talkmate.online
Show HN: TalkMate – Someone to Talk To, Anytimehttps://talkmate.onlineI work alone. I travel constantly:- Bangkok, Dubai, Singapore, Vietnam. I'm a workaholic and honestly pretty confined to myself because there's never enough time. Sometimes I just want to talk through what's on my mind but it's 3 am, or I'm in a new city, or I don't want to bother anyone with half-formed thoughts.So I built TalkMate. It's a voice companion that actually talks back. Open it in your browser, start speaking, and it responds out loud. No signup, no account needed.I used to earlier chat with ChatGPT and Claude in my free time but talking to someone feels different, someone on the other side is listening to you, though virtual but lets forget that for now that there's some virtual someone and imagine that its someone real who is talking to you.For this reason, I built TalkMate. t's a voice companion that actually talks back. Open it in your browser, start speaking, and it responds out loud. No signup, no account needed.It supports 17 languages, doesn't save your conversationJan 15, 2026 6:39 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: How to stop an AWS bot sending 2B requests/month?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45613567I have been struggling with a bot– 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; crawler)' coming from AWS Singapore – and sending an absurd number of requests to a domain of mine, averaging over 700 requests/second for several months now. Thankfully, CloudFlare is able to handle the traffic with a simple WAF rule and 444 response to reduce the outbound traffic.I've submitted several complaints to AWS to get this traffic to stop, their typical followup is: We have engaged with our customer, and based on this engagement have determined that the reported activity does not require further action from AWS at this time.I've tried various 4XX responses to see if the bot will back off, I've tried 30X redirects (which it follows) to no avail.The traffic is hitting numbers that require me to re-negotiate my contract with CloudFlare and is otherwise a nuisance when reviewing analytics/logs.I've considered redirecting the entirety of the traffic to aws abuse report page, but at this scall, it's essentially a small DOct 17, 2025 5:28 AM
news.ycombinator.com
Hey Apple Fix your phoneshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42110142Loads of complaints out there about the same two issues:1- Making an unwanted call from the lock screen to a missed incoming call2- Making an unwanted call when the person you were talking to ends the call before youThese are both examples of truly bad UI/UX and Apple does not seem to either comprehend this or want to fix it. Most of the complaints and requests for solutions go back many years.The first issue happens when you receive a call and do not answer it. You grab your phone, accidentally touch the missed call notice and it instantaneously makes a call.This is horrible under lots of circumstances, not the least of which are:- You did not want to call that person at that time - It is an unknown number and likely a malicious actor - Known caller in a different timezone that you should not be calling at that time - Etc.I deal with people all over the world. I don't want to accidentally call someone in Singapore at 2:00 AM just because my stupid phone does not have a sensible "PlaceNov 11, 2024 8:18 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: I'm trapped in a golden prison, any advice?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37237036This is going to sound very braggy, I hope I won't get shut down for this.I feel like I'm trapped in a golden prison, unhappy but comfortable.I'm a self taught programmer, 32 yo, with an engineering background and masters. Co-founded 2 companies, failed, worked in california and singapore, now based in Europe. I think I'm an ok dev, quite good with people.I've mostly been working as a freelancer all my life, started billing 33€/day in 2012 for a few days at a time, now around 924€/day, 220 days/year.Always worked at fast paced / high stakes startups except for my current job. Worked 60 to 70 hours a week, ~50 weeks per year for many years until 2020.In 2021 I was completely burned out after 7.5 years of grinding.Took a cozy freelance job as a fullstack senior engineer in a ~100ppl company, coming into the office 2days/week.I'm working about 1 to 2 hours a day max, the expectations are so low compared to what I'm used to. The rest of the time I'm just answering a couple of emails, helpiAug 23, 2023 2:56 PM
twinzok.com
Show HN: Contactless Testdrive Plaformhttps://twinzok.com/Hello,while selling a car, I had to make a lot of time to schedule all the test drives for people interested in my offering.This is not easy with a full time job!So I heard that in Singapore, Hyundai made a trial platform that allows users to test drive vehicles in a contactless manner, including keyless entry via web API and more.Since I could not find a replica of such a service in my country, I set out to do my own version and hence my platform twinzok.com was born.It allows people to list their vehicle and offer test drives and viewings at any time. Only people that have a verified license can drive. Just like online rental services. This solves my time problem as I do not have to be present during the viewings and drives anymore.Right now the service is a in trial phase but the main components are working.I wanted to know what you think of this idea and whether you see any use in it.Thank you for your attention!Feb 1, 2023 1:57 PM
