
Show HN: Search engine for lectures - garysieling
https://www.findlectures.com/
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wodenokoto
The idea is really good, but there is still a long way to go.

Searching for "python simulation" (a suggested search, btw) yields results
such as "introduction to programming lecture 23" \- short of watching the
lecture, how am I supposed to judge it's relevancy? There is no description,
and the title contains neither "python" nor "simulation".

Also, the email sign up modal is enough to not make you want to return.

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garysieling
Thanks for the feedback. The email thing should be better now.

Agree on the relevancy issue, I'm working on ways to improve that. If you do a
search that matches the closed captions, it will tell you where in the video
the match starts.

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mceoin
On mobile,

The email modal is over most of screen and can't be closed...

~~~
garysieling
Really sorry about that. I pushed a change to hide it when it doesn't fit.

That area of the screen is supposed to be an informational card, like you see
in Google search results. When I have the data, it shows books a speaker has
written, and I'm working on getting more in there.

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pathsjs
I tried to look for some math topics, such as "harmonic analysis", "lie
algebras" and "model theory" \- unfortunately none of the matches were
relevant for any of the queries

~~~
garysieling
Thanks, I'll look at adding some math classes.

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Micoloth
Hey this is pretty cool! I looked for a specific CS topic and the result was
definitely better than Google's. I'll probably keep using this!

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personlurking
Looks interesting. As someone going through all of Dr Jordan Peterson's
lectures, I put him in the search and only one of his talks (with Joe Rogan)
came up. Please add his stuff if you get the chance (he has a YT channel).
It'd also be nice to be able to find like-minded talks.

Also, when pressing the back button through some searches, the URL changed
with me but the results stayed the same.

~~~
garysieling
Thanks for the feedback!

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msnower
As someone who does a lot of learning online, I can see the usefulness of
this! It'd be a lot easier for me to use if the filters on the side of the
screen if they matched my search queries more closely. Currently, searching
for "react.js vs. angular.js" leads to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton being
options in the "speaker"filter.

~~~
garysieling
Thanks! I think you'll get a better experience if you filter to "Technology"
first, if you're using it that way. I'd like that to be more seamless, but
haven't found a good way yet.

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coding123
Just curious, is this using React/Searchkit/Elasticsearch under the hood?

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garysieling
It's a custom React UI + Semantic UI + D3 + Solr. If I had found Searchkit
when I started this a year and a half ago, I would have used it!

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prab97
It shows ApplicationError. Got a HN hug of death, or are you updating?

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garysieling
Sorry, looks like a memory issue on the Solr server. I shut everything else
down, so hopefully it holds!

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sks4903440
Good initiative. Suggestion: The content could be categorized.For example -
the lecture of MOOCs should be at one place.

Problem: Say, I am browsing page 5 for some query and I change the query, it
shows page 5 of the current query rather than page 1 and if the content of
current query is not enough to reach page 5, it shows "No results found,
sorry!".

~~~
garysieling
Good feedback, thanks.

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netcan
Great project Gary. Thanks for sharing (and building). I would love to see
this kind of content get some love.

~~~
garysieling
Thanks! I'm getting a ton of good feedback and lots of speaker
recommendations, so the next version should be even better!

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kermittd
Interesting project, but as op said email modal on mobile can't be navigated
out of.

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garysieling
Sorry about that, it should be fixed now.

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sztanko
Great project, thank you for your time!

(minor bug: Searching for "top 20%" results in "URIError: URI malformed
/public/lecture_search.bundle.js?v=1.0.22:79346")

~~~
garysieling
Thanks, I will look a this!

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serbrech
Nice! That's going to be very useful when learning a new topic/technology

How are the hits ranked? I imagine just time? Do you have a list of all
sources you used?

~~~
garysieling
There are about 20 factors right now, which I've been tuning over time. They
are applied as I'm able to get the data for the talk. Here is a selection-

1\. Is the publisher of the talk good? (whitelist)

2\. Is the talk referenced in social media (e.g. HN)

3\. Safe for work (i.e. you could use in a lunch and learn)

4\. Length (15-50 minutes preferred)

5\. Is the speaker a keynote level speaker?

6\. Are there closed captions? Can the video be embedded?

7\. How often does the speaker say 'um' (or similar)

8\. Is the talk in English (there are some in Russian and Arabic, but only
small collections)

9\. Are there notable audio quality issues (channel balance)

10\. If it's a historic talk, older talks get higher ranking

11\. If it's a technical talk, these get lower ranking, unless you filter to
that

12\. Is the speaker influential enough to have a wikipedia article?

13\. Has the speaker written books?

14\. What is the role of the institution that sponsored the talk (conferences
are neutral, think tanks, etc lose some ranking)

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ProMarc
I think a language filter would still be good.

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ThomPete
Great resource but your filtering needs some serious work. I managed to filter
myself into a corner with no way to get back.

~~~
garysieling
Thanks for the feedback - I'll look into fixing that.

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mrleinad
Pagination doesn't seem to be working, I need to change the URL to go to page
2 and so on when filtering a cathegory.

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mrleinad
e.g.:
[https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology&category...](https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology&category_l2_Technology=-Machine%20Learning)

~~~
garysieling
Sorry about that, I will look into this.

~~~
mrleinad
Thanks! Great site!

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ychandler
Really interesting, are you searching through Youtube? Wonder what other
sources that you are getting the source data out of

~~~
garysieling
I'm collecting lists of speakers/conferences and doing very targeted crawling.
There are a couple essays on the site (in progress) if you're interested in
more detail-

[https://www.findlectures.com/articles/2017/05/15/Building-a-...](https://www.findlectures.com/articles/2017/05/15/Building-
a-Crawler-in-Node-JS/)

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catshirt
this is awesome. thanks!!

obviously a huge undertaking probably not in your wheelhouse- but finding a
way to map all these topics together would be amazing.

~~~
garysieling
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but looking at ways to map concepts
together with word2vec. E.g. so you could search "writing NOT code" and get
literature, or facets more conceptually related to search results.

~~~
catshirt
interesting but i was thinking more of a Khan-style mindmap:
[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ChwlFfoI4TE/TtEl5UA1AkI/AAAAAAAAAe...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ChwlFfoI4TE/TtEl5UA1AkI/AAAAAAAAAeI/MCR3dwjo8xc/s640/Khan2.png)

