My name is Brad. Writing software, dadding, snowboarding, and whatever else floats my boat. Indianapolis 1986-2011, San Francisco 2011-2020, South Lake Tahoe 2020-present. I play guitar, rock climb, play disc golf, hike, camp, watch a lot of movies, read even more books, and have several other little hobbies. Day to day, I'm a web/application developer specializing in product development and currently working on SpecMade.com. I'm a former principal engineer at GrowthX.ai In previous roles, I co-founded and ran Soothe as CTO for 1.5 years, worked at Bleacher Report on mobile API's for 2.5 years, spent 4 years at Hired, was an original team member at StyleOwner, worked on wizard tools and CMS stuff at iGoDigital, and did front-end development work for Matchbook Creative. If you want to know more, send me an email!
https://matchbookcreative.com
https://igodigital.com (now part of salesforce)
https://styleowner.com (defunct)
https://bleacherreport.com
https://soothe.com
https://hired.com
https://coinbase.com
https://jeevz.com
https://tryrelease.com
https://growthx.ai
https://gnomebobon.com
https://specmade.com
Submissions
Show HN: Orate – On-device neural text-to-speech queue for Mac
orate.to
17 points·by bherms··19 comments
Open Source Smart Home Security Solution
store.konnected.io
5 points·by bherms··0 comments
Ask HN: Resources, Mentors, Advice, etc for advising startups
1 points·by bherms··0 comments
Gender Wage Gap Report 2017
techcrunch.com
7 points·by bherms··0 comments
Women, Work, and the State of Wage Inequality
hired.com
3 points·by bherms··0 comments
How I Got Full-Time Software Development Work at 16
medium.com
4 points·by bherms··0 comments
Perspectives: Shared views on client or server
github.com
1 points·by bherms··0 comments
Bleacher Report Cofounder Raises $6.5mil for Womens Publishing
businessinsider.com
1 points·by bherms··0 comments
Petition: Stop the Marketplace Fairness Act
chn.ge
1 points·by bherms··0 comments
Open Letter to Best Buy
myopenletter.in
1 points·by bherms··0 comments
Escalator Epiphany: Inefficient Design for Increased Conversion
styleownerdev.posterous.com
1 points·by bherms··0 comments
Show HN: Dynamic Placeholder (proof of concept demo)
Found the issue, published a new build, added a few features, and tested on a few devices now that I'm back home. Should be fully operational for you now!
Okay, 0.1.9 is out now and should fix the issue... I also added a way to report crashes, so IF it still gives you issues, let me know and please report the crash
Okay, 0.1.9 is out now and should fix the issue... I also added a way to report crashes, so IF it still gives you issues, let me know and please report the crash
On it! Pushed out a fix for something else earlier and didn’t go through a clean install to test. Should have a fix shortly. Just getting off a plane though. Will follow up when I have it nailed down.
Oh also, on the website, the first preview in the hero does give a real synthesized example I pulled using the app! Its not clear that the other screenshots are not interactive
The Chatterbox HD plugin actually does AI voice cloning, but I didn't expose it yet. That's a great idea to see if it can do different voices and I could clone some popular ones. Device sync is coming soon!
Can you paste your system specs here for me? It's running for me just fine and on a few other laptops here, but I am curious if there's something on your laptop that might be giving issues... It does require Mac w/ Apple M1+. Happy to debug and get it working for you!
Brad here - long time HN user, founder, engineer (Coinbase, Soothe, Jeevz, Release, Hired, GrowthX, etc)...
I have been struggling recently with too many tabs, emails, articles, etc sitting unread while I swap between Claude code sessions all day. So I decided to build Orate to help me work through the backlog by listening to it all like I would a podcast.
Orate allows you to select any text on your screen and keyboard shortcut it to a listening queue where it gets processed using the latest + greatest TTS AI models, and then read back to you in a mostly-natural sounding voice. Orate works fully on-device and offline. Whatever you pass to it stays yours. It's native, lives in your menu bar, and supports things like tagging, system playback controls, speed adjustment, and more. There's also an optional HD-voice tier that uses Chatterbox instead of Kokoro which ships with it for more expressive TTS.
I'm also burnt out on being chipped away at little by little with a subscription for everything, so it's just $4.99 one time and you own it forever. Use the code HACKERNEWS for $3 off, putting you at just $1.99.
As AI helped me nail down - it's "read it later, for your ears". I hope you like it!
If you have any questions, want more details, notice any bugs, or have an idea for something cool to add, just ping me! I plan to launch a companion iOS app soon to sync text between your devices as well.
It's currently Mac only, but I might whip up a Windows version if the response is good.
My fil owns a bunch of grocery stores in Russia. The gov't still essentially subsidizes the cost of basic goods to keep prices low for the poor. Because of this, even the poorest have access to what they need, and they worship Putin because of it - "he makes sure we're taken care of". Obviously we could get into the corruption, why they're so poor in the first place, etc, but it is clearly working pretty well.
Many people losing their minds over stuff like this... I'm just glad some people are finally trying out new ideas, because the status quo is not working for a large portion of the American population.
I just hope they properly track and monitor the outcomes and foster honest/open feedback. The gov't loves to throw money at problems, but never really does much to analyze, pivot, or admit when something doesn't work because that just gives the opposition ammo.
You're completely missing the point. The problem is people aren't collectively incentivized to do so. Individually someone can decide "oh wow, I'm lonely, I should get out more", but collectively there's nothing incentivizing everyone to do it, or even notice it's an issue. If there were, we wouldn't be in this situation.
---
"How do we solve the obesity problem?"
"Well people should just work out."
Obviously, that would solve it, but they're distinctly not doing that, which is why we're talking about a broader solution to actually get people to work out.
Yeah I'm very willing to socialize and actually do far more than pretty much anyone I know, even those without kids (but maybe not as much as a 25 year old just getting started in the world and living in SF like I once was). I'm lucky in that regard I guess.
YMMV I guess. I've got tons of friends I've made walking around the office and just dropping in and asking people what they're working on and introducing myself, or sitting at a table with people I didn't. Some are no more than acquaintances, but some are close friends now.
https://matchbookcreative.com https://igodigital.com (now part of salesforce) https://styleowner.com (defunct) https://bleacherreport.com https://soothe.com https://hired.com https://coinbase.com https://jeevz.com https://tryrelease.com https://growthx.ai https://gnomebobon.com https://specmade.com