Based

The no BS news site.

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Inspiration

I love reading the news, everyday in my first hour class, I sit and look at the news for a while. I love to do it, keeping up on occurring events. However, I do have one problem. After reading many different sources, the bias has become clear. I wanted to read some news that took a neutral stance, that I can trust fully.

What it does

Based uses AI to synthesize multiple news articles and dig deep into the real story.

How we built it

I used NextJS and the Google Cloud Platform. NextJS for the actual framework and website and GCP for the backend. GCP encapsulates the database, AI, and image searching. I also built my own API endpoint to scrape news articles on the web (I used Postman to test my API !!!)

Challenges we ran into

I completed the project hours before the deadline, thought I was ready to record sitting at my computer 4 hours before the deadline after taking a break. I realized that it worked on my local build, but not with Vercel hosted in the cloud. Turns out, because the AI takes more than 10 seconds to produce a response, Vercel would end execution of the edge function because of my accounts payment plan. Functions can only run for 10 seconds on a free plan. So I had to move all my AI synthesizing code to the client side which was a pain. This would also leak my API keys, being a vulnerability. I found a nice hack around it though. I fetched my API keys through the server which was almost instantaneous, then using the API keys to complete the request on the client.

What's next for Based

I would create a more professional website. I spent most the time on the backend, not leaving much time for the frontend. Maybe add category filters, a search bar, and maybe an account system.

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