues remain because few people understand how deep distrust runs especially in Oakland where people have seen the massive destruction caused by government agencies

Since most of these self-righteous comments below still have no idea what they're talking about. The site was for overflow of vaccines that were going unused & being thrown out. The Oakland Coliseum is one of these mega-sites. So many of you don't understand the on-the-ground realities of the communities you're speaking of where I live. I see my neighbors and when FEMA is running these sites they know their goals. It's not unethical to follow the guidelines and get jabbed. Also the line was most exclusively healthy adults coming in from all around California. Clearly I didn't invite 800 people myself from a deleted post on an internal forum.

Also on the Monday before the FEMA agents were telling me they had less people than vaccines, Tuesday they barely covered the people with vaccines, and Wednesday (when I got it) onwards they had slightly more demand when they asked people to tell their friends.

It's up to governments to enforce rules around their clinics instead of moral crusaders that live across the country with no on-the-ground experience to tweet an internal post to generate outrage.

Here are articles around why there was so few people getting vaccinated in our area and why FEMA requested us ask our friends to show up.

"COVID-19 Vaccination Hesitancy in the United States: A Rapid National Assessment " - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7778842/

"Addressing Justified Vaccine Hesitancy in the Black Community " - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009077/

I'm the person this original tweet was about.

None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying.

Here's the order of events:

1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the country.

2. I asked them about eligibility and told them I don't clear CA guidelines. They told me it's first come, first served with an ID showing I am 18+.

3. I showed up the next day, waited in line for 4 hours then got jabbed.

4. Posted it in an internal forum for other founders.

5. A few people had issues so raised them which I addressed but YC still took down the post within the day.

6. I appealed but YC still held their decision as final.

Outcome: YC founder came with his aunt, uncle, and mom all over 65 to get jabbed who didn't know about the vaccine site.

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Paul ends up tweeting about it and making a huge deal around something he has no idea about. He gets a bunch of people on Twitter upset about something they don't know about.

Outcome: Internet rage.