thisisfranciswu

When Pocket shut down, nothing I tried could really fill that gap. Every alternative either wanted me to use their player, manage lists, highlight things, take notes… I just wanted something that complemented my listening setup.

So I built it. My app saves articles, converts them to naturally-sounding speechs, and drops new episodes into your podcast app via private RSS feed. No new suboptimal player. No lists. No highlighting. No notes. No homework. Just paste a URL and listen to it on your favorite podcast player.

Worth acknowledging: TTS is an accessibility feature at its core. The app tries to earn that by being built with semantic HTML and with as little JS funny business as possible. And since it delivers to your existing podcast app, it doesn't ask you to abandon tools that already work for you.

I'm looking for alpha testers who will actually use it and tell me if it does the one job it promises. DM me if you're in! #buildinPublic

AI lets us indulge in our every impulse, without the checks of shared alignment and understanding. That's not speed. That's drift. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-0f8uAfc8w

I can barely keep up with helping my mother navigate her multitude of treatments and this really resonates. It’s one thing to feel taken care of by the doctor. It’s another thing to feel taken care of by the healthcare system. https://www.blog.brittanijamesmd.com/p/why-does-getting-medical-care-feel

"[…] AI readiness is not primarily a technology capability. It is a leadership discipline: the capacity to decide what should move faster, what should slow down, and who has the authority to know the difference." https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2026/04/23/vibe-coding-will-break-your-company/

The absolute lengths we'll go to to avoid admitting something we’ve known for 40 years: the open office layout was a productivity mistake.

Hollywood buys the script, not the storyboard. The narrative, world-building, and intent are what get shopped around. As a product guy seemingly surrounded by designers who over-index on visual, interaction, and motion design, I think about this a lot. #productdesign

"[…] without UBI, people like this are exceedingly rare. Einsteins are rare. Khns and Kleks are rare. With UBI, they will be less rare. That is not a hope. That is a statistical near-certainty." https://www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-de-poitrine-argument-for-ubi/

Midway through 2025, LLMs became my go-to method for understanding a domain space. And it wasn't too long before they became part of my domain-driven design and information architecture toolkit. https://curioussquid.substack.com/p/claude-is-an-information-architecture

Resisting the urge to “pspsps” at the cats appearing in the background during video calls.

Stop calling accessibility failures merely "non-compliant." Let's be more accurate: they're both non-compliant and casually ableist.