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Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language
Hi HN, For over two years I've been working on an App to learn languages (currently French, Italian and Spanish), together with my partner, a language teacher. I think it is finally ready to share with this community!<p>The idea is to introduce vocabulary and grammar whilst you read eBooks in your own language. I've found that it is easier to remember vocabulary 'in context' and with regular repetition. Plus you don't have to carve out dedicated time for language learning. Other apps require you to build a habit around various exercises or ‘games’, whereas lots of people already read books.<p>From testing with early users so far it's proving effective for building a basic understanding of a language and quickly getting to the point where you can read and broadly understand text in the target language. It’s even better in combination with other apps that help with listening/speaking like Pimsleur.<p>There were lots of technical challenges making this. It turned out to be (reassuringly) hard to get accuracy to an acceptable level, requiring a rabbit-hole into machine translation. There was a lot of testing required to optimise the engine that chooses the translations to show and to reduce the friction when reading books. And the backend to support uploading books is a beast in itself. I’d love to share details if there is interest.<p>Roadmap<p>- Accuracy - 100% accuracy is the target, but at present there can be errors. Feedback from users will be important here so that accuracy issues can be generalised and solved at scale. Errors can be reported within the app - please do so if you spot anything!<p>- Dynamic difficulty - rather than have a progression of difficulty levels I’d prefer to introduce vocabulary and grammar automatically in response to user progress, balancing against the friction of seeing unfamiliar words. There’s a lot ‘under the hood’ to manage this today, but plenty of room to improve.<p>- More practice features - to reinforce vocabulary/grammar and support writing, listening and speaking.<p>- Better eBook support - improving the formatting of eBooks within the app and providing more methods for finding good books to read.<p>Use of AI<p>- LLMs provided a step change in accuracy and have enabled a feature that explains translations and grammar to the user<p>- vastly improving the utility versus a year ago.<p>- I believe apps like this, which use AI to enhance or scale functionality rather than simply acting as a wrapper over APIs, will be the major beneficiaries as LLMs improve.<p>Take a look, and let me know your thoughts or questions!
Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language
Hi HN, For over two years I've been working on an App to learn languages (currently French, Italian and Spanish), together with my partner, a language teacher. I think it is finally ready to share with this community!<p>The idea is to introduce vocabulary and grammar whilst you read eBooks in your own language. I've found that it is easier to remember vocabulary 'in context' and with regular repetition. Plus you don't have to carve out dedicated time for language learning. Other apps require you to build a habit around various exercises or ‘games’, whereas lots of people already read books.<p>From testing with early users so far it's proving effective for building a basic understanding of a language and quickly getting to the point where you can read and broadly understand text in the target language. It’s even better in combination with other apps that help with listening/speaking like Pimsleur.<p>There were lots of technical challenges making this. It turned out to be (reassuringly) hard to get accuracy to an acceptable level, requiring a rabbit-hole into machine translation. There was a lot of testing required to optimise the engine that chooses the translations to show and to reduce the friction when reading books. And the backend to support uploading books is a beast in itself. I’d love to share details if there is interest.<p>Roadmap<p>- Accuracy - 100% accuracy is the target, but at present there can be errors. Feedback from users will be important here so that accuracy issues can be generalised and solved at scale. Errors can be reported within the app - please do so if you spot anything!<p>- Dynamic difficulty - rather than have a progression of difficulty levels I’d prefer to introduce vocabulary and grammar automatically in response to user progress, balancing against the friction of seeing unfamiliar words. There’s a lot ‘under the hood’ to manage this today, but plenty of room to improve.<p>- More practice features - to reinforce vocabulary/grammar and support writing, listening and speaking.<p>- Better eBook support - improving the formatting of eBooks within the app and providing more methods for finding good books to read.<p>Use of AI<p>- LLMs provided a step change in accuracy and have enabled a feature that explains translations and grammar to the user<p>- vastly improving the utility versus a year ago.<p>- I believe apps like this, which use AI to enhance or scale functionality rather than simply acting as a wrapper over APIs, will be the major beneficiaries as LLMs improve.<p>Take a look, and let me know your thoughts or questions!
Majority of web apps could just run on a single server
Aegis v3.0 – a free, secure and open source 2FA app for Android
Aegis v3.0 – a free, secure and open source 2FA app for Android
New Aztec Codices Discovered: The Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco
Linux Crisis Tools
Monolith – CLI tool for saving complete web pages as a single HTML file
Monolith – CLI tool for saving complete web pages as a single HTML file
SQL is syntactic sugar for relational algebra
The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)
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Pack: A new container format for compressed files
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SQLite Schema Diagram Generator
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Emad Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI
Game of Life, simulating itself, infinitely zoomable
Game of Life, simulating itself, infinitely zoomable
Mapping almost every law, regulation and case in Australia
Hey HN,<p>After months of hard work, I am excited to share the first ever semantic map of Australian law.<p>My map represents the first attempt to map Australian laws, cases and regulations across the Commonwealth, States and Territories semantically, that is, by their underlying meaning.<p>Each point on the map is a unique document in the Open Australian Legal Corpus, the largest open database of Australian law (which, full disclosure, I created). The closer any two points are on the map, the more similar they are in underlying meaning.<p>As I cover in my article, there’s a lot you can learn by mapping Australian law. Some of the most interesting insights to come out of this initiative are that:<p>⦁ Migration, family and substantive criminal law are the most isolated branches of case law on the map;<p>⦁ Migration, family and substantive criminal law are the most distant branches of case law from legislation on the map;<p>⦁ Development law is the closest branch of case law to legislation on the map;<p>⦁ Case law is more of a continuum than a rigidly defined structure and the borders between branches of case law can often be quite porous; and<p>⦁ The map does not reveal any noticeable distinctions between Australian state and federal law, whether it be in style, principles of interpretation or general jurisprudence.<p>If you’re interested in learning more about what the map has to teach us about Australian law or if you’d like to find out how you can create semantic maps of your own, check out the full article on my blog, which provides a detailed analysis of my map and also covers the finer details of how I built it, with code examples offered along the way.