Ilasky (u/Ilasky) - Readit News

Ilasky commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025) · Posted by u/david927

Ilasky · 4 months ago

It's an email-only Korean (and English) language learning service started by me and my partner! We've both been interested in language and, since I've been learning Korean and she's been improving English, I've been looking for a modality that works for me -- apps don't click for me for some reason.

It started by me sending myself an email everyday with new Korean vocab/grammar, but we thought it would be nice if it responded with corrections and learned from my common mistakes to make better questions. So, we've built it out to work for us, and turns out other people also like it and are growing everyday!

Ilasky commented on Show HN: Language Learning from YouTube content fluentsubs.com/... · Posted by u/ph4evers

Ilasky · 7 months ago

Always excited to see others working in the language learning space! (Korean & English in my case)

Signed up and played around a bit, but was unable to get a video transcribed. It kept popping up with a "Error loading video. Please try again later." issue. I tried entering a URL and was given that the audio quality was too low.

Separately, I'm curious how you're approaching quality control in your translations for the words. While building my app, the GPT models regularly get translations wrong for Korean and miss nuance and require human-in-the-loop before sending to the user.

Great work shipping! It looks great!

Ilasky commented on Show HN: I send myself automated emails to practice Dutch github.com/ThReinecke/dut... · Posted by u/tr97

Ilasky · 8 months ago

This is eerily well-timed!

My partner and I do something similar for Korean & English (she’s Korean native and is fluent in English and I’m learning Korean). We actually built it out for ourselves and some friends and just released it yesterday[0].

Still working out some kinks, but it sends a question every weekday via email that you’d respond to. It then sends back feedback on vocab & grammar, all with spaced repetition baked in to keep track of words you learn/use as you continue.

It’s currently tailored towards those that can already read and have basics under their belt.

[0] https://dailytokki.com/?ref=hn

Ilasky commented on Ask HN: Anyone learned art (drawing, caricature etc.) as an adult? · Posted by u/akudha

Ilasky · a year ago

I started learning violin about 4 years ago. I used to play saxophone, but always loved classical.

To say that the beginning was rough is an understatement. Violin (and any string instrument, really) is just difficult, plain and simple.

But daily practice, private lessons, and I’m able to play pieces that I’ve only heard recordings of. Sure, it’s not professional, but it brings me immense joy to be able to have my hands and fingers know what to do on instinct now.

Private lessons for me were the key: accountability and expertise at every step. Self-learning would have been so much slower.

The more you learn, and I’m sure it’s like this with any art, the more you realize there’s so much nuance to it and that there’s always room to improve.

Ilasky commented on Finish Your Projects github.com/readme/guides/... · Posted by u/xlinux

joshdavham · a year ago

When’s the next cohort? It doesn’t seem to say on the page.

Ilasky · a year ago

Actually just nailed down the date to Oct 6th!

Ilasky commented on Finish Your Projects github.com/readme/guides/... · Posted by u/xlinux

creativenolo · a year ago

This is real neat.

I see you ask about timezone in the form, but it would be great to address expectations around timezone in ‘questions you may have’.

Ilasky · a year ago

Yes! This cohort we are actually splitting into 2 times so that everyone can join at a time that's convenient (had some people that needed to join very early before and want to avoid that this time)

Ilasky commented on Finish Your Projects github.com/readme/guides/... · Posted by u/xlinux

Ilasky · a year ago

There's been a couple articles about finishing projects posted in the last couple weeks[0][1] and in addition to this topic being incredibly interesting, it also seems pretty pervasive in the community.

A lot of people, myself included, tend to work well with external stimuli, e.g., other people. Especially when there aren't users of the product, there's no one you're really accountable for except yourself. When you start to have users, of course, that becomes different.

So, the question really becomes: how can I bake in accountability in the early stages of my project to see it through and finish?

My answer has been to build around others. A group of us meet weekly over the course of a 6-week period to chat about our project, progress, etc. with a "demo day" at the end where we're expected to show the final thing.[2] It's honestly really fun and we're about to start our third "cohort".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41428705

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41293219

[2] https://lmt2.com

Ilasky commented on A flight search engine that combines flights from different airlines? (2014) travel.stackexchange.com/... · Posted by u/beatthatflight

Ilasky · a year ago

One use case I’d love to see is the ability to find the best price for multiple city tickets.

I’m fairly flexible on dates, but getting the best price for it is a super iterative process. Having some similar functionality like excel’s solve function would be awesome to find optimal dates within a range for each destination.