9 ms·

Hi! I'm the dev here! I built this on a whim at after seeing someone ask for it on twitter. It was 12:30 at night but I couldn't pass down the opportunity to bu

by aizk 2y ago

Hi! I'm the dev here! I built this on a whim at after seeing someone ask for it on twitter. It was 12:30 at night but I couldn't pass down the opportunity to build it. The code is very simple, there's no backend at all actually, I believe because wikipedia's api is very permissive and you can just make the requests in the frontend. So you just simply request random articles, get some snippets, and the image attached! I used Claude and cursor do 90% of the heavy lifting, so I am positive there's plenty of room for optimizations. But right now as it stands, it's quite fun to play with, even without anything very sophisticated. Here is the source code. https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok https://github.com/IsaacGemal/wikitok

tomieinlove 2y ago
Congrats! Tomie here, this is absolutely great!
preciousoo 2y ago
I remember seeing that tweet, I thought it was the craziest coincidence ever when I saw this on the front page. I guess it’s not haha
- aizk 2y ago
  As soon as I saw the tweet, I realized the opportunity was there waiting for me. And also, twitter's algorithm is REALLY good at pairing the right tweets to one another, so many people saw those two tweets side by side, which added to the humor.
- blast 2y ago
  What was the tweet?
  - aizk 2y ago
    https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137 https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137
varjag 2y ago
This is great! Thanks for sharing it.
mostertoaster 2y ago
Wow this is surprisingly addictive :) Nice job whipping up something so simple, yet elegant, so fast. This is what I love about LLM tools like cursor, it makes the effort to just try and build something so low, you can just try it one night, and can make cool things that might not have been built otherwise.
piloto_ciego 2y ago
This is freaking really cool, I’m at work browsing HN instead of doing actual work, but I’ll look into it more later, but the “killer feature” I think would be to add audio narration do this, or a quick summary, I would scroll that all day… Awesome job!
larodi 2y ago
Kudos for the anthropological experiment. Indeed makes you wonder what's there about the sliding that makes it so entertaining. I suggest you add some sort of summary that flows, so to add certain level of animation. Some articles have actual sound and animations to them. Great inspiration!
- viraptor 2y ago
  > Indeed makes you wonder what's there about the sliding that makes it so entertaining. Check out "skinner box" - the fact that you may get something interesting or may not is more exciting than just getting something good. They're lootboxes of information/entertainment.
  - larodi 2y ago
    It’s lottery indeed, you are right.
bazmattaz 2y ago
This is awesome. I can imagine you likely are not interested in building one but this site could hugely benefit from a recommendations algorithm. For example an algorithm could understand how much a user really enjoys a certain article and then starts sending the users down a rabbit hole of similar and tangential content. Designing, building and maintaining an algorithm like this though is no small feat.
- aizk 2y ago
  I would not be surprised if Claude + Openai's reasoning models could develop a simple rudimentary algorithm that would work. Of course it wouldn't be as sophisticated as something like TikTok and would require a lot of fine tuning, but it's definitely possible.
  - singpolyma3 2y ago
    Or even use an LLM directly "user liked articles with these titles, what others might they like"
- Aeolun 2y ago
  You are joking right?
  - smus 2y ago
    why would it be a joke?
    - airstrike 2y ago
      echo chambers bad
      - gessha 2y ago
        Personalization is not inherently bad and I believe personal feeds can be engineered in a way that doesn’t result in echo chambers but in communities. The problem is capital incentives are not aligned with making these interfaces which is why we have the feeds we have today on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I look forward to the innovations happening on bring-your-own-algo Bluesky. As a side note, I’m currently building a personalized Hacker News service. I might throw it at Show HN once it gets closer to completion.
andrewmutz 2y ago
It would be cool to add an algorithm that learns my interests and suggests relevant articles
KeplerBoy 2y ago
Love it! One of the rare website i added to my android homescreen. Maybe someone has a good idea for a nice favicon.
- aizk 2y ago
  I added a dark wikipedia logo as the favicon, which should be good for now.
tomashubelbauer 2y ago
Shoutout to APIs that do not enforce CORS preventing requests be made from FE without a need for a BE. There's so many toy apps I started building that would have just worked if this was more common, but they have CORS restrictions requiring me to spin up a BE which for many one-off tools and personal tools just isn't worth doing and maintaining. Same with OAuth.
- aizk 2y ago
  The only caveat I feel is that the speed of the API is definitely not comparable to something more purpose built for this kind of scale, but overall I'm happy as it works well enough that I don't have to think about it too hard.
  - mikedelfino 2y ago
    I think Github Actions could be used for scheduled builds, so that the initial load would have random articles right in. Further requests could then be made in advance so users would not notice any delay from the API.
    - aizk 2y ago
      Do you have any examples of that I can look at as a reference? I'm used to github actions just being my CI/CD build step checking tool.
      - mikedelfino 2y ago
        I attempted to implement the schedule trigger [1] on GitHub Actions as an example, but it is not being triggered as I expected. It needs more digging if you're so inclined. Aside from that, the whole gist is that the initial data can be injected into the static files during the build step, or even saved as separate JSON files that the app can load instead of reaching out to the API. As long as you're willing to refresh the static data from time to time, of course. I created a basic example at https://schedbuild.pages.dev/ https://schedbuild.pages.dev/ with a rough, manual implementation of a build step. Frameworks like Next.js offer a more sophisticated approach that can render the entire HTML, allowing users to load the static page with the initial data already rendered without Javascript, and subsequent interactions taking over from there more seamlessly. If the Github Actions schedule feature is ever sorted out, in my opinion it's a reasonable alternative to setting up a backend just for this. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-when-your-workflow-runs/events-that-trigger-workflows#schedule https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosin...
echelon 2y ago
Next steps: ingest these offline and process them into quick 30 second videos with the most salient facts. TTS narration, additional images. Generate stock video using the images in the API and perhaps text-to-video. That would be a killer app. Bonus: come up with a heuristic or model to filter out or de-rank universally uninteresting articles.
WikiFuck 2y ago
[dead]
rererereferred 2y ago
Very nice! I wonder if it would be possible to see articles related to a topic. Maybe using the hubs as a starting point and then following the related links in each article?
aizk 2y ago
Not to plug myself too shamelessly, but here's my resume if anyone is interested :) https://www.aizk.sh/Isaac's%20Resume.pdf https://www.aizk.sh/Isaac's%20Resume.pdf
- Narciss 2y ago
  This is far from a shameless plug, you built the thing! V nice love the idea.
  - aizk 2y ago
    I think tomorrow I'm going to write a detailed blog of exactly what I did building out WikiTok. One last little bit of info on this subject (and at the end of it I'll say that I'm open to work or whatever).
rzz3 2y ago
This is super super cool. I’ll tell you the single barrier to me actually using this regularly—it needs an algorithm. It would be so cool (and a good learning project) to even build the simplest of recommendation algorithms behind it based on my likes, dislikes, bookmarks, and whether I click “read more”.
INTPenis 2y ago
I just wanna say I love it. So simple, but so cool. You've taken a popular idea and done something interesting and intellectual out of it. good job.
b3n 2y ago
Nice! I made WikTok[1] in the past, but your version looks much better. :-) [1] https://wiktok.org/ https://wiktok.org/
hemant1041 2y ago
Great job!

by aizk 2y ago

tomieinlove 2y ago

Congrats! Tomie here, this is absolutely great!

preciousoo 2y ago

I remember seeing that tweet, I thought it was the craziest coincidence ever when I saw this on the front page. I guess it’s not haha

aizk 2y ago
As soon as I saw the tweet, I realized the opportunity was there waiting for me. And also, twitter's algorithm is REALLY good at pairing the right tweets to one another, so many people saw those two tweets side by side, which added to the humor.
blast 2y ago
What was the tweet?
- aizk 2y ago
  https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137 https://x.com/rauchg/status/1886807959340245137

varjag 2y ago

This is great! Thanks for sharing it.

mostertoaster 2y ago

Wow this is surprisingly addictive :) Nice job whipping up something so simple, yet elegant, so fast. This is what I love about LLM tools like cursor, it makes the effort to just try and build something so low, you can just try it one night, and can make cool things that might not have been built otherwise.

piloto_ciego 2y ago

This is freaking really cool, I’m at work browsing HN instead of doing actual work, but I’ll look into it more later, but the “killer feature” I think would be to add audio narration do this, or a quick summary, I would scroll that all day… Awesome job!

larodi 2y ago

Kudos for the anthropological experiment. Indeed makes you wonder what's there about the sliding that makes it so entertaining. I suggest you add some sort of summary that flows, so to add certain level of animation. Some articles have actual sound and animations to them. Great inspiration!

viraptor 2y ago
> Indeed makes you wonder what's there about the sliding that makes it so entertaining. Check out "skinner box" - the fact that you may get something interesting or may not is more exciting than just getting something good. They're lootboxes of information/entertainment.
- larodi 2y ago
  It’s lottery indeed, you are right.

bazmattaz 2y ago

This is awesome. I can imagine you likely are not interested in building one but this site could hugely benefit from a recommendations algorithm. For example an algorithm could understand how much a user really enjoys a certain article and then starts sending the users down a rabbit hole of similar and tangential content. Designing, building and maintaining an algorithm like this though is no small feat.

aizk 2y ago
I would not be surprised if Claude + Openai's reasoning models could develop a simple rudimentary algorithm that would work. Of course it wouldn't be as sophisticated as something like TikTok and would require a lot of fine tuning, but it's definitely possible.
- singpolyma3 2y ago
  Or even use an LLM directly "user liked articles with these titles, what others might they like"
Aeolun 2y ago
You are joking right?
- smus 2y ago
  why would it be a joke?
  - airstrike 2y ago
    echo chambers bad
    - gessha 2y ago
      Personalization is not inherently bad and I believe personal feeds can be engineered in a way that doesn’t result in echo chambers but in communities. The problem is capital incentives are not aligned with making these interfaces which is why we have the feeds we have today on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I look forward to the innovations happening on bring-your-own-algo Bluesky. As a side note, I’m currently building a personalized Hacker News service. I might throw it at Show HN once it gets closer to completion.

andrewmutz 2y ago

It would be cool to add an algorithm that learns my interests and suggests relevant articles

KeplerBoy 2y ago

Love it! One of the rare website i added to my android homescreen. Maybe someone has a good idea for a nice favicon.

aizk 2y ago
I added a dark wikipedia logo as the favicon, which should be good for now.

tomashubelbauer 2y ago

Shoutout to APIs that do not enforce CORS preventing requests be made from FE without a need for a BE. There's so many toy apps I started building that would have just worked if this was more common, but they have CORS restrictions requiring me to spin up a BE which for many one-off tools and personal tools just isn't worth doing and maintaining. Same with OAuth.

aizk 2y ago
The only caveat I feel is that the speed of the API is definitely not comparable to something more purpose built for this kind of scale, but overall I'm happy as it works well enough that I don't have to think about it too hard.
- mikedelfino 2y ago
  I think Github Actions could be used for scheduled builds, so that the initial load would have random articles right in. Further requests could then be made in advance so users would not notice any delay from the API.
  - aizk 2y ago
    Do you have any examples of that I can look at as a reference? I'm used to github actions just being my CI/CD build step checking tool.
    - mikedelfino 2y ago
      I attempted to implement the schedule trigger [1] on GitHub Actions as an example, but it is not being triggered as I expected. It needs more digging if you're so inclined. Aside from that, the whole gist is that the initial data can be injected into the static files during the build step, or even saved as separate JSON files that the app can load instead of reaching out to the API. As long as you're willing to refresh the static data from time to time, of course. I created a basic example at https://schedbuild.pages.dev/ https://schedbuild.pages.dev/ with a rough, manual implementation of a build step. Frameworks like Next.js offer a more sophisticated approach that can render the entire HTML, allowing users to load the static page with the initial data already rendered without Javascript, and subsequent interactions taking over from there more seamlessly. If the Github Actions schedule feature is ever sorted out, in my opinion it's a reasonable alternative to setting up a backend just for this. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosing-when-your-workflow-runs/events-that-trigger-workflows#schedule https://docs.github.com/en/actions/writing-workflows/choosin...

echelon 2y ago

Next steps: ingest these offline and process them into quick 30 second videos with the most salient facts. TTS narration, additional images. Generate stock video using the images in the API and perhaps text-to-video. That would be a killer app. Bonus: come up with a heuristic or model to filter out or de-rank universally uninteresting articles.

WikiFuck 2y ago

[dead]

rererereferred 2y ago

Very nice! I wonder if it would be possible to see articles related to a topic. Maybe using the hubs as a starting point and then following the related links in each article?

aizk 2y ago

Not to plug myself too shamelessly, but here's my resume if anyone is interested :) https://www.aizk.sh/Isaac's%20Resume.pdf https://www.aizk.sh/Isaac's%20Resume.pdf

Narciss 2y ago
This is far from a shameless plug, you built the thing! V nice love the idea.
- aizk 2y ago
  I think tomorrow I'm going to write a detailed blog of exactly what I did building out WikiTok. One last little bit of info on this subject (and at the end of it I'll say that I'm open to work or whatever).

rzz3 2y ago

This is super super cool. I’ll tell you the single barrier to me actually using this regularly—it needs an algorithm. It would be so cool (and a good learning project) to even build the simplest of recommendation algorithms behind it based on my likes, dislikes, bookmarks, and whether I click “read more”.

INTPenis 2y ago

I just wanna say I love it. So simple, but so cool. You've taken a popular idea and done something interesting and intellectual out of it. good job.

b3n 2y ago

Nice! I made WikTok[1] in the past, but your version looks much better. :-) [1] https://wiktok.org/ https://wiktok.org/

hemant1041 2y ago

Great job!