HN user

ilyakaminsky

40 karma
Posts1
Comments12
View on HN
Fast 12 months ago

i can run it on consumer hardware for vastly cheaper than the cloud

Woah, that's really cool, CJ! I've been toying the with idea of standing up a cluster of older iPhones to run Apple's Speech framework. [1] The inspiration came from this blog post [2] where the author is using it for OCR. A couple of things are holding me back: (1) the OSS models are better according to the current benchmarks and (2) I have customers all over the world, so that geographical load-balancing is a real factor. With that said, I'll definitely spend some time checking out your work. Thanks for sharing!

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/speech

[2] https://terminalbytes.com/iphone-8-solar-powered-vision-ocr-...

Fast 12 months ago

Hmm… That's a good point. I recall a few instances where I went too far to the detriment of production. Having a trusty testing and benchmarking suite thankfully helped with keeping things more stable. As a solo developer, I really enjoy the development process, so while that bit is costly, I didn't really consider that until you mentioned it.

Fast 12 months ago

Fast is also cheap. Especially in the world of cloud computing where you pay by the second. The only way I could create a profitable transcription service [1] that undercuts the rest was by optimizing every little thing along the way. For instance, just yesterday I learned that the image size I've put together is 2.5× smaller than the next open source variant. That means faster cold boots, which reduces the cost (and providers a better service).

[1] https://speechischeap.com

It's sustainable, but not enough to retire on at this point.

Just wondering if I cam build a retirement out of APIs :)

I think it's possible, but you need to find a way to add value beyond the commodity itself (e.g., audio classification and speaker diarization in my case).