dwilding
dwilding on Hacker News
Thanks! Earlier in the project I tried to find a way to generate English but with Chinese grammar - something like “you need to grab your shoelaces and tie them well” - as a way to help memorize grammatical structures. But I didn’t get very far with that. For one reason, I couldn’t coax an LLM to output such unnatural English (!)
So in the end I decided that I can ask GPT-4 to explain alternative structures based on the translation I get
Ideally, I would like to find a reliable way to directly transform my first attempt at an expression into a native-level expression, without necessary routing via English. It didn’t seem doable with the LLMs I tried so far, but there are others I can try, and maybe some training would help too - as you say
My pleasure, glad you like it!
I use GPT-4 for this kind of exposition too. If you haven’t come across Pleco [1] yet, I can highly recommend it. It’s a high quality Chinese-English dictionary with a lot of helpful features for reading Chinese
One feature I use a lot is the clipboard reader, which lets you step through Chinese text character by character and shows you the meaning of each character. It can be faster than using an LLM, but you don’t get the whole-sentence meaning or the ability to ask follow-up questions like you can with an LLM. But it’s a great app all round (some features are paid)
[1] https://www.pleco.com/
Happy to share, thanks!
I also use GPT-4 for explaining the meaning of sentences in more detail (as in JimDabell’s comment). Often my questions are like “how would a native speaker say this colloquially” - I’ve found it really valuable to be able to have a back-and-forth on why something works the way it does
That’s awesome! I hope you have fun too :)
Just for fun, I’m trying to force it to misinterpret what I’m saying by changing “dei tie” to “di tie” (as in subway). It really doesn’t want to interpret it differently! I think “shoelaces” must be such a strong signal of context for the LLM
After working on this project, I’ve started using MS translate as my go-to app if I want to translate an existing sentence. Previously I tended to use Google Translate by default. But I’ve genuinely been surprised by the differences between the apps
I have seen some variation in the interpretation - although it does seem to be pretty consistent. When I enter “服了u” into unscrambler I get the interpretation “I give up” every time I try it
I’ll check out those models - thank you!
According to my wife (a Chinese native speaker), GPT-3.5 is bad at outputting Chinese but GPT-4 does a good job
Thanks for the kind words!
I’ve found it very helpful for staying in the zone and getting better at “thinking” in Chinese
If you start learning Chinese again in the future, I hope you find it useful too!
Posted by
dwilding on Friday March 08, 2024 @05:15PM
from the show-hn dept.
https://unscrambler.dpw.me/
Hi HN! In trying to improve my Chinese skills, I built this tool that lets me write a mix of Chinese and English, then recommends a proper Chinese expression. This is super helpful when I want to write something in Chinese but I don't know all the vocab/grammar - I can enter my best effort and use English for the parts I don't know.Really, the fundamental benefit of the tool is that it...
As lavrton said in a sibling comment - simpler integration.
I can't speak to Dropbox integration, but every time I've looked at integrating with Google Drive I have felt my development effort growing, not shrinking.
Puter also seems to place a high value on privacy, which I like.
I agree, this opens up really interesting possibilities.
Here's my understanding of how it works, based on the puter.js docs [1]:
If I'm developing a frontend app that could benefit from cloud storage, I can load in puter.js as my "backend". I don't need to worry about user auth because puter.js will automatically ask the user to create an account or log in. I also don't need to worry about managing & paying for cloud storage because puter.js will take care of that on a user-by-user basis - including asking the user for payment if they go over their free limits.
I haven't actually used puter.js yet. But if I understand correctly, this could be a really powerful model. As the developer of a niche app whose purpose is not to bring in revenue, puter.js seems like a very reasonable way to pass on cloud storage costs to end users, while also reducing development effort!
[1] https://docs.puter.com/
Posted by
dwilding on Monday March 04, 2024 @07:27PM
from the show-hn dept.
https://unscrambler.dpw.me/
Hi HN! In trying to improve my Chinese skills, I built this tool that lets me write a mix of Chinese and English, then recommends a proper Chinese expression. This is super helpful when I want to write something in Chinese but I don't know all the vocab/grammar - I can enter my best effort and use English for the parts I don't know.Really, the fundamental benefit of the tool is that it...
Your app is awesome, it's just so satisfying to use. Really fantastic job!
My two cents on block insertion: Personally, I would love if Cmd+Enter inserts a new block at the very top
For inserting a new block in sequence, I feel like Cmd+Shift+Enter (splitting the current block) might already be enough - but I obviously haven't used heynote for long enough to have a very informed opinion on this :)
Maybe there's some way to make the behavior configurable?
I love the idea of interoperability between homegrown task managers. Another shameless plug:
https://frogtab.com, which I’ve been building, following similar ideas of minimalism. I’m definitely going to check out your app when I’m at my macbook - and would be super interested in exploring integration!
Does anyone use Kagi for Kids? The Starter level at $5/mo is enough for me so far, so $20/mo for Family is quite a jump. Would love to know whether Kagi for Kids is worth paying for
Yep, there's an entry in the hamburger menu called Help & Privacy - it goes to the /help page
Posted by
dwilding on Tuesday December 05, 2023 @05:57PM
from the show-hn dept.
https://frogtab.com/
Hi HN! I'm excited to share the task manager that I've been building and relying on for the past 9 monthsI started developing Frogtab after a particularly busy period at work, where a large number of ad-hoc tasks would need my attention each day. What I Initially tried was a single (long!) checklist of outstanding tasks, but I found that too overwhelming to look at all day long. Then I tried...
Honestly, I'd happily give my unused project domains to a fellow hacker who can make better use of them. (If interested, see my profile)
Posted by
dwilding on Thursday May 11, 2023 @08:22PM
from the show-hn dept.
https://frogtab.com/
Hi HN! I've been building a browser-based task manager to help keep me focused on my day-to-day priorities. My primary purpose is to scratch my own itch, but I figured that other people might find Frogtab useful too.If you're interested in learning how Frogtab works and how I use it, check out the walkthrough video: https://maybecoding.bearblog.dev/walkthrough-of-frogtab-task...Thanks!
Posted by
dwilding on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @10:22PM
from the ask-hn dept.
Hi HN, I bought viewfinder.dev for a project, but in the end I never used it (and I don't think I will anytime soon). So I'd like to give it away to someone who can make better use of it :)The domain expires at the end of this month. Email in my profile for anyone interested.
Several years ago I hacked together a little tool for exploring integer sequences that can be generated via matrix-vector products:
http://dpw.me/clear-the-deck/
Sadly it's not as functional as it once was (sequences are supposed to continue generating as you scroll down the page). If anyone's interested in lending a hand to get it working properly again, I'd love to hear from you! My email is in my profile.
I think you mentioned in the podcast that managing integrations is one of the toughest parts of your whole operation. (Apologies if I am misrepresentating what you said.) I can 100% believe that embracing failure is the only realistic way to handle this at scale.
But as someone responsible for producing API docs, it really pains me to say this! I know my team goes to great lengths to ensure that our API docs are up to date; we even maintain a changelog of every single doc modification, in large part because we have people integrating directly with our Swagger/OpenAPI based docs.
After a bit of Googling, it looks like CluedIn has an integration with us (Zuora). In case it can help you in any way, our changelog is available at [0].
Full disclosure: I work at Zuora, but am speaking for myself only.
[0]: https://community.zuora.com/t5/Developers/API-Changelog/gpm-...
I'd be really interested in listening to that podcast. Are you able to share a link?
Just what I was thinking!
I find things like this fascinating. Ever since discovering quines, I've thought that it would be neat to use some kind of quine as humanity's radio "calling card" in space. As a puzzle/joke for other beings to enjoy.
Just for fun I've mocked up what such a message could look like [0]. I'm not convinced it totally works... But in any case, I'd thoroughly recommend checking out the inspiration [1] if you haven't seen it already.
[0]: https://firstcontact.space
[1]: https://research.swtch.com/zip
Posted by
dwilding on Wednesday January 02, 2019 @04:57AM
from the firstcontact.space dept.
From the post:
> Originating in simple blog engines, static site generators treat pages as a single content chunk (often in Markdown) with some metadata sprinkled on top. If you need several long chunks of content (say, a product short description, long description, technical specs, and a list of vendors), you’re out of luck.
I've struggled with this too. I'd really like to write in unadorned Markdown, because I'm using Trello as a headless CMS[0], but I also want the Markdown to map to an object containing discrete chunks of content.
The solution I settled on is to map level 1 headings to separate properties. The content that follows each level 1 heading is converted to HTML and becomes the value of the corresponding property - unless the content is a code block, in which case the code block is parsed as YAML to get a nested object instead of HTML.
[0] https://github.com/dwilding/trello-kb