Show HN: OfflineTTS — Free browser-based TTS & STT that runs locally

A new project called OfflineTTS is pitching a very appealing idea: turn text into speech, turn audio into text, make subtitles, and even read files like books or PDFs aloud — all right inside your browser and without sending your stuff away. In plain English, it promises a private, all-in-one voice toolbox that runs on your own device. That’s the kind of pitch that usually gets privacy fans cheering.

And for a moment, it did. One early reaction was basically, "hey, this actually works": the mp3 export got praise, the voice was called surprisingly decent for something running locally, and the user immediately started asking for more, like word-by-word timing for subtitle syncing. That’s the good kind of nerd excitement: half compliment, half wishlist.

But then the thread took a hard tabloid turn. Instead of debating features, commenters started sounding the alarm. One bluntly asked if it had "already been replaced by a scam," while another went even further with the brutal drive-by review: "Malware scam advert popup". Ouch. Suddenly the story wasn’t just "cool private audio app" — it was "is this promising tool already wrapped in internet chaos?"

So the mood is split between genuine curiosity and full red-flag panic. There weren’t many jokes, but the sheer speed of the mood swing is almost a meme by itself: one person is requesting subtitle polish, the next is acting like they wandered into a sketchy back alley of the web. Classic online launch drama.