dan_bez

I like listening non-fiction audiobooks. There are a lot of pro-s comparing to text books, but this is not the main topic. What matter is that there are a lot of people who prefer audiobooks, judging, at least, by audible.com scale.

Why on earth there is still no service for articles TTS reading? There are some ways around, like Pocket app, that has terrible TTS functionality and some other apps with awful UX.

I really hoped someone would develop such application for years and i'd gladly pay very well for it's usage subscription, but there are no suitable apps. With Google's WaveNet TTS api anyone can build awesome TTS RSS reader.

1. Why there is no decent app for this matter? Or, if you know any, could you recommend?

2. If there is no suitable apps, would you pay for such app? Even with WaveNet voices, it will cost about $10 per regular-sized 300-400 pages book, which means quite a lot of articles can be fit into this amount.

3. What features would you like to have in such app?

I think pretty much everyone here is aware of the nasty things Upwork does. High fees, totalitarian policies, sudden suspensions and just marvellous support.

Essentially, it's highly regulated labor exchange, with centralised authority. They CAN instantly ruin your career, or at least incapacitate it for a long time by just banning you and forbid to create another account. May be they will explain this, may they'll just ignore you. Of course, this is not necessary because they are "evil", but because they are just an instance of totalitarian hypocrisy in the internet. They create bunch of regulations, that make it very easy for scummer-type clients to blackmail you and ruin your profile. Why is it okay for so many people?

Can freelance be unregulated? With clients and freelancers dealing with each other without oversight?I was on both sides: as a freelancer and as a client on upwork. I was kicked off by upwork years ago, when i was just a beginner JS developer, i was dependant on them and it was really hard to keep going on. Since then I worked with many clients and even started my own development shop, which, i think, characterises me as capable and responsible person. Upwork's regulations never helped me. I've proven to support that client explicitly blackmailing me with negative review - they unsuspended my account but didn't delete the review, because it's against their regulations. Well, you know what is happening with profile, once it got 1 star review from the beginning. Since then i dealt with clients without any regulations. It was reasonably easy to spot scammers and avoid dealing with them: you can just do small part of the job, get paid and grow amounts of client-to-freelancer debt gradually along with trust. That was years ago, but still, when i hear again and again what is going on there, i feel sorry for all of the good freelancers who have been damaged by Upwork.

What do you think? Can freelance exist on scale without regulations?

Tldr: i'm looking for daily ~10 minutes-long videos about business and tech, very intensive and positive like Techcrunch, intellectual and without business-training-ish bullsh*t.

I used to listen to various podcasts, but sound-only sources are usually too calm - doesn't set the right rhythm for a day. And the most intensive business-ish podcasts i know contains a lot of useless demagogy, which became unbearable for me to listen.

I used to watch Techcrunch before it has been discontinued. Their news were a bit too short, contained superficial information and sometimes were very opinionated. Though, the vibe was very good. Techcrunch + some previously saved article text-to-speach makes about 10-15 minutes, which is good enough. So, something like techcrunch would be acceptable.

TED talks are obviously not frequent enough and mostly too long.

Talks from famous entrepreneurs are rare and repetitive.

I haven't seen any somewhat developed startup case studies channels, but that would be great, i think.

Thank you!