Not for me, tried this in latest Chrome and Firefox, disabling ublock and ghostery and still same behavior. Then once a bit later it worked with blockers on, but just first back & forth.
I think the author underestimated the interest of folks in such a product and it may be having HN 'kiss of death'
this kiss of death sounds ominous...
The strange thing was I posted it to HN about 30days ago and got like 1 upvote. Obviously a lot has change since then, but still. I think the reason people like it so much is because you can try it without having to sign up first...not sure though.
Sign-up would for sure ease up on load, but MAN you created (if it works at least on 90%) product that tons of people would kill for! Combine with stuff like Duolingo and one can cover significant parts of language.
I've spent last year cca 5000$ on tons of conversation/grammar lessons via zoom to get to French B1 and do Swiss FIDE certificate, starting from very low A1 I would say.
Given, the guy was properly good and he helped me to get better tremendously (and I got the cert). The biggest issue with language learning is finding a buddy that would not run away after few mins disgusted by my torture of language, as many french unfortunately do (tells you something about their school system and archaic language, but those are other topics for other places). I mean people in remote France offer this for something like 25 euro/hour.
This tool may be perfect for that active part of learning, up to certain level I presume since I don't expect very high level finesse to be present (sorry I am a bit sceptic when it comes to AI/ML). This is the hardest part of learning // actively speaking, but also one where one grows the most.
