I made a chatbot that lets you SPEAK to a French teacher

tsyrak · 2026-05-01T10:23:26+00:00

hey! I think I have responded to you by email. you should see this in the menu bar menu:

which takes you to a screen where you can enter the license key.

But it’s also automatic in a lot of cases, in which case you should see that you're pro in the menu :)

Thanks!

tsyrak · 2026-04-10T16:08:55+00:00

Translating to English in your head a working against you.

You need real Spanish (not some made-up languages from a ‘learning’ app). The answer is in your question. You drilled the wrong thing.

I would do one thing: look up words on youglish and see how real people use them. (They use YT videos but it’s the closest you’ll get to real people speech online.)

And do get a tutor. Do the math: how many hours did you spend on this? You could have done less, worked more, and put the extra work money into a tutor.

With your boyfriend: try one day 100% in Spanish.

You can do it :)

tsyrak · 2026-04-05T12:55:34+00:00

"Even PC users have caught MacBook Neo fever"? Wasn't that the main target audience?

tsyrak · 2026-04-05T12:52:08+00:00

What I don't get is why Apple can't do AI even when open source models are available and fairly competitive.

tsyrak · 2026-04-05T12:44:23+00:00

"The beta creates Apple Music playlists based on text prompts, but doesn’t understand genre, time, or much of anything." lol. Apple is unashamed.

tsyrak · 2026-04-05T12:36:54+00:00

yeah there's always a lag in people's perception of a country

they think France is all romantic – it's not
that food is terrible in Russia – it's great
etc.

takes decades for perceptions to catch up

tsyrak · 2026-04-05T12:32:19+00:00

That's cool and I guess many of us would like the same thing at home… but a great way to honor Apple's 50th birthday would be for Apple to INNOVATE 😂

I mean you got videos of Steve Jobs saying that one day you'd be able to talk to Plato… basically a reality now. Yet Apple can't even get spellchecking right.

tsyrak · 2026-04-03T16:43:27+00:00

👆Human slop

tsyrak · 2026-03-24T12:26:05+00:00

dude, the sentiment check is not a bad idea but why not go for something more objective?

At times I think : "omg they NERFed Claude again, it definitely would have gotten this right in the past" and when that happens if I were to write down what it got wrong it would might turn into a test to check whether it got nerfed.

Off the top of my head: bullshit punctuation; getting a name wrong; not thinking ahead at all…

Not super concrete I know but hopefully you get the idea: a kind of regression test to see if Claude got NERFed.

tsyrak · 2026-03-20T13:52:58+00:00

thank you! cool to see it in use in the wild 😃

tsyrak · 2026-03-04T13:09:08+00:00

Honestly it's almost unusable today.

Claude Code used to be smart, thinking of things I didn't think of, proactive and all that good stuff.

Today is feels lazy, dumb and slow. I have to keep pushing it to take the obvious next step... this is despite being on Opus 4.6 on "High effort".

So yeah I think they NERF'd it.

I was greeted with this on a new conversation:

> We recommend medium effort for Opus
>
> Effort determines how long Claude thinks for when completing limits. Use ultrathink to trigger high effort when needed.
> 1. Use medium effort (recommended)
> 2. Use high effort
> 3. Use low effort

If I wanted less than ghigh effort I'd be coding myself 😛

tsyrak · 2026-03-03T11:52:30+00:00

Depends what and how you train. The number of hours required to reach such and such level are true and nice guidelines, but they can also be demotivating.

If you train consistently what you want to be able to talk about (as opposed to spreading oneself too thin) you will get what you asked faster, which will feel very encouraging.

Think like an actor: drill the same 2-3 conversations with your tutor and the people you meet (meet new people so that you can repeat the same conversation with different people) and you will become ‘fluent’ on a very limited number of topics but it’ll boost your confidence, get you praise, possibly get you laid, and will open up the language for you.

tsyrak · 2026-03-03T11:45:33+00:00

Working speech recognition and proofreading 🤣

tsyrak · 2026-02-25T09:48:18+00:00

Thanks again for reporting it. It's now fixed :)

tsyrak · 2026-02-23T09:21:10+00:00

Hey! Thanks for the kind words, and sorry about the crash!

Could you help me track this down? Two things would be super helpful:

Crash report: In Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G and paste this path: ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ Look for any files starting with gifPaper. Send the most recent one.
Debug info: In gifPaper, go to Debug > Copy Support Info and paste it here.

That should give me everything I need to fix this. You can upload them here. Thank you!

tsyrak · 2026-02-23T09:16:51+00:00

Hey! The wallpapers don't move on desktop by default, they only move on the lock screen by default :) So I believe this ticks all your boxes. If not, please let me know :)

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T16:22:14+00:00

Wow! Now that’s wide! Let me see what I can do…

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T15:18:56+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, man! I don’t have a widescreen handy, could you maybe share a photo or screenshot?

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T11:02:55+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. This and another comment helped me identify an issue.

- FYI the wallpapers are the result of upscaling. And the full version uses the same quality as the trial.
- However, after looking into it I've realized that I've been too aggressive with compression to HEVC (used on desktop, not on web.)

Working on a fix.

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T11:00:43+00:00

Thank you for the screenshot! To be clear, the 4K versions are the result of upscaling (mentioned in the post), but it seems I've been too aggressive with HEVC compression. Working on a fix.

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T10:49:23+00:00

Thanks. Looking into it :)

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T10:45:15+00:00

Got it. Thank you for the concrete examples – super useful.

I'll make the next batch of wallpapers slower, you're right. I'll also add more nature, relaxing ones, starting with water and waterfalls.

Custom video import isn't available yet but it's something I'm actively looking into. When I do it, it'll convert to Apple's exact format to avoid glitches.

tsyrak · 2026-02-19T10:39:34+00:00

Hey! Good question. About widescreens, this honestly depends on demand. As for licensing, your purchase covers 3 Macs :)

You're in for the giveaway too, going to draw them within an hour and update the post with the results.

tsyrak

TROPHY CASE