HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ilamparithi

254 karma · joined April 22, 2009

submissionscomments
ilamparithi··on Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
ReverseCam - A camera app to show the non-mirror preview while taking selfies.

https://www.reversecam.com/

The front camera apps always show the mirror preview. Most of us hate photos others take of us, but love our selfies. It's because we groom ourselves and find our perfect angles using the mirror preview. So it's jarring when we see the photos of us taken by others. I always wanted a camera app that showed the non-mirror preview. Surprisingly most camera apps don't have this option. So I created this app to scratch my own itch:)

Note: Photos and videos are only stored in the browser. No data is sent to any servers. You can also install this as an app from your browser since it's a progressive web app.

ilamparithi··on LLM Structured Outputs Handbook
For my use case (https://www.grokvocab.com/), I get proper JSON output without much effort. I am using Langchain4J (https://github.com/langchain4j/langchain4j) which automatically maps the output JSON to my POJO. I just prompt the model to return the output as JSON.
ilamparithi··on Tell HN: Twilio support replies with hallucinated features
I searched on Google to check if banks were open on a certain day. The AI response on top said they were closed because it was a second Saturday, but it was actually a Wednesday.
ilamparithi··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)
I've been working on GrokVocab (https://www.grokvocab.com), an app to improve vocabulary without flashcards or memorization.

Everyone knows reading is the best way to build vocabulary, but many avoid it and turn to flashcards or spaced repetition because long texts can feel overwhelming, and they often have to refer to a dictionary.

This app gives users short, engaging passages focused on comprehension. While reading, users guess word meanings from context and find out whether they got it right by answering a few questions below. I believe this will be helpful for people who haven’t had much success with popular vocabulary learning methods.

I shared it on HN earlier (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44543063), but it didn’t get much attention. If you're interested in novel learning methods or vocabulary, I’d love your feedback.

P.S. Login is required since the app uses LLMs to generate interesting passages. You can register with any non-existent email if privacy is a concern.

ilamparithi··on The Einstein AI Model
Had the same thought sometime back about AI discovering theory of relativity with only the data before 1905. It would give a definite answer about whether any reasoning involved in the LLM output.
ilamparithi··on Quote Origin: I had exactly four seconds and Google had told me it wasn’t enough
It gets funnier if you consider the meme that Elon Musk is an alien who is building rockets just to go back to his home planet. :)
ilamparithi··on Number 16 (spider)
Didn't work for me as well. Mainly pacing and writing style. Didn't finish the book.
ilamparithi··on Ask HN: What's the best charting library for customer-facing dashboards?
I used Apex Charts recently with VueJS. Happy with the exhaustive configuration options available for each charts. It worked well for my use case.
ilamparithi··on The Bulma CSS framework reaches 1.0
Micronaut + VueJS + Bulma is my go to stack now. I like the minimalistic approach of Bulma. Was able to create a responsive single page app with minimal effort. Themes feature is a welcome addition.
ilamparithi··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
Sounds great. How do you handle the licenses for the desktop app? Custom solution or is there a library for it?
ilamparithi··on For RoR, see every method call, parameter and return value in production
The project I worked on has a non-trivial codebase. So far I haven't seen any performance issues though I was worried initially. The idea is to use it during development and beta testing and switch it off later once the application is stable enough. Might keep it on for some more time if there are no performance issues.
ilamparithi··on For RoR, see every method call, parameter and return value in production
Recently did something similar for a java project using AOP. Basically adding an annotation to each method and logging the parameters before the method call and return values after the method call. Whenever there is an exception, a mail will be sent with the stacktrace along with the entire request path(including method calls, parameters and return values). Extremely useful for debugging and to proactively fix the issues.
ilamparithi··on Virtual Threads Arrive in JDK 21, Ushering a New Era of Concurrency
when it comes to full stack frameworks, Micronaut(https://micronaut.io/) is actually good and pleasant to work with.
ilamparithi··on Things I learned after getting users
Not sure which programming language you are using. For Java, I find Spring JDBC templates with Row Mappers more productive than ORMs. DataClassRowMapper will automatically populate the domain entity.
ilamparithi··on Practice typing by retyping entire novels
Interesting. Are you manually typing in Tamil or are you using a speech to text software?
ilamparithi··on Twitter shares drop after reporting declining monthly active users
I don't think so since we are already logged out.
ilamparithi··on Twitter shares drop after reporting declining monthly active users
They recently started logging out users and asking for mobile number. I didn't want to give my mobile number so I uninstalled the app. Occasionally visit the website and view some users' tweets (without logging in). But as it was mentioned elsewhere it's full of dark patterns and an irritating experience.
ilamparithi··on Indian IT, “You're Fired”
You are supposed to get an experience certificate (that confirms how long you worked in that company) and a formal relieving letter (that confirms that you left under normal circumstances and your performance was satisfactory) from your previous employer. In addition to that you are also supposed to get payslips for the last three months.

Without supplying these it is very hard to get a job. Most companies also contact previous employers (through a third party) to confirm these details.

ilamparithi··on Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners
I created something similar using the Wordnik api. https://www.greedge.com/grewordlist/
ilamparithi··on Ask HN: Books Like 'Calculus Made Easy'?
It's kind of outdated now. But Mastering EJB (2nd edition) by Ed Roman was very helpful to me to understand EJB at one point. The writing was very different from a typical technical book. It was like reading a novel.
ilamparithi··on YC’s Summer Reading
Seconded. Her books are wonderful.
ilamparithi··on Google Fonts Redesigned
Same issue in Chrome 51, Ubuntu 14.04.
ilamparithi··on What disturbed me about the Facebook meeting
I guess he is talking about the book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
ilamparithi··on U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High
Ha ha. Here I am thinking arranged marriages are too difficult and I should have born in a different culture.
ilamparithi··on Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?
I read somewhere that there is a universe in each scale. For example, there is a whole world in the atomic scale. Similarly there are billions of bacteria in our mouth alone. They couldn't make sense of their host. Sometimes I think it is possible that the entire universe is some body part of a giant organism which we couldn't comprehend.
ilamparithi··on Apache PDFBox – A Java PDF Library
I used to use a Play framework module to create simple PDFs. You just do your formatting in html and render it as a PDF. https://www.playframework.com/modules/pdf (only for 1.x series). There seems to be a version for 2.x series but I have never used it(https://github.com/innoveit/play2-pdf).
ilamparithi··on “Person of Interest”: The TV Show That Predicted Edward Snowden (2014)
I did the exact thing. The first season episodes were so predictable and boring like a Dan Brown plot. I couldn't make myself to watch the second season. May be I should give it another try.
ilamparithi··on Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account
Definitely. I noticed the tone too. Somewhat brash and arrogant.
ilamparithi··on Chrome Cleanup Tool
Finally! We get lots of complaints from out customers about these ads. Some are not tech savvy enough to remove malware and add-ons. We had to help them in removing these. Ideal solution would be Google alerting the users and removing these malware after getting users' permission.
ilamparithi··on Blade: a Java Web Framework
It's good that they are targeting from Java 6. Most of these latest micro frameworks only supports Java 8. Will be really helpful for people who are stuck with Java 6/7.
Page 1 of 3Next →