writing
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One question per post, answered in the first paragraph. Mostly Windows internals and on-device speech recognition - the things we had to find out to build owntools, with the numbers we measured rather than the ones we expected.
5 min read
How to dictate on Windows without sending your voice to the cloud
Windows' Win+H voice typing streams audio to Microsoft's servers. Voice Access, Whisper and Parakeet do not. What each one costs you in accuracy and setup.
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5 min read
How to transcribe audio without uploading it to anyone's server
Interviews, calls and notes you are not allowed to upload. What Whisper does on an ordinary laptop, how fast it really is, and the one thing it will not do.
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5 min read
Screen recording that zooms in by itself, on Windows
Screen Studio is macOS only. What auto-zoom actually does, the three ways it gets implemented badly, and how to test any tool for them in five minutes.
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4 min read
How to convert a PDF without uploading it to a website
Contracts, payslips and scans do not belong on a stranger's server. What converts well on your own machine, what never converts well, and how to spot an upload.
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4 min read
What your tools cost you a year, added up
Ten subscriptions for jobs a desktop app does locally come to $964.93 a year. The list, the rules behind the numbers, and which of them genuinely need a server.
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5 min read
Are duplicate files safe to delete? What a duplicate finder cannot know
Two files with identical bytes are often both load-bearing: program folders, WinSxS hard links, node_modules. What to exclude before ticking 25 GB of "duplicates".
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5 min read
Parakeet vs whisper.cpp on a laptop CPU: 6.4 s to 0.7 s per take
Measured on a 4-core i5: the model load dominated, and halving the thread count nearly doubled the speed. Numbers for both engines, and where each one wins.
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