MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: 5MB Local macOS Transcriber App
by kaiwenwang | 2025-05-31 06:51:39+00:00
Most transcriber apps were cloud-based, didn't store original audio, had confusing UI/UX, required logins, and costed a lot per month.

Therefore this app is: - Low priced - No login - Native SwiftUI and MacOS APIs - Uses your own API keys for AI features

I was in a bit of a catch-22 after college because I switched into Computer Science fairly late, and I had health and family issues. It was either apply to tons of jobs (and have the possibility of no job even after applying to hundreds of places) or build my skills and an income-generating app instead.

Luckily LLMs got more advanced and I was able to build this without any prior experience in Swift in a few months.

In theory the lowest price and highest quality app should win over time due to just outlasting everyone else. I'm kind of confused how a lot of recent SAAS are charging $20 per person, but maybe consumers have more money than I'd expect for some things.

This app is just one step in a long-term vision I see society heading toward. Anyways, hope HN demands more from my apps! That gives me the drive to keep building.
by potamic | 2025-05-31 06:52:04+00:00
This is a problem even with a large turn out because swing voters are a thing and generally the target of manipulation. You may only need to target like a 1000 key swing voters to get your nose ahead of the other contestants. In fact, I would argue that making it easy to bribe would level out the playing field for contestants, otherwise the one with deepest pockets will tend to have the advantage.
by wenc | 2025-05-31 06:52:14+00:00
I type somewhat fast, so I labored for years under the impression that I already knew touch typing. But the reality is I didn't -- like I don't keep my fingers on the home row, and I make tons of mistakes that I mindlessly correct using Bksp.

I find keeping my fingers on the home row quite unnatural and prevents me from typing chords with Ctrl/Alt and Shift. How have folks overcome this?
by kergonath | 2025-05-31 06:52:46+00:00
He was extrapolating, as well. Going from children in the mines to the welfare state in a generation was quite something. Unfortunately, progress slowed down significantly for many reasons but I don’t think we should really blame Keynes for this.

> We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.

I think it has always been that way. Looking through history, there are many examples of turkeys voting for Christmas and propaganda is an old invention. I don’t think there is anything special right now. And to be fair to the working class, it’s not hard to see how they could feel abandoned. It’s also broader than the working class. The middle class is getting squeezed as well. The only winners are the oligarchs.
by GianFabien | 2025-05-31 06:53:01+00:00
It has become increasingly difficult to repair electronics. The components have become ever smaller and with higher levels of integration. You need access to schematics for the products and datasheets for the components. Of course, you also need sufficient knowledge to use that information. Then there is the issue of sourcing replacement components. If you lack any of the foregoing, then you will have to reverse-engineer the circuits and that is very difficult with multi-layer PCBs.

For any product with microcontrollers, you might be able to locate JTAG connections and use that to debug some of the functionality. But that area requires even greater amount of knowledge and experience.
by euroderf | 2025-05-31 06:53:10+00:00
They tell you to use words that the kid can relate to. So I made a set of flash cards with the names of body parts.

I hacked an HTML <table> so that the cards would come out in only two different sizes, and then laminated & cut them. Also simple words like left, right, front, back. I used font attributes to grey out silent letters and oddities like "gh" (this was for English), and I used <small> for the occasional unusually long word.

Then my kid and I played "The Body Parts Game". I shuffle the cards and go thru them one by one. Each card, I ask him to say the word and then point to the body part.

It went really well. It kept a 2yo entertained and he knew he was learning something important.
by mindcrime | 2025-05-31 06:53:57+00:00
What is the pragmatic approach in this mission?

There are a lot of good videos on Youtube, for one. Louis Rossmann has some good stuff (especially his older stuff), Dave Jones has some good repair videos (intermingled with a LOT of other stuff, though), and there are plenty of other channels dedicated to electronics repairs.

Having said that... you'll need to know at least a bit about electronics (qua electronics) before going terribly far with electronics repair. Much the same way that one could only get so far at debugging and fixing code, if one didn't know something about writing code in the first place.

So... there are, again, videos on Youtube. The Vocademy channel, for one, is a great resource for general electronics theory.

And books. Don't forget books.

I'd suggest, depending on your existing knowledge level, find a couple of books on basic electronics, load up some of those videos, get some components and perfboard and a soldering iron and some basic test equipment (a multimeter and an oscilloscope are a good start) and start building simple circuits. And gradually expand the range of circuits you build to become more complex over time. More or less simultaneously, start watching YT videos on "electronics repair". The thing is, there's a difference between knowing "the theory of electronics" and having the debugging / troubleshooting skills, intuition, judgment, etc. to diagnose faults. The two things are related, but are somewhat orthogonal.

At some point, find used junk non-working electronics, either stuff friends/family will give you, or stuff you dig out of a dumpster, or buy at thrift shops, or buy off of Ebay listed as "not working / for parts only" and start trying to fix things.

So basically... "learn theory / build stuff / fix stuff" in an iterative loop. That's about the best advice I can give.

I reckon it will be valuable in the future that comes.

I agree. That's one reason (not the only reason mind you, but one) that I've spent a modest amount of money over the last year or two, upgrading my electronics lab, in terms of tools, test equipment, etc. I mean, I do this stuff for a hobby, and it's been a nearly life-long thing for me anyway. But more and more recently, I find myself thinking that the ability to repair/hack/build electronic "stuff" will be a skill with serious value. I just wish I had more time to commit to it.
by lotsofpulp | 2025-05-31 06:54:13+00:00
What better way to incentivize young people to care about elections?

Would US voters have reveled in invading Iraq on flimsy premises if their own kids were at risk?

Also, armed services can participate in humanitarian missions along with the military training. Right now, there is no country. Everyone is doing their own thing, perfectly content letting the lower classes do the dirty work.
by NAR8789 | 2025-05-31 06:55:07+00:00
Wait, how common is it to not know touch typing?

Honest question, maybe a blind spot of mine. Touch typing is so integrated into my daily experience it feels like driving or riding a bike. I mostly learned to touch type in the 90s just chatting with friends on AOL instant messenger. I think of touch typing as something nearly everyone picks up just as a side effect of living with computers.
by y2244 | 2025-05-31 06:55:56+00:00
Pick up a used 3090 with more ram.

It holds it's value so you won't lose much if anything when you resell it.

But otherwise, as said, install Ollama and/or Llama.cpp and run the model using the --verbose flag.

This will print out the token per second result after each promt is returned.

Then find the best model that gives you a token per second speed you are happy with.

And as also said, 'abliterated' models are less censored versions of normal ones.
by lazyasciiart | 2025-05-31 06:56:09+00:00
> The labor protections are basically ignored (you will be expected to work off the clock hours in any white collar role),

I happen to have a sibling in consulting who was seconded from London to New York for a year, doing the same work for the same company, and she found the work hours in NY to be ludicrously long (and not for a significant productivity gain: more required time-at-desk). So there are varying levels of "expected to work off the clock hours".
by croes | 2025-05-31 06:56:17+00:00
Is it?

> In 1997, Italian director Roberto Benigni won Oscars for “Life is Beautiful,” about a father who uses humor to comfort his young son when they are imprisoned in a concentration camp. ”Benigni stole the idea from me, but he did it well,” Lewis adds.

https://qz.com/613084/jerry-lewis-has-broken-a-40-year-silen...
by eddythompson80 | 2025-05-31 06:56:48+00:00
This is a perfect example of snakeoil nonesense being sold in the AI tech market these days. People offering to wrap your LLM calls with another prompt asking the LLM to "reconsider" or "does this make sense to you", and selling you that artisanally crafted prompt at a premium.

This is simply an information retrieval problem. LLMs don't retrieve information perfectly from their context. They are very good at it, but every now and then they'll introduce a change here or there. Changing an "Hello" to "Hi" doesn't really make any difference, but changing an "PS/2 Model 286" to "PS/2 Model 280" makes a huge difference. The LLM "knows"* this at some level because it "knows" that names are important to be reproduced in exact format. But everynow and then even names can change and sill generally mean the same thing, so everynow and then it'll change a name or an identifier for no reason.

some of my favorite descriptions of this I have heard from people:

- We need to introduce a reflection layer

- We need a supervisor tree-like checks on responses

- We need an evaluation-feedback mechanism for AI operations

- We need to agents that operates and judges/supervisors/evaluators

all apparently mean:

const response = await getChatResponse([...messages, newMsg]); const {didGood, why} = await getChatResponse([RolePlayLikeAMeanJudgePromot, ...messages, newMsg, response]) if (!didGoog) { response = await getChatResonse([ThreateningMafiaGuyPrompt, [ ...messages, newMsg, response, why[]) } // loop like 4 times, maybe use different models and egg them on each other, like use Grok and tell it you got the response from Claude and that Claude was shit talking Grok all the way through it. Like it was unnecessary tbh. // this makes Grook work extra hard. It's actually been measured by kill-a-watt.

*: I say "knows" to indicate just that the model training biases it that way
by john01dav | 2025-05-31 06:56:54+00:00
I did enough computer stuff before kindergarten that I could type very quickly without looking at the keyboard or thought. I did hunt and peck initially, but as I used a computer more it just got faster. When I think of any character I immediately know where on the keyboard it is. This is even if I can't see the keyboard, since the layout of any local area is uncommon enough to quickly and automatically orient. My kindergarten had a class where they wanted to teach touch typing. They did it via an automatic program where it'd explain some concept, then have you type some sequences to practice it. I decided to give this strategy (with the home row, feeling the bumps, etc.) a chance. I was quite a bit slower with it. Eventually, I got frustrated with the slow progress and just sped through typing each sequence in the way that I knew how. I finished a few month course in like 30 minutes. Today I type the fastest out of anyone whom I know, beating many people who use traditional touch typing methods.

From this anecdote, I hope to show that it is possible to learn to type well with general keyboard use. Note that this is the very skill where it's useful. So, I posit: touch typing doesn't need to be taught because the people who use a keyboard enough to benefit from it will learn something better automatically.
by flomo | 2025-05-31 06:57:34+00:00
I had a question about my car, so I googled '[year] [make] [model] [feature]'. This seems like the sort of thing that Google had always absolutely nailed. But now, 90% of the page was ai slop about wrong model, wrong year, even the wrong make. (There was one youtube which was sorta informative, so some credit.)

But way way down on at the very the bottom of the page, there was the classic google search answer on a totally unrelated car forum. Thanks CamaroZ28.com!
by gnulinux | 2025-05-31 06:57:57+00:00
Why not? Why do you think it's irrelevant? The reason why I included that is very simple: it models the situation I want to express exceptionally well. In "mathematics" we learn in school none of the discussion relevant to the "Halting Problem" really is relevant, which is very confusing to students who even paid attention in school. To make the situation even relevant, we need to start assuming (or realizing, accepting, whichever one you want) that there are relations in mathematics that are undecidable. If you have a model of computation, which will internally be constructive, in order to freely apply our knowledge of mathematics onto this model, we need to go back to grade school and replace every instance of "is true" with "is constructible in your model of computation/programming language" (or more traditionally "is provable"). Which means you need an entirely different reasoning framework. So, to "go back" to classical math from having understood the existence of undecidability as "home", we need to unassume this, which will be identical to assuming all relations are "decidable" within your computational model. It's not like they actually are (at least not to the extent you can compute within). Homotopy theory is the exact thing that's developed to explain situations such as this one. Why not just use it? I apologize if anything I say is wrong or misleading, I'd be happy if you can clarify.
by bawolff | 2025-05-31 06:58:16+00:00
No, landlords will increase rent as much as they can because they like money (they call it capitalism for a reason). This is true of all goods, both essential and non-essential. All businesses follow the rule of supply and demand when setting prices or quickly go out of business.

In the scenario being discussed - if a bunch of companies hired a whole bunch of lawyers, markerters, etc that might make salaries go up due to increased demand (but probably not super high amoung as tech isnt the only industry in the world). That still first requires companies to be hiring more of these types of people for that effect to happen, so we should still see some of the increased output even if there is a limiting factor. We would also notice the salaray of those professions going up, which so far hasn't happened.
by larodi | 2025-05-31 06:59:02+00:00
indeed, back in the day i'd love to write perl code such as

this() and that() or otherr() and fail();

so this all seems very reasonable, and clear, and people who read the code hated it. I've tried many times to do it in JS sadly it does not work:

a && b || do { console.log (err) }

but this all does not make it easier to read, but makes it only very likely to outsmart yourself.

some code is algorithmically more beautiful than other, more declarative perhaps. but going away from the common understanding of trivial stuff, does not always benefit the group or the project.
by notepad0x90 | 2025-05-31 06:59:17+00:00
You know, I'm not convinced "we" should care. People get to choose their romantic partners, and they can set any standards they want. If anyone feels entitled over other people's sexual choices, they should either seek help or be treated as potential criminals, because that is a very rapey intent.

Maybe they just want attention or they're just lonely, which is a very real epidemic. Lots could be said about the state of society, such as lack of the "third space", loneliness capitalism, declining birth rates and more. But people will always get to choose their romantic partners, else it's rape because it is non-consensual. Forming groups over rapey entitled whining is not something that should be "cared about" but treated as harmful and dangerous.

There is nothing wrong with not having a romantic partner. and frankly, people need to get along with themselves first before all that. It's very sad that they don't realize there is so much more to life beyond sex and romance.

But in the end, society owes individuals nothing when it comes to finding romantic partners. it would benefit society if more people paired up, it's healthier for everyone involved and for society at large. But the strict social law that must be upheld is that individuals either adapt to the preferences of their desired romantic partners or to living a celibate life and all the consequences that come with that. There is no third option that is valid. They're not involuntary celibates, they are voluntarily maladapted.

A lot of these people don't see potential romantic partners as people, simple humans like themselves, but as boxes to check or a trophy to win in a game. Whatever the cause or reason is, they feel like if they play by the rules of a certain game, then they are entitled to a romantic partner as a reward.

My main point being, society/"we" must take a strong stance against this nonsense and say that we really don't care about people who refuse to get help and are holding hostile and harmful beliefs. They can accept that the world owes them nothing in this regard, they can seek help to arrive at that same conclusion or be treated as dangerous elements of society who should expect hostility not "care" or attention.
by kergonath | 2025-05-31 06:59:44+00:00
Quality control, for one. The state of commercial software is appalling. Writing code itself is not enough to get a useable piece of software.

LLMs are also not very useful for long term strategy or to come up with novel features or combinations of features. They also are not great at maintaining existing code, particularly without comprehensive test suites. They are good at coming up with tests for boiler plate code, but not really for high-level features.
by imtringued | 2025-05-31 06:59:55+00:00
Read the article before spouting lies. Actually never mind that.

Read the damn comment you're responding to. There have been human written kernels for both fp16 and fp32 for a long time.

Here is the corrected version of your comment:

"Wow, so, you're basically saying the AI created the same but faster algos in a well known domain with established pre-existing solutions, whose overall impact on the runtime of practical workloads is insignificant? Awesome!"
by runsonrum | 2025-05-31 06:59:57+00:00
I also had typing classes in the 90s which I believe helped but I was also eager to learn how as I didn't have a computer at home, so any chance to get my hands on a typewriter or computer.

I believe my touch typing speed come about with instant messaging applications such as AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, or chatting in mIRC. I felt the need to type as fast as possible to be able to stay in the conversation with many users or to keep conversation moving as naturally as speaking speed.
by ryao | 2025-05-31 07:01:40+00:00
> At over 2,500 t/s, Cerebras has set a world record for LLM inference speed on the 400B parameter Llama 4 Maverick model, the largest and most powerful in the Llama 4 family.

This is incorrect. The unreleased Llama 4 Behemoth is the largest and most powerful in the Llama 4 family.

As for the speed record, it seems important to keep it in context. That comparison is only for performance on 1 query, but it is well known that people run potentially hundreds of queries in parallel to get their money out of the hardware. If you aggregate the tokens per second across all simultaneous queries to get the total throughput for comparison, I wonder if it will still look so competitive in absolute performance.

Also, Cerebras is the company that not only was saying that their hardware was not useful for inference until some time last year, but even partnered with Qualcomm with the claim that Qualcomm’s accelerators had a 10x price performance improvement over their things:

https://www.cerebras.ai/press-release/cerebras-qualcomm-anno...

Their hardware does inference with FP16, so they need ~20 of their CSE-3 chips to run this model. Each one costs ~$2 million, so that is $40 million. The DGX B200 that they used for their comparison costs ~$500,000:

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-blackwell-dgx-b200-price-half-a-...

You only need 1 DGX B200 to run Llama 4 Maverick. You could buy ~80 of them for the price it costs to buy enough Cerebras hardware to run Llama 4 Maverick.

Their latencies are impressive, but beyond a certain point, throughput is what counts and they don’t really talk about their throughput numbers. I suspect the cost to performance ratio is terrible for throughput numbers. It certainly is terrible for latency numbers. That is what they are not telling people.

Finally, I have trouble getting excited about Cerebras. SRAM scaling is dead, so short of figuring out how to 3D stack their wafer scale chips, during fabrication at TSMC, or designing round chips, they have a dead end product since it relies on using an entire wafer to be able to throw SRAM at problems. Nvidia, using DRAM, is far less reliant on SRAM and can use more silicon for compute, which is still shrinking.
by gsundeep | 2025-05-31 07:02:22+00:00
We used Cursor + MCP tools like Cloudflare, Linear and Github to build and deploy a lot of MCP Defender, so I think the value is real. I had the same thought about it feeling like an antivirus/firewall many of us ran decades ago. Those always felt clunky and slowed down your computer. We'll try our best to avoid that fate
by mindcrime | 2025-05-31 07:02:42+00:00
You're not wrong. But still, a lot of gadgets can be repaired with some knowledge and effort, even if you don't have a schematic. If one just knows, for example, that very many faults are power supply related, and knows that problems with capacitors and transistors are responsible for a lot of power supply problems, you can accomplish quite a bit.

But yes, if you are talking about replacing BGA packaged high-end chips in very complex devices, there's a threshold were it becomes very difficult. But even then, if we watch some of what the different folks on Youtube accomplish repairing smartphones, laptops, etc., we'll see that some of these guys can achieve some pretty impressive results even without fancy labs and complete schematics, etc. Not everything is repairable of course, but I don't think pursuing this path is exactly "tilting at windmills" either.
by mdp2021 | 2025-05-31 07:02:55+00:00
The paradox is that that the "overview" is within a search engine, that should provide links to pages containing third party answers to the question; a rational individual knowing to suffer from bad memory would keep documentation at hand to verify its faulty-memory based intuition; the elements for the normal process ("get an intuition - if that is what you do - but verify it through (assessed) available documentation") are there but are not used.
by GianFabien | 2025-05-31 07:03:15+00:00
Touch typing courses focus on writing English prose. Programming requires a far greater range of ability with all the punctuation and special symbols. Then you have all the function and special keys too.

I wouldn't be too hung up on how it is taught. Once you learn the essentials and can type a sentence or so without looking, then you'll be fine. Personally, I just watch the screen and correct and make slight hand position adjustments without looking down at the keyboard. The fun trick is when somebody walks up to my desk to ask a question, and I continue typing whilst engaging in their conversation. It is sort of a file-write-flush for me, to capture whatever was on my mind when I was interrupted.