jkoff

Joined 15 years ago

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Member since

Mar 2

https://jonathankoff.com/

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Comment · 1 month ago

My wife and I made a daily guessing game together. Unlike others of the genre that we enjoy playing, an explicit goal of this one is teaching you about the world as you play it. It’s quite simple, using Wikipedia and factbook.json for information about the countries, but it incorporates a few ideas that I think are fun and there’s a lot I’d like to experiment with.

https://countryguesser.jkoff.ca

Comment · 11 months ago

I'm working on a web app that creates easy-to-understand stories and explainers for the sake of language learning. You can listen in your favourite podcast app, or directly on the website with illustrations.

https://infinitepod.app/

Most of the testing so far is English/French/Japanese/Mandarin, but I'm eager to add more languages if anyone is fluent and willing to help me evaluate the text-to-speech.

Comment · 1 year ago

https://infinitepod.app/

I'm eager to add more languages if anyone is fluent/able to help me evaluate the text-to-speech.

Comment · 1 year ago

Link: https://infinitepod.app/

I've mostly focused on Japanese and French, but I'm eager to add more languages if anyone is able to help me evaluate the text-to-speech for that language.

Comment · 1 year ago

Thanks!

Comment · 1 year ago

Thanks Adrian, that's helpful feedback! I've updated the page -- would you say that it now better answers the question?

Comment · 1 year ago

Link: https://infinitepod.app/

I'm building Infinite Pod, a web app that generates language learning podcasts tuned to your individual learning goals and level.

It's based on the principle of language acquisition through comprehensible input, as described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug

It's still a bit rough, but feels magical in my own testing so I wanted to make it available to others.

Comment · 1 year ago

I can't help but point out the irony of a chess program written in Go, as someone that enjoys playing Go [1] myself. Sorry to hear it wasn't that fun, hope you still got something out of it!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)

Comment · 1 year ago

While learning Japanese using a mix of comprehensible videos (I like cijapanese.com), podcasts, and shows, I've also been working on my own language learning podcast generator to smooth over plateaus and learn more specialized vocabulary. I'm getting more and more excited about it as a platform for experimentation with different teaching methods.

It's not available publicly yet, but works well for my purposes and I'm working on productionizing it. Sign-up page for updates: https://letmeknow.jkoff.ca/infinite-ci

Comment · 1 year ago

I first generate a script to be handed to a TTS model. For this step, Claude 3.5 Sonnet works well. For voice synthesis, I've been using Google Cloud's Text-to-Speech API and it's been adequate.

Comment · 1 year ago

To be clear, I haven't shared this with anyone because I'm not yet sure that the content is useful and correct.

As far as where I'm at: - I've listened to it in my target language for N hours. To my ear, it sounds correct and I've learned some new words that I then heard used consistently in native media. - Next, I'd like to set it to teach me a language that I already know, so that I can more reliably and easily spot errors. This will require some changes, since my target language is currently hardcoded. - Longer-term, validation based on languages I speak can't generalize 100% to other languages, nor can validation of version N make assertions about version N + 1. Correctness would benefit from native speakers periodically checking results, and usefulness would benefit from user feedback (even if only in the form of engagement or lack thereof).

Comment · 1 year ago

I did a double-take at the description since for a second I thought we were building the same tool. This is really cool, and seems like it'd greatly expand the set of podcasts I can listen to.

What I'm working on is different but similarly aimed at breaking through the intermediate plateau. I'm generating comprehensible input in podcast form, targeting the vocabulary used to fit a specific learning goal (e.g. "I want to be able to watch show X without subtitles") and systematically repeating the words at specific intervals to improve retention.

It works well as a prototype. I've listened to it for ~16 hours so far and it does seem to help me with vocabulary acquisition.

I'm still gauging whether I should polish and release it as a product, and would love some feedback and/or sign-ups:

https://letmeknow.jkoff.ca/infinite-ci?utm_source=hn

Comment · 15 years ago

Our entry is a fun bug tracker for small projects.

Try it here: http://uberpro.nko2.nodeknockout.com/

Info page: http://nodeknockout.com/teams/4e24c9fe4d4c760100001495