frasermince

Joined 12 years ago

Karma

Submissions

Member since

Jul 10

Recent submissions

I worked on a language learning app for about a year. I wanted to read the first Harry Potter in french and easily create flashcards. I iterated early on based mostly on what I wanted to see in the app instead of talking to people. I definitely should have talked to people much more and much earlier. Also I didn't have any other founders with product or design experience. In retrospect I would have really benefited from other cofounders.

In addition to this such an app is very content driven and the lack of being able to use anything other than public domain content really limited me. It's still up in a semi working state https://unchart.io. Personally it achieved my language learning goal as I was able to read most of the first Harry Potter in french so I will probably continue to add more features as a personal project.

Comment · 6 years ago

I think a lot of people in these comments are missing the core dilemma a lot of these tech companies are dealing with. How do you deal with rampant misinformation that might be harmful to society as a whole? I think moving to putting disclaimers on posts instead of deleting them might be the right move but it’s honestly just a hard problem.

Why Books Are the Key to Learning a Language blog.unchart.io

1 frasermince 6 years ago 0 comments

A Tool to End the Pandemic threadreaderapp.com

3 frasermince 6 years ago 0 comments

Comment · 6 years ago

While I think there might be a grain of truth here I really disagree with how he states it. He seems to be really placing higher value on the isolated genius who does great things despite society being against him. This seems to be based on a lot of pretension and dismisses people who do not think like him.

With how he defines conformity and nonconformity one could argue that the flatearther surrounded by non flatearthers could be a nonconformist. I would argue it's not conformity or lack there of that leads to effectiveness, but instead an indifference to conforming leading to a pursuit of the truth regardless of if it is mainstream or not. So I would say his quadrant system does not define the independent minded person he talks about later in the article.

I think he is in the right ballpark when it comes to pointing to the clear eyed visionary who is willing to look past the orthodox of those around them. But I think his formulation of such an idea is reductionistic. People I would view as conformist have their own worldviews and often pride themselves as nonconformists. Worldviews are a complicated thing and if we write off the majority of people as "sheep" or just part of the problem we become part of a contempt culture that can be really toxic.

Comment · 6 years ago

I love the clear eyed approach to what Haskell's future may look like. I look forward to seeing the fresh ideas the programming language community continues to bring forward in this area. Does anyone know if these slides came from a talk that was recorded?

Comment · 6 years ago

I'm working on a project to help people learn languages from reading books: https://unchart.io/ I've been using machine learning to highlight different parts of speech which I've found makes looking at a foreign language slightly less overwhelming. My stack is Elixir + React Native + Purescript + Spacy for the machine learning.