Hi HN,
I wanted to read PG's essays but for such long content, I prefer audio. So I made a podcast out of his essays.
I generated the audio automatically with Amazon Polly, AWS's lifelike text-to-speech offering. It reads impressively well like a human. I thought you'd find it useful. It's available on iTunes as well (you'll find the link on the website)
It was not all straightforward though. For example, there is currently a limit of 1500 characters to be translated per request. I also have to merge all of the audio parts in order.
I'd like to invite you to check it out. If you have any advice on how to improve this, do let me know.
Interesting and useful idea. How have you handled licensing? I don't see any mention of it on your site (though I may have missed it), and I see that paulgraham.com carries a copyright mark.
In that case, I strongly recommend taking the site down ASAP, at least until you get things squared away. Then reach out to Paul Graham. Contacting a lawyer would also be good, as it sounds like you could use some legal advice in this area. I don't either, for that matter. I just wouldn't want to be potentially exposed.
Asking for donations + a community purpose suggests that there is a recognized non-profit behind the project. If you contacted Graham, maybe he'd say 'no'. Maybe he'd have suggestions for improving it. Maybe he'd ignore it.
Personally, I'd prefer to hear a human reading the text.
Readit News
I generated the audio automatically with Amazon Polly, AWS's lifelike text-to-speech offering. It reads impressively well like a human. I thought you'd find it useful. It's available on iTunes as well (you'll find the link on the website)
It was not all straightforward though. For example, there is currently a limit of 1500 characters to be translated per request. I also have to merge all of the audio parts in order.
I'd like to invite you to check it out. If you have any advice on how to improve this, do let me know.
Jeshan.
Personally, I'd prefer to hear a human reading the text.