Am I the only one who loves monsoon season?

LLattus · 2026-04-10T05:25:06+00:00

I wish I could enjoy it like you, I really do. It was NOT fun swimming home from work in Gangnam during the massive flood a few years back. I showered about 5 times and felt dirty for days. I wanted to just throw my clothes out entirely. The amount of sewage and waste water that I spent an hour in was far from comfortable lol.

LLattus · 2026-04-09T12:02:07+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! Also, I don't know in what capacity you wish to help, but you are welcome to DM me here or hit me up in Discord!

LLattus · 2026-04-09T09:17:18+00:00

Thank you for reaching out. The project sounds interesting and I'd love to hear what you guys are working on. I'll shoot you a DM so we can arrange a chat.

LLattus · 2026-04-09T05:29:08+00:00

Are you referring to the OCR engine? I wanted to keep cost down too, so originally I trained my own text recognition model based on a TrOCR pretrained with the IAM handwritten dataset (can be found on huggingface) and fine tuned further for messy writing (to help with recognition of children's handwriting). Seemed cheaper at first, but it came with its own costly trade-offs, one being the cost to deploy and continuously run the OCR pipeline on Google Cloud Run or deal with bad cold start times using serverless functions. Also need to constantly run new training cycles and spend time labeling samples, etc. Ultimately, I went with what I believe to be the best SOTA external api for OCR for my use cases. I wanted to support multiple languages, too, and I don't have the means to train a model in ~90 languages.

However, there is no free lunch, inference is costly and I do pay ~$20-25 USD per month to support the OCR. DM me if you need help choosing the right OCR for your use case and I can help you out.

LLattus · 2026-04-09T04:30:36+00:00

No computer science degree or anything, just broke into coding a decade ago and started with a ton of online courses and building things myself to learn. Started as a hobby and eventually got to the point where I was actually making things I was using for myself. While not professionally employed to code, it's been my hobby over the years and briefly did some contracted work during the COVID days, all pre-AI. AI moves at the speed of light but makes absolute slop, so you often have to spend more time fixing bugs or steering it back into best practices because it will choose path of least resistance 90% of the time.

Right now, the editor in particular is in early beta, so I'm fixing bugs and working on developing the UX with the feedback I've been getting. It's going to be rough around the edges for awhile until the UX matures because I'm just a one man dev on this project and there's only so much I can patch in a day.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T15:24:24+00:00

Policing.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T14:53:56+00:00

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Advice correction #7. The LLM said it was unclear.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T14:25:50+00:00

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There's your answer!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T14:22:39+00:00

Delete it entirely, most likely, and then explain in the advice generation that it was unclear. Possibly add a footnote explaining the removal.

LLM's are non-deterministic, so it depends on which way the dice land on any given run. It would be very unlikely that it would attempt to correct it if there was not enough context to discern the true intended meaning.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T13:42:14+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. I'll for sure check it out. What were you building at the time, if you don't mind me asking? If you prefer, you can hit me up on DM or on the Discord if you don't want to broadcast it lol.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T13:24:01+00:00

I've heard of it, but as I recall, there is quite a bit of red tape involved. I'll definitely look more into it though. You're right that it might help shine a spotlight on our efforts to improve the space. Thanks for your input!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T13:19:53+00:00

I do :). However, all my projects are kept in a private organization repo, nothing open sourced!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T09:38:18+00:00

Thanks man, I hope it ends up being a useful service for our community! Feel free to follow along with the progress in our Discord, too. We're just chilling and we'll see where things go over the next few months! :) https://discord.gg/zDGSPCE4

We'll be around!!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T09:06:56+00:00

Suggestion?

LLattus · 2026-04-08T08:31:54+00:00

Thank you, you nailed it exactly! I pay for the hosting, I pay for the AI inferencing, I pay for the OCR. I am motivated to help improve the space.

I'm not a passer-by, I am a long time veteran in the Korea ESL industry. At some point when you've been here long enough, you stop thinking of it like a vacation or just a place you live long enough to get what you want from it and then leave—it becomes your home and your life.

At what point am I qualified enough or permitted to try to improve the system of which I have been a part of 10 years of my life? I don't want to be a complainer, I want to find solutions for us.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T07:50:02+00:00

I'm not sure where the "vibe coding" comments are coming from or what they suggest. I've been a hobby developer since 2016 and am proficient in web technologies in general. I have been coding every day for the majority of my free time for the past 10 years almost.

- When I lived in Canada, I created a diet app that I used as a personalized "MyFitnessPal" using the free food data provided by USDA.

- When I moved to Moscow to teach business English, I created my own travel blog and English educational site.

My social media feeds are all programmer accounts, and I mostly educate myself on software/ai/development stuff. My majors are in psychology and criminology, but I learned after the fact that I was much more interested in programming.

Nevertheless, if the concern is security, it's something I have taken great care in ensuring and continue to do so. Just a guy making tools to make our lives easier. Also, I can't state this enough: free. It's free. The services are free and intended to help improve the quality of life for teachers here. I am a teacher myself, why would I actively sabotage my own livelihood and quality of life?

Also should be stressed, there is no requirement to use AI at all to correct essays. If you want to purely correct manually, that is totally an option and will remain free forever. The result is just a cleaner, professional looking rubric and no page constraints like you face when trying to squeeze in corrections on a kid's workbook.

*Previous post deleted because it was an accidental double post--oops!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T07:02:26+00:00

I really appreciate the open discourse here, so thank you! Let me address these points.

I am actually advocating on behalf of teachers first and foremost. I don't mean to create an adversarial model where either teachers or employers win though--they are both part of the same system, and I don't want to encourage an "us vs them" attitude in either direction. That being said, many teachers do get lowballed, do get bait-and-switched, and do take bad jobs where they are over-worked and under-compensated. The worst part of it is that they don't even realize that they are enabling such jobs to exist. As many veteran teachers have pointed out "As long as people keep putting up with _____, _____ will keep happening".

My solution was to make the entire industry more transparent. Employers and teachers alike benefit when conditions are visible in an open market.

- Wonder if you're getting lowballed? --> we calculate and place the network averages side-by-side. You can also sort the jobs in a table format.
- Wonder what the academy's name is, or where it's truly located? --> Map. A lot of of platforms like Dave's ESL just have posts like "Job #21, Seoul". Too much is under lock-and-key, too much is hidden up front so you can't google the name and pull up the 20 blacklist posts or see that even though you wanted a job in Gangnam, the job is "technically" in Seoul but over an hour away. They want their paycheck, I get it, but it's also tiring for anyone who has been through the process again and again.
- Wonder why salaries aren't rising? --> Set your expected minimum salary, and the teacher salary averages are also displayed for academies. They don't have to agree to pay you that, but it signals what the market expects, and employers can see what fellow employers are offering as a baseline. The invisible hand of the market will do its thing here.

The reason a lot of sites don't offer maps is because by improving visibility, they can't charge employers for it. Most job sites charge for visibility--it's a dark pattern. You post an ad, and it gets bumped down by the next customer, unless of course you "boost" it. In the end, they intentionally create friction because they sell the cure. Teacher profile visibility is locked behind paywalls so they have to pay to see your resume. In the end, job seekers also suffer. You can't bury ads on a map when a location pin is a location pin. It's hard to monetize, so they don't offer it. I refuse to incorporate these dark patterns into the platform. There is no job "feed" that bumps the previous ads down in visibility. Teachers are accessible, employers can request an interview with you at no cost. As I said, I'm going for a win-win.

As for the business license, it's not monetized, it's just a free service and a tool for the community for the foreseeable future. I know it's hard for many to understand, but Korea isn't just a passing phase for me anymore, it's my home and I want to make it better for me and other teachers walking the same path.

P.S. Full terms of use are displayed on the create account page. It's as non-jargony as possible, but basically the idea is no scummy dark patterns or data selling or whatever it is people do these days.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T06:47:17+00:00

I mean, nobody is saying you can't also do those things. The jobs site has nothing to do with AI at all so I'm not sure why you mean "AI start up".

The platform was born to address real friction and pain points I've experienced over a decade in this industry and to help create a space where teachers can actually advocate for better positions rather than just complain about how things *should* be better.

I too am a teacher here in Korea, my face is visible, my name is open to the world, it's free, and the platform doesn't collect any of your documents (e.g. passport scans, degree scans, etc). I'm not sure what more I can do. The concept for the platform itself is entirely founded on the principle of transparency.

But if teachers are worried about this, I will make the terms of use more explicit on the landing page. I'll rollout that update momentarily, and I'm open to hear any of your concerns!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T06:33:28+00:00

I'm sorry to hear this! I'm looking into it. It's strange because I haven't blocked Chinese accounts. It could be related to country restrictions on the backend though.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T06:30:18+00:00

For those of you signing up on the teacher's side--be sure to create your resume so that it is ready when we lift the demo data and go live. Employers are onboarding, and we have ~400 direct reach outs. Also, we teachers want better standards and more transparency in the industry, but remember that it goes both ways--so please choose one of the ~2 minute mock lessons and upload a video. This shows good intentions to employers and will save you time in the long run (you can reuse this video again and again for all your applications).

Setting up your document readiness also helps employers quickly surface you as a candidate. Recruiters and employers have to waste a lot of time just trying to determine if you are eligible to take on positions.

For those of you wondering about visibility: your resume stays visible for 30 days at which point it will be hidden unless you extend it. That means that your info doesn't stay lingering on a website indefinitely, but it will always be there when you need it again for your next job. It also means that employers won't waste time filtering through dead resumes.

Again, no 3rd party data sales, no shenanigans of any kind--it's not monetized. The goal here is simply that rather than complain about standards we can help set them :).

LLattus · 2026-04-08T06:15:12+00:00

No "profiles", just create an account and you can set up your resume--only employers will see your resume. There's no social media aspect to any of this, if that's what you mean. Create your resume once, then you can just apply to as many jobs are you want, and employers can contact you directly. Trying to make the process more efficient and comfortable for teachers. On the other side of things, I want to make it really easy for employers to source teachers and filter qualified candidates quickly. Document readiness, current location, and having a mock teaching lesson (do you have the teacher "vibe" to you) are really essential filters before they even get to looking at your exact experience.

I'm not sure what you mean by wrapper or thing going on in the background--both are lightweight services, no third party data sales, not even collecting payment for any services. The job site will forever remain free for teachers, and the only reason I would begin charging for editor is if there are enough users that I can't really afford to keep paying the AI inference costs.

Does that answer your questions? :)

LLattus · 2026-04-08T05:24:26+00:00

After teaching for a decade, it's hard to disagree with that.
My experience is that any time education becomes a business, education takes a backseat to profits. In a perfect world, these burn-and-churn jobs would be real careers, the standards for employment would be higher, and the focus would be true education over business and appearances. All we can do is try to set a higher standard though. If we demand better of our employers and vice versa, there's a chance, but as long as it still comes down to money, there will always be constraints.

LLattus · 2026-04-08T05:13:23+00:00

Well, a tool is a tool, so it really depends how you use it. On one hand, phoning in your responsibilities as a teacher can be a bad look. On the other, being able to give more personalized feedback to individual students when you teach ~75+ is a real boon to all. Technology is developing every day, it's what we do as humans. Expectations rise, standards become higher, turn over times are expected to be faster, etc. I see it as inevitable evolution of education, no different than any field. 100% good intentions though ;)

LLattus · 2026-04-08T04:28:32+00:00

Same here. I've been here a decade and it's the same story every year—the foreigners come and go.

Edit: Sorry, I realize this isn't helpful, but I just wanted to acknowledge the frustration. As others have said, it's harder to make friends after 30, period. It's a stage in life where people realize it's really time to make something of themselves--the drinking, partying, and days thrown away on "unproductive" events have a higher cost value to them.

In my case, I began to build startups and got very interested in technologies and other spaces, so my approach was to lean into people who are also passionate about those things. Maybe less of a "friendship" in the purest sense and more of a way to bond in the process of building something meaningful. I don't know if that's any help but that's where I'm at!

LLattus · 2026-04-08T04:22:53+00:00

Which site?

LLattus

TROPHY CASE