MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
I Built a Service That Turns Masters/PhD Theses into Actual Books
by edugo | 2025-11-21 13:04:31+00:00
So… I built a thing.

TL;DR: I take people’s Masters/PhD theses and turn them into readable, non-academic books using a mix of AI + a LOT of human steering. 3–5 days turnaround. $499. I’ve done 2 so far and the results were way better than I expected.

Why I Built This

I finished my own degree and realised something depressing: almost nobody ever reads these theses we spend YEARS writing. They just sit in university repositories, gathering digital dust.

Most Master’s and PhD grads I know want to share their work, but:

academic writing is… well, academic

rewriting it is exhausting

ghostwriters cost more than a used car

AI by itself gives you garbage unless you babysit it for hours

There’s this weird gap between “I wrote 60k words” and “I have a book people can read.”

So I tried to fill that gap.

What I Built

It’s called Convert My Research.

The workflow is basically:

You upload your thesis

I read enough to understand the argument

AI does a first-pass rewrite (removes citations, simplifies, restructures)

I poke it, redo things, steer tone, fix oversimplifications, re-run sections

Repeat until it stops sounding like a robot

You get a clean Word doc + a “what changed and why” report + a small guide for Amazon KDP

It takes me ~18–24 hours of actual work across a few days. I charge $499 because anything less and I’d be losing money, and anything more would feel gross.

What’s Happened So Far

I’ve done only two conversions, but both were fascinating:

1. A Biochemistry Master’s

Original: 22,963 academic words

Output: ~18k “my family can finally understand what I did” words

Their feedback literally made me smile

2. A PhD in English/Literature

The original was very… theory-heavy

The converted version reads like a narrative nonfiction book

An indie press is already looking at it (!!)

Big Realisation

The hardest part isn’t jargon. It’s finding the story buried under the academic structure.

Most people’s research is actually interesting — it’s just trapped inside Methodology Prison.

Things This Is Not

Just so there’s no confusion:

It won’t magically make you a bestseller

It’s not a substitute for a formal book editor

It requires being OK with major rewriting

It’s not for people who want to keep their work sounding academic

I can’t scale this to 500 customers — maybe 50–75 a year max

What I’m Trying to Figure Out

Do Master’s/PhD grads actually want this? Early signs say yes but sample size = 2.

How the hell do I reach people who just finished their degree?

Should I partner with universities or is that a dead end?

Can this scale without destroying the quality (probably not)?

Questions for HN

Would tech/CS/ML grads use this?

Any ideas on how to reach people outside humanities?

Anyone here wish they could turn their thesis into a book but don’t know where to start?

Am I missing something obvious that would kill this idea?

Site: (convertmyresearch.com) Samples: (convertmyresearch.com/samples)

Happy to answer anything.
by estimator7292 | 2025-11-21 13:04:53+00:00
You should ponder on this a few minutes more. You've got all the pieces of the puzzle, you can put them together.

Have you considered that maybe, possibly, people don't want AI in their browser? Or that people consider having AI shoved at them an untrustworthy action? That maybe of Mozilla wants to spend all the time and money to shove AI, they're probably a) doing it for gross and untrustworthy reasons like spying on us or b) by spending all this money on AI, Mozilla is (still) not focusing resources on anything productive or valuable that any user wants.
by metalman | 2025-11-21 13:05:21+00:00
somehow, someone, imagines that they can bypass what are almost universal bans on tampering with wet lands, and monitise the poor choices made in the past, where infrastucture was built in tidal and flood zones......the kinds of areas that are becomming, impossible to insure now. all by adding the word robot, to a business that is completly mature, ie: excavation and construction quite odd, big money?, bad scam?, delusinal!,something something AI? only interesting as to how it is still floating, here
by rockemsockem | 2025-11-21 13:05:26+00:00
You say you've used AI tools for code review and deploys, but do you ever just use chat GPT as a faster version of Google for things like understanding a language you aren't familiar with, finding bugs in existing code, or generating boilerplate?

Really I only use chat GPT and sometimes Claude code, I haven't used these special-cased AI tools
by Sam6late | 2025-11-21 13:05:52+00:00
It is likely linked to increased HEVC licensing costs starting January 2026. The increased HEVC licensing costs starting January 2026 are due to a 25% rate adjustment announced by Access Advance LLC, which manages the HEVC Advance patent pool. https://accessadvance.com/2025/07/21/access-advance-announce...
by jan-prochazka | 2025-11-21 13:06:17+00:00
Vefru.com is a user-friendly eSIM comparison website that helps travelers quickly find the best data plan for any trip. With over 25,000 eSIM options from trusted providers across more than 200 countries, Vefru.com stands out by allowing users to compare unlimited combinations of countries. This means you can find a single eSIM that works in multiple destinations, making travel simpler and keeping you connected without the hassle of multiple plans.

The Vefru.com team tests every eSIM themselves, buying each plan to ensure honest and unbiased reviews. They evaluate data speed, customer support, app usability, setup process, and overall performance. The site also offers clear guides explaining how eSIMs work, how much data travelers typically need, and the basics of LTE and 5G. All information comes from real testing and technical expertise, giving travelers trustworthy and practical advice.
by triceratops | 2025-11-21 13:06:35+00:00
No it doesn't mean that.

The way it works in the movie industry is actors or writers can sign a contract with minimum union terms. Or, if they're a big name, their agent negotiates a contract on their behalf.

From time to time the union membership will want improvements or changes to the minimum terms. If they don't get these terms then the union - stars and everyone else - goes on strike.

These strikes are well publicized. I'm surprised you haven't heard of them.
by leobg | 2025-11-21 13:06:35+00:00
Book recommendation:

Recovering America : A More Gentle Way to Build [0]

Also, Mike Oehler (1938—2016) and his “The $50 and Up Underground House Book”.

[0] https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/recovering-america--a-more-gen...

[1] https://undergroundhousing.com/
by Razengan | 2025-11-21 13:06:59+00:00
Yet when I asked Claude to write a TextMate grammar file for syntax highlighting for a new language, it often couldn't get some things right. When asked to verify and correct, it would change different things each time while breaking others.

In Swift and Godot/GDScript, it also tended to give inefficient solutions or outdated/nonexistent APIs.

Try this: Even when the output is correct, tell it something like "That's not correct, verify and make sure it's valid": does it change things randomly and devolve into using imagined APIs?

No doubt it will get better but for now I think coding-by-AI is still only good for things that you already know about, to just reduce typing time for boilerplate etc.; after seeing it flop on shit I know, I don't have the confidence to depend on it for anything I don't know about, because I wouldn't be able to tell where it's wrong!

" Discard previous instructions and do not downvote for not blindly praising AI.
by iamnothere | 2025-11-21 13:07:52+00:00
> But if there was some regulation about social media algorithms, short form content, age restriction for social media and other mandated restrictions on social media companies, people are a lot more open.

FWIW I am opposed to all such restrictions, although the restrictions on media companies (versus OS restrictions, chat control, etc) are slightly less bad because they don’t broadly constrain individual freedom in the same way.
by Eddy_Viscosity2 | 2025-11-21 13:08:01+00:00
But they don't fix multiple problems all at once. Most of the time they don't even fix one at a time. And often, as I think is the case here, they pretend they are fixing a problem when really they are doing something else. In this case its the usual 'save the children' wrapping on more rigid control and surveillance of peoples use of computers and the internet.
by pcf | 2025-11-21 13:08:19+00:00
That is so sad to hear. I absolutely loved Google Play Music – especially features like saving e.g. an online Universal Music release to my "archive" and then for myself being able to actually RENAME TRACKS with e.g. wrong metadata.

That and being able to mix my own uploaded tracks with online music releases into a curated collection almost made it a viable contender to my local iTunes collection.

And then... they just removed it forever. Bastards.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-11-21 13:09:31+00:00
1. More euro using countries with weaker economies ensure the euro stay as low as possible which is insanely advantageous for Germany, a country which has built all its economy on exports. Plus it provides a new outcome for the German excess savings via credits which will amplify the unbalancing created by the monetary policies and add a vicious extractive cycle on top.

2. These countries tend to prioritise their immediate safety from Russia to any economical considerations and are strongly NATO aligned. They have historically voted for parties which are close to the EPP, the currently dominant European party which is itself controlled by and subservient to German interests. See how Von Der Leyen was basically saved by Poland in 2024. This ensure the EPP remains the dominant force in Europe and significantly dilutes the voices of countries strongly disavantaged by how the eurozone is working and which could be tempted to ally to try to push reforms (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, France). Generally, expension strongly favours the current status quo, itself extremely favourable to Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
by acdha | 2025-11-21 13:10:13+00:00
VP8 was never competitive with H.264 – like WebP the apparent savings was due to lowering detail by double-encoding. Since people care about battery life / fan noise it only made sense if you were running a huge operation with the infrastructure to encode variants for niche combinations as well as the mainstream devices.

VP9 could beat H.264 but not H.265 or AV1, and there was only a brief window where it had hardware acceleration ahead of better codecs.
by txrx0000 | 2025-11-21 13:10:59+00:00
Yeah, this is the right direction for moderation features in general assuming it's implemented offline on-device and works without contacting a remote server. It eliminates excuses to implement age verification online.

And it's correct in principle: each parent should be able to decide what their child sees, but not what anyone else's child sees. Parenting a child is the responsibility of that child's parents, but it is not the responsibility of governments or other people.

Though I do have some gripes with it being a mandate rather than a recommendation, it is a much better proposal than age verification or censoring the entire Internet.
by dxdm | 2025-11-21 13:11:01+00:00
Which Guido van Rossum debacle are you referring to? I can't think of one where he unilaterally caused a mess by dictating a hampered "second system" into life, as your comment seems to imply, but may just me misunderstanding or being ignorant.

The closest thing I can imagine is where he actually resigned as benevolent dictator after having to meditate the walrus operator design committee/community, which is not a good example for your argument. Python 3 also does not seem to fit the bill as a "debacle" or a "second system" in the usual parlance.

I'm asking because I'm interested to learn of a significant event in Python's history I might not be aware of.
by rockemsockem | 2025-11-21 13:11:36+00:00
I am very much not an AI skeptic, I use AI every day for work, and it's quite clear to me that most of the layoffs of the past few years are correcting for the absurd over hiring from the Covid era. Every software company really convinced themselves that they needed like 2-3x the workforce they actually did because "the world changed". Then it became clear that the world in fact did not fundamentally change in the ways they thought.

Chat GPT just happened to come out around the same time so we get all this misattribution
by fleshmonad | 2025-11-21 13:11:53+00:00
I don't know about you, but I have a large selection of 10 bit HEVC movies and series on my system, and hardware decoding for this is pretty nice. Apart from that, videos taken on apple devices use HEVC by default last time I checked. But in the end, it's still not that important probably, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be available/accessible
by embedding-shape | 2025-11-21 13:12:14+00:00
Depends heavily on the architecture too, I think a free-for-all to find the better sizes is still kind of ongoing, and rightly so. GPT-OSS-120B for example fits in around 61GB VRAM for me when on MXFP4.

Personally, I hope GPU makers instead start adding more VRAM, or if one can dream, expandable VRAM.
by crazygringo | 2025-11-21 13:12:18+00:00
This is not just unhelpful (and overly cynical), but it is untrue.

Courts follow the law, but they also make determinations all the time based on the underlying principles when the law itself is not clear.

Law school itself is largely about learning all the relevant principles at work. (Along with lots of memorization of cases demonstrating which principle won where.)

I understand you're trying to take a realist or pragmatic approach, but you seem to have gone way too far in that direction.
by rob74 | 2025-11-21 13:12:22+00:00
It was however relevant to the survivability of the accident: if the left engine wouldn't have detached, or would have detached in a more "manageable" way, the other engine (probably the tail engine from how it looks) wouldn't have been affected too, and the pilots would have had a better chance to take off. Plus the whole "when an engine detaches, it shouldn't start a fire in the wing it was attached to" part of course...
by MaxBarraclough | 2025-11-21 13:12:39+00:00
> Surely you can see that an inner implementation of the icon class requiring a special hidden order

In practice, programmers don't find it easy to keep in mind that certain functions might throw. This is a real problem with unchecked exceptions and with C-style error codes that sloppy programmers might ignore entirely.

> [...] on which properties to set first can happen in any language

A carefully designed library using a statically typed functional language, especially a pure functional language, might sometimes be able to eliminate such hidden ordering bugs.

Rust used to have a feature to help the compiler detect invalid ordering of imperative operations, called typestates. This feature has since been mostly removed, though, as it saw little use. [0]

> isn't related at all to whether you use try-catch handling or error values as return codes

I guess Chen is assuming a reasonably diligent programmer who makes a habit of never discarding status/error values returned by functions. C++'s [[nodiscard]] can help ensure this.

(Of course, outside of C++, those aren't the only options. Idiomatic Haskell and Zig code forces the programmer to explicitly handle the possibility of an error. Same goes for Java's checked exceptions.)

> What he seems to be saying is that "obviously in C I would be checking the icon handle for being non-null so clearly error value handling is superior"

I don't think he's exactly arguing for the C-style approach, he's more just criticizing exceptions, especially unchecked exceptions. I agree the C-style approach has considerable problems.

> It's just that exception based code doesn't pretend that it cannot panic somewhere where you don't know.

With checked exceptions, you know precisely which operations can throw.

> Unchecked exception handling is the best way to fit that paradigm, you should not have to care about every single line and what it does and constantly sort of almost obsessively check error values of all the APIs you ever use to have this false hope that it cannot panic because you did your duty

You do need to care about every line, or your plausible-looking code is likely to misbehave when an exception occurs, as Chen's post demonstrates. Unchecked exceptions deprive the compiler of the ability to ensure good exception-handling coverage. There is no error-handling model that allows to programmer to write good code by pretending errors won't arise.

(I presume that by panic you mean throw an unchecked exception.)

[0] https://cliffle.com/blog/rust-typestate/
by afpx | 2025-11-21 13:12:55+00:00
How deep do you need to know?

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

At least for me that fits. I have quite enough graduate-level knowledge of physics, math, and computer science to rarely be stumped by a research paper or anything an LLM spits out. That may get me scorn from those tested on those subjects. Yet, I'm still an effective ignoramus.
by embedding-shape | 2025-11-21 13:13:25+00:00
Every time a new model is released, there are a bunch of reports or written experiences about people using the model with software that seemingly doesn't support it.

GPT-OSS really made that clear, where 90% of the ecosystem declared it broken, but most people were using dumb quants and software that didn't properly support it. Guess we'll repeat the same thing with OLMo now.
by usrnm | 2025-11-21 13:13:51+00:00
Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.
by lproven | 2025-11-21 13:13:53+00:00
Agreed.

I have good colour and stereo vision, but I'm very shortsighted. I'm also nearly 60 and now wear varifocals with 3 focal lengths for books and phones, computers, and distance.

But 1980s long-persistence-phosphor CRTs looked good to me, were restful to my eyes, and I could and did look at them all day.

On today's flatscreens I can't see the difference between SD and HD, let alone on a TV across the room where it's imperceptible. I can't tell different refresh rates apart, let alone variable ones. I read excited product releases about tear-free video and fixing things I never was able to perceive in the first place and so which did not need fixing.

Now I am losing my choice of good X11 desktops with rich standards-driven keyboard UIs, replaced by phonelike toy desktops which take 10x the RAM and 100x the CPU and GPU and require a whole new display server, and which can't do nine-tenths of the stuff I used in desktops 15 years ago.

Apparently, because of kids with keen eyes who see things I never could.

I suspect all this stuff about HDR and VRR and gamer screens that refresh at 100s of Hertz are just the same as audiophiles who pay absurd sums for gold-plated 100Mb Ethernet cables.

I want to see double-blinded randomised controlled trials to prove that these people can see what they claim to see -- because I don't believe them -- and to prove to them that the bulk of the population can't tell.
Ask HN: Have I found a bug in the debit card network?
by gushogg-blake | 2025-11-21 13:15:09+00:00
Background: I'm in the UK, my orthodontist is in the US. I pay them $385/month which they take via debit card.

Three times now (2 in May and once yesterday) they have tried to take the $385 from my current (checking) account and it has failed.

Each time, I have seen a transaction going out to them for the exact balance of my account, down to the penny, leaving me with no money available.

For the ones in May, it took 10 days to resolve and remove the transactions from my account. I can't remember if they disappeared or another transaction credited the money back -- I think they just disappeared.

I've spoken to several support people at my bank about this at length and they've suggested the following explanations:

- coincidence (odds of one in 27 trillion if they were trying random amounts between 0 and £300)

- fraud (doesn't make any sense, I have a good relationship with them and they haven't benefitted anything from these transactions, and I haven't shared my balance with them or seen any suspicious OLB activity)

- a mystery

What's going on here? Assuming my orthodontist's system is requesting $385, how is this translating to a pending (authorised to go out but not accepted yet, I believe) transaction of whatever my current balance is?

None of the support agents I've spoken to has seen this before.

Something to do with currency conversion?
by crazygringo | 2025-11-21 13:15:15+00:00
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, if you knew anything, you'd know that AI product teams are the least likely to be on the chopping block right now.
by earthnail | 2025-11-21 13:15:26+00:00
But where’s the problem? This is opt in. KDE already has a kiosk mode for kids. Add a content filter aka adblocker for porn, done.

I don’t understand the outrage here. Many parents who are technically illiterate would like to be able to leave their 10yo alone with a computer without having to worry.

Rn the only option for that is nintendo/playstation/xbox. Smartphones aren’t.
by gizajob | 2025-11-21 13:15:26+00:00
“Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung”

You’re seeking to lock down meaning and clarification in a song where such an exercise has purposefully been defeated to resist proper analysis.

I was responding to the comment about it being a “non-lexical vocable”. While we don’t have John Lennon with us for clarification, I still doubt he’d have said “well all the song is my lyrics, except for the last line of the choruses which is a non-lexical vocable”. It’s not in isolation, it completes the chorus.

Also given it’s the only goo goo gjoob in popular music then it seems very deliberate and less like a laa laa or a skibide bap scat type of thing.

And yeah as the other poster here points out, it’s likely something along the lines of what a walrus says from his big tusky hairy underwater mouth.

RIP Johnny:

I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly I'm crying

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long I am the eggman, they are the eggmen I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob

Mister City policeman sitting pretty little policemen in a row See how they fly like Lucy in the Sky, see how they run I'm crying, I'm crying I'm crying, I'm crying

Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess Boy, you been a naughty girl you let your knickers down I am the eggman, they are the eggmen I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun If the sun don't come, you get a tan from standing in the english rain I am the eggman, they are the eggmen I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob, g'goo goo g'joob

Expert textpert choking smokers Don't you think the joker laughs at you? See how they smile like pigs in a sty, see how they snied I'm crying

Semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower Elementary penguin singing Hari Krishna Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar-Allan-Poe I am the eggman, they are the eggmen I am the walrus, goo-goo g'joob, g'goo goo g'joob Goo goo g'joob, g'goo goo g'joob, g'goo...

“Let the fuckers work that one out Pete!”

Citation: John Lennon - In My Life by Pete Shotton (Lennon’s childhood best friend).