I really like dictation. For years, I relied on transcription tools that were almost good, but they were all closed-source. Even a lot of them that claimed to be \u201clocal\u201d or \u201con-device\u201d were still black boxes that left me wondering where my audio really went.
So I built Whispering. It\u2019s open-source, local-first, and most importantly, transparent with your data. Your data is stored locally on your device, and your audio goes directly from your machine to a local provider (Whisper C++, Speaches, etc.) or your chosen cloud provider (Groq, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, etc.). For me, the features were good enough that I left my paid tools behind (I used Superwhisper and Wispr Flow before).
Productivity apps should be open-source and transparent with your data, but they also need to match the UX of paid, closed-software alternatives. I hope Whispering is near that point. I use it for several hours a day, from coding to thinking out loud while carrying pizza boxes back from the office.
Here\u2019s an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jYgBMrfVZs, and here\u2019s how I personally am using it with Claude Code these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpix588SeiQ.
There are plenty of transcription apps out there, but I hope Whispering adds some extra competition from the OSS ecosystem (one of my other OSS favorites is Handy https://github.com/cjpais/Handy). Whispering has a few tricks up its sleeve, like a voice-activated mode for hands-free operation (no button holding), and customizable AI transformations with any prompt/model.
Whispering used to be in my personal GH repo, but I recently moved it as part of a larger project called Epicenter (https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter), which I should explain a bit...
I\u2019m basically obsessed with local-first open-source software. I think there should be an open-source, local-first version of every app, and I would like them all to work together. The idea of Epicenter is to store your data in a folder of plaintext and SQLite, and build a suite of interoperable, local-first tools on top of this shared memory. Everything is totally transparent, so you can trust it.
Whispering is the first app in this effort. It\u2019s not there yet regarding memory, but it\u2019s getting there. I\u2019ll probably write more about the bigger picture soon, but mainly I just want to make software and let it speak for itself (no pun intended in this case!), so this is my Show HN for now.
I just finished college and was about to move back with my parents and work on this instead of getting a job\u2026and then I somehow got into YC. So my current plan is to cover my living expenses and use the YC funding to support maintainers, our dependencies, and people working on their own open-source local-first projects. More on that soon.
Would love your feedback, ideas, and roasts. If you would like to support the project, star it on GitHub here (https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter) and join the Discord here (https://go.epicenter.so/discord). Everything\u2019s MIT licensed, so fork it, break it, ship your own version, copy whatever you want!"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"Show HN: Whispering \u2013 Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["whispering"],"value":"https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter/tree/main/apps/whispering"}},"_tags":["story","author_braden-w","story_44942731","show_hn"],"author":"braden-w","children":[44943566,44943649,44943652,44943769,44943951,44943960,44944028,44944089,44944150,44944305,44944611,44944691,44944742,44944760,44944804,44944893,44945125,44945190,44945376,44945412,44945623,44945684,44945712,44945918,44946289,44946357,44946461,44946603,44947448,44947704,44948069,44948094,44948129,44948163,44948848,44949314,44949378,44949429,44949860,44949906,44950090,44950595,44950642,44952236,44952700,44954221,44954290,44958565,44958952,44959904,44974122],"created_at":"2025-08-18T16:52:29Z","created_at_i":1755535949,"num_comments":152,"objectID":"44942731","points":591,"story_id":44942731,"story_text":"Hey HN! Braden here, creator of Whispering, an open-source speech-to-text app.
I really like dictation. For years, I relied on transcription tools that were almost good, but they were all closed-source. Even a lot of them that claimed to be \u201clocal\u201d or \u201con-device\u201d were still black boxes that left me wondering where my audio really went.
So I built Whispering. It\u2019s open-source, local-first, and most importantly, transparent with your data. Your data is stored locally on your device, and your audio goes directly from your machine to a local provider (Whisper C++, Speaches, etc.) or your chosen cloud provider (Groq, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, etc.). For me, the features were good enough that I left my paid tools behind (I used Superwhisper and Wispr Flow before).
Productivity apps should be open-source and transparent with your data, but they also need to match the UX of paid, closed-software alternatives. I hope Whispering is near that point. I use it for several hours a day, from coding to thinking out loud while carrying pizza boxes back from the office.
Here\u2019s an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jYgBMrfVZs, and here\u2019s how I personally am using it with Claude Code these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpix588SeiQ.
There are plenty of transcription apps out there, but I hope Whispering adds some extra competition from the OSS ecosystem (one of my other OSS favorites is Handy https://github.com/cjpais/Handy). Whispering has a few tricks up its sleeve, like a voice-activated mode for hands-free operation (no button holding), and customizable AI transformations with any prompt/model.
Whispering used to be in my personal GH repo, but I recently moved it as part of a larger project called Epicenter (https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter), which I should explain a bit...
I\u2019m basically obsessed with local-first open-source software. I think there should be an open-source, local-first version of every app, and I would like them all to work together. The idea of Epicenter is to store your data in a folder of plaintext and SQLite, and build a suite of interoperable, local-first tools on top of this shared memory. Everything is totally transparent, so you can trust it.
Whispering is the first app in this effort. It\u2019s not there yet regarding memory, but it\u2019s getting there. I\u2019ll probably write more about the bigger picture soon, but mainly I just want to make software and let it speak for itself (no pun intended in this case!), so this is my Show HN for now.
I just finished college and was about to move back with my parents and work on this instead of getting a job\u2026and then I somehow got into YC. So my current plan is to cover my living expenses and use the YC funding to support maintainers, our dependencies, and people working on their own open-source local-first projects. More on that soon.
Would love your feedback, ideas, and roasts. If you would like to support the project, star it on GitHub here (https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter) and join the Discord here (https://go.epicenter.so/discord). Everything\u2019s MIT licensed, so fork it, break it, ship your own version, copy whatever you want!","title":"Show HN: Whispering \u2013 Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust","updated_at":"2026-05-26T05:21:38Z","url":"https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter/tree/main/apps/whispering"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"sodakim"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"I dictate to Claude Code with Wispr Flow and it's fast and natural at home. The moment I'm in the office or a cafe I stop, because everyone can hear me talking to my laptop. Whisper mode helps a little, but I still feel self-conscious, so I just go back to typing.
So I'm testing an idea: a slim mic mask you wear over your mouth. You talk normally, your dictation app hears every word, and the people around you hear almost nothing. Hands-free, and closer to a fabric mask than a gadget.
It doesn't exist yet. Before I build anything, I want to know if the need is real: vibemask.dev
A few honest questions:\n1. Do you actually hit this, or is whispering / just typing good enough?\n2. Would you wear something on your face for it, or is that a dealbreaker?\n3. What would make it a clear yes instead of a gimmick?
Not selling anything. Just trying to decide if it is worth building."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Would you use a soundproof mic mask to dictate to AI in public?"}},"_tags":["story","author_sodakim","story_48383050","ask_hn"],"author":"sodakim","children":[48395031],"created_at":"2026-06-03T12:24:31Z","created_at_i":1780489471,"num_comments":1,"objectID":"48383050","points":3,"story_id":48383050,"story_text":"I dictate to Claude Code with Wispr Flow and it's fast and natural at home. The moment I'm in the office or a cafe I stop, because everyone can hear me talking to my laptop. Whisper mode helps a little, but I still feel self-conscious, so I just go back to typing.
So I'm testing an idea: a slim mic mask you wear over your mouth. You talk normally, your dictation app hears every word, and the people around you hear almost nothing. Hands-free, and closer to a fabric mask than a gadget.
It doesn't exist yet. Before I build anything, I want to know if the need is real: vibemask.dev
A few honest questions:\n1. Do you actually hit this, or is whispering / just typing good enough?\n2. Would you wear something on your face for it, or is that a dealbreaker?\n3. What would make it a clear yes instead of a gimmick?
Not selling anything. Just trying to decide if it is worth building.","title":"Ask HN: Would you use a soundproof mic mask to dictate to AI in public?","updated_at":"2026-06-05T14:17:12Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"telenardo"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"I tested Wispr on the same 525 dictation clips a month apart (May and again in June) and there's a clear regression: Word Error Rate rose from 9.0% to 11.2% (lower is better). It got worse in 8 of 9 categories I track.
Full results and the raw transcripts attached above.
Important context: this only measures a single, American\u2011accented voice on synthetic prompts. Wispr supports many languages and accents, and I\u2019d assume their updates have boosted overall accuracy. But, they regressed for my use\u2011case: plain old boring, unaccented American English.
How I tested: I have a harness that drives a dictation app by playing an audio file through a virtual input device and captures the app\u2019s pasted output. I ran this on 525 audio files through Wispr Flow a month ago. Yesterday, I ran the same clips through again. The clips are recordings of me whispering AI-generated sentences.
Results: There\u2019s a clear regression on word accuracy. Words that were correct ~1 month ago are now incorrect. Phonetically, they\u2019re similar, but just off.
May: "Brian, refactor this auth middleware to stop leaking tokens and debug logs." (near perfect)
June: "Ryan refactored his odd metalware to stop leaking tokens in deep bugs and backlogs." (garbled)
So no, you're not imagining it, it has gotten worse. At least if you speak plain, unaccented American English like me!
Disclosure: I work on a competitor which is why I had the May eval ready. Take this with a grain of salt and do your own testing!"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"[dead]"}},"_tags":["comment","author_telenardo","story_48548001"],"author":"telenardo","comment_text":"I tested Wispr on the same 525 dictation clips a month apart (May and again in June) and there's a clear regression: Word Error Rate rose from 9.0% to 11.2% (lower is better). It got worse in 8 of 9 categories I track.
Full results and the raw transcripts attached above.
Important context: this only measures a single, American\u2011accented voice on synthetic prompts. Wispr supports many languages and accents, and I\u2019d assume their updates have boosted overall accuracy. But, they regressed for my use\u2011case: plain old boring, unaccented American English.
How I tested: I have a harness that drives a dictation app by playing an audio file through a virtual input device and captures the app\u2019s pasted output. I ran this on 525 audio files through Wispr Flow a month ago. Yesterday, I ran the same clips through again. The clips are recordings of me whispering AI-generated sentences.
Results: There\u2019s a clear regression on word accuracy. Words that were correct ~1 month ago are now incorrect. Phonetically, they\u2019re similar, but just off.
May: "Brian, refactor this auth middleware to stop leaking tokens and debug logs." (near perfect)
June: "Ryan refactored his odd metalware to stop leaking tokens in deep bugs and backlogs." (garbled)
So no, you're not imagining it, it has gotten worse. At least if you speak plain, unaccented American English like me!
Disclosure: I work on a competitor which is why I had the May eval ready. Take this with a grain of salt and do your own testing!","created_at":"2026-06-15T22:39:30Z","created_at_i":1781563170,"objectID":"48548002","parent_id":48548001,"story_id":48548001,"story_title":"[dead]","updated_at":"2026-06-15T22:43:32Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"remuskaos"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"parakeet is amazing, it has completely ousted whisper for me. On Linux, both handy.computer and epicenter Whispering (using parakeet of course) work incredibly well for set-and-forget STT. I use it constantly to write messages on Slack/Teams, do debate with claude code etc. Both have minor bugs, but I can easily accept those, these apps being FOSS and all.
On Mac, I've been using VoiceInk and it's even better. VoiceInk (and MacWhisper too, IIRC) use the neural engine and the delay between dictation and appearance of the typed text is almost imperceptible."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Moonshine Open-Weights STT models \u2013 higher accuracy than WhisperLargev3"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://github.com/moonshine-ai/moonshine"}},"_tags":["comment","author_remuskaos","story_47143755"],"author":"remuskaos","comment_text":"parakeet is amazing, it has completely ousted whisper for me. On Linux, both handy.computer and epicenter Whispering (using parakeet of course) work incredibly well for set-and-forget STT. I use it constantly to write messages on Slack/Teams, do debate with claude code etc. Both have minor bugs, but I can easily accept those, these apps being FOSS and all.
On Mac, I've been using VoiceInk and it's even better. VoiceInk (and MacWhisper too, IIRC) use the neural engine and the delay between dictation and appearance of the typed text is almost imperceptible.","created_at":"2026-03-02T12:27:21Z","created_at_i":1772454441,"objectID":"47217138","parent_id":47147478,"story_id":47143755,"story_title":"Show HN: Moonshine Open-Weights STT models \u2013 higher accuracy than WhisperLargev3","story_url":"https://github.com/moonshine-ai/moonshine","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:39:42Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"d4rkp4ttern"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"VoiceInk (one time payment) and WisprFlow (subscription) are currently my fav dictation apps. I just looked at Whispering and have to say VoiceInk is far superior to Whispering in terms of Ux, and clarity of settings, so I think VoiceInk deserves at least as much attention. There are several things that make a huge difference things that make a huge difference in dictation apps, besides the obvious speed and accuracy:
- allow flexible recording toggle shortcuts \n- show a visual icon with waves etc showing recording\n- how the clipboard is handled during recording (does it copy to clipboard? does it clear it after text output?)
VoiceInk is nearly there in terms of good behavior on these dimensions, and I hope to ditch my Wispr Flow sub soon."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"Show HN: Whispering \u2013 Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["whispering"],"value":"https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter/tree/main/apps/whispering"}},"_tags":["comment","author_d4rkp4ttern","story_44942731"],"author":"d4rkp4ttern","comment_text":"VoiceInk (one time payment) and WisprFlow (subscription) are currently my fav dictation apps. I just looked at Whispering and have to say VoiceInk is far superior to Whispering in terms of Ux, and clarity of settings, so I think VoiceInk deserves at least as much attention. There are several things that make a huge difference things that make a huge difference in dictation apps, besides the obvious speed and accuracy:
- allow flexible recording toggle shortcuts \n- show a visual icon with waves etc showing recording\n- how the clipboard is handled during recording (does it copy to clipboard? does it clear it after text output?)
VoiceInk is nearly there in terms of good behavior on these dimensions, and I hope to ditch my Wispr Flow sub soon.","created_at":"2025-08-19T15:11:16Z","created_at_i":1755616276,"objectID":"44952476","parent_id":44944691,"story_id":44942731,"story_title":"Show HN: Whispering \u2013 Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust","story_url":"https://github.com/epicenter-so/epicenter/tree/main/apps/whispering","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:31:21Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jcrites"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"> The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch."
Very interesting, and not at all true for me. I can imagine shouting "I like crickets" with a near ear-splitting level of volume, tantamount to the force of a storm with a shockwave. Imagine an anime scene where a character is radiating power, arms raised into the air, like Saurman calling a storm down upon a mountain in LOTR. When I imagine this substantial level of volume, my muscles want to start to tense, like my body wants to brace itself for an impact.
I can also imagine whispering the same thing. It is actually difficult to reduce the volume of the whisper down as low as I'd like it to go (as low as I could hear), but it's substantially lower "volume" than the shout.
I can get the volume even lower if I imagine someone else, or a voice from somewhere else, whispering it.
> I can think in words so that I can prepare to write something (like this) but there is no audio.
I can do all of these. I can think as a sequence of abstract thoughts, with no audio component (this is most natural); I can think as a sequence of words, which are optionally rendered as audio (I would do this if sounding out an unfamiliar word), and I can render audio in the mind as a particular voice (i.e. my voice or someone else's, similar to a deepfake). I could imagine Barack Obama speaking any arbitrary words in his particular style of dictation. "My fellow Americans..."
My most common kinds of "inner voice", though, are not speaking actual words, but ideas. They are often critical, or perhaps playing devil's advocate in some way. In fact, thinking using actual words is uncommon for me, unless I specifically need language in some way, so the "inner voice(s)" appear as a kind of alternative narrative to whatever my primary thought process is."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Inner Speech"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/inner-speech/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_jcrites","story_38965310"],"author":"jcrites","children":[38977030],"comment_text":"> The presenter then claims, "The volume is the same because you can't change the volume of the voice in your head, only the tone and pitch."
Very interesting, and not at all true for me. I can imagine shouting "I like crickets" with a near ear-splitting level of volume, tantamount to the force of a storm with a shockwave. Imagine an anime scene where a character is radiating power, arms raised into the air, like Saurman calling a storm down upon a mountain in LOTR. When I imagine this substantial level of volume, my muscles want to start to tense, like my body wants to brace itself for an impact.
I can also imagine whispering the same thing. It is actually difficult to reduce the volume of the whisper down as low as I'd like it to go (as low as I could hear), but it's substantially lower "volume" than the shout.
I can get the volume even lower if I imagine someone else, or a voice from somewhere else, whispering it.
> I can think in words so that I can prepare to write something (like this) but there is no audio.
I can do all of these. I can think as a sequence of abstract thoughts, with no audio component (this is most natural); I can think as a sequence of words, which are optionally rendered as audio (I would do this if sounding out an unfamiliar word), and I can render audio in the mind as a particular voice (i.e. my voice or someone else's, similar to a deepfake). I could imagine Barack Obama speaking any arbitrary words in his particular style of dictation. "My fellow Americans..."
My most common kinds of "inner voice", though, are not speaking actual words, but ideas. They are often critical, or perhaps playing devil's advocate in some way. In fact, thinking using actual words is uncommon for me, unless I specifically need language in some way, so the "inner voice(s)" appear as a kind of alternative narrative to whatever my primary thought process is.","created_at":"2024-01-12T19:59:32Z","created_at_i":1705089572,"objectID":"38973160","parent_id":38966048,"story_id":38965310,"story_title":"Inner Speech","story_url":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/inner-speech/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T16:07:38Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"braden-w"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"For those interested in the architecture: I use dependency injection at build time to share ~95% of code between desktop and web versions. Instead of maintaining separate codebases, I detect the platform and inject the appropriate service implementations.
The three-layer architecture has been particularly helpful:
- Services: https://github.com/braden-w/whispering/tree/main/apps/app/sr...: Pure functions with platform abstraction, no UI dependencies
- Query layer: https://github.com/braden-w/whispering/tree/main/apps/app/sr... : Adds reactivity, caching, and runtime dependency injection
Voice-activated mode is particularly nice when coding\u2014you can keep your hands on the keyboard while dictating. The Svelte 5 runes + TanStack Query combination has been fantastic for managing real-time audio state."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Open-source transcription that costs $0.02/hour instead of $30/month"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["whispering"],"value":"https://github.com/braden-w/whispering"}},"_tags":["comment","author_braden-w","story_44490741"],"author":"braden-w","comment_text":"For those interested in the architecture: I use dependency injection at build time to share ~95% of code between desktop and web versions. Instead of maintaining separate codebases, I detect the platform and inject the appropriate service implementations.
The three-layer architecture has been particularly helpful:
- Services: https://github.com/braden-w/whispering/tree/main/apps/app/sr...: Pure functions with platform abstraction, no UI dependencies
- Query layer: https://github.com/braden-w/whispering/tree/main/apps/app/sr... : Adds reactivity, caching, and runtime dependency injection
Voice-activated mode is particularly nice when coding\u2014you can keep your hands on the keyboard while dictating. The Svelte 5 runes + TanStack Query combination has been fantastic for managing real-time audio state.","created_at":"2025-07-07T14:45:16Z","created_at_i":1751899516,"objectID":"44490913","parent_id":44490741,"story_id":44490741,"story_title":"Show HN: Open-source transcription that costs $0.02/hour instead of $30/month","story_url":"https://github.com/braden-w/whispering","updated_at":"2025-07-08T07:06:58Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Mistletoe"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"Now I just think about where those takes started and all roads always lead back to the same culprits. Your parents and the hillbillies don\u2019t come up with these takes on their own, they always starts somewhere and benefit the person whispering it in their ear.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/10/the-piv...
> The EU also hit a landmark in 2025, with more than 50% of its electricity coming from renewables by late summer.
> This has not gone unnoticed by the fossil fuel industry, which is collectively shitting itself. After a couple of centuries of prospecting we know pretty much where all the oil, coal, and gas reserves are buried in the ground. (Another hint about Ukraine: Ukraine is sitting on top of over 670 billion cubic metres of natural gas: to the dictator of a neighbouring resource-extraction economy this must have been quite a draw.) The constant propaganda and astroturfed campaigns advocating against belief in climate change must be viewed in this light: by 2040 at the latest, those coal, gas, and oil land rights must be regarded as stranded assets that can't be monetized, and the land rights probably have a book value measured in trillions of dollars."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/california-made-it-through-another-summer-without-a-flex-alert"}},"_tags":["comment","author_Mistletoe","story_45706527"],"author":"Mistletoe","comment_text":"Now I just think about where those takes started and all roads always lead back to the same culprits. Your parents and the hillbillies don\u2019t come up with these takes on their own, they always starts somewhere and benefit the person whispering it in their ear.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/10/the-piv...
> The EU also hit a landmark in 2025, with more than 50% of its electricity coming from renewables by late summer.
> This has not gone unnoticed by the fossil fuel industry, which is collectively shitting itself. After a couple of centuries of prospecting we know pretty much where all the oil, coal, and gas reserves are buried in the ground. (Another hint about Ukraine: Ukraine is sitting on top of over 670 billion cubic metres of natural gas: to the dictator of a neighbouring resource-extraction economy this must have been quite a draw.) The constant propaganda and astroturfed campaigns advocating against belief in climate change must be viewed in this light: by 2040 at the latest, those coal, gas, and oil land rights must be regarded as stranded assets that can't be monetized, and the land rights probably have a book value measured in trillions of dollars.","created_at":"2025-10-25T21:33:30Z","created_at_i":1761428010,"objectID":"45707166","parent_id":45707077,"story_id":45706527,"story_title":"California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind","story_url":"https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/california-made-it-through-another-summer-without-a-flex-alert","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:55:04Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"pmarreck"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"> pointing out the incredibly anti-social behaviour of wanting to outsource socializing
Excellently and succinctly stated.
I guess I was considering it an adjunct to socializing, or a filter on who to socialize with. Not a substitute. Have you ever spent a few minutes talking to someone only to realize that you had nothing in common? Have you ever met someone you had things in common with but it was at the very end of an event when there was no more time (or when it would be too awkward or too soon) to exchange contact info with? Well, this tech might have captured those.
Another example- There are people in the world who literally cannot stand having their beliefs get poked and prodded, and who in fact react violently if this poking and prodding (which is really just "curious probing") includes evidence against something they believe. I had a woman actually scream at me at a cocktail party once when I challenged her blank-slate hypothesis by citing Hassett/Siebert/Wallen (2008) (notably, the experimental conclusions from this study have since been challenged numerous times, which wasn't the case when that occurred years ago- I'm not here to defend it, only to point out an example). It would have been wonderful if I could have avoided that embarrassment by filtering out people who cannot tolerate a difference of evidence-backed opinion and gone straight to the people who love to debate stuff. Picture an AI whispering into my tiny earpiece, "this person, whose name is April, will likely not react well to the heretical poking and prodding you usually enjoy doing at these things."
> No more of that time wasting! I could be hustling!
LOL. Fair enough. As a friend recently pointed out to me, "if you really want efficiency in government, you'll end up with an autocratic dictatorship." Perhaps "optimizing the hell out of certain things" ruins them, or at least passes some point where the on-balance total cost is too high.
I'd love to "run the experiment" in real life!"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: My AI Native Resume"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://ai.jakegaylor.com/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_pmarreck","story_43891245"],"author":"pmarreck","children":[43897799],"comment_text":"> pointing out the incredibly anti-social behaviour of wanting to outsource socializing
Excellently and succinctly stated.
I guess I was considering it an adjunct to socializing, or a filter on who to socialize with. Not a substitute. Have you ever spent a few minutes talking to someone only to realize that you had nothing in common? Have you ever met someone you had things in common with but it was at the very end of an event when there was no more time (or when it would be too awkward or too soon) to exchange contact info with? Well, this tech might have captured those.
Another example- There are people in the world who literally cannot stand having their beliefs get poked and prodded, and who in fact react violently if this poking and prodding (which is really just "curious probing") includes evidence against something they believe. I had a woman actually scream at me at a cocktail party once when I challenged her blank-slate hypothesis by citing Hassett/Siebert/Wallen (2008) (notably, the experimental conclusions from this study have since been challenged numerous times, which wasn't the case when that occurred years ago- I'm not here to defend it, only to point out an example). It would have been wonderful if I could have avoided that embarrassment by filtering out people who cannot tolerate a difference of evidence-backed opinion and gone straight to the people who love to debate stuff. Picture an AI whispering into my tiny earpiece, "this person, whose name is April, will likely not react well to the heretical poking and prodding you usually enjoy doing at these things."
> No more of that time wasting! I could be hustling!
LOL. Fair enough. As a friend recently pointed out to me, "if you really want efficiency in government, you'll end up with an autocratic dictatorship." Perhaps "optimizing the hell out of certain things" ruins them, or at least passes some point where the on-balance total cost is too high.
I'd love to "run the experiment" in real life!","created_at":"2025-05-05T16:27:03Z","created_at_i":1746462423,"objectID":"43896783","parent_id":43896438,"story_id":43891245,"story_title":"Show HN: My AI Native Resume","story_url":"https://ai.jakegaylor.com/","updated_at":"2025-05-06T14:50:47Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"javajosh"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":">does not say anything about those same people's desire to continue doing so
Well, I'm not sure about that. I feel that we are all responsible for our government to some degree. If the gov is really doing evil things without accountability, then it is the people's responsibility to change it.
The problem is that it is very easy to move from democracy to dictatorship, and very hard to move from dictatorship to democracy, with the latter transition almost always requiring the use of force. Its a big, gigantic step. It's starts when Russian mothers and fathers, Russian neighbors and shopkeepers, start whispering about really taking up arms against Putin.
This is a very problematic line to cross, mainly because people are stupid and will trigger 'a revolution' about anything and everything. The information landscape is treacherous for false positives, now more than ever. Consider the example of the pitiable 1/6 insurrectionists. Every one of them thought they were defending their country against a threat. But they were all badly wrong, and now they suffer for it. But the instinct to put their lives on the line for their constitution is, in my old-fashioned belief system, admirable. They just got tricked into fighting for the wrong side."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Higher-income people are worried about the economy"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.axios.com/wealth-inflation-fears-money-financial-assets-52779e2d-8940-4b87-85cd-29c65744fb29.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_javajosh","story_30778649"],"author":"javajosh","comment_text":">does not say anything about those same people's desire to continue doing so
Well, I'm not sure about that. I feel that we are all responsible for our government to some degree. If the gov is really doing evil things without accountability, then it is the people's responsibility to change it.
The problem is that it is very easy to move from democracy to dictatorship, and very hard to move from dictatorship to democracy, with the latter transition almost always requiring the use of force. Its a big, gigantic step. It's starts when Russian mothers and fathers, Russian neighbors and shopkeepers, start whispering about really taking up arms against Putin.
This is a very problematic line to cross, mainly because people are stupid and will trigger 'a revolution' about anything and everything. The information landscape is treacherous for false positives, now more than ever. Consider the example of the pitiable 1/6 insurrectionists. Every one of them thought they were defending their country against a threat. But they were all badly wrong, and now they suffer for it. But the instinct to put their lives on the line for their constitution is, in my old-fashioned belief system, admirable. They just got tricked into fighting for the wrong side.","created_at":"2022-03-23T17:59:43Z","created_at_i":1648058383,"objectID":"30781353","parent_id":30780712,"story_id":30778649,"story_title":"Higher-income people are worried about the economy","story_url":"https://www.axios.com/wealth-inflation-fears-money-financial-assets-52779e2d-8940-4b87-85cd-29c65744fb29.html","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:48:57Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"compelledToken"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"You ain't kidding. Talk about trying to rewrite a narrative with bogus claims.
The 2003 Iraq invasion had nothing to do with warnings from informants about state secrets.
The idea very idea that there was any concern about Iraq's capability to wage war is a joke. Iraq was pretty well softened up by no fly zones and sanctions, so as to be sufficiently anemic, and decapitating the incumbent dictator for life (literally) was mostly just sour grapes for him going off script, and besmirching the sanctity of Kuwait.
It was gloves off for Iraq, as soon as the 9/11 hijackings unfolded. Literally next month people were whispering about Iraq, even though Afghanistan was well understood as the official point of origin for the attacks."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Apple Insiders Say Nobody Knows What\u2019s Going on with Bloomberg's Hack Story"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-china-hacking-bloomberg-servers-spies-fbi"}},"_tags":["comment","author_compelledToken","story_18152792"],"author":"compelledToken","children":[18153657,18153684],"comment_text":"You ain't kidding. Talk about trying to rewrite a narrative with bogus claims.
The 2003 Iraq invasion had nothing to do with warnings from informants about state secrets.
The idea very idea that there was any concern about Iraq's capability to wage war is a joke. Iraq was pretty well softened up by no fly zones and sanctions, so as to be sufficiently anemic, and decapitating the incumbent dictator for life (literally) was mostly just sour grapes for him going off script, and besmirching the sanctity of Kuwait.
It was gloves off for Iraq, as soon as the 9/11 hijackings unfolded. Literally next month people were whispering about Iraq, even though Afghanistan was well understood as the official point of origin for the attacks.","created_at":"2018-10-06T02:06:16Z","created_at_i":1538791576,"objectID":"18153097","parent_id":18153061,"story_id":18152792,"story_title":"Apple Insiders Say Nobody Knows What\u2019s Going on with Bloomberg's Hack Story","story_url":"https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-china-hacking-bloomberg-servers-spies-fbi","updated_at":"2024-09-20T03:09:20Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"api"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"He gets among other things its power as a rhetorical force multiplier and how it will be used to end democracy and any form of large scale public discourse. Think "individualized con artistry at scale." One person or small group could effectively sit down with every human being on Earth at once and "work on them" one on one using social media and other profile data to change their mind.
It makes me think of the classical religious notion of how demons are constantly whispering to us. We may be on the verge of inventing Satan... to make people click ads. There is something depressingly idiocracy about that. The big evil dictators of the past at least had high minded master plans. This is definitely an example of the banality of evil.
In the future you will not be able to trust anything you haven't met face to face in the flesh. Even then you'd have to perhaps do physical in person key exchanges to communicate electronically. Anything not verified through "physical captcha" could be a demon."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"What does Elon Musk have against AI?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://news.alphastreet.com/what-does-elon-musk-have-against-a-i/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_api","story_17220163"],"author":"api","children":[17221100],"comment_text":"He gets among other things its power as a rhetorical force multiplier and how it will be used to end democracy and any form of large scale public discourse. Think "individualized con artistry at scale." One person or small group could effectively sit down with every human being on Earth at once and "work on them" one on one using social media and other profile data to change their mind.
It makes me think of the classical religious notion of how demons are constantly whispering to us. We may be on the verge of inventing Satan... to make people click ads. There is something depressingly idiocracy about that. The big evil dictators of the past at least had high minded master plans. This is definitely an example of the banality of evil.
In the future you will not be able to trust anything you haven't met face to face in the flesh. Even then you'd have to perhaps do physical in person key exchanges to communicate electronically. Anything not verified through "physical captcha" could be a demon.","created_at":"2018-06-03T16:20:29Z","created_at_i":1528042829,"objectID":"17220243","parent_id":17220163,"story_id":17220163,"story_title":"What does Elon Musk have against AI?","story_url":"https://news.alphastreet.com/what-does-elon-musk-have-against-a-i/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T02:33:24Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"rada"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"1. I was using the word \"wrong\" in its normal dictionary definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wrong). It is not right, good, or truthful to \"shout\" your profits/assets in big print on the main financial docs, while \"whispering\" your losses/liabilities in small print in supplemental documents.
2. If you can't get the rules changed, it doesn't matter what you wish they were.
Are you serious? It matters very much. Public opinion changes both the rules and interpretation of the rules all the time, through voting, legislative action and general intellectual osmosis. Just this week, we got ourselves gay marriage and iPhone jailbreaking. I am especially surprised to see such an ultra conservative opinion on a hacker/startup community.
3. I totally agree with you that intelligent investing takes time and skill. I dedicate maybe a half hour of my workday to investing, and I would guess that your average investor doesn't spend even that much time. Yes, it is terribly inadequate. So what are you doing to do about that? We do not live in an ideal world - we do not have medical insurance only for those who exercise constantly, avoid stress, and never eat anything with sugar in it; or driver's licenses only for those with perfect vision; etc. The rules must work for the real world, not some hypothetical ideal.
3. The rest of your paragraph is a hyperbolic effort to put words in another's mouth.
Actually, I explicitly refrained from putting words into op's mouth: \"I am not saying you personally would subscribe to that argument of course\". Sorry if that was unclear."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Megan McArdle: The Great Stock Market Myth"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/the-great-stock-myth/8178/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_rada","story_1598062"],"author":"rada","children":[1599340],"comment_text":"1. I was using the word \"wrong\" in its normal dictionary definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wrong). It is not right, good, or truthful to \"shout\" your profits/assets in big print on the main financial docs, while \"whispering\" your losses/liabilities in small print in supplemental documents.
2. If you can't get the rules changed, it doesn't matter what you wish they were.
Are you serious? It matters very much. Public opinion changes both the rules and interpretation of the rules all the time, through voting, legislative action and general intellectual osmosis. Just this week, we got ourselves gay marriage and iPhone jailbreaking. I am especially surprised to see such an ultra conservative opinion on a hacker/startup community.
3. I totally agree with you that intelligent investing takes time and skill. I dedicate maybe a half hour of my workday to investing, and I would guess that your average investor doesn't spend even that much time. Yes, it is terribly inadequate. So what are you doing to do about that? We do not live in an ideal world - we do not have medical insurance only for those who exercise constantly, avoid stress, and never eat anything with sugar in it; or driver's licenses only for those with perfect vision; etc. The rules must work for the real world, not some hypothetical ideal.
3. The rest of your paragraph is a hyperbolic effort to put words in another's mouth.
Actually, I explicitly refrained from putting words into op's mouth: \"I am not saying you personally would subscribe to that argument of course\". Sorry if that was unclear.","created_at":"2010-08-12T19:56:31Z","created_at_i":1281642991,"objectID":"1599052","parent_id":1598866,"story_id":1598062,"story_title":"Megan McArdle: The Great Stock Market Myth","story_url":"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/the-great-stock-myth/8178/","updated_at":"2024-09-19T17:15:10Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"vidarh"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["whispering","dictation"],"value":"Classical libertarianism is libertarian communism. The term libertarianism originates with the French anarcho-communist Joseph D\u00e9jacques back in the 19th century, and was championed by groups like the Socialist League in the UK (which was supported by Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx amongst others).
Modern-day right-wing libertarianism is the new kid on the block.
Basically in the late 1800's the main split between anarchists and communists in the First International was not predominantly their end goal.
E.g. consider the famous concept of the "whithering away of the state" (coined by Friedrich Engels, but Engels attributed the idea to Marx): that given that according to Marxism the state is predominantly a tool of class rule, and that communism by their definition is the stage of society where there no longer are any classes, the state will cease to have a political purpose and will "whither away". So anarchists and communists agreed the state was a tool of oppression and that this oppression must be removed, and that the state will eventually disappear.
The split was over methods. How to get there. The anarchists generally favoured a quicker, more immediate, dismantling of the state (whether by taking control and orderly dismantling it, or by rising up and destroying it), while communists generally favoured an intermediate transitional stage. In Marxism the intermediate stage is socialism: A phase where the proletariat is meant to take control of the state (hence the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in contrast with Marx description of capitalist democracies as the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"), and for the first time wield it as a weapon of the majority against the minority, and use it to remove the class differences. So communists traditionally saw the state as a tool for the working class.
Eventually this lead to the split of the First International, where Marx came out victorious, and most of the anarchists left when Bakunin was thrown out. Not long after, new libertarian socialist/communist tendencies started "filling the gap" in the International left by the anarchists.
The extent of support for a strong state varied greatly amongst people who called themselves communists, leading to screeds like Lenins "Left Communism: An Infantile Disorder", which targeted exactly libertarian Communists which opposed his ideas of a vanguard."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Libertarian communism"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://libcom.org/notes/about"}},"_tags":["comment","author_vidarh","story_10351830"],"author":"vidarh","children":[10352210],"comment_text":"Classical libertarianism is libertarian communism. The term libertarianism originates with the French anarcho-communist Joseph D\u00e9jacques back in the 19th century, and was championed by groups like the Socialist League in the UK (which was supported by Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx amongst others).
Modern-day right-wing libertarianism is the new kid on the block.
Basically in the late 1800's the main split between anarchists and communists in the First International was not predominantly their end goal.
E.g. consider the famous concept of the "whithering away of the state" (coined by Friedrich Engels, but Engels attributed the idea to Marx): that given that according to Marxism the state is predominantly a tool of class rule, and that communism by their definition is the stage of society where there no longer are any classes, the state will cease to have a political purpose and will "whither away". So anarchists and communists agreed the state was a tool of oppression and that this oppression must be removed, and that the state will eventually disappear.
The split was over methods. How to get there. The anarchists generally favoured a quicker, more immediate, dismantling of the state (whether by taking control and orderly dismantling it, or by rising up and destroying it), while communists generally favoured an intermediate transitional stage. In Marxism the intermediate stage is socialism: A phase where the proletariat is meant to take control of the state (hence the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in contrast with Marx description of capitalist democracies as the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"), and for the first time wield it as a weapon of the majority against the minority, and use it to remove the class differences. So communists traditionally saw the state as a tool for the working class.
Eventually this lead to the split of the First International, where Marx came out victorious, and most of the anarchists left when Bakunin was thrown out. Not long after, new libertarian socialist/communist tendencies started "filling the gap" in the International left by the anarchists.
The extent of support for a strong state varied greatly amongst people who called themselves communists, leading to screeds like Lenins "Left Communism: An Infantile Disorder", which targeted exactly libertarian Communists which opposed his ideas of a vanguard.","created_at":"2015-10-08T12:18:13Z","created_at_i":1444306693,"objectID":"10352186","parent_id":10352091,"story_id":10351830,"story_title":"Libertarian communism","story_url":"https://libcom.org/notes/about","updated_at":"2024-09-19T22:24:05Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":14,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=whispering+dictation&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":19,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":21},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":1,"total":2},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":4,"total":5},"total":5},"total":5},"fetch":{"query":12,"total":13},"total":19},"query":"whispering dictation","serverTimeMS":21}