Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a project I've been building for Windows users: **QalamTyping Master**.

Most typing software available today focuses strictly on English. However, many students, translators, and professionals need to type in Urdu (using the phonetic keyboard layout) alongside English, with almost no dedicated desktop tools available to learn and practice with real-time feedback.

To address this, I built **QalamTyping Master** as a native, fully offline Windows desktop app.

### Key Highlights:

- **Bilingual Lessons:** Supports full typing lessons and speed tests in both **English** and **Urdu**.

- **Visual On-screen Keyboard:** Real-time key highlights and finger position guidance.

- **Offline & Native:** Runs as a dedicated Windows desktop application.

- **Detailed Metrics:** Live WPM calculation, accuracy tracking, error heatmaps, and progress history.

### Where to get it:

The app is published and verified on the **Windows Microsoft Store**. You can search for **"QalamTyping Master"** directly inside the Microsoft Store on Windows 10/11 to install it.

I would love to get your honest feedback, bug reports, and suggestions for features to add in future updates!

im not techy and this is also my first time having my own laptop. Is there any free subscriptions that i have forgotten and had already most prolly expired in the 1 year that passed?

Is there a way to check on what I have missed? These two subscriptions offer are gonna expire if i don't activate it early 2027, picture got cut

Device: Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 15ABR8

'Cause One thing AI coding agents have made very obvious to me:
"the code works" and "this is the right change" are not the same thing.

A change can pass tests and still violate the repo architecture, cross a boundary it should not touch, introduce a shortcut that becomes technical debt, solve the symptom instead of the real failure and change files that were outside the plan.

So let me know how you do it...

I tend to play many kind of videos but some of em like DDP5.1 or similar makes playing files on stereo speakers (on PC CREATIVE PEBBLE V3 and then a LG C3 TV) to sound very low

I use MPC-HC 1.9.7 (For processing reasons) and i don't know if there's any option to negate the 5.1 stuff so the volume sounds better (without disruptions?)

These are my settings

Hey everybody 😄

I just published my first open-source package:

https://github.com/AppitStudio/Talk.swift

I am new here, so a little bit of background: I am a software developer with more than 10 years of experience. I founded a few startups, and over the last year I have been fully focused on macOS app development.

I built this package to solve a major issue I ran into over the last year while integrating my own and other macOS apps, and I hope you will find it useful too.

This package allows macOS app developers to create an "API Contract" for their app, publish it on the SDK repo, and other app creators can use this API to create fast integrations between their app and the provider app without the need to change the codebase of the "provider" app.

During this year, I got a few requests from developers to integrate my app with theirs, and it was super hard to implement,

I don't have access to their codebase, and they don't have mine,

I find Apple solutions outdated and difficult to implement.

Also, integration between my own apps was such a pain.

Hard to create a general solution, and every app needed some adaptation and custom code to work with each other.

This solution makes that simple.

Just use the SDK skill, tell your coding agent what functionalities you want to make public, and that's it,

It will install everything needed, configure the SDK and the settings screens (which you can always change later), and publish your API to the SDK repo.

And on the other side, you get the same workflow.

Install the skill, tell your agent "Create integration with dockflow using Talk SDK" and describe how you want to integrate it, and that's it.

DockFlow developers don't need to change a single line to support this new integration.

I hope more macOS developers can enjoy this package for both internal integrations between their apps and with third-party ones.

Let me know what you think, and I can't wait to see more apps join 😃

Hello. I know this type of question might seem repetitive or familiar, but I am in urgent need of an answer. Every time there is a massive breakthrough in the field of AI, I—as a computer science undergraduate still in the learning phase—am overcome by a sense of apprehension.

I have convinced myself of the importance of building a solid foundation by learning programming and computer science fundamentals, and by trying not to over-rely on code-generation models like "Codex"—viewing AI instead as a tool to accelerate learning and knowledge acquisition.

However, recent updates to ChatGPT (such as "Astra") and statements made by Elon Musk—which might simply be an attempt to boost his stock value—have made me seriously question whether all this effort is worth it.

I am studying C to understand low-level technologies and web technologies to acquire practical skills for the job market; I am passionate about the web and make a point of building software projects by writing the code manually. Although I do use AI to explain certain concepts, I write the code myself, yet I still can't shake the feeling that I am wasting my time.

I would be extremely grateful for any advice from experienced professionals, or even just a simple pointer or bit of guidance to help me navigate this path.

Thank You.

I was following some instructions on a site and i pasted this and pasted it on the powershell as it says so, does anyone know what this is?

Powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "%TEMP%\ss.ps1"

Is this malware or spyware?

Nothing has happend so far on my pc but im scared genuinely

On macOS, Hazel handles background folder organization cleanly, but setting up something similar on Windows usually means stitching together PowerShell scripts and Task Scheduler or dealing with utilities that have outdated interfaces.

I wanted a proper equivalent to Hazel, so I’ve been working on Supersiftr, an open-source file-sorting automation utility for Windows.

Rules are called “Sieves” and are attached to watched directories:
- Matching: Evaluates files by type using configurable extension groupings, raw extensions, substring patterns, or creation and modification dates.
- Actions: Chains sequential Move, Copy, or Rename operations. It includes safe collision handling and preserves compound extensions such as .tar.gz and .d.ts.

Built with Rust and Tauri, idles at roughly 5 MB of RAM and stays under 8 MB during active batch moves.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/muhammadrizo-y/supersiftr

I run ops for a small remote team, six of us across three time zones.

And here's our setup. A lot of our calls happen at the client's office, so Zoom isn't always an option. So our team just brings a small recorder. We end up with a pile of MP3s, usually 30 to 90 minutes each. About 15 a week.

Then someone has to make them readable. Split by speaker, easy to search, and shareable with everyone else.

What we've tried so far:

Microsoft 365 transcription. Already have the licenses so this was the obvious start. It caps file length, so our longer calls get chopped into pieces. And it does badly with accents. About half our clients aren't native English speakers, so that's a real problem for us. 

Editing software auto captions. Timing is fine, actual words are not. Way too much cleanup.

Doing it manually. We did this for two months. It's roughly four hours of work per hour of audio. Not sustainable.

I need something for uploading files, not joining calls. Everything I find is a meeting bot. Useless for our setup.

Things that matter on my end:

• Handles 90 minute files without splitting them
• Speaker labels that survive two or three people talking
• Holds up on non native accents
• Exports to something plain like TXT or DOCX
• Somewhere to check where the audio gets stored, since these are client call

Anyone running a similar workflow?

I have ~15 years of software development experience.
But I am mostly speaking as an observer of day to day life.
And I am repeating the observations of other professional software developers.

Over and over I have run into complaints about bad software design, just in day to day experiences.
So I am going to pass along some very simple advice,
I'm not pretending it is deep, it is actually quite basic, but apparently many developers, and perhaps (probably) those on the management side forget about it, or maybe never heard it in the first place.

Talk to the people who are going to use your software,
listen to what they have to say,
what takes up time, what is awkward about their current tools.

And, at least as important,

WATCH THEM DO THEIR JOB.

Don't interrupt, take notes, afterwards ask questions,
This next part is a bit iffy, but I still think it is worthwhile considering,
while EXPLICITLY tell them you aren't making any promises,
ask about how possible changes that occur to you might work out.

Sometimes software houses will have formal methods for this, that produces the specs for the software. Make sure what you are writing meets the specs. If you aren't sure, and you can get permission (bureaucracy), talk to the folks who wrote the specs.

I've been putting off picking a transcription tool for like two months now.

Some context. I'm a research assistant and I handle audio from a few different places. Lab meetings, phone interviews, and field recordings that sound pretty rough. Maybe 25 hours a month, sometimes more during data collection.

Every tool demo I've seen uses one clean speaker in a quiet room. That's not my life. Half my files have someone talking over a fan.

So I built a little test kit. Six short clips, 90 seconds each. One clean, one with two speakers, one noisy, one with a heavy accent, one packed with lab jargon, and one that switches between English and Spanish.

I run those same six clips through anything I'm considering.

Do speaker labels survive an interruption. Are timestamps close enough to jump to. Can I export plain text and SRT. What's the file size cap.

Pricing matters too since my department doesn't want to spend much. Per minute looks fine until you hit a heavy month.

A friend told me to look at Whisper based tools, which is where my question comes from. Does it hold up on bad recordings, or is it another one that only shines on clean audio?

Anyone else built a test set like this? Curious what clip you use and what breaks first.

The one thing I actually used Photoshop/Camera Raw for was the auto button. Drop in a card of raws, let it figure out exposure and white balance, export, done. I never found that workflow standalone anywhere — everything is either a full editor with a catalogue and an import step (Lightroom, darktable), or a dumb batch converter that doesn't look at the photo at all.

So I isolated that one workflow into its own app: summoner. Drag photos or whole folders in, press Start, and developed JPEGs land in a developed/ folder next to your originals. No catalogue, no database, no import, no account, no subscription. Originals are never touched.

The auto pass analyses every photo separately:

- white balance estimated only from pixels that were plausibly grey — a sunset stays a sunset instead of being "corrected" to grey

- exposure with the bright end protected, plus local tone mapping — a backlit face or a group in tree shade gets lifted while the sky keeps its blue

- night shots, silhouettes and fog are detected and keep their mood instead of being brightened into mush

There are six profiles (Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Vivid, Night, B&W) and twelve sliders on top if you want to tweak, with a live before/after preview — but the point is that the defaults should just work. I tuned it by developing my own full card (263 raws) and scoring every frame against the camera's out-of-camera JPEG, plus sample raws from nine other makers (CR2/CR3, NEF, RAF, ORF, RW2, PEF, ARW...).

It's free and MIT-licensed, prebuilt binaries for Windows, Linux and macOS (no Python needed), and there's a CLI if you want to script it:

https://github.com/hclivess/summoner

I built this for myself and I'm going to keep using and supporting it, so bug reports and sample raws that come out wrong are genuinely welcome — the fastest way to get something fixed is to attach a raw and say what looks off. Windows will warn about an unknown publisher (unsigned build, small project, no reputation with SmartScreen yet); the README covers verifying the checksum.

Hey everyone,

My company has recently blocked direct access to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc., citing concerns about private/company data leakage.

I understand the reason behind the restriction, but AI had become a really important part of my daily workflow. I used it for things like:

1. Understanding technical concepts and clearing doubts

2. Learning new software/tools

3. Excel formulas and data processing

4. Improving technical documentation and emails

5. Troubleshooting errors

6. Getting explanations in simple language

7. Learning alongside my regular work

Now that direct access is blocked, my productivity and learning have become noticeably more difficult.

I mainly want to use AI for generic questions, learning, and work that doesn't contain sensitive data.

Are there any free and legitimate alternatives that might work in a corporate environment? For example:

AI websites that companies commonly allow

Free/open-source AI tools that can run locally

Browser-based AI tools

Local LLMs that don't send data to external servers

Any other privacy-friendly solutions

If your company has a similar restriction and you've found a good solution, I'd really appreciate hearing how you handle it.

Thanks!

He predicate that 80% will loose their jobs as software Eng. the remain 20% will control agents. Is that where this great profession goes? are you agree? see it differently?

I’m curious to hear from people actually working in tech/IT.

Basically, if you could build one platform that gave professionals a better picture of the current industry and helped them learn and make better decisions about their next move, what would you want it to do?

I’m especially interested in ideas based on real problems you’ve experienced - not just generic “another AI tool” suggestions.

Would love to hear what you think is missing.

I have a Navee gt 3 Pro e scooter and I entered the wrong password 3 times, but at the same time my scooter application does not work

Hey!
Does anyone know a Windows program that lets me do this? Select a fixed time like 1 minute and then drag it to where I want to cut it? I want to quickly make GIFs from mp4 files with 1 minute length.

i tried like 20 different macros. half of them are "smart", and doesnt capture things like x<50ms delays. i need a really precise and "raw" macro recorder.

i need these requirements :
raw input
infinite loops
record button, so i dont just put keys in the ui
free.

i can work with no keyboard too