Finishing up my PhD thesis on low-resource audio classification for ecoacoustics. Our partners deployed 98 recorders in remote Arctic/sub-Arctic regions, collecting a massive (~19.5 years) dataset to monitor wildlife and human noise.
Labeled data is the bottleneck, so my work focuses on getting good results with less data. Key parts:
- Created EDANSA [1], the first public dataset of its kind from these areas, using a improved active learning method (ensemble disagreement) to efficiently find rare sounds.
- Explored other low-resource ML: transfer learning, data valuation (using Shapley values), cross-modal learning (using satellite weather data to train audio models), and testing the reasoning abilities of MLLMs on audio (spoiler: they struggle!).
Hi Enis, it seems a very interesting project. I myself with my team are currently working with the non-stationary of physiological and earthquake seismic public data mainly based on the time-frequency distributions, and the results are very promising.
Just wondering if the raw data that you've mentioned are available publicly so we can test our techniques on them or they're only available through research collaborations. Either way very much interested on the potential use of our techniques for the polar research in Arctic and/or Antarctica.
Hi teleforce, thanks! Your project sounds very interesting as well.
That actually reminds me, at one point, a researcher suggested looking into geophone or fiber optic Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) data that oil companies sometimes collect in Alaska, potentially for tracking animal movements or impacts, but I never got the chance to follow up. Connecting seismic activity data (like yours) with potential effects on animal vocalizations or behaviour observed in acoustic recordings would be an interesting research direction!
Regarding data access:
Our labeled dataset (EDANSA, focused on specific sound events) is public here: https://zenodo.org/records/6824272. We will be releasing an updated version with more samples soon.
We are also actively working on releasing the raw, continuous audio recordings. These will eventually be published via the Arctic Data Center (arcticdata.io). If you'd like, feel free to send me an email (address should be in my profile), and I can ping you when that happens.
Separately, we have an open-source model (with updates coming) trained on EDANSA for predicting various animal sounds and human-generated noise. Let me know if you'd ever be interested in discussing whether running that model on other types of non-stationary sound data you might have access to could be useful or yield interesting comparisons.
You should train a GPT on the raw data, and then figure out how to reuse the DNN for various other tasks you're interested in (e.g. one-shot learning, fine-tuning, etc). This data setting is exactly the situation that people faced in the NLP world before GPT. I would guess that some people from the frontier labs would be willing to help you, I doubt even your large dataset would cost very much for their massive GPU fleets to handle.
Hi d_burfoot, really appreciate you bringing that up! The idea of pre-training a big foundation model on our raw data using self-supervised learning (SSL) methods (kind of like how GPT emerged in NLP) is definitely something we've considered and experimented with using transformer architectures.
The main hurdle we've hit is honestly the scale of relevant data needed to train such large models from scratch effectively. While our ~19.5 years dataset duration is massive for ecoacoustics, a significant portion of it is silence or ambient noise. This means the actual volume of distinct events or complex acoustic scenes is much lower compared to the densely packed information in the corpora typically used to train foundational speech or general audio models, making our effective dataset size smaller in that context.
We also tried leveraging existing pre-trained SSL models (like Wav2Vec 2.0, HuBERT for speech), but the domain gap is substantial. As you can imagine, raw ecoacoustic field recordings are characterized by significant non-stationary noise, overlapping sounds, sparse events we care about mixed with lots of quiet/noise, huge diversity, and variations from mics/weather.
This messes with the SSL pre-training tasks themselves. Predicting masked audio doesn't work as well when the surrounding context is just noise, and the data augmentations used in contrastive learning can sometimes accidentally remove the unique signatures of the animal calls we're trying to learn.
It's definitely an ongoing challenge in the field! People are trying different things, like initializing audio transformers with weights pre-trained on image models (ViT adapted for spectrograms) to give them a head start. Finding the best way forward for large models in these specialized, data-constrained domains is still key. Thanks again for the suggestion, it really hits on a core challenge!
If you’re asking whether multiple recorders were active at the same time, then yes, we had recorders at 98 different locations over four years, primarily during the summer months. However, these locations were far apart, so no two recorders captured the same exact area.
oh man that's awesome. I have been working for quite some time on big taxonomy/classification models for field research, espec for my old research area (pollination stuff). the #1 capability that I want to build is audio input modality, it would just be so useful in the field-- not only for low-resource (audio-only) field sensors, but also just as a supplemental modality for measuring activity out of the FoV of an image sensor.
but as you mention, labeled data is the bottleneck. eventually I'll be able to skirt around this by just capturing more video data myself and learning sound features from the video component, but I have a hard time imagining how I can get the global coverage that I have in visual datasets. I would give anything to trade half of my labeled image data for labeled audio data!
Hi Caleb, thanks for the kind words and enthusiasm! You're absolutely right, audio provides that crucial omnidirectional coverage that can supplement fixed field-of-view sensors like cameras. We actually collect images too and have explored fusion approaches, though they definitely come with their own set of challenges, as you can imagine.
On the labeled audio data front: our Arctic dataset (EDANSA, linked in my original post) is open source. We've actually updated it with more samples since the initial release, and getting the new version out is on my to-do list.
Polli.ai looks fantastic! It's genuinely exciting to see more people tackling the ecological monitoring challenge with hardware/software solutions. While I know the startup path in this space can be tough financially, the work is incredibly important for understanding and protecting biodiversity. Keep up the great work!
I'd love to turn my spectrogram tool into something more of a scientific tool for sound labelling and analysis. Do you use a spectrograph for your project?
Hey thePhytochemist, cool tool! Yes, spectrograms are fundamental for us. Audacity is the classic for quick looks. For systematic analysis and ML inputs, it's mostly programmatic generation via libraries like torch.audio or librosa. Spectrograms are a common ML input, though other representations are being explored.
Enhancing frequenSee for scientific use (labelling/analysis) sounds like a good idea. But I am not sure what is missing from the current tooling. What functionalities were you thinking of adding?
Our labeled dataset (EDANSA, focused on specific sound events) is public here: https://zenodo.org/records/6824272. We will be releasing an updated version with more samples soon.
We are also actively working on releasing the raw, continuous audio recordings. These will eventually be published via the Arctic Data Center (arcticdata.io). If you'd like, feel free to send me an email (address should be in my profile), and I can ping you when that happens.
You can search for the "Arctic Soundscapes Project 2019-2024". We are still working out the specifics of the licensing to meet our funding requirements, but it will be permissive.
I've been putting together a no-nonsense free invoice generator, for people (like myself) that only occasionally send invoices. It's more-or-less a WYSIWYG editor, and the state is stored in the URL, so you don't have to worry about keeping track of where you stored your copy - if you've sent someone an email with the link, you've got a copy. This project was born out of the frustration of trying to generate an invoice on my phone on the go, I found all the existing solutions to be quite awful (forced signups to paid subscriptions, clunky interface etc).
Would love to hear any feedback the HN crowd has. I'm aware of a couple of alignment issues, will fix them up tonight. Also, yes, there will be a "generate PDF" button, for now if you want a pdf I'd suggest using the Print dialog to "Save as PDF".
I built something similar for myself, but with a live PDF preview, support for downloading PDFs in multiple languages (English and Polish), VAT tax deductions, and multiple currencies.
Nice work, this looks better than the established players in this space! You've got some customisation options in yours that I'd love to implement in mine as soon as time permits. Huge props for not forcing people to sign up for an account to use it!
Most important is for it to have the right number consistently without room for error. You may also use multiple sequences like if you sell cars and crates of bananas you wouldn't want to mix those but you would want to use a single tool.
Anything else can be corrected. It is important to easily make corrections and/or credit nota as those seem to happen at the worse time. Usually the same as the invoice but with amounts in the -
It is also nice to tie the products into it so that you don't have to type it every time and get consistent naming. Same for an address book.
I don't know how complicated or easy it would be to just create templates which satisfy this.
In Germany it's already required for B2B transactions [0]
In principle, the following formats will comply with CEN 16931:
ZUGFeRD: Hybrid format: Human-readable PDF/A-3 with an embedded XML file in the syntax "Cross-Industry Invoice" (CII)
XRechnung: XML file in the syntax "Cross-Industry Invoice" (CII)
XRechnung: XML file in the "Universal Business Language" (UBL) syntax
Nice work! Would totally have used this when I was freelancing. Honestly love the serif'd fonts, would love to see everything serif'd tbh.
Also back when I had to do these (I used Wave) having a notes section was very useful to include a few things (i.e. I used to include conversion rates). Would probably be pretty easy.
Yeah it'd be cool to consider this approach for some other domains. Sometime soon I'll make it so you can change the word in the top-left from "INVOICE" to "QUOTE" or "RECEIPT". The nice thing about an invoice is you know there's going to be a relatively small amount of data, so storing the state in the URL is a plausible approach (even if it looks obscene to discerning users ).
Interesting, I’ve been using https://simpleinvoices.io for a couple of years and really like it. Integrates with my Stripe and super easy to configure. Best of luck!
It looks nice at a glance, but there's just no way I can justify $15/mth for the few times a year I need to send an invoice. If https://bestfreeinvoice.com gains some amount of traction I'd love to extend the feature set to justify a paid tier, but the basic experience (i.e. what's currently live) will always be free and genuinely useful.
I know the URLs are long compared to what people are used to. Part of the rationale for putting this out there in the current state is I'm curious if people in practise will share long URLs or not.
At some point I'd like to add shortlinks but at the moment everything is clientside, there's no persistence at all (beyond localStorage). I think that's a nice feature from a security perspective.
Correct me if I'm wrong but zipping it would mean it would be encoded in a way that wouldn't be usable as a URL. The state is currently compressed and URL encoded via lz-string fwiw/in case you're curious.
Yeah it's compressed and encoded with `lz-string` but I know it's hideous - I'm curious if that will prove a practical problem for adoption, even if a technical crowd isn't fond of the choice. Surprisingly most messaging apps you paste urls into these days don't show the whole thing anyway - when you paste it'll transform the link into a small preview card with just the domain portion of the URL visible.
Not be negative about bestfreevoice, or any other invoicing tool, but it always seems like developers and early-stage entrepreneurs don't understand invoicing.
First major disconnect is that not every country uses invoices, but may use receipts instead. This is true for the USA for example, so many US devs (for example: Stripe in the early days) are not familiar with the concept of invoicing. Technically there is no difference between receipts and invoices, so if you're not familiar with the concept of invoicing, just read this post with /s/invoice/receipt in mind.
The point about invoicing is to act as a non-mutable entry into the ledgers of both parties (seller and buyer). In most countries (especially EU) invoices are mandated by law for B2B transactions, and so is keeping accounts (aka bookkeeping). So for invoicing to be practical it needs to be tied to your books/accounts. Because of this, any business will use some bookkeeping/accounting software, which will have invoicing capabilities built-in. Invoicing as a standalone product doesn't make sense if you have to import it all into your ledgers later.
Then there is the 'design' trap, which many invoicing startups seem to fall for. Invoices are weird things. They are basically very, very inefficient artefacts from the past. An invoice is just a very little amount of transaction data exchanged between buyer and seller. In the days of physical bookkeeping (actual paper books) paper invoices made sense, but nowadays it is all done digitally. So the invoice is effectively a machine-2-machine interface, but for all sorts of legacy reasons we still wrap them in PDF with a fancy design that looks great for humans, but it effectively impossible for machines to read.
There are all sorts of attempts made to improve upon this situation (like OCR, and nowadays AI to extract data from PDF invoices). There are open structured data formats such as UBL to replace / augment PDF invoices, but due to all sorts of politics and lobbying the open standards have been doomed from the beginning. There is a lot of money made in accounting software, and they all rely on vendor lock-in. The major accounting software vendors have very strong incentives to keep us from adopting UBL et al, and most of the established accounting product suck, but you can't easily migrate so you'll be stuck with it.
If you run or own a business, treat your books as an asset of your business, a very important asset for that matter. Books are kept in accounting software, which is typically part of a larger software suite which also features tax filing, HRM, asset management, invoicing, etc. In fancy business terms this is often called ERP. But think of ERP as just your central database, or your 'books'.
Choosing your accounting software an important decision. Choose accounting software that allows exporting your data (very important!), that has an API (also very important), and preferably a web interface. It should be always available, so on-premise software is out.
For entrepreneurs: choose your own accounting software, do not be tempted to hire an external bookkeeper that keeps the books in 'their' systems (accountant lock-in). Don't let an accountant recommend your software either, they get huge kickbacks from the software vendors (vendor lock-in).
Every sale—whether this being PoS, invoicing, or a payment integration like Stripe—should automatically registered as a ledger entry in the books, preferably with an invoice document attached. Here you can see why an accountant who keeps your books in their systems won't work, you don't want to be stuck having to periodically send an email (or shoebox) filled with invoices for them to process. Your books should be owned by the business, should be automated (at least for the receivable side), and always be up-to-date. You can then give an(y) accountant access to your books for them to do audits, tax filings, etc. For a business, the books are the central database of the business, everything else revolves around it. Do not be tempted to write your own, instead integrate with existing solutions while avoiding vendor lock-in as much as possible.
Integrating your business with the accounting software is an ever-ongoing part of your software development efforts, so not underestimate it. Accepting payments is hard, making sure it is well registered in your books is equally hard. It takes _much_ more time than you'd think (most first-time entrepreneurs actually don't consider it at all). There are no silver bullets here.
In Italy, many of these invoicing challenges have already been tackled through a nationwide standardized system.
Every invoice—whether B2B or even B2C (receipts included)—must be sent electronically using a government-defined XML format. This invoice includes predefined metadata and is digitally signed by the issuing party. Once ready, it gets submitted to the national tax agency’s centralized system, called the Sistema di Interscambio (SdI), which validates and registers it before forwarding it to the recipient.
This system essentially acts as a clearinghouse: it ensures all invoices go through the same format, are verifiably issued, and are automatically recorded on both ends. For consumers (B2C), the invoice still goes through the same pipeline and is made available in their personal portal on the IRS website, while the seller can still email a copy (PDF) for convenience.
This centralized and machine-readable approach has eliminated a lot of the fragmentation seen elsewhere. There’s no vendor lock-in, no OCR, and no AI needed to parse PDFs—just a signed XML file going through a common pipeline. It’s not perfect, but it shows how much smoother things can be when the rules (and formats) are defined at the infrastructure level.
> Every invoice—whether B2B or even B2C (receipts included)—must be sent electronically using a government-defined XML format
So not a universal standard then. Imagine having to implement a different format for every country you do business with...
For the Netherlands there is a similar (but slightly different I believe) XML type format required if you want to do business with the government. Initially a company successfully lobbied to get their closed-specification version to be the mandated standard for government, to get the XML spec you had to become partner (I believe for €8k/year or something).
Luckily they are now performing a XKCD 927 and have defined a few new (this time open) standards, which they aim to consolidate into a new spec that complies to EN 16931. EN 16931 is the EU compliance standard for e-invoicing.
There’s plenty of need for basic use invoicing like this. Generate an invoice as a way to bill someone or serve as an estimate for work/project cost. Not everyone is at a place where it needs to be so formal and integrated into a complete solution that tracks the dollars from invoice to balance sheet to income statement, etc. It’s a lot especially for people that are just freelancing and need a similar probably infrequent way to send a bill. They probably are just tracking things in a spreadsheet and not even big enough to use quickbooks or anything else. It would be a poor use of time and over engineering to put that all in place and setup things that cost subscription dollars in perpetuity just to bill for a one off charge. Or even a handful of them.
When I think of people I pay, my lawn guy and my housekeeper both just text me how much I owe them. Then I zelle them. They both have dozens of clients at least and I imagine they are doing this way for them all. If I were a business, in May insist on getting an invoice to load the AP into an accounting flow from my end but they wouldn’t really want to change their system of doing things just to comply with my request. So, they may want something like this that just basically converts the text message info into an official looking invoice.
I feel the real problem is everyone is assuming this side project type thing to solve every edge case that exists in the world. Even the bigger guys like stripe. That’s the wrong take. They offer a solution, you have to evaluate of it fits your needs, if not, use something else. If you’re in a locale that mandates something completely different, use something else. This project is being very transparent about what it does and how it works, which should help you out if you have a requirements list to compare it to.
>First major disconnect is that not every country uses invoices, but may use receipts instead. This is true for the USA for example, so many US devs (for example: Stripe in the early days) are not familiar with the concept of invoicing. Technically there is no difference between receipts and invoices, so if you're not familiar with the concept of invoicing, just read this post with /s/invoice/receipt in mind.
I find this hard to believe. An invoice is a request for payment. A receipt is proof/confirmation of payment. Invoices sometimes double as receipts (or rather the other way around) when the payment is made immediately. But how can a country not have something that represents a formal request for payment by some future time?
I don't even understand this from an accounting perspective. What would accounts receivable and accounts payable even mean without this distinction? How would you date the respective journal entries if there is no distinction?
> But how can a country not have something that represents a formal request for payment by some future time?
There are plenty countries where the vendor will charge the account of the customer, like a 'pull' mechanism. In many countries they'll use (or used) checks/cheques for that, or a different payment account like a credit card. The agreement for this would have been a contract. They may still use invoices for larger transactions, but they aren't always required by law.
I remember that in the old days, Google, Stripe, etc wouldn't send invoices, sometimes you'd get a minimal receipt message by email, but that was about it. This was particularly annoying for EU-based companies where there are minimal requirements for invoices and/or receipts.
Times have changed though. Most companies, including US-based, will now offer invoices that comply with most international regulations.
Except PayPal of course, for some reason they still seem to get away with not offering invoices. You'll have to download your monthly account overview in PDF from their merchant portal, and they just slapped the following text on it: "This statement may serve as a receipt for accounting and tax related purposes.".
>choose your own accounting software, do not be tempted to hire an external bookkeeper that keeps the books in 'their' systems (accountant lock-in).
~30 years ago I worked at a very small business (3 employees) and they used and liked Quickbooks. The accountant convinced them to switch to some "better" system and for around 3 months they had no idea how much money they had, they just lost all visibility into the system because it didn't work in the way they expected. "If things didn't look right, we'd just go through every screen in the system and press Post." At the end of those 3 months they realized they had unexpectedly gotten into $70K in debt -- this was ~35 years ago when a house was around that much. They had to take a second mortgage on their house. Eventually, they figured out the accounting system, righted the ship, and paid back the second mortgage over a few years. Y2K really helped, with that giant bump in sales.
What accounting software would you recommend for first-time entrepreneurs? Are their any open-source solutions that can be self hosted that integrate with existing solutions?
I am just starting my journey into entrepreneurship, and have yet to choose a bank or accounting software, and would appreciate guidance. I am based in the UK, and will only be conducting business in the UK to start off with.
Not OP but there are a few open source options. GNU cash is friendlier for beginners due to the GUI. I like plain text accounting, specifically beancount.
As far as integrations, GNU cash lets you import from various formats like quicken while beancount has lots of plugins from the community like importers for various banks. I don’t believe either offer invoicing but you could integrate it yourself or just manually record.
IMO, the hardest part of keeping your own books is learning double entry accounting.
Starling Bank as the bank, and FreeAgent as the accounting software - it'll handle personal tax (self-assessment), corporation tax, VAT, and payroll. If you need an accountancy practice, I very much recommend Maslins - they'll provide FreeAgent access in that case as part of their fee.
Haha thank you, I was amazed the domain was available! And yeah jumping through hoops just to get to the invoice generator is something that frustrated me with existing alternatives, so dumping the user straight into it was one of the foremost decisions the design centered around.
I'm working on pure.md[1], which lets your scripts, APIs, apps, agents, etc reliably access web content in markdown format. Simply prefix any URL with `pure.md/` and you get the unblocked markdown content of that webpage. It avoids bot detection and renders JavaScript-heavy websites, and can convert HTML, PDFs, images, and more into pure markdown.
pure.md acts as a global caching layer between LLMs and web content. I like to think of it like a CDN for LLMs, similar to how Cloudinary is a CDN for images.
By default, href values of <a> tags are removed, because they add significant token length without adding more context. Coming soon, you can specify a request header to set whether or not you want links removed from the response. Those underscores you mentioned are from the italics.
Thanks for sharing. I was planning on building something like this in April after hitting too many issues with Jina and Tavily but it looks like you've already done the hard work!
With AWS Athena, you can query the contents of someone else’s public S3 bucket. You pay per read, but if you craft your query the right way then it’s very inexpensive. Each query I run only scans about 1MB of data.
Good job on enshittifying the web even more. You must be proud. Also, from the looks of it, there is no difference between pure.md and any generic scraper. It's plain old tactics, designed for bloating the web with more slop
The service seems designed to bypass anti-scraping measures. If site owners don't want their content scraped by AI this is subverting their will.
It also obfuscates responsibility between the AI vendor and the scraping service. One can imagine unethical AI providers using a series of ephemeral "gateways" to access content while avoiding any legal or reputational harm.
I built a machine learning library [1] (similar to PyTorch's API) entirely from scratch using only Python and NumPy. It was inspired by Andrej Karpathy's Micrograd project [2]. I slowly added more functionality and evolved it into a fully functional ML library that can build and train classical CNNs [3] to even a toy GPT-2 [4].
I wanted to understand how models learn, like literally bridging the gap between mathematical formulas and high-level API calls. I feel like, as a beginner in machine learning, it's important to strip away the abstractions and understand how these libraries work from the ground up before leveraging these "high-level" libraries such as PyTorch and Tensorflow. Oh I also wrote a blog post [5] on the journey.
I love card games, but for digital card games the business model is beyond predatory. If you need a specific card your option is to basically buy a pack. Let’s say this is about 3$ give or take. But if it’s a specific rare card, you can open a dozen of so packs and still not get the specific card you want.
This can go on indefinitely, and apologists will claim you can just work around this, by building a different deck. But the business model clearly wants you to drop 50 to 100$ just to get a single card.
All for this to repeat every 3 months when they introduce new mechanics to nerf the old cards or just rotate out the dream deck you spent 100$+ to build.
I’m under no impression I’ll directly compete, but it’s a fun FOSS game you can spin up with friends. Or even since it’s all MIT, you can fork and sell.
It also gives me an excuse to use Python, looks like Django on the backend and Godot for the game client. Although the actual logic runs in Django so you can always roll a different game client.
Eventually I’d like different devs to roll their own game clients in whatever framework they want.
I started building a MtG competitor inspired by Altered and Netrunner. As weird as it sounds, I started with some bash scripts to see how the meta would play out to make sure the card values/strategies were balanced.
I would love to compare game development notes if you're interested in discussing this sometime.
Many years ago Decipher (who made the Star Trek and Star Wars TCGs) rolled out a web platform for playing their games. It was the business model but with none of the advantages of the physical property. You would spend money on their platform to buy their digital cards, to play only there, and when you left the cards just disappeared into the void.
Have you heard about Mindbug[0]? It's a recent MTG-inspired (co-created by one of the authors of MTG) card game. Plays quick and is full of interesting and consequential decisions.
So far it's basically just a Django server. You're responsible for self hosting ( although I imagine I'll put up a demo server), you can define your own cards.
You can play the game by literally just using curl calls if you want to be hardcore about it.
I *might* make a nice closed source game client one day with a bunch of cool effects, but that's not my focus right now.
My master's thesis[1] was half research, half dev project, exploring how we can continue to fully fuse traditional RPGs with computers. This goal is my life quest, my life's work.
I think virtual tabletops (VTTs) as they currently stand are barking up the wrong tree[2]. I want a computer-augmented RPG to allow the GM to do everything he does in the analog form of the game. On-the-fly addition of content to the game world, defining of new kinds of content, defining and editing rules, and many other things ... as well as the stuff VTTs do, of course. The closest we've gotten in the last 30 years is LambdaMOO and other MUDs.
The app I made for my thesis project was an experimental vertical slice of the kinds of functionality I want. The app I made after that last year is more practical and focused on the needs of my weekly game, in my custom system; I continue to develop it almost daily.
I'm itching to tackle the hardest problem of all, which is fully incorporating game rules in a not-totally-hardcoded way. I need rules to be first-class objects that can be programmatically reasoned about to do cool things like "use the Common Lisp condition system to present end user GMs with strategies for recovering from buggy rules." Inspirations include the Inform 7 rulebook system.
[2] Anything that requires physical equipment other than dice and a regular computer is also barking up the wrong tree. So no VR, no video-tracked physical miniatures, no custom-designed tabletop, no Microsoft Surface... Again, just my opinion.
I'm working on something similar. I'm building a MUD with an LLM playing the role of GM. Currently it just controls NPCs, but I eventually want it to be able to modify the game rules in real time. My end goal is a world that hundreds of players can play in simultaneously, but has the freedom and flexibility of a TTRPG (while still remaining balanced and fair).
That's really cool, Elias. I keep seeing people try to put LLMs into the role of the GM. But I think you're doing something new and important by working to have the rules available to it.
Is your project available anywhere? Best of luck!
If you're interested, because I kept seeing "LLM as GM" projects, I got curious about how well it would work to have LLMs as players instead. So I made this:
It's a training ground for GMs to practice things like spontaneous description, with 4 AI players that get fed what each other say so they act in a reasonably consistent manner. It's not perfect, but I've gotten some good use out of it.
how do you feel about Talespire? it allows pretty fast on-the-fly map-making as long you’re not dealing with significant vertical distances, although it’s got very little in common with LambdaMOO. but MUDs generally seem to be MMRPG precursors at this point, unless there’s an underground community I’m unaware of.
I feel the same way about Tailspire as I feel about pretty much every other VTT. They might do okay, even pretty well, at combat maps and/or character sheets, but I want is the whole game world in the computer. Maps are just a fraction of what I need as a GM. I need data on economics and population numbers and power structures. And I need computation over all those things.
For instance, my game rules include an economic subsystem, which takes in the production of goods and services at hundreds of in-game cities, and computes prices for over a thousand player-purchaseable goods. The "second app" that I referred to above allows players to (among many other things) purchase stuff at the market nearest their current location and have those items go straight into their character sheet. If the "item" is actually an animal, a hired mercenary, etc. then a different subsystem generates a new NPC with the right statistics and attaches the player to it as owner/liege.
I could write an extension for a VTT that talks to my economic system over an API, and throws items up on screen, lets players purchase them, moves them into their character sheet using the right function calls in the VTT's extension library, etc. But every step of the way, I would be fighting to cram this subsystem into the VTT's conception that gameplay begins and ends with maps and char sheets.
I am full-time building LLM-based NPCs for a text-based MMORPG. Been doing a lot of work recently on allowing progression through scenarios with them where the rules are in a class, and the LLM takes care of communicating user intent to the rules engine, based on free-text, and writes back to the user with the results.
That's sweet! I think LLMs have incredible potential for descriptions and for NPC behavior, and I really like that you have this bridge between freeform intent and a rules engine. I'd like to pick your brain about it - I'll send an email.
I've been building mentions.us[1] - it sends you alerts when your keywords are mentioned on Hacker News, Reddit, Bluesky, LinkedIn and a few other places. For anyone who uses F5Bot, it's similar but with some extra data sources and a Slack integration.
It's been a fun project. Dealing with the scale of Reddit (~300 posts/second) creates some interesting technical challenges. It's also let me polish up my frontend development skills.
I don't think it will ever be a money spinner - it has ~70 folks using it buy they're all on the free tier. It's felt really good to build something useful, though.
You just got a signup :) Free plan, I'll admit. I don't need or want anything other than email notifications, and the free plan for that is very generous. Thanks for building this.
For the social platforms, are you hooking up to their APIs or just using Google? I'm only interested in emails and would pay a small price for that (say 5-7/month). I've signed up and added my first keyword to test.
That being said, here is an additional feature: being able to track discord/slack/telegram by providing my API key and you streaming the content of the groups I've signed up to.
We’re hooking up to the APIs - the goal is to alert you of mentions as quickly as possible, so waiting for Google to index results would introduce (much) too much lag.
Interesting feature request! I’ll have a think on it.
This is really interesting, thanks for sharing! I'm keen to know how it compares to a tool like Pulsar? I've been quoted a huge amount to use their service, and it looks like mention.us basically fulfills the same social listening function? If it does then I will definitely push my org to sign up!
Thanks! I haven't used Pulsar, but the general answer is that mentions.us is focussed on sending you alerts for notifications, whereas more sophisticated social listening tools provide a lot more analytics (e.g., sentiment analysis).
If your company just wants alerts when their keywords are mentioned on social media then mentions.us should work great for them. If you work for Coca Cola then you likely need something very different from your social listening tool!
Perhaps it would be of interest to people into social media marketing or people trying to build social media presence. Keywords mean a lot to them. I'm sure you've thought of it. Perhaps that is where market potential exists for it.
Sounds very cool. I'm curious how you manage to monitor Linkedin though.
The only tool that seems capable of monitoring Linkedin is https://kwatch.io , so if you manage to achieve that too it's impressive.
your pricing is little confusing, for free you are providing 100 keywords, and for you most expensive plan you are providing also 100 keywords, in fact only diff between these two is slack notification.
What's the motivation behind this pricing plan?
I put more details in a reply to another comment, but basically I think the number of people willing to pay for email alerts is small, so I’ve made the service free for them. It’s only teams who want Slack notifications who have paid plans.
I’m not optimising to extract every possible $ from the market with that pricing strategy. Instead I hope it will maximise the number of users whilst breaking even on costs.
Looks very interesting!! I registered and found an issue: when I add the mention keyword, it shows two results, but after saving it, it shows zero results. I tried checking mentions for my side project DollarDeploy.
Thanks for the feedback! For saved terms we show you the number of matches we’ve notified you about, which always starts at zero, whereas during creating we show you how many you would have matched. That’s a confusing UI and I should improve it
I think most of the people who sign up for email alerts would never pay. Lots of them are indie hackers or folks with a side project - I've been there, and know how price sensitive those communities are. I'd rather they use the service for free than not at all - I get valuable feedback from that, a marketing boost if they tell others about it, and the validation of having built something other people use.
I do have a paid plan for people who want Slack notifications, and I think those folks ought to be happy to pay. My hope is that I'll eventually get a few paid signups and that those will cover the costs of the service (which are minimal).
I know I lose a bit of revenue with the above approach, but it's a tradeoff I'm happy to make.
Through the API - in particular the info endpoint[1], combined with the fact that Reddit IDs are base36 encoded sequentially increasing integers[2]. You can get 100 objects at a time, so if you make ~3 requests a second it's enough to get all of the new posts and comments.
Does “vibe coding” count :-) I’m from west Africa and lately been very interested in African fairy tales to read to my daughter. Ended up building (
a GPT-backed interface that can insert her in any African story she wants. We also have a list of African queens who’re not famous anymore but did amazing things (look up Queen Nzinga for example). So I’m doing a series of little children’s books about each queen - have them exported to PDF so I can print them out and bind for her: her own little
Collection of fairytales. I plan to put it online later - even if you’re not African I think it’s a great way to explore our history.
This sounds pretty cool. As another commenter asked if you have a write up, I just want to throw my hat in and say, I would enjoy reading a write up what your doing. From the technical bits to a review by your daughter of how well the stories came out.
Thank you. Yes she’s been enjoying them a lot now that we don’t have to repeat the same stories every night :) I’ll share on here once I’m done and also the right up.
Sounds super unique. Please include me too if you do any public follow up? I'd actually enjoy reading those, myself as I've collected folktale collections for years!
Will do. Hn has no way of tagging people or following up though so I’m not sure how to share once I go live. But if you shoot me a message I’ll update you once done. amrangaye at gmail dot com.
Not yet as I’m still finessing it to her needs. She has a problem getting rid of thumb sucking, and finally asked for a fairy tale with a thumb sucking princess who eventually stops sucking her thumb lol. It’s a fun activity and also letting me learn about LLMs.
We've used them to generate stories about our kids and their favourite characters, too. It's a great use case — your approach sounds excellent. Good luck to you!
I dusted off an old app (2012 or so) that I wrote for me and my girlfriend who are in a long-distance relationship which I call "Date Night Movie Player". It needs updates and she mentioned that she missed using it. Basically it lets two people sync watching a video/movie together, while chatting in a side transparent overlay and has a remote control with interesting buttons like timed "beer break", "bathroom break", along with pause so you can draw an arrow on the screen or circle something of interest. There is also a button that might (it is random chance and you can only do it a few times) let you steal the remote control from the other user. Only the person with the remote can really pause after all! It gives the experience of watching a movie together and being able to comment about things happening like when we are together.
Interesting to hear. One big thing I had to address was the fact that she lives in a rural area with very slow internet access and I don't. So I built in and option for us both to select a movie and a time for the date and it would pre-download a high-quality version.
I don't think the apps themselves are illegal any more than VLC is illegal. You could likely watch something on the app that is illegal depending on where you live.
In short, at the core of Tangled is what we call “knots”; they’re lightweight, headless servers that serve up your git repository, and the contents viewed and collaborated upon via the “app view” at tangled.sh. All social data (issues, comments, PRs, other repo metadata) is stored “on-proto”—in your AT Protocol PDS.
We don’t just plan to reimplement GitHub, but rethink and improve on the status quo. For instance, we plan to make stacked PRs and stacked diff-based reviews first-class citizens of the platform.
Right now, our pull request feature is rather simplistic but very useful still: you paste your git diff output, and “resubmit” for a new round of review (if necessary). You can see an example here: https://tangled.sh/@tangled.sh/core/pulls/14
How is the support for LFS? Also, what backend language? I have some Go code for implementing an LFS server and auth but did not want to build a full code forge. All of the major Git hosts have woefully bad LFS management (e.g. if you want to purge a file from history have to delete the whole repository).
I built a no-AI, human-only social network focused on ONLY one thing - keeping people connected.
I'd stepped away from mainstream social media last year due to the overwhelming negativity, privacy violation, etc. Then around early this year, I started to feel I was missing updates from people who actually matter in my life. Instead of going back to traditional platforms, I decided to create a simple solution myself.
The platform emphasizes:
- No AI algorithms or content manipulation
- No infinite scrolling designed to trap your attention
- A simple interface for sharing life updates with close connections (Text and Photos only for now)
We've intentionally made connecting difficult: no user search and no friend suggestions - you only connect with people you already know and care about.
So I like what you are doing but I think it might be worth having a larger think about this
> no user search and no friend suggestions
I get the intentionality, but the reason that facebook was successful was that it found the people you intentionally wanted to communicate with for you.
The issue is that the social graph overstays its welcome. After its done finding all the people you want to communicate with, it suggests a ton of people you dont.
I actually find this to be similar to netflix and spotify suggestions, both of which were able to find things I wanted to consume early on, but now just give me waves of shit.
Consider doing something a lot smaller, like an opt in, 1 month activation at a time, depth 1 search to find people you might want to connect with, but without the hassle of having to swap details on another platform.
That’s a great insight. I totally agree that early Facebook’s ability to surface actual connections was valuable before it turned into an endless recommendation machine.
The challenge is figuring out how to offer just enough discoverability that doesn't creep users. I like your idea of an opt-in, time-limited, depth-1 search, it keeps things intentional while reducing friction. Definitely something to think about.
Curious: would you see value in a simple "import contacts" option, or do you think that would risk overstepping?
As long as it is isnt intrusive. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have done this to me at some stage or another, and I get endless prompts to try again, and theres also a bunch of users on those platforms that are now recommended to me because of the search.
It would be useful to identify my friends but I dont want a loose thread of some guy I emailed 20 years ago to constantly bug me.
You need an about page with screenshots, ect. I'd like to know what I'm getting into before I invest my extremely valuable time and attention into your site.
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The links on the bottom of the page (about, privacy policy, ect) don't work.
In general: Non-functioning links / buttons are a huge no-no. When I encounter non-functioning links / buttons in software, I just assume I'm going to waste my time and move on.
I know that sometimes when designing a UI, you want to be able to "see" what the final product will look like. Leaving them in before they work is sloppy, and gives the impression that your product also has more loose ends.
Something like this has been on my mind for a while now -- take the useful, positive elements from across the socials (network of connections, media sharing, events, etc) and create mini-nets that let people who want to, stay in touch.
How do you envision onboarding? Do I join, and then try to convince a handful of people to join as well?
Glad this resonates with you! That’s exactly the goal—keeping the useful parts of social networking while removing the noise and AI-driven manipulation.
> How do you envision onboarding? Do I join, and then try to convince a handful of people to join as well?
Yes, that's been the idea so far for onboarding. But we’re also exploring ways to make the platform more organically discoverable and valuable from day one (without AI).
In my case, it's been easy to convince my network to move and I found they shared a similar level of dismay towards traditional networks.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions on the onboarding process
I wish I had suggestions! The daunting nature of the onboarding is what cooled my jets in the first place, and I never got part the ideation phase with this particular project.
The need is there (at least for some of us!) so the sell shouldn't be so hard, but I feel like I'm missing the "a-ha!" differentiator here. It's not enough to pull the good/useful remnants from the sludge socials are today; it would need an extra something to excite people enough to make the effort to engage with yet another online service.
Thanks for trying it out!
That particular error usually happens due to a temporary network issue or if third-party cookies are blocked. Could you try refreshing or using a different browser?
I’ll also check on my end to make sure everything is running smoothly. Appreciate the heads-up!
I started a small company selling accessories that I design, 3d print, and build for old 16mm film cameras. I recently released a crystal synchronized motor for Arri cameras, which allows you to record sound and have it sync up properly later, that has actually been selling pretty well. My next goal is to get into CNC machining with metal and actually build a modern 16mm film camera.
For my day job I am currently working for an online education company. I have been learning about the concepts behind knowledge tracing and using knowledge components to get a fine grained perspective on what types of skills someone has acquired throughout their learning path. It is hard because our company hasn't really had any sort of basis to start from, so I have been reading a lot of research papers and trying to understand, from sort of first principles, how to approach this problem. It has been a fun challenge.
Hi! I can't really share the company, but I do love the space and happy to discuss what I've been reading.
So the idea of Knowledge Tracing originated, from my understanding with a paper in 1994: http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/1... this sort of introduced the idea that you could model and understand a students learning as it progresses through a set of materials.
Going forward a few years you have a Stanford paper, Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT): https://stanford.edu/~cpiech/bio/papers/deepKnowledgeTracing... which delves into utilizing RNN(recurrent neural networks) to aide in the task of modelling student knowledge over time.
Jumping really far forward to 2024 we have another paper from Carnegie Mellon & University of Pittsburgh: Automated Generation and Tagging of Knowledge Components from Multiple-Choice Questions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.20526 and A very similar paper that I really enjoyed from Switzerland: Using Large Multimodal Models to Extract Knowledge Components for Knowledge Tracing from Multimedia Question Information https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.20167
Overall the concept I've been sort of gathering is that, if you can break down the skills involved in smaller and smaller tasks, you can make much more intelligent decisions about what is best for the student.
The other thing I've been gathering is that Skills Taxonomies are only useful in as much as they help you make decisions about students. If you build a very rigid Taxonomy that is unable to accommodate change, you can't really adapt easily to new course material or to make dynamic decisions about students. So the idea of a rigid Taxonomy is quickly becoming outdated. Large language models are being used to generate fine-grained skills (Knowledge Components) from existing course material to help model a students development based on performance in a way that can be easily updated when materials change.
I have worked through and replicated some of the findings in these later papers using local models, for example using the open Gemma 2 27b models from Google to generate Knowledge components and using Sentence Embedding models and K-means clustering to gather them together and create groups of related Knowledge Components. It's been a really fun project and I've been learning quite a bit.
Thank-you!
It's a long time that I have a similar idea and I'm interested in developing it, but never found the time to dig deeper, with those references I will jump start in the subject and refine.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one thinking about that.
The trick for me is that it's a path in a graph for each student, so even if some component is not as strong for one student, he can fill the gap by taking another route. A good framework would be resilient if it finds many possible paths to reach the same result, and not forcing one path. But then, teaching in this way is more difficult.
I released an iOS app last October for users who use Apple Watch to record their workouts - https://mergefit.itwenty.me
It lets users merge two or more workouts into a single one. There have been times when I have been out riding, hiking or whatever and accidentally end the activity on my apple watch instead of pausing it. Starting a new workout means having your stats split across the two workouts.
The "usual" way to merge such workouts is to export all of them to individual FIT files, then use a tool like fitfiletools.com to merge the individual FIT files. You then have a merged FIT file, which is difficult to import back into Apple Health. This process also requires access to the internet, which is not always guaranteed when out in remote areas.
MergeFit makes this process easy by merging workouts right on device and without the need to deal with FIT files at all. It reads data directly from Apple Health and writes the merged data back to Apple Health.
The app reached a small milestone a few days ago - crossing 1000$ in total sales.
Great idea! One other thing that annoys me is the inability to trim workouts, mostly walking workouts which I forgot to stop. Even when the Apple Watch asks you if you want to end the workout, it doesn’t cut off the end where nothing happened anymore. It should be possible to do this (semi-)automatically using the heart rate and movement data.
That's a good problem to solve. Another pet peeve of mine is the inability to modify different streams of fitness data in a single workout. If I record workout on the watch, but use a different device just for heart rate, there's no good way to replace the watch recorded HR data with this other device's HR data.
Backstory: from 2018-2023 I converted London taxis to be electric and built three prototypes. We also raised £300k and were featured in The Guardian. I have a day-job again these days and am persisting what I learnt and sharing it. YouTube is super interesting for me because of the writing, similar for the web app actually because the code isn't that complicated, it's about how do I present it in a way that engaged users, so I am thinking mostly about UX.
Actually why not, here is the intro to the first module (100 questions about batteries - ends in a 404):
https://foxev.io/academy/modules/1/
Thanks for sharing. I watched some of canbus video and came back to say it looks really interesting. I am building a prototype diesel electric autonomous vehicle for farm applications at the moment so the videos are somewhat relevant to me.
I've been playing around with turning it into a sandbox for running code in Python (https://runno.dev/articles/sandbox-python/). This would allow you to safely execute AI generated code.
Generally thinking about more ways to run code in sandbox environments, as I think this will become more important as we are generating a lot of "untrusted" code using Gen AI.
Thanks! Yeah I'm very aware of Pyodide and interested in adopting some of their techniques.
A big difference between my approach and their approach is that Runno is generic across programming languages. Pyodide only works for Python (and can only work for Python).
Big interesting development in this space is the announcement of Endor at WASM IO which I'd like to try out: https://endor.dev/
Been a freelance dev for years, now going on "sabbatical" (love that word) shortly.
Planning to do a lot of learning, self-improvement, and projects. Tech-related and not. Preparing for the next volume (not chapter) of life. Refactoring, if you like, among other things.
Yeah.. I'm starting a LIT-RPG style blog for my personal growth. Skills/attributes tied to personal goals. Spirit as it relates to learning guitar (for instance), Mana as it relates to tech skills.
Right now it's all a flat index.html and simple.css hosted on github pages, but I'll get a site eventually. Writing a blog is part of my goals to become a profitable author. (Creativity ~= blogging, sketching, animation)
An electronic board game similar to Settlers of Catan (https://github.com/seanboyce/Calculus-the-game), just received the much better full sized boards. Will assemble and test over the next few weeks, then document properly. I got the matte black PCBs, they look really cool.
A hardware quantum RNG. Made a mistake in the board power supply, but it still works well with cut trace and a bodge wire. Will probably fix the bug and put the results up in a few weeks. Can push out ~300 bytes of entropy a second, each as an MQTT message.
A hardware device that just does E2E encrypted chat (using Curve 25519). Microcontrollers only, no OS, and nothing ever stored locally. HDMI output (1024x768), Wi-Fi, and USB keyboard support. I originally designed it to use a vanilla MQTT broker, but I'm probably going to move it to HTTP and just write a little self-hosted HTTP service that handles message routing and ephemeral key registration. Right now the encryption, video output, and USB host works -- but it was a tangle of wires to fix the initial bugs, so I ordered new boards. Got to put those through testing, then move on to writing the server.
Iterating on hardware stuff is pretty slow. I try to test more than one bugfix in parallel on the same board. Iteration time is 2-3 weeks and 8$. If I have all the parts in stock. I don't have very much free time right now due to work, so this suits me fine. A rule I live by is that I must always be creating, so I think this is a reasonable compromise.
I'm working on an emulator for 16-bit computer I have designed for teaching students. It's designed to make low level computing more accessible for modern students by making things as visual as possible, for example blinken-lighten for the registers like w/ the old PDPs, color coded memory that shows where the code and data segments are, where the stack is, etc, and a small frame buffer that drives a 64x64 2 bit display that uses the same color palette as the original gameboy. The instruction set is a mashup of MIPS, the Scott CPU and JVM/forth stack operations. I'm excited about it.
Working on [redacted], a Chrome extension to make YouTube more time-efficient (and way more fun).
Its main differentiator: hover any thumbnail (homepage, search, shorts, etc.) for an instant mini-summary, like Wikipedia link previews. Also includes detailed summaries w/ timestamps, chat w/ video, chat w/ entire channels, and comment summaries.
Hover & Detailed summaries are free if you plug in your own OpenAI API key ("free for nerds" mode).
Aiming to be the best YouTube-specific AI tool. Would love your feedback. No signup needed for free tier/BYOK. If you try it and email me ([redacted]), happy to give you extended Pro access!
Love the idea and the name! Do you think whether this will worsen the YouTube experience? Because it encourages consuming content at a faster pace than watching the videos themselves.
I think its impact on watch time depends on your goal of that session. When I'm in "looking for a specific answer" mode it does reduce my watch time, but there's plenty of times when I just want to watch youtube–and when I do, it helps me find what to watch, rather than reducing my watch time per se.
Me and a friend of mine are designing a HAB (high altitude balloon) payload meant to go on Hack Club's Apex: https://apex.hackclub.com. It's designed to measure how altitude, temperature, and much more affect photosynthesis, and in turn, chlorophyll fluorescence in algae. We learned a while back that when you shine blue light on chlorophyll, it fluoresces red, and it's really quite a cool phenomena. We're designing custom PCBs for powering and processing data, and even. It'll all go to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W which will beam data back to earth over 915Mhz LoRa when it's 100k feet in the sky.
Older work includes Folders: code written as a pattern of folders: https://github.com/rottytooth/Folders , Entropy: where data decays each time it’s read from or written to: http://entropy-lang.org/ and Olympus: where code is written as prayer to Greek gods, who may or may not carry out your wishes: https://github.com/rottytooth/Olympus (a way to reverse the power structure of code, among other things).
I have three more to complete in the next few months.
I'm working on MailTrigger — a customizable SMTP server that turns any email notification into a message on platforms like LINE, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, SMS, or pretty much anything else.
The idea is simple: if your app can send an email, it can trigger notifications across multiple channels with no extra coding. Think of it as "SMTP Server to Anything."
One of the cool parts is MailTrigger supports WebAssembly (WASM), so you can customize your own notification logic and automate workflows. I’ve used it for tasks like monitoring internal systems, forwarding alerts to different chat platforms, and even adding basic decision-making logic before sending notifications. It’s been a huge time saver.
I’ve also experimented with using LLMs to assist in rule creation — you can configure notification rules using natural language instead of writing manual code. It’s like giving your infrastructure a smarter way to handle incidents.
At my company, I’m using MailTrigger for real-time price drop alerts and server health monitoring, along with integrations like Jenkins and Sentry to forward alerts to our DevOps Telegram channel.
It’s still super early, and things like the docs, pricing, and overall user experience are definitely a work in progress. But I’m iterating quickly and would love to hear feedback from this community!
Sounds like you are making fast progress. Congrats!
I wanted to check it out but using Brave Browser and Chrome on a Samsung A54 it took 10s+ to load. After a few seconds the spinner loaded, then the progress bar moved and then restarted and then loaded.
Thanks for checking it out and for the feedback — really appreciate it!
I’m sorry the loading took so long. I’m not entirely sure if the issue was with the main site or the Join Waiting List process. We’ll definitely investigate and get it fixed as soon as possible.
If it turns out that the waiting list form was the problem and you'd still like to join, feel free to shoot me an email at bear@nuwainfo.com — I'd be happy to add you directly!
Thanks again for flagging this. Your feedback means a lot and will help us improve!
Right now, each MailTrigger mailbox requires SMTP authentication (username/password), so unless someone has the correct credentials, they can’t inject messages. That gives us a basic layer of protection against spoofing from the SMTP side.
For forwarded emails (e.g. from Gmail), we do validate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on inbound messages. Each mailbox acts as a gated endpoint — only verified senders are allowed to trigger actions.
As for pricing — you nailed it, we’re still working that out. We have a few rough ideas, but I’d genuinely love to hear what kind of pricing model would feel fair or sustainable to you.
Would you lean towards usage-based (like number of messages/month), flat monthly per mailbox, or something else entirely? Have you seen pricing models you liked (or didn’t) in similar tools like Zapier or SendGrid?
Your feedback’s incredibly helpful at this stage — really appreciate it!
I'm working on AssetRoom, a free service to email you noise-free, easy to digest summaries of SEC filings from companies you're interested in.
I often read about interesting public companies (from an investment perspective or otherwise), but fail to then keep up with them over time (sometimes reading many months/years later how successful they were - or not!). I built this to make an easy way for me to follow updates from said companies.
I was working on a ray-casting game engine in C, with the focus on enabling the largest worlds yet seen in such an engine (Minecraft scale etc). [0]
A ray-casting engine is an old style of game engine (think 1990 - Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem). The most famous, well-known example is probably Wolfenstein-3D created by ID software (John Carmack and John Romero etc!) You don’t see these engines used anymore in modern games.
So to me, they are novel and a great challenge to try and modernise. Especially as a solo dev! And for further context, raycasted levels are usually teeny tiny (Wolfenstein 3D or Shadow Warrior are the largest worlds I’ve seen, so nothing impressively scaled). I have never ever come across a raycaster with levels the scale of something like Minecraft. So that’s what my ambition is.
I spent a period of 2-3 months roughly 8-10 hour days every day on this project, not knowing much C and not knowing anything about game engines or graphics, and average at mathematics.
But I’m on a break from the project and coding after my 7 year relationship broke down.
Realised I had tunnel vision with my life and ambitions, and am now “touching grass” daily instead. It’s hard to put effort into your hobbies when you feel other areas of your life are suffering.
So now I’m lifting weights and doing cardio and reading books instead, trying to keep active and my mind occupied.
I do want to pick this project back up, I’m really proud of what I was able to achieve with no knowledge coming in and I think the project has good bones.
And I loved coding, still haven’t found a hobby that scratches a similar itch
I'm continuing to develop Uncloud [1] — an open source tool for deploying and managing containerised applications across multiple Docker hosts. Includes WireGuard overlay network, ingress with automatic HTTPS, and simple Docker-like CLI. Unlike traditional orchestrators such as Kubernetes, Uncloud has no state reconciliation or quorum needs which makes it easy to understand and use. If you ever wanted something simpler than Kubernetes for self-hosting your apps on cloud VMs or in your homelab, Uncloud might be for you.
Key updates from the past month:
- New demo screencast [2]: Deploy a highly available web app with automatic HTTPS across cloud VMs and on-premises in just a couple minutes
- Added initial Docker Compose support for service deployment. The same Compose can be used for developing locally and deploying to your cluster
- Completely revamped how service and container specifications are stored, enabling proper implementation of the service 'scale' command and selective container recreation
My goal for Uncloud is to create a more capable and modern replacement for Docker Swarm, which is no longer being actively developed.
It’s a TypeScript web framework that’s runtime agnostic, so it can work on serverless and servers (similar to Hono).
What’s different is that the focus is primarily just on TypeScript. There’s a CLI tool that inspects all the project code and generates loads of metadata. This can include:
• services used
• all the HTTP routes, inputs and outputs
• OpenAPI documentation
• schemas to validate against
• typed fetch client
• typed WebSocket client
(and more)
The design decision was also to make it follow a function-based approach, which means your product code is just functions (that get given all the services required). And you have controllers that wire them up to different transport protocols.
This allows interesting design concepts, like writing WebSocket code via serverless format, while allowing it to be deployed via a single process or distributed/serverless. Or progressive enhancement, allowing backend functions to work as HTTP, but also work via Server-Sent Events if a stream is provided.
It also allows functions to be called directly from Next.js and full-stack development frameworks without needing to run on a separate server or use their API endpoints (not a huge advocate, but it helps a lot with SSR). Gave a talk about that last week at the Node.js meetup in Berlin.
It’s still not 1.0 and there are breaking changes while I include more use cases.
Upcoming changes:
• use Request and Response objects to make it truly runtime agnostic (currently each adapter has its own thin layer, which tbf is still needed by many that don’t adopt the web spec)
• smarter code splitting (this will reduce bundle size by tree-shaking anything not needed on a per-function basis)
My pursuit of happiness, I'm in fear of quitting my current job and go for a working holiday to Australia, I'm excited while still trying to overcome the fear of not having a stable and well paying job because I don't find any joy in this job no more , so I am working on mentally getting out of this, I want to truly let go "money is more important than my happiness" idea.
I embarked on a working holiday to the UK in 1998. Quit my job in South Africa and left with nothing but a backpack. Opened up my world, I worked for Coca Cola, the BBC, an investment bank, got wrapped up in the dot com boom, met my American wife, met the smartest people in the world, some invested in me, moved to the States, started a business that now has millions of customers and a team of 40 that my wife and I 100% own. So I guess I lean towards GO!! NOW!! :-) Best of luck.
I'm at a similar place to GP. Reading this comment and the employment[1] page for Defiant was a great reminder of some of the things I've been struggling with lately (and how alternatives can look). Congrats on taking the leap many years ago and setting up a company with a deliberate work culture that sounds brilliant to be part of!
Wordfence is pretty cool. Heard about it and your security research for years before I ever used the plugin, then started using it with a client in the past couple years. My time with it is ending shortly (see my comment elsewhere on this thread[0]), but it's been great. Thanks!
thanks for the story, one of the reasons I want to do this is to let go of control and to believe in myself so I can face unpredictable future, I will never know if future will get better or not, but I'll definitely be mentally stronger when I do this, cheers!
Not sure what your age and obligations are, but I did this years ago. Highly recommended.
I spent time kicking around, had a work visa through BUNAC[0] but didn't use it, went to some festivals, did some WWOOFing[1] and hiking and climbing. Also took the opportunity to visit other countries near AU that I wouldn't get to otherwise (NZ, Fiji).
One of my life highlights. Two thumbs up! I doubt my experience is super relevant any more, but feel free to send me an email (address in profile) if you want to chat about it.
I'm 27 and have a bit of saving, I just checked wwoof and it seems pretty cool, I couldn't make up my mind which city I should go and WWOOFing gives me a general idea of the work demands, I'll hit you up sometimes, thank you for the sharing!
That is cool thing to do if you do not have family yet. If you do not, than do it. Life is too short to worry about not having a job for a few months.
If.you have savings than why not?
I am doing this myself. I turned in my two weeks' notice a few days ago
I am worried about my decision too, but I think about a few things:
- You got your current job (plus all of the previous roles), so why wouldn't you be able to do it again if and when the time comes?
- Job gaps don't look as bad as they used to. People understand burnout and being stuck in a bad job. Breaking away from those can be seen as a positive, especially if you are pursuing your own health and interests
- There's more to life than draining your useful waking hours for a paycheck at a place that offers little else. With more time and energy, you can explore interests and projects on your own terms
I guess I'm somewhat worried about not being able to get back to tech again, but I just realized I can still do open source contribution if I want to when doing WH.
I'm in a weird state that I have an okay amount of saving for me to do this, but I'm still worried because I had been through having almost zero money and two years of unemployment, I'm scared to get back to that again.
In the end, I know I have to let this thing go or I'll never become happy even if I'm making tons of money, gotta enjoy life sometimes, thanks for the words!
I dove into using LLMs together with MCP servers for the first time this weekend. Absolutely incredible.
In addition to the code assistant, I configured a Grafana's MCP server with Cline, so that I can chat with an LLM while having real-time metrics and logs.
For context, I self host grafana in addition to a bunch of services on a raspberry pi. Simple prompts such as "why has CPU been increasing this week?" resulted in a deep analysis of logs/metrics that uncovered correlations I had never been aware of.
Incredible. I can only imagine what this will all look like in a few years
I’ve been dissecting stock market data with code to see how dark pool and automated trading behaviors are evolving and impacting the market. The market is the most adverse possible brain battle where actors constantly try to outsmart and make money off of each-other. Greed and fear playing out and conditions changing constantly. AI is also used but it gets funny when the market adapts and plays against past behavior to take advantage of AI traders as well.
Also curious about what you find out. I also thought that the cool billionaire kids were using "private rooms"[0] now and dark pools were for poor boomer hundred-millionaires! :-)
My toddler has a LeapFrog talking dictionary that drives my teenage daughter crazy. So I just started a project to replace its logic board with a RPi Pico 2 and interfacing with all ~45 of the toy's buttons and LEDs via a couple of GPIO expansion cards.
We'll have about ~300 short audio clips to record, and we'll store/access them via an SPI SD card reader peripheral. Audio output via a MAX98357A combo DAC/class D amplifier that we'll talk to via I2S. Powered by 2 AA batteries. Programming will be in CircuitPython, which is a cool way to teach the kids programming. (There are easy libraries for talking to all those peripherals.)
I'm working on a plaintext, decetralized, distributed (multi-device), trustless (multi-user), immutable, schemaless database that's syncable via SyncThing. The trustless part, fundamentally, comes from records being signed by the authors, each device/user keeping track of signatures (ids) seen, and each device periodically publishing all ids it's aware of: that seems to defeat all attacks or accidental corruptions I care about. My most demanding use case is multi-user expense tracking. Legal/financial document (a la google drive), family photo tracking (a la google photos) is also up there.
Also, I've recently picked up modeling my financial choices and circumstances in Python. Modeling uncertainty is especially interesting I've found. I might share the Jupyter notebook some time to get some feedback.
As someone that uses Syncthing for pretty much all the usecases you mentioned that sounds very interesting! Do you mind sharing some details about the process so far?
- It will work as a library that a tool (e.g. family finance tracker) would be based on;
- Every record will be immutable and undeleteable; the whole thing is space inefficient, though I've some mechanisms in mind for pruning away unnecessary records, and it's just plain text, so I'm not worried: should compress well; I wouldn't envision something like this working well on a very large scale though;
- Editing of preexisting records will be implemented as adding a new record that simply references the previous one as its previous version; also, you can implement a ledger by creating a parent-child chain (though the tracking of signatures I mentioned previously might be a simpler approach);
- I like the append-only model because it gives you history of edits for everything, and protects you in case of mistakes (or malice);
- You'll be able to collaborate on records (and the whole db) with other devices/people; every record will be signed by its author/device; conflicting edits (records marking the same record as their parent) will not be deconflicted automatically by the db: the high level app can choose how it wants to do that: throw up an alarm for the user, ignore the older fork, whatever;
- SyncThing-compatibility will be achieved by simply having each device only edit files specific to it; there won't be a single file that is edited by more than a single device/user, thus, SyncThing conflicts can't happen;
- The db will have fairly good guarantees: if it runs its checks and tells you all's good, you can be sure that records were not changed, there is not a new record masquerading as an old record, a record was not secretely deleted, records weren't reordered, another device didn't edit some other device's files, every record's author is its author;
- It was important for me to make the database easily editable and readable via regular text editors, i.e. not only plaintext, but text-editing-centric, but I've not found a way to do that at the lowest level; right now I'm contemplating using some variant of JSON for the records; however, I do envision a text-interface where the database, or a database query/subset, is rendered as a text file, and edits are automatically picked up by a daemon and translated into new records in the actual db, but that would be just another tool using this db, not a feature of the db itself;
- Like for anything synced via SyncThing, the user (or an app using the db) will want to implement some kind of backup (SyncThing is not meant for backups), unless the data is not sensitive to loss.
Some time ago, I began searching for Python-related events and discovered that many PUGs (local Python User Groups) had disappeared sometime around COVID (at least my local PUGs). After analyzing the ones listed on the official Python website, I found only about 18% were still active, with most hosted on Meetup. This makes sense, as maintaining a community requires time and money, which small PUGs don't have. Meetup can be costly for those starting local Python User Groups, but it's very cheap for big communities. IMO Meetup is not the best place for PUGs, as they are not big by default.
PUGs need a way to communicate and broadcast, to be discovered, but it doesn't necessarily need all of Meetup's features. Also, PUGs probably don't want to be tied to Facebook or other social media platforms. It'd be best if they allowed a simple ownership transfer, once you get tired of organizing.
That's why I created https://pythonuser.group/ - a lightweight side project that, despite being rough around the edges, fulfills the core need: allowing people to discover PUGs worldwide for free. The platform costs me almost nothing to maintain. Allows to subscribe to local PUGs via RSS (not sure if it works). I'll add "export all my PUG data" once someone requests this feature.
It's the first time I share it with the world. Please don't treat it as prod-ready. Feedback welcome at hn@{username}.com
Good work, It looks promising. Perhaps feed it with some group info. If you're expecting people to just show up and list their events I don't think you'll get much traction.
I'm working on a new Event Sourcing database that elevates the WAL into a first class application concept like a message queue. So instead of standing up a postgresql instance and a kafka instance and a bunch of custom event sourcing plumbing, you stand up this database and publish all your application events as messages. For the database part you just define the mappings from event to table row and you get read models and snapshots for free.
The real key here is how migrations over time are handled seamlessly and effortlessly. Never again do you have to meet with half a dozen teams to see what a field does and if you still need it - you can identify all the logic affecting the field and all the history of every change on the field and create a mapping. Then deploy and the system migrated data on the fly as needed.
Still in stealth mode and private github but the launch is coming.
I have done similar for a few customers. I have found that useful pattern is to have both raw queues (incoming data) and clean queue (outgoing data). Outgoing data in single queue only (so all changes are ordered, so we avoid eventual consistency) that has well-defined data model (custom DSL for defining it) and tables/REST api that corresponds 1-to-1 to the data model. Then we need mappings from raw queues to the clean queue.
Interesting experience! Can you explain a bit more about the raw queues vs clean queues? Is it literally just incoming and outgoing queues or was there a problem that you were trying to solve?
It was inspired by KSQL! But really KSQL isn't a database, it just gives you some sql processing. Nobody stands up Kafka and KSQL when they want database of any kind.
The difference is that I'm building a database and exposing the WAL to the application layer. What that means is that you can connect your legacy DB application and have it issuing insert and update queries which are now native messages on a distributed message queue. Suddenly you gain a conokete audit trail for your entities without brittle tables and triggers to track this. Then instead of hooking up Qlik or devezium, you can just stand up another instance of the DB, propagate the realtime WAL and you've got streaming analytics - or whatever new application you want.
I'm working on tooling to turn kids from consumers into creators. I'm focusing on game development initially, but have plans for video production and hands on crafts.
For younger kids I've modified Overcooked 2, a traditionally co-op game. I've replaced the second player with a visual scripting platform that allows kids to code their way through levels — worth noting I haven't removed co-op, there's still room for 2 other players:
For older kids I've been making contributions to GodotJS, which allows you to build games in Godot using TypeScript rather than GDScript. GDScript is pretty nice, but I want to be able to teach kids skills that are more directly transferable to different domains e.g. web development:
I used to be Head of Engineering at Ender, where we ran custom Minecraft servers for kids: https://joinender.com/ and prior to that I was Head of Engineering at Prequel / Beta Camp, where we ran courses that helped teenagers learn about entrepreneurship: https://www.beta.camp/. During peak COVID I also ran a social emotion development book subscription service with my wife, a primary school teacher.
Yes, absolutely, but we're talking about teenagers. I've no doubt they're capable of learning multiple languages. But teenagers are most constrained by the limited time they have available for extra curricular activities. If I was to teach interested kids a second language (and I'd like to), then it would probably be lower level so kids can learn about memory management etc.
I guess I did not explain myself well.
the way I understand what you are saying is let's not teach them gdscript but TS instead. the rationale is, so they can do webdev also.
but my impression of the godot community is a lot of gdscript,some C#. So they would not easily be growing in the godot community and make games.
as for teenagers learning new languages, if i remember my teens, 200 years ago, learning new computer things was a thrill, not a chore.
and like I said earlier, I see the habit of picking up a new language a wonderful skill.
hope it is clearer. good luck with your quest of teaching kids to make their own games with godot.
I'm a synthetic biologist! And I think a big problem is physically executing biology programs.
I've been working on building a programming method for biology labs. Basically, it is a dynamic execution environment using lua that can have full rewind-ability (for complete execution tracing) and pausing - you can execute some code then wait a week or so to continue execution. The idea is you can have a dynamic environment for executing biology experiments where the route changes on the basis of outcomes - something I haven't really seen anywhere else. Then I focused a bit on the pedagogy of LLMs so that you can ask an LLM to generate a protocol, and then when you execute it and get unexpected results, it can automatically debug its own protocol using a code sandbox.
It all sounds decent in theory but the difference is I actually implemented it and ran a real biology experiment with it (albeit a simple one that I knew wouldn't work)
I realized that many seasoned developers do not yet grasp the power and productivity gains that tools like Cursor can not only provide to them, but ESPECIALLY to those that have a lot of experience and broad expertise.
Therefore, I‘m working on a mid- to longform blog post that details how precisely the competencies that senior developers and tech leads already have are the key to fully harness the potential of these tools.
And who knows, maybe I‘m going to develop this into some form of consulting or training side project.
I'm building CAIL – an AI that makes and answers phone calls for you.
You type what needs to be done – it calls, talks, waits on hold, asks questions, and sends you a summary. Kind of like a voice assistant, but for actual phone calls.
Also built an AI voicemail agent – it can answer missed or declined calls, figure out what they wanted, book a meeting in your free calendar slot, or even mess with spammers if needed.
Started as a personal pain after moving to the US. Now works for both people and businesses. Built our own voice infra. iOS, Android for B2C, and web dashboard for B2B. Building full-time with my wife – just pushed the first version of the mobile app this week.
That's cool! I wondered about this recently -- I'd be pretty annoyed if an AI called me. I would most likely hang up immediately, regardless of what was said. Am I in the minority here? Is that feedback you've gotten before?
I do however think people would be more tolerant of an AI answering a phone call they made, I'm bullish on that half of the equation.
App in review right now in App Store & Google Play! I will send you a link to LinkedIn on release, but now you can try it in web ui on https://app.cail.io
But on the web platform you need to deal with forwarding on your own, in our app we have a bunch of instructions for each carrier.
As a native Spanish speaker, I often used ChatGPT to improve my emails in English. It was very time-consuming having to type the same prompt multiple times in a day to set my writing style and format. That's why I decided to build an app to simplify my process. You can set the style and format just once, and with a single click, you can improve your text. You have the option to include the email thread or any relevant context for a more personalized improvement. Additionally, I've included features designed specifically for non-native speakers, like tone detection and the ability to request a few different alternatives for any word/phrase. And of course, you can talk directly with the AI to create a draft or modify the text. Check it out: https://talktext-ai.web.app/
I experimented with it and was able to get everything I wanted, but it required many extra steps and prompts. For instance, my app automatically detects the tone of the message while I am typing, whereas in GPT, I need to manually request the tone after making any changes to the text.
To start with, there's https://nuenki.app. It's a browser extension that selectively translates sentences into the language you're learning, so you're constantly immersing yourself in text at your knowledge level.
I've also been working with a friend on a device to help blind people without light perception. I'm quite new to electronics. It's pretty simple, conceptually - a coin-sized device on the forehead that takes in the light intensity in a ~15 degree cone, then translates it into high resolution haptic feedback to the forehead.
The idea being that it means people without light perception can gain a sixth sense through neuroplasticity, with helps them navigate the room and understand their surroundings. We're planning on open sourcing the files. My mum used to teach blind kids, and there's been quite a lot of interest!
As for Nuenki, I'm pretty bad at marketing, so I'm doing a final lot of work to see if I can make it work financially - seeing if an exceptionally generous affiliate program will do the trick - before putting it on maintenance mode, since I have a small group of users who really like it. I'm burning through my gap year fast, and really want to focus on the electronics project, tutoring, and practicing maths for my physics degree.
Just installed Nuenki, really excited to give this a try. Amazing how it can hopefully iteratively help me learn Spanish while I don't change my behavior much.
I wanted a better way to keep track of applications I sent out, A spreadsheet just seemed like a poor way of tracking data. So overtime I built a desktop application to track my job search activity for me. Most alternatives are web-based, but I didn’t love the idea of broadcasting my job search to third parties. This is a native desktop app (Windows/macOS) that keeps everything local.
Still working on code signing (so no scary "unknown publisher" warnings), but otherwise, v1 is ready.
Would love feedback—especially from others who’ve struggled with job-search tracking!
I had thought about it, but I found that in practice that the majority of applications I send out wind up in the 'Applied' state and don't get much further, leading to a large list in a narrow swim lane.
That and I am able to customize the flow of applications, and the number of swim lanes would be a bit messy. I have my app setup to track interviews, phone screens, take home assignments, and many more.
I found that a smart sorting algorithm is best for displaying the applications.
But its still early days of the app, possibly someday.
Been slowly chipping away at my browser mmo game http://everwilds.io. I've always been curious about MMO software/netcode architecture thanks to playing Guild Wars (the original) in my youth. It's the reason I became a programmer, I wanted to learn how to make games like those. For those interested in following the progress I made a discord channel: https://discord.gg/b3REbeavaT
I just finished building a Night Routine manager for me and my wife that help us keep alternating who does the toddler night routine. I needed this because we both have evening activities and trying to figure how to block day for it while keeping the routine fair was hard.
I wanted to build everything from the ground up in Go and have it fully integrated with Google Calendar where we have our family calendar.
It setup full day event with the name of the parent in charge of the night routine. To override a routine, any of us can just rename the event with the the other parent name and the software recalculate the following routines.
I also wanted to give a try to Roo Code in VS Code it only took me 2 days (evenings) to code the whole thing with a proper sqlite db.
My wife and I alternate and handle conflicts by exception. Meaning, if we have a conflict the other person subs in. I think calendaring things around your home schedule will be hard for the 'things'. Like, a lot of our evening activities are scheduled events that we can't control (concert, theater, etc) or even a group (dad's dinner, etc) and the occasional work stuff. Anyways, I just think it would be hard to plan for the home duties as a conflict and instead we try to sub in for each other and shoot for something that 'feels fair' over time instead of quantitatively fair on a tracker. I'm all for building tools for youself so if you think this would be of use then that's awesome, just thought I'd share my 2 cents on the 'problem space' :)
Also, FWIW, I think I'm the one that is in the deficit of fair although dad's usually get a bad rep in this regard. I end up doing a lot more night time reps because she does frequent girls nights and has multiple friend groups she's trying to stay engaged with and is in a theater group and mahjong group, etc. However, I balance it with my occasional "take an entire day" to myself. Stuff like this is hard to track and why I think it's important to shoot for what 'feels fair' and make sure you talk about it occasionally so nobody suddenly has repressed feelings of inequality.
This is great advice.
In our case, we realized we can't trust our memory anymore, it became hard to remember who done it the most.
We wanted both a system that keeps track of it for us. We want to be sure we can both have activities while still not leaving the other parent on the side and rely on feeling.
In our case we also have recurring events like sport in the evening that happens every week at the same time so this help plan around it and not become unbalanced. We already put everything in the calendar :)
Still plugging away on my linear genetic programming experiments.
The big debate in my head right now is whether a next byte prediction architecture is better or worse than full sequence prediction.
The benefit of next byte prediction is that we only expect 1 byte of information to be produced per execution of the UTM program. The implication here is that the program probably doesn't need a whole lot of interpreter cycles to figure out this single byte each time (given reasonable context size). However, the downside is that you only get 256 levels of signal to work with at tournament selection time. There isn't much gradient when comparing candidates on a specific task.
The full sequence prediction architecture is expected to produce the entire output (i.e., context window size) for each UTM program invocation. This implies that we may need a much larger # of interpreter cycles to play with each time. However, we get a far richer gradient to work with at fitness compare time (100-1000 bytes).
Other options could involve bringing BPE into my life, but I really want to try to think different for now. If I take the bitter lesson as strongly as possible, tokenization and related techniques (next token prediction) could be framed as clever tricks that a different computational model could avoid.
With the recent flurry of historic events unfolding, I want to see it from different perspectives (e.g. U.S., Europe, Russia, China, pro-Palestine vs Pro-Israel), therefore I included channels from all these areas, even channels that may be considered propaganda. So keep a critical eye when watching them.
And it's a way for me to try out Vidstack and SvelteKit. Feels like the routing can be improved though.
I use CarGurus in the US to find used cars since you can very effectively filter on features and lifespan (age/mileage). Worth thinking about - used-car buyers might be after a specific year-range/model or only after a body type and set of features.
Have been building drawDB[1] for a while now. It's a database schema visualizer. Currently working on adding support for oracle databases. Wrote a parser[2] to allow importing from oracle sql. Have been struggling with motivation though, the pieces are pretty much there but I've been procrastinating on putting it all together. This has been my main side project for almost 2 years now.. I miss the feeling of novelty.. but can't come up with something worth building..idk
I love playing solitaire card games. But got sick of all privacy intrusive, subscription, ad-riddled crap out there. So I combined learning macOS/iOS development with doing my own games the way I want them (currently Klondike and Spider); https://menubar.games (originally I intended them to only be accessible through the menubar, but got carried away when I realized how easy it was to make iOS versions).
Will continue to refine and possibly do more - love iterating and polishing as a way to learn.
I have recently started working on a swi-prolog library for unit aware arithmetic[1].
It is still very bare bone (especially in documentation), but I started writing some examples[2] to showcase the library.
It is essentially a port of the mp-units[3] library in c++.
It was a lot of fun, and I found prolog especially well suited for manipulating symbolic representation of units and quantities.
We're increasing the brain's restorative function during sleep.
Over the last 4.5 years, we've been developing slow-wave enhancement technology which increases the effectiveness of deep sleep.
We've developed the full stack, our own hardware, soft conductive dry (no paste or gel) electrodes, comfortable EEG headband, embedded sleep stage classification and stimulation models, the list goes on and on.
We're currently ramping up for a pre-sale, and getting the marketing inline, along with finalizing industrial design, prepping for manufacturing, etc, etc,
Very excited to see this as I’ve been struggling to increase my amount of deep sleep each night. I sleep 7.5 hours, but only get an average of 1 hour of deep sleep. What’s the timeline look like?
So something that I wrote about in a recent blog post[1], we don't increase the amount of TIME in deep sleep. We increase the restorative function (synchronous firing of neurons) without altering sleep time.
We'll be launching a pre-sale once we complete our fit testing (end of Q2 '25) and shipping Q4.
We don't use fabric electrodes, we've developed our own conductive silicone. The other thing to learn from Muse S is that mastoid (over ear) electrodes are nearly impossible. We have comb electrodes similar to dreem.
Though, I don't think corrosion is the issue with Muse S, the electrodes tear as I understand it. Either way, they are not robust enough.
We'll be competitive to the high end of other wearable devices (think Oura/Whoop). We aim to make the starting price affordable by offering a subscription plan, though we are also considering a "full fare" for people who hate subscriptions, but that would be considerably more up front.
I'm currently trying to transition from a fairly rigid day job into working as an independent developer. The goal is to build useful online tools and hopefully create a sustainable income stream doing something I find more engaging.
One consistent annoyance in my professional work has been dealing with PDFs – specifically, extracting information into editable formats without losing structure. Copy-pasting often creates a mess.
I've focused heavily on trying to maintain good formatting for headings, text flow, formulas, and especially table structure (getting rows/columns right in Markdown). It also has an online editor for quick modifications after conversion.
A key aspect for me was privacy: the application explicitly does not save the content of uploaded PDFs or the generated Markdown files. It only stores minimal metadata (email, filename, page count) for registered users' plan limits.
It's very much a "scratching my own itch" project born out of that PDF frustration. Early days, but hoping it proves useful for others too.
The need for batch processing to pull out targeted data points from PDFs (rather than converting the whole document) is a valuable insight.
While the current tool focuses on full conversion to Markdown, enhancing https://pdftomarkdown.pro/ to handle specific data extraction tasks like yours is definitely something I'll consider carefully for the future roadmap. Thanks for highlighting it!
I'm working on an order and production management system for a company that fulfills orders for print-on-demand ecommerce sites. It handles things like graphics manipulation, imposition layouts (gang sheets), cutlines, printing, order batching and tracking during the production and fulfillment stages (barcodes) and everything necessary from what an order is received via API to when it is shipped.
I've been re-energized to work on some programming things I'd mostly left on the shelf or only picked up once in a blue moon on some quiet weekends. Mostly this is all thanks to LLMs and how enjoyable tools like Claude Code can be to use (when they actually give you what you want!), and how much more social they make the experience for me.
Not a professional developer so I suspect these projects look a lot more like slugging through mud and trying to navigate through a maze in a pitch black environment, and I've found these tools to be helpful especially in small refactorings that would normally result in me just slowly losing interest in the project.
Anyways, https://pianobooth.com is the latest one! Gave me an excuse to learn some Blender as well. It'll play your midi files (well, it might play your midi file) and show the notes being played on a keyboard. :)
Lots of room for improvement. It now works on most of the midi files I've tried, but it's still glitchy and buggy. But at least it works sometimes!
I am working on a guitar practice app[1]. It's a metronome that captures speed and duration as you practice. This data can then be visualized. It's designed to be used on a desktop/laptop as there are keyboard shortcuts for easily controlling the metronome while playing the instrument, but otherwise it works quite well in mobile browsers too.
It started as a personal project a few months back. Since then, I have been using it myself, alongside building the functionality I need. Lately I have been working on polishing it up in order to put it out there for others.
Based on my usage so far, I've come to realize some good second order effects too -
1. having a list of exercises helps me quickly pick something meaningful to practice rather than noodling for most of the time.
2. At the end of a practice session, the total duration is just 15-20 mins yet it feels like quality practice. So now, even if I have just 20-30 mins of free time, I am motivated to squeeze in a quick practice session. Turns out, this is a game changer (at least for myself).
Feature wise, I'm quite happy with the current state of it although I have some ideas for premium features (if it generates enough interest). In the coming weeks, I am planning to switch gears a bit and focus more on marketing/promotion. I also need to play more, because ironically, my practice time has reduced in the last few weeks in the pursuit of "launching" it! Also, I've set a goal to publish one new exercise in the library every week until the end of this year.
I wanted some extra functionality for the Swaybar in the Sway Window Manager. I got a basic thing working with Bash, but I wanted more stuff, and so I rewrote it in Clojure with GraalVM.
I think it's kind of cool, I ended up with a fairly elaborate async framework with multimethods and lots of configuration, and the entire thing has almost no "real" blocking, and can persist state so that it can survive restarts.
The reason for async support was so that I can easily have my Swaybar ping HTTP endpoints and display stuff, without it affecting the synchronous data in the bar. I have TTLs in order to rate-limit stuff, and also have click-event support.
Right now, I have it ping OpenAI to generate a stupid inspirational quote based on something from a list of about two-hundred topics. Right now on the top of my bar it says:
> "Let the flame-grilled passion of life's challenges be your fuel for success" - Patty Royale
I think it's kind of cool, it's building with Nix so it should be reproducible, and with GraalVM, it hovers at around 12-15 megs of RAM on my machine.
Really interesting. I'm bookmarking your comment for later.
One thing you can do is separate the information fetching from your bar completely. I have a service that runs every minute or so to fetch available updates from the arch repositories (including aur), it writes its output to a file and then my bar regularly updates it's displayed information based on that file.
I don't have the service definition uploaded anywhere, but you can see how simple it is to then integrate it with anything here [1]. This is a status bar I'm building with qml. It's not ready to be released yet, I'm at 0.7.0. Only tested on x11/i3wm so far. Last time I launched it in wayland/sway, there were some issues but it's been a while since. Since it's built with qt complex and non-blocking interactions are available out of the box. For example, switching workspace by clicking an icon in the bar, or switching the format of the displayed date time.
Yeah, the current design is kind of an iterative process; I started with a considerably simpler thing that just had the clock and date and currently selected program, and then I thought it might be neat to try and add add some async stuff and it ballooned from there.
I do have the state persisted in a msgpack binary, but the data fetching is done within the app. I don’t know that separating it out would necessarily be better, I kind of like that I have the pipeline set up on such a way that the fetching for sync and async stuff can be reused.
I am debating rewriting this to use the slightly lower level NIO selector class instead of core.async, but the memory on this is low enough to where I am not sure that it’s worth it.
I have been writing a lot of helper apps in Rust for Sway as well, mostly as an excuse to play with Rust more [1] [2].
I will take a look at your stuff. I have wanted an excuse to learn a bit more about Qt.
Basically, I've noticed a bunch of social media protocols like ATProtocol, ActivityPub and Nostr are coming out and I think while having these protocols is a good idea, one thing limiting adoption is lack of differentiated social media sites on these protocols. Basically everyone keeps building twitter on a new protocol without offering anything novel. One bottleneck, I thought, is that there isn't a set of utilities to help build a new social network easily so everyone defaults to building twitter as an MVP. I wanted to make an engine, kind of like a game engine, but to make a custom social media for any particular protocol. Hypothetically this should make it so that development for these kinds of projects go way faster. Basically, like a very opinionated django rest framework. Hopefully developers will build more interesting, novel sites and increase adoption for these protocols
I just released an iPhone app called "KIN: Family Calendar" (https://www.kincalendar.com/). It is a Voice-first, AI-Native Shared Family Calendar. Actually, it is simply a replacement for Fridge Calendar. It solves one problem really well:
Capture everything going on in the Family.
Let me elaborate. Families attempt to use a Shared Calendar when things get hectic, but they don't capture everything going on, because most of these events are just too tedious to enter into a traditional Calendar. Voice Assistants are not tailored to capture the kinds of Events that families have. Examples below. So, families either don't use a Calendar, or one person in the family ends up spending too much time keeping everything in sync.
Examples of flexible events that KIN can handle:
1. Aditi has School board meeting on second Tuesday of every month.
2. Aadi has chess on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 7, and Saturdays at 11.
3. Rushi has after-school Soccer every Wednesday starting April 3rd, for 10 weeks.
4. Create events from Screenshots or Photos.
Coming in next Release:
- Send Reminders to other members in the Family! e.g, Remind Aditi to pick up Rushi from School tomorrow at 3 pm.
Which I think is a valid answer. I have a job, family and some health issues.
The main thing I am looking at is blogging. Just posts on a problem I solved that week at work kind of thing. Seems like a low time cost way to promote myself. I might dip my toe in the cooking fat of linkedin engagement using the posts.
As much as that is yuk I feel it may be beneficial. Just need one linked in lurker to be impressed and hire me in a few years time!
And by not posting about AI or working 200 hour weeks I might stand out :)
I think that is a fantastic idea! I would be happy to see your blog take shape. Blogging is something I genuinely enjoy, as it allows me to put my thoughts into tangible form.
Considering quitting my mind-melting corporate job to have the freedom of mind to pursue another attempt of starting my own business. So the decision is, what I'm working on. Background: they announced large scale restructurings last week and that could be my chance of getting some money for leaving (region beta paradox in full swing here).
Just working through @munificent's excellent Crafting Interpreters book. I am currently plugging away at the end of the tree walking interpreter section (add your own feature).
I'm excited that I'm getting paid to do an event next week because that's been one of my goals. I feel like I'm really progressing at understanding event venues to pair up interesting foregrounds with meaningful backgrounds as well as painting events in a strongly positive light when other photographers might do otherwise.
(2) Coding: I have several applications that use arangodb, a document/graph database that unfortunately, like most innovative databases of the 2010s, has a terrible license. I don't feel I can either commercialize or open source these things so I am switching them over to use JSONB support in Postgres. I am building an adaption layer that works like "python-arango"
this is not a complete replacement because I'm not using many features like Pregel or Foxx and in some ways it is more functional because it supports primary keys being integers or uuids. Out of about 50 AQL queries I think there is just 1 that might be challenging to write in SQLAlchemy. It's interesting in that I am triangulating between the implementation being simple, being able to modify my applications if necessary, and also developing the API that I really want in the long term.
I’m writing an interpreter for the Starlark language in pure Kotlin (no JVM dependencies).
I had this idea in mind for some time already, it began with me wanting to build a simple programming language (and learn in the process) and interest in Bazel.
I got started about a month ago by going through the Crafting Interpreters book by Bob Nystrom (it’s crazy good), but now Im straying further and further away from it.
Overall I find the project a great mixture of fun and challenging.
It’s a private repo for now because it’s in a pretty rough state, and is still missing a lot of stuff, but I will release as OSS at some point. That said if someone would like it could be fun:)
An entirely open-source, peer-based accounting package intended for accountants and end users who like the way that certain popular accounting software used to be, with control placed in the user's hands whether they want to run it locally like a desktop app, cloud-based, or some combination thereof. (You can insert a few buzzwords like "blockchain" if that appeals to you.)
After spending a few years developing it for internal purposes, a customer decided to contribute a significant amount to its ongoing, open-source development, plus additional closed-source commercial add-on modules for their own use: making the accounting software useful for very specific industries.
Currently it's piloted running payroll & profit/loss/balance sheet for a handful of small businesses, with the rest of the usual modules (accounts payable, invoicing, quoting, etc.) slated for release this year.
Technology stack is currently Python plus Preact; "severless" architecture where each node maintains a replica of the data involved and can replicate it to other nodes. User interfaces is either CLI or web-based, with an eye towards eventually replicating the desktop user experience of popular accounting packages of times past. We are taking a hard look at shifting from Python to Rust simply as we rely heavily on third-party packages, and Rust is where a lot of the active development in that space is going.
The most fun I had was finding a module written in Perl and Postscript, porting the Perl part to Python, and realising the existing Postscript was excellent and needed no improvement. (Our team now has more Postscript competency than we ever planned to have.)
If you're interested, see my profile for an email and put "HN" in the subject.
I am building https://www.videocrawl.dev/, an AI companion web application that enhances the video-watching and learning experience. Since I primarily learn from videos, I built this to improve my learning workflow. It is free to use.
It offers standard features like chatting with videos, summarization, FAQs, note-taking, and extracting sources mentioned in the video. We're taking it a step further by extracting relevant information from video frames and making it easily accessible.
I've been working (on and off) on part 2 of my blog post series on the rigid body collisions [0] for over a year now. I burned out on it a few times and got super mega stuck on one particular section for months on end. I think I've finally broken through the worst of my writer's block, so there might be light at the end of the tunnel!
RankPic (https://www.rankpic.info) is an app to help users crowdsource their best photo.
I've been building over the past 3 years. It's grown into a lovely community of people who help each other pick their best pictures for dating apps, professional photos etc.
Still in the earliest R&D phase, but working on a multiplayer voxel game. I don’t intend to share it widely, just something for me and family/friends to play.
I mostly wanted an excuse to play with shaders and WebRTC, but I also like the idea of being a sort of “dungeon master” but instead of writing a campaign, I populate the world through procedural rules, and adjust the rules based on how we all end up playing as we go, adding things to stumble upon and keep it fresh in an organic way.
I've been working on extending Postgres to run on top of FoundationDB, effectively turning Postgres into a distributed database with all the modern features one would expect. Hoping to release an initial version for people to try out very soon!
Sure! So my prototype is implemented as a Postgres extension that hooks into transaction as well table and index storage and implements them on top of FoundationDB.
This makes Postgres itself stateless and all data storage and transaction processing is handled by FoundationDB, turning Postgres into a fully distributed database akin to CockroachDB and others.
This has a number of advantages:
- Simple horizontal scaling simply by adding more nodes, including automatic sharding (no need for Citus or similar)
- Distributed and strictly serializable transactions across all your data
- Automatic replication for durability and read performance. No need to set up read replicas or configure your client to route queries to them.
- Built-in fault tolerance that can handle node failures and full zone outages. No need to configure replication and failovers.
- Multi-tenancy through FoundationDB's built-in tenants feature
All this while not just maintaining Postgres compatibility but actually being Postgres, so hopefully all the features/extensions you know and love will be supported.
I'm planning on publishing to this repo if you want to keep an eye on it: https://github.com/fabianlindfors/pgfdb. Likely won't publish any of the source at first but just some instructions for testing it out.
I'm building https://www.themoonlight.io/en with a small team of four - it
s an AI aided PDF reader, designed to make research papers more accessible :)
Lately, I've seen a growing interest in academic content from non-researchers, so I'm focusing on features like automatic summarization and LaTeX math explanation to lower the barrier. I hope this helps more people engage with research and ultimately push global innovation forward.
Pagecord makes blogging so effortless you'll want to write more. Publish posts by sending an email (or use the Pagecord app). Your readers can follow you by RSS, or subscribe to your posts by email.
Share long-form posts or short stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Both look great!
Pagecord is independent, open source and built to last :)
What happens if you combine a full Dungeons & Dragons rules engine with an LLM to act as the dungeon master? Until the recent wave of reasoning models, the answer was mostly 'nothing coherent', but Claude 3.7 with thinking is very good at this! It will probably get rate limited with minimal traffic, but I have a demo up at https://lairsandllamas.com
You select some text with your phone and share it with my app, then the shared text is reformulated to a flashcard (with the help of a llm).
You can then browse your flashcards in the app, but I’m also working on ways to show the cards to you with less friction: Like on the phone lock screen or on the face of your watch.
I'm writing bigger CLIs with it now and I want to tab through their subcommands and flags, as well as allow customization - suggest values for the current flag based on previous flags' values.
It's been a lot of work (9 months of quite limited side project time)- I had to rearchitect significant parts of the parsing to keep more state around, and learn how I want to approach communication with zsh, but I just need to add some tests and an option or two more and it'll be good enough for most CLIs I wrote.
Oddly enough, I'm procrastinating actually finishing it. I've really enjoyed the "grind" for this feature, and I'm also taking the time to clean up the API if I think of better versions. Being able to noodle around with no pressure (except internal) to deliver keeps the joy in programming going for me.
But, after this is done and integrated into my CLIs, I plan to take a left turn and try to add really good OTEL tracing and visualization to my CLIs- I think I can outut OTEL traces to log files and then embed logdy.dev subcommands for really nice searching and visualization.
I recently launched SpiesInDC, a Cold War history subscription service that delivers reproductions of historical documents and speeches, maps, photos, and even coins and stamps to your real mailbox. I have always loved reading about Cold War history, and I'm an avid stamp collector, so I combined the two together and people really seem to love it.
I'm working on the next big version of my timer app[0]. I'm adding a Watch companion app.
While doing that, I realized that I actually have some fundamental issues with my architecture.
When I find myself playing whack-a-mole with bugs (especially with a Watch app), then I know the fundamentals are suspect (the app is one that has been in the App Store for over a decade, in one form or another, so it does have some bitrot).
So I'm redoing the engine, and will probably substantially rewrite the app, itself.
I'm working on Cali Challenge. A calisthenics workout app with a daily challenge that gradually increases in difficulty. It guides you through the different progression levels of core calisthenics moves like push-ups, pull-ups, and dips.
I've been more or less sick for the most of Q1/25. Always some cold, coughing, sometimes worse. Went to work nevertheless most of the time (stupid, I know), because... I don't know. Guess I think work is more important because it gives me the feeling of being good at something and worth it.
Didn't take much care about eathing healthy, getting my gym routine done or even enough sleep. Lots of other stress, too.
Not sure how much I can change from Q2/2025 on but I'll have to start optimistic. Some clouds are clearing up, some problems and issues are gone or being taken care of, can only go up from here.
thank you for sharing this, as someone going through a rough Q1 too, it's nice to hold this feeling with someone else across the universe as well. Onwards and upwards.
Currently, when my brain lets me, I am working on redoing my entire home network infrastructure. My network cupboard is a mess, and I've been slowly CADing and test-printing parts for a 8.5 inch server rack system. I've managed to get some nice side rails, and I'm currently doing some test prints for a mount for a Lenovo M700 computer, which I like for lightweight server stuff (the one I have is currently running my homeassistant and a couple of other docker things, and I'm going to be buying another to use as a NAS). I'm also slowly working on rewriting my website backend to pull projects off external drives, reformat them into blog pages and automatically update my website to use them. Currently I'm still at the early testing stage, and I have quite a way to go, but the basic parts are there.
The 8.5 inch racking system was inspired by Jeff Geerling's video about 10 inch rack, but shrunk even further to allow me to fit it on my 3D printer bed (8.6 inch square). I currently have parts for the top and bottom of the rack, as well as 1U and 2U expansions that you can slot together to make the rack as tall as you want. I'm also thinking about making a side attachment system so you can clip fans onto the side or similar. Once I have a working rack with several units in it, I'll probably end up publishing the parts and a writeup about it
No, I'm using OnShape to model it manually. If I can't work out how to model something, I probably won't be able to describe it to an LLM for it to attempt to convert to CAD
Want to build a platform to alleviate chronic suffering that can't be understood by one's local doctor.
Suggestions by this platform wouldn't interfere with treatment protocol straight away; it wouldn't ask the patient to stop medicines their doctor has prescribed, or itself prescribe scheduled drugs.
It will suggest complementary interventions. Case in point: anxiety, depression, brain degeneration & other related diseases - there's Rhonda Patrick's protocol of HIIT exercises to breach the blood-brain barrier & deliver positive effects; there's Dr Chris Palmer's method of looking at metabolism & mental health jointly & benefits of a keto diet to solve such issues.
Likewise, there can suggestions from Yoga-Pranayama where deep breathing can solve insomnia & hence other diseases downstream such as hypertension in many cases.
After being on such complementary protocols, the patient's suffering will be reduced, but also the body will heal enough to an extent that their local doctor could reduce/stop medication.
The tech is in the platform, combing through wisdom of all such complementary protocols for a start. If it gains traction, we could start involving experts have system route some queries specifically to them.
I have experience building the ML-LLM part. Anyone wants to join me and build the full stack part?
- there could be a community angle too; with someone in another part of the world suggesting possible remedies. This can take a reddit/quora-for-personal diseases form.
A modern SQL client for web devs. Deeply integrated with your workflow (vscode, drizzle, supabase, etc), a nicer more schema-aware GUI (think Airtable), and smarter ways to save queries and export/share them.
Checkout out the README; it gives you a straightforward idea of how Navi works. Currently only works for Notion, but the idea is to make any notetaking tool (Obsidian, Evernote, Google docs, etc...) be ingestable by Navi.
Next steps are to make an SRS plugin, and to make a HTMX-based website so it's useable beyond just the CLI.
A JVM written in go. [0] We're committed to a high-quality implementation that works reliably--so our test code is > 2.x the size of our production code. We can already run lots of classes, but the finished product won't be ready for alpha testing until, we hope!, end of this year.
I'm still working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted social platform for local communities.
The plan is for it to be federated, but that's a while off yet.
I finally cracked ansible/docker-compose provisioning on Ubuntu and plan to expand that out to support Debian also. The groundwork is there. I can finally see an official release in the distant horizon, I just need to put those quality of life features in now, like the ability to delete your own account, change your email address, notifications on comments and all that stuff.
Would you recommend your tool to use with a single instance for a local community that won't be interested in federating? I mean self hosting by one person, likely via docker, exposing to a few hundred people, not federating at all, all data should be kept within the community, not public.
If yes, do you think it's already mature enough to give it a spin?
> all data should be kept within the community, not public.
I would recommend it for everything you said except for this part. Everything posted is publicly visible by design. I'm afraid I have no intention of changing that. You're free to fork it if you want though.
Basically it’s a way to enforce custom policy rules on GitHub PRs without writing any scripts or maintaining any custom Actions. It’s got all of the customization that you wish GitHub’s built in branch protections had.
Things like “make sure the frontend tests pass if there are frontend code changes” or “require 2 approvals only if there are no test files added” are trivial to write and enforce.
I’ve been building https://lowlow.bot, it tracks price changes on any website. I was inspired by https://camelcamelcamel.com, but wanted something that worked for more than just Amazon.
It’s been handy for big purchases I’m ok waiting for and stocking up on recurring non-perishable essentials when they go on sale. It also lets me know when something has come back in stock.
I am working on a FOSS google tasks alternative for android with unix-like aesthetics and my desire to take some inspiration from the windows mobile app designs. It's just 84kb apk at the with reproducible build system and also downloadable from IzzyOnDroid fdroid repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/io.github.ronynn.ka...
It's privacy focussed and does not connects to the internet, your notes stay on device which you can backup and import into other devices, and I am working on a quick qr share features too.
My idea was that there are almost no android apps with this kind of design vision even though there are fans of this design out there as can be seen with the trend of people modifying their termux startup screens and the huge downloads of windows mobile styled launchers. And so I want to make a design system that provides an open source go to system for others to make apps with this design
Got inspired by Go by Example [1] while learning Go. Realised there's nothing for Ruby like that and decided to build.
Goal is to have simple urls for one-click navigation for each topic where the page covers a single topic briefly with examples, with relevant links and historic artifacts (for example, it links to the "Programming with Nothing" talk in procs/lamdba page [3]).
It's still a work in progress and I'm not rushing it.
The examples are all my own. It's easy to do with AI, but I'm not going that way. I'm explaining things based on my own 12+ years of ruby experience.
Like GoByExample, this is also desktop only, but mobile-friendly is on the roadmap. The CSS also will change to be someting like RailsGuides. Might also add a video for each topic explaining the code.
I'm continuing to update my already published ebooks. Apart from catching up to new software versions, it also helps to address typos and other issues found by my readers.
I am continuing work on https://reliquary.se - a VPN for the hackers - based on my fully privilege separated and sandboxed VPN sanctum (https://sanctum.se).
It is shaping up nicely towards an actual 1.0 release in the near future, with a little less keccak based AEADs this time around. It was a fun experiment but in the end I have yet to do any cryptanalysis on it or provide security proofs for it - neither which I have time for at this point - so the swap to AES was expected on my end.
I'm building pgflow, a Postgres-native workflow orchestration engine that keeps the entire DAG's state and orchestration logic inside the database, while a dedicated task queue worker (Edge Worker) handles execution.
This split minimizes external dependencies and makes it easy to manage complex pipelines without leaving PostgreSQL.
I started pgflow because I wanted a fully integrated, Supabase-based system (no separate servers!) for reliable, parallel workflows which keep state in postgres so I can trigger flows from triggers and stream their progress via Supabase Realtime.
Started protytyping it in early November, released serverless task queue worker in January and I'm currently polishing the flow orchestrator pieces, releasing an alpha version in upcoming weeks.
I'm working on DeskPal. The project still needs a lot of polishing, so it's in private for now. Here is a part of its README.
# DESKPAL
## What is DeskPal?
DeskPal stands for Desktop Companion - exactly as it sounds: A companion for your desktop.
It's a gadget that will:
- Display your media info (From Spotify, etc. - more sources to be added)
- Display time
- Connect to your phone and display notifications (TBD)
- Function as a StreamDeck-like device (TBD)
All of these features should work right out of the box, without installing any new apps on phone or computer:
- You can use it with your company laptop, or even with no computer at all
- An app may be needed to configure some settings (like StreamDeck macros - TBD)
## Hardware & Software
Inside DeskPal is an ESP32S3 MCU that supports both WiFi and BLE. The current configuration has 16MB Flash memory and 8MB of SRAM.
DeskPal runs on Zephyr RTOS, a RTOS that is heavily supported by many vendors. Using Zephyr allows us to leverage a vast ecosystem of hardware drivers and enables easy porting of this project to other MCUs if needed.
DeskPal's software architecture allows adding dynamic apps so that we can install or remove functionality without firmware updates.
I'm working on a small project to bring plain-old-telephones back into our children's lives. Quick, screen-less connections with grandparents, cousins, and friends is as quick as picking up the phone and pressing one button. Imagine that.
A GNSS receiver written in Rust. It takes as input IQ data from an rtl-sdr device (or equivalent). It decodes the GPS L1 C/A signal, but I hope to augment it so that it handles Galileo and the other constellations.
We’re building AI PSY HELP – an AI-powered mental health assistant offering 24/7 anonymous support via voice and text, without appointments or waiting. It’s used by 100,000+ people in Ukraine, including veterans, teens, and first responders.
The AI is trained on 40,000+ hours of real psychotherapy sessions and provides individualized emotional guidance to help users manage stress, anxiety, and trauma. We partner with public institutions to deliver large-scale support and just launched a B2B program for employers.
Now preparing for EU expansion (starting with Germany), mobile app rollout, and voice interaction in Ukrainian. This is not just a chatbot – it’s scalable mental health infrastructure.
How did you get people to agree to training a chatbot on their sessions? That strikes me as extremely intimate text. Is it a "it's in the T&Cs" deal, or did you seek a separate opt-in?
I'm askng because the answer will shed light on the level of privacy "the average consumer" is comfortable with.
Great question, and I fully agree — privacy in mental health is sacred.
We don’t train on user chats directly. Instead, we collaborate with a team of 42 certified psychologists who work with us to curate anonymized case structures, decision trees, and response strategies based on real but depersonalized therapeutic experience.
These professionals help us model how psychological support is provided — without ever using actual user conversations. Our system is trained on synthesized, anonymized session data that reflects best practices, not private logs.
It’s not buried in the T&Cs — we’re very explicit about our commitment to data ethics and user safety. No session data is used for model training, and user interaction is fully confidential and never stored in a way that links it to identities.
Our goal is to make high-quality support available without compromising trust. Let me know if you’d like more technical or ethical detail — happy to share!
We combine the flexibility of an LLM with a structured layer of expert-driven decision trees and psychological frameworks. This hybrid approach lets us preserve nuance and personalization while maintaining safety, boundaries, and clinical integrity.
The decision tree layer is used both to steer responses contextually and to define escalation protocols (e.g., for suicidal ideation, PTSD triggers, or crisis states). It’s informed by standardized practices like CBT, trauma therapy, and psychological first aid, co-developed with our licensed psychologists.
So yes — think of it as an LLM augmented by a domain-specific expert system, designed for real-world psychological use.
Happy to share more if you’re interested in how we’re scaling this across multilingual and cultural contexts)
No need to go any further - to be honest it's one of those problems I'b be too risk-averse to tackle. But thanks, it was very interesting to hear about your approach.
We're building https://tripjam.com after being frustrated with planning trips in regular group chats and trying to organize information across multiple apps. It combines:
- Group chat that keeps all travel discussions in one thread
- Interactive maps where everyone can pin locations and add notes
- Collaborative itineraries that sync with your calendar
- AI travel assistant that suggests activities and helps optimize your plans
I've used Notational Velocity for years, but couldn't get a working binary on latest MacOS/Chips and the newer variants I found seem to miss the mark on what made Notational Velocity great (imo).
So I'm working on an electron version[1] that has what I remember of the core UX. I wasn't the best user of NV – I'm sure it had features that I didn't use. If there are features that it had that you used, I'd certainly like to be aware of them.
I'm writing a fictional spy thriller book that takes place in the early 1990s in two countries. I'm about 100 pages in, and expect the end product to be about 200 pages long. Not sure how I'm going to publish it yet; suggestions welcome!
Here's a synopsis of the plot, redacted since I've already revealed too much :)
-----, a college student from ----- majoring in -----, graduates from university and is recruited to work for a mysterious company that has links to -----. Initially hired as a translator, his talent with electronics get noticed quickly and his superiors begin training him for a covert overseas operation in which he will visit ----- as an exchange student while really serving as a spy.
With a soft spot for ----- culture, he is excited to visit ----- for the first time. Although he is fully aware he could be killed or imprisoned there, his confidence in his ----- language skills, plus a bit of youthful naiveté, make him jump at the chance. As he carries out his mission in -----, he uncovers a tangled web of family secrets.
I'm working on a GenAI learning platform (focusing on software engineering). I want it to not suck, not to be another LLM wrapper. I will make it public as soon as I find it useful myself.
Very nice on both! I've long had an affinity for non-mainstream programming languages (mostly those with Wirth lineage). I wish there were more projects that used them.
I'm learning FreeCAD and 3D printing. My goals are to be able to print involute gears, and eventually various mechanical arithmetic devices, leading up to a mechanical version of my BitGrid. Also, I want to make an Armstrong shaper.
A friend gifted me a large box of semiconductors, and I'll be testing 7400 and 4000 series chips for the next week once my T48 EPROM Burner/IC tester shows up.
I'm working on a geography guessing game. This is mostly in order to learn the technologies that the team I manage is working on, as I don't get as much hands-on time as I'd like at work. But it's a fun game and it's improving at a rapid clip. I'd love your feedback.
I’ve been building Velty[1] over the past year as a tool to tame my ever-growing YouTube subscriptions. It’s a web app (PWA) that lets you organize your YouTube channels and videos into folders (with sub-folders), and view all the latest videos in one chronological feed with powerful filtering/sorting.
I built it because I was frustrated with how hard it was to manage a large number of channel subscriptions using YouTube’s default interface.
This is great! It's very close to something I desperately want to exist: a way to peruse the YouTube videos' my friends are watching.
My algo often gets bad, and the best recommendations for YouTube videos come from friends' suggestions. And sometimes I just want to be recommended something totally different than what my algo would know about.
I've got a couple different things I've been hacking on on and off over the last few months.
The one that's furthest along is a database and (currently extremely crude) webapp for asking interesting data type questions about Lotus setlists. I built a little scraper for Nugs and have all their setlists, I just need to take it further and get some of the queries I want implemented and put some kind of halfway decent interface in front.
I also built a little app that uses your Claude API key to generate "generative art," so you send in a prompt and it sends back some visualization code and renders it. It's fun to mess with but I haven't seen anything come out that's wowed me yet.
Got some other little hackeries going too, a lot of my recent hacking time has gone towards getting the -arr apps and their whole little ecosystem set up on my home server. I got a little N100 machine back in December and have been having tons of fun hosting little docker gewgaws.
I have a startup idea and I’m curious what others think.
Setting up AI agents is way too complicated. I am constantly being sent to GitHub pages with installation instructions that require way too many dependencies, API connections, and more. We’re talking hours of setup and config.
So what if there was an open-source marketplace where you could just search, find an agent, click deploy, get launched into an already configured agent, and just have it do its thing? Essentially a marketplace discoverablity, automated deployment infrastructure and an interface to manage your agents.
I’d also probably create some kind of open-source solution, probably a custom Docker container, so developers can easily build agents and wrap them in a container and upload them for deployment.
Thoughts? Does anything like this already exist?
P.S. No, I don’t want to build or use another crappy AI agent builder. I want to deploy open-source agents already built by actual developers.
Currently rewiring some my home's electricity so I can monitor my PV power production locally (without the shitty built in Chinese cloud garbage with hardcoded wifi passwords).
Using the Shelly Pro EM for energy monitoring (it has 2 CT clamps, one is going on the PV output, the other on the grid input).
The data will be collected in Home Assistant on a HA Green device. Additionally, we have "smart" electricity meters here, these have a port which can be used to fine grained power & gas monitoring, should be possible to integrate that into Home Assistant as well.
It's not anything particularly challenging, it's mostly refactoring my electrical distribution board to make room for the Shelly device, routing ethernet cables, and installing some power sockets and a network switch to tie everything together.
I'm developing a wargame-like 3D simulator designed to train AI drones into elite stealth pilots. By integrating reinforcement learning techniques and utilizing real-life local landscape data, the simulator offers highly realistic mission scenarios.
I've been working since November on an integration between a Quest VR app called Fluid, and MacOS and Windows hosts. The app itself is called Fluid Link, launched just after new years, and has been rolled into official Fluid offerings. It supports full desktop and individual window streaming into the Quest app, shared keyboard and mouse control, and unlike competitor apps also supports multiple hosts and cross platform clipboard sync.
Fluid is currently free (until tomorrow?) and Fluid Link is free to try up to 15 minutes at a time, with no restrictions on functionality. There's a discord server and in-app support chat for support questions, and videos demonstrating Installation and usage on YouTube.
I'm just drawing stuff, including a comic book about a future run by horrible AIs that find they get the best response from humans when they present as horrible, unctuous clowns.
I'm working on scraper bot filtering software! https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis. This week I'm going to publish the plans for building binary packages (both distribution-specific packages and tarballs full of binaries).
I have been curating a gaming newsletter for a little over 5 years now called The Gaming Pub - https://thegamingpub.com/
This year, I started my first original content, Unmuted, which is a series of interviews with regular gamers about how gaming is part of their lives and their gaming habits. It's going pretty good so far with 2 interviews done. This is the latest one: https://www.thegamingpub.com/features/unmuted-002-mateus-kar...
The hardest part is sourcing the people to be interviewed.
Working on Circuitscript, a language based on python to describe electronic schematics/circuits: https://circuitscript.net/
The motivation for creating Circuitscript is to describe schematics in terms of code rather than graphical UIs. I have used different CAD packages extensively (Allegro, Altium, KiCAD) in the past and wanted to spend more time thinking about the schematic design itself rather than fiddling around with GUIs.
The main language goals are to be easy to write and reason, generated graphical schematics should be displayed according to how the designer wishes so and to encourage code reuse.
Currently trying to improve the docs and also release an online IDE. Please check it out and I look forward to feedback!
I have been working on Hostup, with which I recently got accepted into Antler's residency program.
It's currently an upsell management and fulfillment platform built for hosts and property managers who list on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other travel websites. My goal is to make staying at Airbnbs as great as staying at a hotel (without the downsides) by building experiences for guests.
This currently includes the ability for the hosts to offer things like meal plans, at-home massages, etc. In the future, it will help them offer a faster check-in process, make personal recommendations, add interactive guides, and maybe even neighbourhood treasure hunts that involve other travelers.
It reads from a replication stream and allows you to trim/enrich the replicated data by running SQL queries from the database, then writing the result out to another database (also using a custom SQL query, so it's easy to do upserts or joining with other data on the destination database).
It's working really well, and I'm just sprucing up logging and documentation a bit before making the source code public on github. The idea is for it to be a much simpler alternative to things like Debezium for small to medium sized projects.
Currently supports postgres for input, and postgres and clickhouse for output with more databases coming down the road.
I have way too many things that catch my interest, but right now I am designing a paper and aluminum foil based linear electric motor. The idea is to create an electromechanical display that pushes a colored piece of paper into place to create a pixel, and see if this can be done cheaply and at scale. The electronics that I have selected look very promising, all I have to do is test the idea and see if this is worth pursuing further.
I've been working on a documentation system that improves how AI assistants understand project context. The problem I'm solving is that traditional documentation approaches are too fragmented for AI to effectively process.
After struggling with vague outputs from AI coding assistants, I started experimenting with MECE principles (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) to organize technical documentation hierarchically. Think of it as creating a "mental model" for AI rather than just reference docs.
Some early results:
- 40% reduction in back-and-forth iterations with AI assistants
- Much more consistent code style and architectural patterns
- Better preservation of domain knowledge across the project
Currently refining the metadata structure and creating templates for different project types. The system works especially well with Cursor AI and similar assistants that can process structured context.
If anyone else is exploring this space of "AI-optimized documentation," I'd love to exchange notes.
1. Hardware
a. Trying to create my own mechanical keyboard: already modeled, how finding a suitable printer.
b. Waiting for a display to arrive so I can wire into my digital calendar.
c. Waiting my modem HAT to arrive to go to phase 2 of my self hosted server.
1. Software
a. Preparing my next blog post.
b. Working on my distro.
I am trying to finish the first draft of my whodunnit novel, before I hit the two-year anniversary from when I started out. I've had good periods with streaks where I write 45 minutes in the morning, but also longer periods where the project lies dormant. 100 pages in so far.
I'm working on adding something like https://graphtoy.com/ to my lisp-based 3D art tool https://bauble.studio/. It's really useful to visualize functions like this, especially when writing animation curves that vary over time.
It's easy to add it as a plain overlay over the screen if you're graphing a function, but I really want it to be able to plot arbitrary expressions with free variables where it just infers the axes, so you can just see values overload in the orthographic view (press alt-q to see that). That way you can just write something like (ss p.x 0 10 | graph) on any expression and visualize it as you go. I haven't quite figured out how to make it seamless though...
I'm working on https://reynote.com (not optimized for mobile in case you want to try it out).
It's an AI-powered relationship coach supported by an specialized AI swarm following integrative therapy principles. It started off by me thinking "how would an AI relationship therapist work if they could see both sides of an argument" to me reading up a lot about integrative therapy, experimenting with various AI agent architectures and landing on this approach now.
I'm pretty happy now with how it works. Even my wife, which is not really into AI and is a coach herself is using it regularly.
I'm building and running a Bluesky analytics and post scheduler site, with a couple of tools on top. The network is showing good growth and promise at 33M users at the moment so I'm optimistic about it.
I'm aiming to solve the problem of wanting to build a game but having to build all these extra "other" systems around it (leaderboards, stats/analytics, saving and loading game state).
Right now you can drop Talo into your game for player management, authentication, leaderboards, analytics, game saves and player segmentation. There's a dashboard too so you can visualise all of your game's data.
I got really good at rxjs and saw a way to make a custom jsx transform where every element is an Observable of string. I've been using it to make my site/blog and just got done writing a mini self contained jira board to iron out the interactivity aspects.
Since it's strings, I just render to file for backend static site generation, then frontend I use diffDom library to do efficient (enough) updates from html string without destroying dom state.
It works really well, but I also don't allow inline event listeners (they make everything much harder), so I've been learning how to leverage event delegation. All in all a pretty fun side project.
You've sent me down a really interesting rabbit hole as someone who is trying to move away from just writing and understanding how React works. Can you explain a little more why this felt worth pursuing? I'm interested in what sorts of advantages this could have.
1. Async and conditional effects without hopping component boundaries with switchMap
2. React.Context ritual vs oneliner `pipe(shareReplay)`
- this is easily the most useful thing, in lines of code alone
3. React is used shallowly for jsx and html, and rxjs is used for events and state and quite literally everything not writing to the dom.
4. Lazy by default, no need for suspense bc it's inherit property of observables.
5. Merge and combineLatest give you algebraic tools for constructing your logic instead of stringing components down a subtree
6. Scan but that's just inline redux reducer but I use it all the time
7. Observables are on standards track for HTMLElements in browser.
- element.when('click').map/filter/takeUntil etc.
I view react as promises--. You have to do wildly hacky things using custom API ideas that change between majors, can only use sync functions, yet all your logic is async. It's like the function coloring problem on steroids.
The maiden voyage of my blog will be soon, it's first big write up will be the test page for this jsx transform, then I'm gonna be writing a field guide for how to translate between react and rxjs.
Input: The website of a company. Any company. Apple.com or Ycombinator.com if you want.
Output: The verified email of every Apple/YC employee we've managed to find. Works for linkedin profiles too — put a linkedin profile in, you get a verified email out.
It's currently cheap as fuck ($10/mo) because it's a hacky piece of software. It doesn't work every time, but it gets improved every 48 hours so it'll be really good soon.
We're also teaching people how to hack sales and advertising, stuff like how to get a 30% response rate with targeted cold email. Basically everyone who's bought a subscription gets a lesson once per week. I've got 10 years of experience teaching skills, so in my opinion it's cool.
I've been dipping my toe further into gamedev. Been working on a game/maybe minimal engine? Been writing about it on a site. It uses a basic raycaster style rendering with billboard sprite. Shout out to pikuma for getting me started down this path. But started as C, tried it in Zig and ended up rewriting the whole thing in C++. Front page of the site has a little demo scene. Dev log contains just some mad scribblings about thing I am doing, thinking about, and trying.
While reading AI Engineering[1], I was inspired to take a crack at an idea I've had for a while - diffusion-based LLM. The accessibility of shakespeare.txt[2] and the proliferation of tinyGPT implementations has made vibe-coding LLM research on the brink of possibility. It does help to have a familiarity in the datascience/ML/AI space in order to check and guide appropriately, but it's amazing how well the virtuous cycle is beginning to work.
For the last while I've been working on a link sharing site that allows you to follow subsets of someone's tags, rather than the whole person. It's a kind of "alts by default", moving counter to the audience capture of so many social media sites that forces you to over-simplify yourself.
Reverse chronological is sacrosanct, and it will never have ads (there is a recently added subscription option). I plan to do a proper launch soon but I'll admit anyone who signs up to the waitlist from this post.
I've already found so many cool resources from it and we literally just got our 1000th post!
I wrote a small business preventive maintenance and calibration tracker (https://pmcal.net) as a side project.
A few manufacturing companies that I have a close relationship with are using it and love it, but I have kind of hit a wall with other growth avenues (Google Ads, organic promotion on the web).
I have been thinking of marketing directly to ISO 9001 auditors, because “can you get email reminders” is a question they have asked at multiple companies I have worked at. I feel like cold mailing them something branded (e.g. notepads) might work, but I am not sure how much money I want to spend on it if it doesn’t and it’s also a bit nerve-wracking to put myself out there like that.
Thank you. My day job is as an engineer in manufacturing so I felt like I had a unique opportunity to "build what I know" and have seen people use and enjoy.
It's a worthwhile project to build yourself. If nothing else I found out that I definitely do not like the date-fns library in JavaScript. I built it using AWS Amplify, and although I like that it scales to zero, but I think there are too many gotchas to Amplify, and especially DynamoDB, for a startup app that you want to move quickly on. I wrote up one of the major ones after I got really frustrated. [1]
Like I said in my original post, I am trying to figure out how to get it in front of the right people (who are less likely to be on HN). I have kind of decided that the B2C sales experience is not great unless you get a critical mass; my experience doing sales in manufacturing is working the booth at trade shows, talking to people about engineering, and using our process tools to develop a solution to the customer's problem. The more scattered "compete for attention" advertising/promotion sales model doesn't seem great unless you have a lot of money behind it.
I'm rambling, but if anyone likes this or feels it needs a certain feature, feel free to reach out. If you're in Boston / Providence I'll happily grab a drink with you.
I have been working towards building and understanding the shift in search / information retrieval.
To that end, I just did a show HN on a couple of my projects
What if google did not focus on hyper commercialisation? 10 Blue links, but sorted by how they answer your query- https://www.unlob.com
Can we answer questions with lesser hallucinations? A snippet cited answer engine which only picks links that focus on answering your query - https://www.unzoi.com
I am building DollarDeploy [1] - platform to deploy apps to your own server. Think of it as a Vercel but without serverless or public cloud confusing pricing - DollarDeploy + VPS of your choice. DD supports NextJS, React, Python, Docker Compose apps. NextJS and React runs without docker and deploy super fast - around 1min from GitHub push to live with HTPPS, Postgres and Redis db alongside.
Currently in progress of implementing DevOps AI which will configure properly your deployment based on the source code.
I am finishing up a 32 year old stretch project (as of this month). 99.9% sure I nailed it. Technically a 42 year old project, but it took me 10 years to find the right way to think about it and craft a formal definition.
The theory seems to check, but I can't/won't be convinced until the tools based on it are complete and working without friction or exception. Many times it has felt like I was tilting at windmills, but every challenge eventually caved.
An epic (for me) black triangle moment approaches! (Discovered that term here on HN.) An algorithmic triad the color of space without light is a poetic, but not misleading description.
It is something I can build a business with, without being transparent about the technical advantage. So perhaps I shouldn't have commented here. But it is a milestone moment, a big milestone after a long haul, and the "What are you working on" subject on this particular month hit me in a celebratory way.
On the business side, things seem to be well lined up.
So my apologies for being indirect. Not trying to be "mysterious".
I just favorited your comment. So at any moment I feel I can be more straightforward I will reply to any comment you make in any other thread. That will be a good moment too.
I made an RSS reader. I have an idea for an infinite canvas dashboard that I meant to use for various things other than RSS because I wanted something to put on my touchscreen portable monitor and projector.
I tried to make the dashboard experience really seamless and even used a physics engine in there. I think I did achieve this though, but I ended up spending more time on the UI than the dashboard contents. IMO infinite canvas UIs are not utilized enough.
Try it out and tell me what you think. Currently, it only shows what I put up there.
Working on ʻŌlelo Honua, a free and open-source internationalization (i18n) tool that uses AI to translate app content. Now building a CLI so it can integrate seamlessly with tools like Shopify and other platforms. The goal is to make localization effortless for developers without relying on expensive translation services.
A reactive computational notebook with an effect system. Kinda like a "factorio for workflow processes." I want to use it to build backend pipelines or AI RAG pipelines. I'd be able to replay network effects for debugging. It is multiplayer and can be easily deployed to a server.
I'd always found web app backends to eventually need something that chained background jobs together. And inevitably, it was something bespoke without a lot of observability. It was always frustrating to maintain. And while building AI RAG pipelines, I've run into the same problems.
I don't know how people are so smart here. You people are really so incredibly clever and driven.
I've found myself in a data analyst job where we do lots of python and linux stuff. That's cool and all but I am such an exhausted and deeply demotivated person. I don't know what to do next with my career. I am largely banking on building strong passive income streams.
I don't think I'm in the right job or career - but I don't know what I'd do otherwise. I am not sure I can afford to do an apprenticeship.
Maybe I should speak to a psychologist.
I just finished adding support for ChatGPT's new GPT4o image generator to <https://martiansoftware.com/chatkeeper> and it's working great. Testing it over the next few days and then it'll be ready for release.
This is a tool meant for heavy users of ChatGPT who want to sync their *entire* conversation history to local markdown files. If that describes you, I invite you to check it out!
My side project now is a websockets based dashboard that acts as a todo list for my easily distracted children in the morning. The tv remote is an lg one that can be used as a mouse, and they pop the tasks on the screen. I used chatgpt to generate some kawaii style stickers (think big eyes and sparkes). They love it. The reward is (in the morning at least) however many Blueys they can watch before the predetermined departure time.
A few improvements to go, but from what I hear from other parents (without raising it) is that they'd take advantage of something like this.
Just using the TV web browser. Do you have kids? Mine are so easily distracted in the mornings. It spawned from the bewilderment of them having so few jobs to do in the morning (compared to us parents) and the complete lack of focus
I developed multi-ssh, it's a command-line utility designed to simplify the management of simultaneous SSH connections to multiple remote servers. It leverages tmux to create organized sessions, allowing you to interact with servers in separate panes within a single window or in individual windows per server. Features include synchronized input across panes, executing commands on all servers, copying files using rsync, and customizable configurations via a config file.
I'm working on a combined registration and timing system [0] for motorsports organizers, mostly rallycross atm. Most RX organizers in CA are using it now. In 2023 32 events ran their timing with it!
It's designed to save organizers time and solve reg & timing problems I got tired of dealing with as a competitor.
Soon I'll be adding QR code support, so we can just scan a QR code on your helmet or car at lap (which helps handle multi driver cars etc).
I've been "Vibe Coding" this weekend with the vibe of a micromanaging tech lead or PM. Actually, it's not terrible if you just accept that you need to treat the AI like a year 0 engineer who is really good at googling.
I've run the project through cline and roo. Also tried Claude 3.7 and the 1M context Gemni 2.5 pro model. I'd say Gemini is less creative. But it's still good.
I can see how it is a productivity booster. Or at least it gives you the illusion of one. Really I think best part of it is just building out detailed documentation. That's really the killer app for me.
I am currently working on and beta testing an app called Malak. It is an opensource version of Visible VC/Carta/Angelist. as a previous founder, toolings to send and manage investors' updates, decks, fundraising and others were ridiculously expensive and now I have built one completely open sourced but I have an hosted cloud version.
I have a use case to have a need to provision at will hyper-v instances for others to have control over fully. I've looked into proper things for things like SCVMM and Azure local and really they do suck..
So off to build a set of automation scripts to provision hyper-v inside of hyper-v attached to S2D shares and give students admin access to them and work in teams to build things on their own.
Its going to suck... I've done this exact use case using openstack, incus, proxmox and they all kinda suck...
I need project isolation, I need freedom, I need compliance.
The compliance is where I'm stuck with hyper-v due to the powers to be....
I'm working on Dronygon, a map of cool drone flying locations.
Well I just put it live couple of days ago, now I'm just starting to post my own locations.
Had this idea when I wanted to take my drone out but didn't know where to go. And as a plus I really wanted to learn more about working with maps and geolocation for an upcoming project, so this was a perfect way to learn it and make something useful.
I've been working on a decentralized group chat called River[1], which will be the first truly decentralized group chat and the flagship application on Freenet[1], a general purpose platform for decentralized apps.
Just 2 or 3 bugs remaining before people can start playing with both River and Freenet which hopefully means we're days away (touch wood).
I’m wrapping up the final audio plug-in in my “Loudness Series” which was designed to bring compressors and limiters into modernity by upgrading their circuitry to using LUFS and True Peak in place of RMS/Peak.
The final plugin is an equalizer which will be focused on loudness but expand the filtering to include more advanced equal loudness contours.
I'm building an experimental a JSX-like language that embraces more functional features --- has stronger type guarantees that TS, ADTs, and pattern matching, but it's also more familiar than alternatives like Elm (or, I would argue, even Rescript).
My current tag line is "JS with guardrails, without footguns"
I've got two main projects I'm working concurrently on in my free time:
- Repairing an Apple II+. So far I've converted it to run on 230V and picked up the A2DVI to connect to modern displays. Next working on cleaning up the floppy drives and repairing the one that doesn't work.
- Reverse engineering the Tandy Z-PDA. I want to be able to synchronize with modern desktop Linux applications, and also eventually write my own PEN/GEOS applications for the PDA.
I continue to build the best hardware product design firm in the world. We have designed surgical robots, implanted devices including blood pumps, down bore oil drilling robots, high volume disposables, helped companies bring injection molding in house. On and on.
We are based in the SOMA neighborhood of SF and would love to help anyone with their hardware!!
I've been and still working on code input (https://codeinput.com). A merge conflict resolution tool that integrates with GitHub. I'm close to move from an alpha to a beta and hopefully it'll be ready to launch in a couple months time. If you dread merge conflicts, or currently have a Pull Request stuck in a conflict state, give it a try. I should re-mention it is still in an alpha state and might bug out during the process.
I've been working on a free, in-browser "pre" video editor. Upload your clip, use a transcript interface to cut it down to the takes and salient bits you want to keep, then export your cuts to FCP or Resolve to complete your editing. This tool saves me about 25-30% of my editing time.
Uses transformers.js & WebGPU for running transcription, so it's pretty fast. It's still a bit rough around the edges, so I'm looking for feedback.
Writing a book on my unique theory on human psychology based on cynicism, military theory, and evolution.
Is has helped me to address all of my problems, from mental health to productivity to learning across all domains like economics, writing, coding, marketing.
Working on an embedded DSL for writing typed LLM workflows in Haskell: https://github.com/outervation/promptyped . It handles the "LLM in a loop" structuring for e.g. forcing an LLM to keep making changes in a loop until unit tests pass, and custom validation so the LLM is forced to retry a task if the validation fails (validation can include using a LLM to check the result, or plain Haskell function, or e.g. running a compiler/unit tests). It also allows structured context management, allowing the user to specify which files are initially provided as context to a task (which may itself be the result of a LLM query), as well as providing the LLM tools to open files it deems relevant, and prompting it to close the least important file when it has too many open (and compressing non-recently-modified source files when many are open).
Currently heavily WIP though and only has a working Go compile/test backend (Go seems particularly easy for smaller LLMs like o3-mini to work with due to being a relatively non-complex language).
I'm working on a few closed source projects that are all built on https://github.com/1backend/1backend, my dream microservices platform I've had in mind for 12 years before starting to implement it.
On the frontend I'm rather happy with Angular but backend-wise I was never really happy. So it was time to build it. Been developing it for more than a year now.
Busy building some personal infrastructure around information. Think mix of scrapping and filtering, scoring and summarization.
Clearly all of the info space is getting ever more polluted and I just don’t trust anyone else (with their own agenda) to manage and filter that for me. If one is to abdicate that sort of responsibility to a system wholesale then I think it has to be fully under one’s control, own data, own design, self hosted etc
A single address space operating system called Fusion¹ implemented in Nim. It currently has the basic building blocks for the kernel. The rest is being built incrementally as time permits. I've also taken the time to document everything I'm doing², which some people found useful.
Have been building a design tool for Spatial Computing [0] Me and my co-founder struggled for over a decade working in XR and wanted to simplify the design process for us and everyone else. We've been focused on reducing steps between design iterations by as much as humanly possible. So the tool works live, multi-user, in real-time and immediately across all compatible devices.
Here's a recent example of whats possible from one of our users [1], and a recent project I made for fun that you can try on your iOS [2] or Meta Quest [3] device.
I'm working on a Dutch dictionary for immersion learning; https://hetnederlands.com. Structured outputs combined with react router renders a chain of thought on demand. With most "learners dictionaries", you're limited to the basic words. This enables getting a perfectly laid out learners dictionary explanation of any word in the entire language.
I got frustrated with the current web becoming more and more unusable and made a browser extension to fix that.
It's an addon that allows one to modify any web page behavior. You can write rules for things like redirecting reddit to old reddit or keeping youtube videos playing in the background.
It's like Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey/etc but it works on HTTP request level and can modify scripts/styles/markup before they are ever rendered making it considerably more powerful.
Currently it only works on Firefox (and Firefox Mobile) because it's the only browser that supports the necessary APIs. It's seen its first release already but the UI is a bit lacking :)
I have been bedroom DJing, and wanting to expand what I can do with the hardware I already have.
Using `midiex` for Elixir I’ve written a fully fledged driver for Ableton Push, letting me use it as essentially a 4-deck version of Pioneer’s DDJ-XP2 sub controller with Rekordbox.
It implements basic statefulness so that the rotary encoders can be used, as well as a paging system so the 64 performance pads can be mapped to different functions. It also supports track browsing and loading, which is helpful if you want to use say DVS with an external mixer and don’t want to be hunched over a laptop dragging tracks around.
It’s also got some additional capabilities which I’ve not seen on other hardware like dedicated faders for stem separation levels.
It’s been a great exercise in combing two hobbies, learning about MIDI as well as being able to personalise my setup for my own use. I haven’t open sourced any of it just yet whilst I’m still tweaking things but I’d be interested in collaborating with anyone who also has one of these devices and has programmed it. I’m looking to use the display on it next, whose protocol Ableton have some (albeit scant) documentation for.
This is probably one of the most redundant project out there, but a RSS reader app designed with Tauri, Sveltekit, Tailwind. I wanted to build this to stay in sync with product development as I don't get to do this a lot in my day-to-day job. I also want to build a game, but it is so much effort. I do wish to pursue it in near future.
I'm working on MindRoot, which is a plugin-focused agent framework with a fully customizable chat UI and swappable services and commands as well as pipes, agents and personas. The goal is to be fully user-friendly while also easily expandable for programmers. And to make it easy to share tool commands and agents. Hopefully someday with a public plugin+agent+persona registry built in.
Started working on a case discussion platform for students around 18 months ago. Mostly for dentistry and medicine, but it's template-based so works well for other purposes (e.g. teachers, social workers, etc.). It's going well and is being used by three universities right now.
On the way, I developed lightweight image editor and 3D model viewer components, which I've open sourced [1].
Working on my plain text cricket live cricket site[1]. Just realised after starting that getting reliable live cricket or sport data is super hard. Tried a paid provider[2] and it’s frustratingly inaccurate. Need to figure out a better way!
Also, figuring out a way to visualise manhattan chart, score worm, wagon wheels etc using plain text ascii
All kinds of personal FOSS projects I have mostly yet to release.
[1] noscrypt - portable C cryptography library for nostr
[2] vnlib - C# + C libraries for server applications, eventual high performance alternative to ASP.NET. It's really just a collection of libraries that are optimized for long running server applications.
[3] vncache - vnlib cache extensions and cluster cache server over web-sockets
[4] cmnext - self-hosted, vnlib based, json-file CMS + podcast 2.0 server
[5] simple-bookmark - kind of deprecated, vnlib based, self hosted bookmark server
Free online database of all apps and their third party trackers.
I made an Android app that lists the trackers on your phone.
You can checkout that app by going to https://AppGoblin.info/about and clicking the link there. It is a test url for an open source ad tracking software. (ie track where an install came from, in this case the about page of the site).
Feel free to reach out if you're interested in either project.
I'm working on a PostScript interpreter. This is a retirement project. I wanted something substantial to sink my teeth into without any commercial pressure. I wanted to see if I could get back that intrinsic motivation that I for had for programming before I started my career. Back in the eighties I worked for the QMS distributor in the UK, QMS were Adobe's second OEM after Apple and made a range of PostScript printers. I was working in support at the time and would never have thought of taking on a project like this.
I have an original Apple LaserWriter which I can use through the serial port (but it won't print). I've pulled the ROM's in it and got them working through the MAME game emulator. This is great as I can debug the 68000 code, for instance I was able to reverse engineer the random number generator and the password for internaldict. Ghostscript is handy as well although I try not to rely on it too much as there are some differences between the two implementations.
The plan is to keep it as close as possible to the LaserWriter so that means level 1. PostScript is quite interesting in that it starts executing PostScript code as soon as you power on the printer. That code is responsible for initialising the printer, handling errors, managing the serial ports then receiving and executing the incoming PostScript job. You can load and dump this internal code with a simple script.
The interpreter is complete along with the 125 programming operators, core types and error handlers. The next stage is the graphics operators. I'm going to target PDF for output as the drawing model is the same as PostScript. I'm assuming that handling the fonts is going to be the bulk of the work.
It's written in Rust, so far about 14,000 lines and 650 unit tests. In some ways it would have been easier in C as I could have followed the exact memory layout in the original interpreter however I really dislike C.
Working on adding features to my app.
I wrote BVCalc because I wanted a calculator that would show not only the numerical result value but also show the corresponding algebraic expression that I entered so that I could check for entry mistakes and more easily keep track of calculations. I also wanted this feature to work even when the calculator is in RPN mode. That is, I wanted to be able to use RPN entry, and have the calculator show both the result value and the corresponding algebraic expression (displayed using infix notation, not RPN) for each item on the stack.
I was surprised that such a feature was not available on any existing calculators and so I wrote my own. Runs on macOS, iPhone, and iPad.
I've been thinking about hobby projects I can work on in retirement (in a few years) that have a large scope that I would find fun. So, I've started work on a game development library in C that combines a few projects I've started over the years but never finished. It's not very far yet.
I'm building the 2d parts of it in the GLFW library and modern OpenGL (this will eventually also be used as an overlay system when I get to the 3d portions of the project). I'm also adding in simple text menuing so I can quickly build text prototypes of the games so I can also be working on game data structures and basic mechanics while the graphical engine comes together.
So far I've started two basic games, an old school rogue-like on a large scale using tiles and a similar game that combines factory building with the rogue-like parts. I have plans to bring in some other games that will stretch different parts of the engine.
Initially started as small webapp to help me learn Dutch words. Made it out of the frustration that in Duolingo I cannot specify the words I want to learn and Quizlet exercising and progression felt limited. I also wanted to target the specific meanings of the words.
Then I decided to try out CapacitorJS and wrapped it into the mobile app. For now only English is available as the target language as it was easier to validate the content, but more languages are coming.
Along with it also started the podcast with language tutors about the teaching & tech. Please find the links here: https://www.woor.app/tutorandtech
I've been working on a library for Node (using TypeScript) that encrypts environment variables and generates typings for accessing said environment variables.
e.g. you init a project (`obelisq init`) and use `obelisq set -k <key> -v <value>` (e.g. `obelisq set -k SERVICE_KEY -v ABCDEF`) to set your environment variables:
As part of that, I made an ADIF (ham radio logs) parser to learn go. It's more than 2x faster than parsing the same data in json format with the go standard library.
Working on the Monokai Pro website for my color theme for code editors, and the Monokai Pro plugin for JetBrains, which has just been released. Working out some optimizations, which will be pushed in the next update.
Monokai Pro has been running for more than 5 years now for VSCode and Sublime Text, and the original Monokai almost 20 years.
I'm thinking about how to properly test AWS Step Functions. The problem is that I can either mock the entire response for every state in JSON only, or call out to a lambda. What I want is to type check the evaluated JSONPath payload and the mocked JSON response, to ensure that my tests always adheres to global contracts/types written in JSON Schema.
I think it's doable by dynamically creating lambdas based on test cases I define in one way or another, perhaps like mocked integration services, that does nothing but validate if the event from SFN matches a schema, and that the mocked response also matches a schema.
My concern is that I can't find prior projects doing this. My use case is mostly (exclusively at the moment) calling out to lambdas, so perhaps I can get away with this kind of type checking. But it's just weird that something like this doesn't already exist! Past experiences have taught me that if no one have tried it before, my idea is usually not that good.
Let me know what you think!
(Would have liked to use durable execution which totally solves the typing issue, but can't in this case)
1. User on allow list forwards suspicious email to service directly from their inbox.
2. The email is parsed, opened, and sanitized in a sandbox environment. Attachments are scanned into raw pixel data and then converted to PDF.
3. Reply email with sanitized content is sent back to original sender.
4. Server is rebuilt, forgetting all previous jobs to protect privacy.
I'm working on a calorie & macro tracker called FitBee. Tracking my food has been tremendously helpful in terms of improving my health, but it's always been kind of a PITA. These past couple of months have been really exciting as I'm leaning into using AI to make it less of a hassle to track & provide more insights.
I clicked because I have strong opinions about calorie-tracking apps (just since I've tried all of the major ones and know what features I like). I'm impressed! Love the UI.
I'm working on revitalizing a FPGA DSP from my first failed startup. It's a RISC-V processor with a vector machine glued onto the side. It's capable of 30 second rapid testing of new algorithms which normally takes hours in FPGA land. Looking for a clear way to describe this novel approach to DSP.
Reimagining personalized food, prepared on demand and directly from fresh ingredients, as an always available urban utility. A vertically integrated ready to eat food retail and logistics network with order of magnitude improvements to value proposition, unit economics,
scalability and risk profile. Consolidating nearly a decade of R&D for US go to market, our systems are way ahead of the competition by footprint (2m²/20ft²), cost per location (~$25K), degree of automation (complete) and drone integration (integrated multi-drone airport with autonomous handover, recharge, precision recapture). Think last mile delivery aggregator with zero people in prep/packaging/pickup/(post FAA BVLOS normalization ~2Q 2026 in some areas)delivery, meaningful personalization, fresher food, and 24×7 operations. Rough complexity ~10K parts BOM. Internal manufacturing. We aim to grow at ~2× historic QSR rates right out of the gate, then accelerate. Simultaneously, spinning off a few industrial ventures filling gaps in what's available on the market we've had to build for ourselves. Prior unicorn. Currently raising for US GTM, email in profile.
I’ve been building two things that kinda go hand-in-hand to scratch a few personal itches. [1] is an interactive fretboard tool for guitarists. I wasn’t quite happy with the way existing tools approached visualization, so I made my own. Too many felt littered with ads or just didn’t work the way I was hoping for.
It goes beyond just plotting notes there are options to show scales using intervals, roots, note names, etc., plus a chord mode that highlights triads, voicings, and inversions. I’ve found it useful for routine practice start the built-in metronome, pick a voicing or scale pattern, and run through it in time.
There are also pages covering theory topics like modes and progressions, but the fretboard’s the main draw. It’s something I built for myself and figured others might get some use out of too. I plan to keep adding to it as I think of more things I want to reference probably adding support for additional strings or tunings next?
The other solves a very specific problem (mostly out of laziness) I do most of my playing using the standalone Neural DSP application on Windows, but I don’t really want to do any mixing in it. So I built a dead simple recording application [2] that doesn’t require firing up a DAW, but still offers a decent UX. It lets me quickly capture riffs and ideas, and later I can just send them to my Mac for mixing if anything seems promising. Haven’t shipped it yet, but I’ve been using it daily and having some friends try it out.
A long time ago I played around with neural net stuff and had some fun making tiny little things. To give an idea of time frame, this was before people were using ReLU.
Going back to it after the recent advances was incredible seeing how much has happened. So many times I'd see something and wondered how I could have missed it the first time only to realise it hadn't been invented yet when I did things last time.
It feels like there is a much higher focus on statistical mathematics now in a way that it permeates everything. That in itself requires a whole lot of new learning to get to grips with, but I also feel like there might be some value in looking at a lot of these things from a different perspective. I think I tend to look at things from a more geometric point of view.
In that vein I have been looking at some transformers using unit n-sphere embeddings with V values as geodesics, just to see what happens.
As I learn new things, I keep finding fun new ideas to muck around with, I'm just an amateur, so I'm not really restricted by areas I look at. Today I'm wondering about whether Wasserstein distance could be quickly approximated by a learnable method (especially if the inputs had access to parts of the ml components that generated the things being Wasserstein compared).
I'm almost certainly treading ground well explored by others, but my way of learning seems to be to rapidly jump between many different things picking up a small understanding of each as I go until I just seem to know things that I didn't before. Focusing on a topic and pushing in that direction never seemed to work for me so much. This is probably why I am an amateur :-)
I'm building modular home audio speakers. Wireless, self-powered, upgradeable, repairable. Think Sonos meets the Framework laptop. Check out my prelaunch page here:
This seems cool, but I think many people have been burned by smart speakers of various types. If your system does Spotify and Pandora and such then it's going to have a phone app and then if the phone app enshittifies the entire investment in the 'ecosystem' goes to waste. Nobody wants to throw out their speakers because of software updates.
I think a better smart amplifier could be a good product -- and then people can bring their own speakers. Or you can make great wireless speakers and then people can bring their own amplifier. But the moment the speakers and amp become an 'integrated solution' I hear the e-waste bells toll in the distance.
People have been burned by sonos and don't expect their framework laptop to last more than a couple of years. Meanwhile my 25 year old dumb speakers are still going strong.
I would respectfully disagree with your assertion regarding Framework laptops. Their entire business model is predicated on building computers that DO last more than a few years....
There are plenty of streaming audio amp solutions currently on the market - Wiim builds a nice one. But some of us don't want to run speaker wires through the walls for a home theater.
I've given a lot of thought to building a system that will work without a dedicated internet connection and this system won't require a central server to check-in to. I too have 25+ year old speakers that work just fine (Paradigm Titan's from 1998) and that's partly my inspiration. I wanted more sound from them but there's no way to upgrade traditional passive speakers. I don't want these speakers to be bricked if my company fails. They also don't need an app to work. The TV can control it through the eARC connection.
I'm working full time but looking at these streams outside of work
SaaS
- I'm working on this https://prfrmhq.com - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538744 [Show HN: My SaaS for performance reviews setting goals and driving success]
- Shows I can use AI and I've integrated into AWS Bedrock
- Shows I can integrate with Stripe for payments
Consulting (Architecture, Strategy, Tech)
- I'm working on getting my consultancy running but the market is hard atm. https://architectfwd.com
Next SaaS
- Starting a SaaS for managing core strategy and tech concepts
I've been thinking about the natural handicaps certain sports teams have. Things like weather, elevation, travel distance in a season, etc.
I think it's interesting to think about how much something like that might affect the career of an athlete, especially early in their career or someone who is on the margin of getting into professional sports. Would choosing to play at a university that has a lot of natural handicaps be the difference between making it into pro sports? I wonder.
Anyway, I ended up making a page showing how much baseball teams in MLB have to travel this season: https://calcubest.com/sports/mlb2025 which I think does an OK job of highlighting how much less time athletes playing on central division teams have to travel.
JavaScript works, scrolling - but layout is still being figured out! Also missing are form controls, etc etc.
It's meant to just be text (no images, etc) and to work in your terminal. It's NOT meant to alter/condense the layout to something like "reader mode" - just to be a faithful "GUI -> TUI" rendering in the terminal.
Like Lynx, but upgraded for the modern web. So maybe I'll call it Jaguar, but probably not! The idea is that other options like Brow.sh may be overcomplicated, hard to maintain, focused on a kind of graphical fidelity. Whereas this is more BBS style text only, but still usable. Minimum viable text, so to speak.
I'm working on Babla, an open-source tool that helps doctors spend less time on documentation. It transcribes and structures medical conversations automatically.
What's cool is the flexibility - you can deploy it with Docker and either run it completely locally with open models for HIPAA compliance or connect to external providers. It exports to multiple formats that work with existing systems.
We just launched it as free, open-source software. Now we are looking how to make it even better.
I built https://emojithis.com, which automatically adds emojis to text. Although it’s essentially an AI wrapper, with meaningful UX and some useful touches, there’s something surprisingly useful in there. My friends and I use it a lot, and the people who try it tend to come back!
I'm working on an interactive book that introduces young readers to the world of entrepreneurship. Readers get to join the protagonist, Daphne, on a fun, week-long adventure launching her own mini-businesses. Readers help her make smart decisions, solve fun challenges, and learn about money and problem-solving in the process. Featuring several storylines in a single book, readers learn about the fundamentals of business, smart saving, and the rewards of creative effort.
The book has been a fun endeavor in both writing the manuscript and code! On the latter, I wrote an exporter for Twinery to Org Mode and an Emacs Org export backend to do the reverse.
Which seems like a good way to avoid all the trouble of escaping separators in CSV files, if a bit clunky since you need to end each record with US RS and each file with US RS GS.
I also accidentally found another test that _all_ LLMs fail at (including all the reasoning models): the ability to decide if a given string is derivable from a grammar. I was asking for tests before I started coding and _every_ frontier model gave me obvious garbage. I've not seen such bad performance on such low hanging fruit for automated training in over a year.
This week I got back into Zig. I wanted to build a Zig library from end to end to find out all the wrinkles in publishing it as a package. Ended up building a topological sorting library that does the followings:
- Build dependency graph from dependency pairs.
- Generate the topological sort from the graph.
- Ordered parallel task sets (i.e. subsets of nodes that can run in parallel, within the overall topological order).
- Cycle detection and reporting the cyclical nodes.
It's feature complete, but I still have problem publishing it as a library. Kept getting "unable to find module 'toposort'" error when importing it in a separate project.
Edit: Alright, finally figured out why the module was not published. The default project creation template in Zig 15 uses createModule() in the generated build.zig, which creates a private module. Switched to use addModule() to create a public module and my library can be imported and used by other projects.
I'm working on designing a survey to help assess the degree to which enterprise tech buyers believe that they need to invest in improving data access, metadata management, architecture, storage, and integration as a necessary prerequisite to getting value out of AI investments.
The backstory is that AI investments are proceeding, but companies seem to be struggling to get things into production, so the ROIs are beginning to slip. Where I have first party knowledge, there is a (small sample size) trend of businesses kicking off significant data modernization processes.
Most interesting to me, is that organizations finally seem to be figuring out that it is worth managing "information" for the business and "data" in their applications as separate work streams, and seem to be acting on separating those responsibilities.
Ive written a simple app [1] that crawls tech corporate sites daily looking for job postings, and sends you an email with the new jobs that match your profile.
The profile matching is currently very basic - just job title category and location(s). There is also a recommendation agent that is yet to be released (WIP).
I would be grateful for feedback and thoughts. So far I have personally (and others) found this to be very helpful in allowing me automate the daily checking of hundreds of sites.
You can also add specific companies to the crawler, which is nice if you are passively looking at specific companies. A possible feature addition might be to limit the search to only pre-defined companies that interest you.
I am writing a newsletter, https://www.clientserver.dev, which started with the writing prompt “what if someone tried to make Money Stuff for software engineering?” I’m still iterating on the format a bit, but I just crossed 100 subscribers and made the Hacker News front page, so I feel like I’m on the right track.
I had a daughter almost 2 years ago, and for a while I didn’t have any free time. But once I started getting a few hours in the evening, I wanted to start up side projects again. I found it frustrating to work on coding projects in 1-2 hour windows. But writing is a little easier; I feel like progress is a little more linear with writing, and having the Monday/Thursday deadline has helped me just ship.
A buddy and me have been working on https://microfn.dev for a while: A platform for creating, managing and composing tiny (micro) javascript functions and using them from different places like webhooks, cron, MCP or AI agents.
It's still very heavy in development but the gist is: Say you have a cool idea for something small you want to automate or run - instead of thinking about hosting, workers, lambdas and what not, you just open microfn, open the editor (or the function generator), write your function, hit save - done! All the complexity is tucked away on microfn, and your place of use just has to authenticate with microfn and nothing else. We run it for you and keep you productive.
Now you can use that function from anywhere: From the terminal, periodically with a cron, add it to an AI agent as skill, use it through an MCP (not released yet), through Siri shortcuts, share it with your friends and so on.
Say you want to have an agent or function that gets the weather and sends it through Telegram: You can either quickly generate 2 functions through the AI function generator that get the weather ("I want a function that gets the weather for Tokyo") and another one for sending a message on telegram, or you can use what's already available (such as https://microfn.dev/david/getweathertokyo). Equipping them to an agent works like in a video game - each function is a new "skill" or "tool" the agent can use, and if someone else already has some cool skills, you can fork them without needint to re-implement everything from scratch.
So like a toolbox full of small composable hammers and tools that can be used across different scenarios and places, to be plugged into existing workflows, automation or to even be used in autonomous agents and through MCP.
Again, super heavy in development and not really a 1.0 yet, more like an early alpha, but wanted to share here anyway. Feedback greatly appreciated!
Sounds neat, but please make testing first class - it should be easy to run functions locally, or to have the same code "infrastructure" run in dev/test/prod environments, etc
A website that lets users create and collect digital trading cards (not NFC or blockchain stuff). Currently trying to get the first active artists to join but it's hard. At least its a place for me to create my little artworks.
The idea is to be able to ingest your logs locally and run queries against them without having to resort to a hosted prod-like environment. It's all focused on localdev-first experience. I use it when the o11y tools at work don't do what I need: I can just pull the raw logs locally and run my queries there.
It's still very rough around the edges but it gets better day by day. I want to add features like alerts and monitoring, metrics and tracing. A full o11y platform in a single binary with zero config. I would love any feedback.
(Also please excuse the poor onboarding experience, I haven't polished it as this is a side project and I have a day job)
I'm building an AI DJ for Spotify called Listen to Luther. It's open source here: https://github.com/jacobheric/luther. Currently it responds to prompts with a list of songs that can be queued, played or added to playlists on Spotify. Next I'll give it proper memory and the ability to adjust and remix on the fly. I built it because I was frustrated by the mostly passive experience of Spotify's own AI DJ. There is no path to commercialization here as Spotify's TOS does not permit it (I asked them). So I host it for myself and a few friends and made it open source for anyone who's handy enough to run it themselves.
I just launched ‘The Phonics App’ to teach kids phonics.
I made a v1 about 5 years ago just for my daughter because I didn’t like any of the apps available. They were just games with a sprinkling of learning on top. She’d spend hours on there and learn F all except how to be addicted to dopamine.
So I made something very clean and very simple that we’d do together for 3 minutes a day. She learned to read really fast!
But… then I forgot all about it for 4 years, only remembering it when my second daughter needed to learn to read. She’s 3 and I taught her the first 26 sounds already.
At this point I wondered if it’d be good for other people so I contacted a phonics expert and they liked it too, so we spent the last 6 months making it into a proper app.
Rewriting the Elixir parser for QueueMetrics live for Teams, my company's service to keep track of call and queue statistics for Microsoft Teams telephony, in a way that's better than the PowerBI examples that come in the box. It's at https://www.queuemetrics.com/teams.jsp?lid=H990
It's quite a mess as we have to aggregate multiple data sources that come with their own timing and sequence issues - plus we are seeing massive adoption so resource usage will be interesting for v2.
The plus side is that building massively parallel and redundant services in Elixir is, if not actually fun, at least more feasible than in other environments.
I'm building an ERP to encapsulate the whole "customer" journey. I'm building it to be a business operating system of sorts with a goal of creating clear line-of-sight visibility for all activities along journey's like lead-gen to churn (but in a variety of settings).
The goal is make it easier for organizations to work with external parties that affect finances (customers, investors, vendors, etc.).
The idea was born out of personal frustration that I've faced in a variety of leadership roles in organizations, that lead to wasted effort, slower decision making, bad decisions made with equally unhygienic data.
I've solved this successfully in the past form of internal tools and a data governance layer (data warehouse with much more authority).
Payroll desktop application with python that works closely with an old time clock that only generates xls files (i know i should use c++ but I'm too lazy to learn it and I just need to get it done lol). I'm planning on open sourcing the project once it's in a more usable state.
Also, I just started on building a web application with golang that will make it easier for hobbyists to share their creative works (like manga, paintings, etc.) by providing a much better platform for their creativity to show. Right now it's pretty bare bones but it'll be a cross between myspace and patreon essentially. Main difference being the ease of use and the ability to showcase your work directly on the same app, without having to host your works on a separate service and promote it on another.
I made this spectrum analyzer/music visualizer recently. It's meant to be easy to use by just going to the URL and looks great on a 4K screen, jameskdouglas.github.io/frequenSee/
For some clients, electronics for a low impedance guitar pickup (pick up all the signal then process it later instead of building in filtering to the pickup).
And an automated design app that turns a 3D model from Fusion into something that's easy to change the parameters on. That way people can easily just type stuff in and move on to manufacturing. This started for staircases - for companies that make like 20 sets of wood staircases on site every day they want to turn that 1hr of drawing into 60s of data input.
For anyone interested in the tabletop Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight Games / Edge Studio - a friend and I have been working on some small typescript libraries starting with dice rolling and monte carlo simulations that we can eventually use with web apps.
I'm working on https://photoboost.app, a tool that turns a handful of selfies into professional AI-generated headshots. Think studio-quality photos without the studio — powered by LoRA fine-tuning and smart prompting.
The goal: minimal input, fast turnaround, and results good enough to use on LinkedIn or resumes. Currently experimenting with ways to reduce training time and improve accuracy with as little as 5-8 images. Also exploring automatic gender/style detection to optimize prompts while keeping everything privacy-friendly.
Would love feedback — what would you expect from a tool like this? What features or improvements would make it a no-brainer to use?
I was inspired by the article over at evilmartians[0] about OKLCH, and I loved their oklch picker. Decided I wanted to learn more about OKLCH by implementing my own tool that I've released this week. Had a lot of fun with this project, and am getting plenty of usage out of it already.
I am working on a versatile and powerful platform for ingesting, transforming, and searching through structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data. It allows for interactive searches, dashboards, alerts, and more.
We are in open Alpha at the moment, but plan on offering affordable plans while keeping the source code available. While in open Alpha and during the upcoming Beta, it is free to use for any purpose.
We will be selling Fair-Source license, meaning that the source code will be released under MIT 2 years after release.
I'm working on Torch Lens Maker [1], an open-source Python library for differential geometric optics. The goal of this project is to design optical systems with modern numerical optimization (PyTorch autograd). The website has a detailed roadmap of what I have planned.
I also had a recent blog post [2] do fairly well on HN, and now I'm kinda thinking about a new design for version 2 of that project because I can't help it I guess.
I’m working on SocialWeaver, an employee advocacy platform that helps businesses scale their marketing and reach by getting employees engaged with social content directly from Slack and Microsoft Teams.
I’m sure many of you were asked to engage with some product announcement, hiring post, or whatever on LinkedIn. With SocialWeaver, we remove all friction from that process by letting employees like, share, and comment directly within Slack and Teams. On top of the core use case, marketing teams also get analytics, employee leaderboards, content scheduling, etc.
It's mostly feature complete at this point, but there are still some rough edges.
Notion's API is far from complete, and updates are few and far between. This has led me to work around some of its limitations in creative ways. For example, there is still no way to create top-level pages in Notion, which makes restores impossible. Instead, I ask customers to create a top-level page themselves and write backups there.
Personally, the hardest part of working on a project for an extended period is not getting burnt out repeteadly. Sometimes it helps to work on something else, and other times you just need to step away from the game entirely for a while
I've been building a productivity tool for content writing teams called Vewrite (https://vewrite.com/).
The problem that I'm trying to solve is that when you are writing a lot of content as a team you often lose track of the state of things because it is passed through email or google docs (or whatever). People tend to manually manage these types of projects with spreadsheets or trello or whatever, but that means that you are manually updating the status.
Vewrite has an integrated editor and a workflow manager, meaning that as you progress through the workflow while doing the actual work, your project management status is constantly kept up to date, too.
I've been working on Zigpoll as a one-man project for a while now: https://www.zigpoll.com/ it has traction and solid growth (~100% YoY for the past 3 years) but the larger the numbers the harder it gets to double each year.
In a past life I would have thought this would be the easy part given the product market fit but it's hard to figure out growth channels that are scalable and cost-effective at this stage. Burning what would otherwise be a large salary month on month in search of growth is mentally taxing when it doesn't deliver. Metrics across the board only seem to tell part of the story so it's tricky to figure out what needs changing and what's worth doubling down on.
If anyone has experience doing this sort of thing - please get in touch!
For those few living in NZ, I've made a site that lists all the bank saving rates (and TDs), and ranks them by best to worst.
This is mostly intended for people who know what they're doing. So don't just pick the highest and roll with it. Higher return usually comes with more risk.
Also, the biggest banks usually have the worst rates, this also goes for Kiwisaver, don't put your Kiwisaver with a bank, it'll do poorly compared to the lowest fee options we got in NZ. e.g. InvestNow (Foundation Series funds) / Kernel / Simplicity.
Still needs some work, like showing which rates are variable, or extra high risk.
Pretty quickly hacked together, to be very utilitarian, and practical. Don't see ever making money on it, made it more for me.
Highlights.Email [1] - a service to email yourself book highlights from your Kobo E-Reader!
Exporting book highlights from a Kobo was slow and inconvenient; you’d need to connect the device to your computer via USB and run a script, or upload the onboard sqlite database to a website to extract book highlights. With Highlights.Email, you tap a button on-device and in a few seconds have a nicely formatted email with all your book highlights!
So, I’m just scratching my own itch mainly while learning how to build and launch something to the world. There’s two parts to this service: Rust program that runs on-device and a SveltKit app (w/ a Supabase backend) for auth and sending emails.
And also a new project to fetch all links seen in the Bluesky firehose and gather metadata to build a database of sites and pages at a more granular level than the domain. For example, is account X posting video links from one YT channel or many?
Taking shader programs (they have a main() functions), hacking up their source code / AST to turn the into modularized code packages, and then enabling composition of shaders by injecting the output of one module into another (essentially calling the main function of one shader in another). This enables arbitrary shader composition. One application is Photoshop-style stacking of shaders as layers, like https://shaderfrog.com/2/editor/cm6y90vai002mpaxio3zjhfvq
Continuing to grow MedAngle, the world's first Super App for future and current doctors. Everything that students and graduates could need for premed/medical and dental school, in one place. 90k+ users, 100m+ questions solved, billions of seconds spent on the apps.
I'm in the exploratory phase of a few projects, meaning I haven't decided if they are compelling enough (or within my skillset) to push me to develop them properly. That said, the one project I've explored multiple times, each time getting a little closer to making the full mental commitment, is a word processor.
Not a "text editor" for code and whatnot, but a real-deal word processor for writing novels and such. I cloned Visicalc (onto the Pico-8), so my "How does a spreadsheet work?" itch has been scratched. I think it's finally time to answer for myself, "How does a word processor work?" (in pure C, to level-up those skills as well) So lately I've been working on small programmatic experiments to understand the underlying subsystems necessary to build one.
I'm beta testing a SaaS called ChimeraHR that helps bridge the divide between developers and HR when it comes to assessing programmer's skill. The main idea is that the programming languages we use reveal a lot about how we think and problem solve.
When devs put their top languages on their resumes, they are also saying a bit about how they prefer to work and what they value. This signal is largely lost on HR since a lot of it is insight you get from actually coding over time. I strongly believe that we can get more people hired and into the right organizations and cultures if people could see beyond the surface level of the keywords on a resume.
I'm looking for first customers now and people to give feedback on the idea and the upcoming offerings. There's a proof of concept now that hints at how it all works.
HR don't know what coders want, but sadly most of their clients do not care that much either. This is a pity, because happy developers are the key to retention.
I'm working on a personal AI notebook called Lightpage.
I've always found it useful to have scratch notes about whatever's on my mind -- a mix of journaling/reflection, planning, project ideas, notes on things I'm reading, etc. But I wanted to be able to chat with an LLM that has full context & memory from these notes.
It's been surprisingly helpful for me and some of my friends! Some ways I've used it:
- Talking through fuzzy ideas & ideas to clarify them
- Having it re-inforce the healthy habits I want to build
- Using it to reflect on feelings or whatever's been bothering me
The focus is on providing a better experience: faster, with smoother interactions, with higher information density and a lot more focused on your daily work (with features such as bookmarks and drafts).
It's web-based but there will be also desktop apps (thanks to tauri) that will integrate with your local git.
If you start using it and want to ask for feature requests or notify bug reports please go to the discord server: https://discord.gg/RHCJvUSbr5 Thanks!!
I'm building Recon Wave (https://reconwave.com) - we monitor companies online perimeter and let them know when something's wrong.
Recon Wave basically finds and scans all their services - DNS, IPs, Apps, Ports - and notify customers when it breaks some policy (aka. "no ports than 443 should be open") or when some service is straight vulnerable.
I'm former security engineer and I hated all that "critical reports" that reported missing CSP header.
We're now playing with an idea to build LLM pentesting agent that could run agains the whole infra of our customers.
I'm all for in for it. Sadly, companies host wild stuff and forget about it.
What we build is primarily focused on companies that have at least hybrid stack - some on prem, some in cloud. If you completely behind load balancer and have strict change management, we can't bring you any value.
In ideal world, we wouldn't have any business. But oh boy... Companies host wild stuff.
Every single conversation I had with clients ended up with us showing some of their infra and the response was "wow, we didn't know this is ours".
I'm working on a configuration file format. I see a lot of complexity in the current space, and not enough thought put into the use-cases for a configuration language.
YAML is prone to typos, TOML does not seem obvious to me, and JSON is not as easy to edit.
I’ve been developing an observability platform [0] for small teams and indie developers where they can track logs, live metrics, and get alerted in realtime through webhooks. I intend to develop a dead simple on-call calendar as well in the coming weeks.
After using tools like Sentry on apps serving millions of users, I always felt I was missing a cheap and dead simple approach to following what happened in my apps and apis, and basically became my first customer for all of my side projects and even got some friends using it for their SaaS and apps.
I'm happy to say I'm no longer stuck on endless little business logic decisions.
Now I'm mostly stuck on essentially creating a (more) complicated google calendar interface. (React + MUI)
I stopped work when everything was still wonky but i could quickly make appointments on the fly with it.
A few days ago when trying to wrap my head around my own code i kind of regretted that decision.
It's a bit more complex of a UI piece than what i've tried my hand at before and my current holdup is (re-)implementing proper drag & drop to edit appointments after i rewrote a piece of the underlying stuff.
I’m building a on-device AI App that supports a good variety of open-weight LLM Models. It’s mostly so that I can gain an intuition on what goes on when we do inferencing, but my longer term plan is
1. Support on-device RAG to allow chatting with your own documents on mobile offline
2. Support MCP on-device, taking advantage of information that’s (only) available on your phone, like calendar events, health data, etc. These shouldn’t need to be anywhere but on-device.
3. Allow on-device AI to use shortcuts(?)
I think most of the functionality are well served on desktop front with Ollama and LM Studio, but moving these functionality to mobile offers a great learning opportunity.
I'm still working on my newsletter: https://ciamweekly.substack.com/ , all about customer identity and access management (CIAM).
Recently added a free tier, so working on making sure both the free subscribers and the paid ones get value out of it. I've asked people to pay for my time as a consultant and books I've written in the past, but it is pretty scary to ask folks to pay for my knowledge via a newsletter.
Finding the balance between technical dives, standards reviews, interviews, and CIAM use cases while doing this as a side hustle is an interesting balance as well. And, the weekly cadence can be brutal. But it does keep me on my toes.
I have an idea that you can steal (would be cool if you send me some of the spoils if it moons lol). This might be right up your alley, Google and Apple devs.
Generated voice profiles (you can use "AI" to sell it to your bosses) to narrate text messages in the sender's voice. Many texts are already sent by speech to text, why not carry that voice to the reciever? Simply recording is not ideal due to the background noise and extra bandwidth, so regenerating the speech on the reciever side seems to be the better approach after generating the speech profile from some sample of initial messages.
I used to work for an assistive tech company that did part of this. For people who have degenerative diseases like ALS, we would create speech profiles for them before they lost their voice so that once they did, their computer-generated voice (through eye tracking software and hardware) would be their own and not a generic voice.
Just partnered with an old friend. We want to see if we can tackle movie recommendations in the streaming age. Exited to begin the journey.
https://pressplay.app/
It's a log management/processing software, with visual scripting.
Started out of frustration towards OpenObserve and its inability (at the time) to properly/easily refine/categorize logs: we had many VMs, with many Docker containers, with some containers running multiple processes. Parsing the logs and routing them to different storages was crucial to ease debugging/monitoring.
It was initially built in Go + HTMX + React Flow encapsulated in a WebComponent, I then migrated to React (no SSR). It integrates VRL using Rust+CGO.
It is by far easier to use than Logstash and similar tools, and in fact it aims to replace it.
I'm making an NES emulator in Go. Not because other ones don't exist, but because I've been wanting to get more familiar with low level system principles, and there ain't a better way than building one.
I suppose I'll post the link someday. I literally just started today.
I am currently testing the hypothesis that RAG can reduce the likelihood of LLM hallucination when it comes to software architecture (existing or proposed enhancements or tech debt reduction) of complex systems. To that end, I recently launched a web spa https://www.exploravention.com/AskArchitect/ where you can ask the software architect questions about various popular open source projects. I hope that you participate in this experiment.
Working on (mostly weekends) <https://pluswhois.com> (part-time) – a tool to simplify brand name research. It checks domain availability, allows one to monitor taken domains, checks social handle availability, and links to basic trademark search tools.
If a domain is taken, it shows full ownership data with great UX — not just a raw JSON dump. Clickable links to social profiles, business info, tech stack, DNS records, and more.
Built it to streamline my own workflow for naming and branding projects. Still early, but already saving me time. More features coming!
Its a Offline-first desktop app with auto suggestion and auto correct feature to help you type faster.
A hobby project to learn AI techniques RAG, vector databses etc. Wrote something about it haha. Its been inactive for last 2 months tho coz of travelling, but I am going to revive it this week
https://bhavepant.substack.com/p/typingfast-my-journey-into-...
I'm building an amateur radio logging tool. Yes, there's a million out there, but I wanted one specifically for hunting Parks on the Air and Summits on the Air activators:
I'm working on a tool specifically for viewing log files, it started when I wanted to open logcat files and have filtering but I couldn't really do that with a lightweight tool, Wireshark works well and I found a cool tool called lognote. so I started making my own, and I wanted to display things different ways and make it easy to add features. it's still a work in progress but I'm proud of it so far
Still working on my software project for live music production [1]. At the moment, it only creates, forwards, and records MIDI note events, so it can't produce audio on its own. It has to be connected to external or virtual MIDI devices that can create sound. Turns out this is too much of a hassle and kind of a deal-breaker for most people (and to be fair, it is a hassle), so now I'm working on adding VST hosting support directly inside the app. If you're not familiar, VST (Steinberg Virtual Studio Technology) is pretty much the industry standard plugin system that most DAWs support. Different VSTs can create and filter audio data, and in a hosted context audio data can be sent between VST instances before going out to the speakers.
It's been tricky but interesting. VST plugins are basically packaged as DLL files of Windows COM(-ish) objects. Despite primarily being a Windows dev myself, I never worked directly with COM libraries or objects before. My app is written in C#, and .NET does have built-in "COM Interop" support, so it is possible. A few years ago, .NET added a new COM Interop Source Generator system [2, 3], and I'm trying to get it working with that. So far I've been making some progress, but it's still a lot of tedious work to setup.
(There are libraries/packages out there that implement VST in .NET already, but they mostly focus on plugin creation while I only need hosting. They're a lot heavier and more capable than I need. They also didn't use the newer Source Generator approach, so I figured I'd give it a shot myself.)
I recently built a quick SwiftUI app to pin quotes and posts from X to my home screen.
I found I was liking/bookmarking insightful content on X I rarely saw again and wanted a way to resurface them somewhere I would see multiple times per day.
Can import from X via share sheet or manually enter them. It's minimal, but I've found having:
"i hate how well asking myself "if i had 10x the agency i have what would i do" works"
there every time I unlock my phone, was worth the development effort.
I am working on nothing which by the is something important and precious because it is something to works on nothing.
By the way, nothing else matter, which mean that everything keep my mind on working on the thing of nothing.
- A typescript SDK for creating local-first applications to browse the Fediverse (https://codeberg.org/mushroomlabs/activitypub-client). I want to be able to use this SDK to work on a fork of Elk (Mastodon client) and Voyager (Lemmy Client) and swap the API-based libraries they use.
- Adding support to WhatsApp/Discord/Signal bridges to Communick's Matrix server. For some reason, last week I got a handful of handful of customers saying that they would be willing to pay more than the $29/year of the standard plan if they could get those bridges on Communick's Matrix server
A mostly vibe coded(since I don't plan to ever go commercial with it) app for music composition, which I suspect real musicians would mostly not like..
You can create patterns, play those patterns on a specific beats, add melodies(HTML tables of notes!) with lyrics, add chord changes to determine how the patterns are played, etc.
It's meant to be CAD-like, so you're working as high level as possible, not looking at some raw notes and having to go look up what chord it is every five seconds.
There's plenty of features that don't exist but look like they do, but it does work.
Building Based Security (https://www.basedsec.io), a startup in the zero trust/identity space creating immovable, attestable, hardware backed identities that can be used for strong and continuous authentication but not moved from the device. We can guarantee the user and the device are known, the user is assigned the device they are using, and characteristics of the identity matches the defined policy. The initial product offering is tied to GitHub/GitLab, offering secure authentication for git over ssh operations with plans to expand to general ssh access and additional systems with pluggable access control.
We’re leveraging ssh certificates which are backed by keys stored in a variety of hardware. For yubikeys we’re leveraging piv and the standard ssh tooling. We’re determining whether we’ll be able to use a pkcs11 implementation for TPMs and Secure Enclave or whether we’ll need to build a custom agent.
I'm an app developer, and I've had such a terrible experience with deferred deep linking providers like Branch and Appsflyer that I decided to build a competitor - https://DeepLinkNow.com
Why I think it's good: deferred deep linking has become an also-ran feature for MMPs whose primary focus is tracking users and advertising.
It's so bad that I can't even open deep links for Tiktok on my home network, because onelink links are blocked by adguard.
So that's why I built DLN. It's brand new and open for beta testing, I'd love some feedback and feature requests + to know how people use deferred deep linking.
I am building "Scharf", a blazing-fast security scanner for reporting and hardening third-party GitHub actions.
For whoever aware of recent `tj-actions/changed-files` security incident, I built a mutable-reference scanner that performs a deep scan across branches to identify all third-party GitHub actions used in organization Git projects. The output report can be exported to CSV or JSON (default).
Using mutable references (version tags, main/master/dev etc.) is a security vulnerability that can result in supply-chain attacks.
My own functional programming language. I'd done an imperative before but wanted one that has pattern matching, would let me do currying _and_ uses a bidirectional type-checker. All of this is currently implemented but not for all type constructs. It's name? Marmelade. Because Lady Marmelade and thus files with a lady suffix. m.lady.
I've always wanted workout tracking apps to take into respect how to track gymnastic rings, but no luck. So I decided to build my own: https://gravitygainsapp.com/
I was getting stuck in some manager <> direct report situations and wanted to figure out a way to practice tough conversations, so I started putting together https://practicecallai.com/.
You can choose from common difficult scenarios or create a custom one and get connected with a conversational AI voice agent to practice. Started out with just manager use cases but now testing out sales calls, interviews, pitches, etc.
Mostly built on Replit (would recommend - is amazing & keeps getting better) and relying on a mix of ElevenLabs / OpenAI / Anthropic for the voice & LLM tech.
I use it myself for making branded palettes for projects because it gives you full control over the hue, saturation and lightness curves (instead of these being mostly autogenerated), and it helps you make tint/shades for multiple swatches at a time that go together (rather than a single swatch at a time).
I am working with a colleague of mine on Handout Generator (https://handouts.cthulhuarchitect.com) which is a website you can use to create fake documents and handouts to be used in different TTRPG, especially investigative ones like Call of Cthulhu.
It is going pretty well, already 17k users signed up. There are many people using it daily which give me the motivation to continue working on this.
I just wish I had more time to spend on this instead of the boring CRUD app I work on for living.
Only public on iOS store for now, due to Google requires larger # of testers to authenticate the app.
This app idea came from my last Japan trip. I had a hard time finding good local restaurants (not tourist traps). So I decided to build this app with Japanese-oriented lists, due to lists' lacked of maps, etc. The app actually helped me discover some great spots, since it lists places all over Japan. Please give it a try and let me know if you have any feature requests or ideas.
> This project was born out of the need for a lightweight analytics tool to track internal services on a resource-constrained VPS. Most SaaS analytics products either lack the scalability or exceed their free tier limits when tracking millions of events per month. Minimalytics addresses this gap by offering a minimalist, high-performance solution for resource-constrained environments.
I recently did a Show HN which you can find on my profile.
Connecting my website builder funnel system to multiple payment providers for various reasons. Not for payments, but for easy up sells or email marketing.
Working on In or Out. Anyone with Elixir Phoenix experience are welcome to help with the project.
Side project for Fantasy football offline drafting. We aren't allowed any electronics just up to date print outs. However drafting takes forever with stickers. I'm making a Elixir Phoenix liveview app to replace the board and player picks with timer and fun prizes.
I've been working on an alternative to JSON called XferLang, and along with that a "CLI construction kit" that will let the user create a CLI for interacting with RESTful APIs (and, eventually, more).
I am working on this mobile app that is a cross between karaoke and musical instrument practice. Through playing music for a long time, I realize that playing with a band or with the actual song is important to get a good feel of music, specially for starting musicians. Hence the app. Currently I have Nepali songs up. I am finding it difficult to get more subtitle files or generate them quickly (for lyrics layout). Through this I would want to ask how I can quickly generate lyrics file. I really would appreciate the help.
This weekend I’m working on mobile app that allows you to upload photos and it turns everything into a stitched anime (ghibli or not) with movements and eventually sound and script. Great to make mini animes from your day or travels or anything.
2 things: (1) trying to find a job, and (2) continuing work on my software.
I've been working on a new software product (native Windows) that is for analysis of SQLite databases. It's geared towards non-technical and slightly technical who may not know anything about SQL. The software includes an ER diagram, ability to browse table data, query building, and charting (bar, column, histogram, line, pie, scatter). Trying to get it finished up so that it can be released (hopefully in next few weeks).
I am building an image gallery as a side project to play with AI coding tools. I got really far in just 2 days and plan to open source it soon. It:
- Uses an encrypted badgerdb to keep track of metadata
- Uses rclone (with an encrypted backend) for file storage in s3 or any backend rclone supports
- Automatically indexes and generates video thumbnails and transcodes to webm to be streamed in the browser
- Slideshows
- has a fairly decent ui that doesn’t look like it was developed by a backend engineer
The goal was to be able to attach my own s3 storage and keep all data encrypted at rest. It’s written in go and deploys as a single binary.
But for real, I've also been working on large-scale photo/video management, and the question of where to keep additionally metadata has bothered me. It seems right to want to keep it "in" the file, and so I want to write it into EXIF, or even steganography, or something.
I’m working on a live voice chat for settling rule disputes during tabletop gaming. It uses OpenAI’s realtime API to allow anyone to call in a “ref”, trained on the rules of the games, to answer questions about the rules.
It's a collection of small tools that run locally in your browser which, over time, I've built to serve my needs mostly. This has been living on my home NAS for a while. When I created the flashcards maker to help my 10 years old son prepare for a Spelling bee word quiz, it became popular with his schoolmates and I got some new drive to make it public.
I built a free and open-source invoice generator with a live PDF preview that runs in your browser.
It supports multiple currencies, VAT tax deductions, and lets you download PDFs in multiple languages (English and Polish for now, with more coming soon). You can also share your invoice by clicking “Generate a link to invoice” button.
I made Periplus (https://periplus.app), a new interface for exploring and learning with LLMs.
It generates interconnected learning documents, a bit like personalized wiki articles. Features include courses on any topic, generative flashcards for spaced repetition (think Anki), as well as a chat alongside each document.
Working on v2 of our n+1-proof/reactive TypeScript ORM, Joist (https://joist-orm.io/), that moves to using the new-ish postgres.js driver (instead of knex/node-pg), so that we can leverage postgres.js's statement pipelining within transactions.
I'm anticipating a really sweet perf increase (as shown by some proof-of-concepts), but now that everything is actually working on the v2 branch, I'm putting together benchmarks that show the benefit in practice.
Love to have anyone poke around/ask questions/hang out on discord.
I'm working on the next release of Cyphernetes. It's a query language for Kubernetes that allows doing most complex k8s management operations in a much more compact and concise form (compared to writing shell scripts, using jsonpath+jq, nested kubectl, writing API code etc.).
Recently merged a visual overhaul to the Cyphernetes web UI and now working on adding support for ORDER BY, LIMIT and SKIP to the language.
I'm expanding my website Bingeclock (online since 2014) into mobile. Both the iOS and Android apps were approved for open testing last week, so I'm very happy about that!
I've been building an email archiving system [1] which ingests emails sent by a company to it's customers. The hypothesis is that this data is largely un-indexed and once it's indexed, it can be really valuable tool for market insights.
I'm working on a VSCode extension that lets me quickly copy code from a workspace into a structured format for LLMs.
This makes it easy to provide context so the LLM can continue developing the codebase.
There are other similar tools out there—mostly web apps or CLI-based—but I found a VSCode extension to be the fastest and most convenient option for VSCode users.
I just launched the beta for Table Slayer. It lets you build animated maps for in person RPG games (DnD, Pathfinder...etc) where you have a digital table top. It's built on Svelte + Turso + websockets.
The video here best shows it off. The source is available and free to use for non-compete, personal use.
BiasScanner - a non-profit project to fight non-neutral news reporting with a special LLM model wrapped in a Firefox plugin (that marks biased sentences yellow when you read your news online). In JavaScript and Python -- see https://biasscanner.org
IdeaFunnel - capturing, tracking and evaluating ideas in organizations; as innovation is topic that I am conducting research in and will be teaching a block course in July on. (Being rapid prototyped in PHP.)
ltools -- a set of command line tools in Rust.
Also starting a new multi-year computer science book project...
If you want to use your own domain and certificates, yes. Otherwise you can use the Cloud version for free with a dynamic hostname, or you can contact us for a static hostname setup.
I am trying to become a business and financial programmer. Right now i am focusing on SAP technologies and ABAP, UI5 and GUI. I would like to become an expert in anything that is financial informatic related or business programming in relation to companies. Meaning Financial modules, Databases and Dashboards, automation of bank transactions and secure economic data communications. I would like to become the expert that when enters the room people say "Thank god you're here!"
I'm building Magical.pm – an AI product management co-pilot.
Today, it generates clean, formatted product requirements from natural language and includes templates for different use cases (bug fixes, usability adjustments, etc.).
Soon, it will use RAG to incorporate knowledge of your system into the product requirements and perform inference on key down to help product managers write better specs with AI.
Working on a full on Riichi Mahjong web client because I really like the game and want to make a more serious english client without anime.
Did it also to learn rust, which made it easy to convert the engine code into webassembly and create a hand score calculator for the game :)!
https://cerpins.com/mahjong-tool
Plans now are to finish the client, then freshen up the calculator with some QOL and visuals, surely a bug fix might be needed here and there as well.
This month I've been working on automating the data collection and processing for my property research website [0]. I'm testing out DuckDB to process geospatial data, and so far the process has been quite pleasant.
As long as you don't need many advanced spatial functions (where PostGIS shines), and you make sure to minimize the use of GDAL to perform operations, it parallelizes processing quite nicely (most queries on large datasets saturate as many cores as you throw at it).
Trappist, a space exploration / city builder game in the Trappist-1 solar system. It is inspired by the classic Alien Legacy, with more modern gameplay in the style of the Anno-series.
I quit my job a couple years back to work on this app full-time, as well as its companion flashcard app, Manabi Flashcards. The goal is to help you learn through immersion.
What's special about it? Manabi Reader became popular as an Japanese-focused alternative to services like LingQ in that it locally tracks and analyzes all the words and kanji you read and study. It shows you which words are new and which you're currently learning via flashcards, so you can easily find content that suits your level and see what flashcards to prioritize adding. It also passively accumulates an on-device (and in your personal iCloud) corpus of example sentences from your reading.
I had built this part-time while working over many years (starting with flashcards and then the reader app) but going full-time gave me the time to do a full rewrite: SwiftUI, native iOS + macOS, and an offline-first architecture that syncs with iCloud and my server in the background.
Although it has a companion SRS algorithm (SM-2) flashcard app, it's also excellent for mining Anki cards. This works with AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiConnect on desktop.
You can use it like a web browser for the web, or subscribe to RSS feeds. It comes with a bunch of curated content by level. Recently I added EPUB support, pitch accents, and note-taking with todos.
I'm now almost done adding a manga mode via Mokuro.
Next I plan on adding more media types (video, YouTube, PDFs), AI functionality (grammar explanations, document Q&A, etc), Yomitan/Yomichan dictionaries for bilingual/monolingual EPWING and Wiktionary support, and more service integrations such as 2-way sync for WaniKani, JPDB, and existing Anki decks. I've begun work on these items and hope to share more soon.
I'd also like to make this app much more beginner-friendly so that people with zero Japanese knowledge can start learning. Currently it assumes you can read kana at least.
Been learning a lot in the process: brushed up on trigonometry and so-forth using _Make:Geometry/Trigonometry/Calculus_[1] and various other books, some of which I am still reading through; lots about programming, esp. useful was John Ousterhout's _A Philosophy of Software Design_[2] and the next stages are Bézier curves/NURBS, a system for single line fonts (which may get extended into an interactive METAFONT programming system), and a mastery of conic sections _and_ algorithms sufficiently efficient that the 1" x 2" x 1" test case which took ~18 minutes to calculate on an i7 and which generated a ~127MB toolpath file can be done a bit more reasonably.
The big thing it makes me thing about is whether I should try to get a Master's and then go on to get a PhD (but that's a hard sell w/ the finance committee when I'm 59 and still making house payments).
Whisp [1] - Pure* PHP SSH server specifically designed for devs to build fun TUIs
Ended up having to write a decent chunk of C using FFI mind, no wonder people write SSH servers in Go/C, and why every AI tool told me it's really difficult and shouldn't be done :D
Bit of fun though, and I know more than I would ever want to know about the SSH protocol now!
High quality translation requires context. Mainstream translation apps (Google Translate) guess based on probabilities based on what the user would commonly mean, but this can results in confusing translations.
A basketball shot chart. I’m about done with it, but one thing I was happy to have figured - out coaches often want to tag a shot as a particular type. So like a three pointer, mid range, or whatever else it may be. With my shot chart, it automatically tags the shot based on where they added it, which I think is pretty neat.
Building a game similar to Zombies! Run but with slightly modified gameplay. Narrative heavy with point and click elements, quests, and choose your own adventure decision making elements.
I've been hacking on a similar idea since about 2016 but only recently picked it back up. I want to support walking and cycling - any activity as long as it's outdoors (no treadmills).
I have a few ideas about the narrative that I think should be fun and timely.
It's a double entry based personal finance tool, to help families and individuals, track, understand and plan their finances.
It's local first. Synched across devices via a sync server. Financial data is encrypted before it leaves your local devices. By design, we don't have access to your data.
We are still in early phase, and looking for active users, and their feedback.
Low cost monocular headset display for rugged outdoor use (cycling, sailing, err golf). Idea is your phone sends low bandwidth data to the display for handsfree info, so more simple data display than xR.
I am working on a site that makes it easier for people to learn Vim. It started with me delving into containerization and Neovim plugins and then took on its own identity. It's called:
vimgolf.ai
Right now, only has two levels but I soon plan to add all the Vim motions and use reasoning models as bots that start off the level with you. Apparently, reasoning models like o3-high, Claude 3.7 thinking, and Gemini 2.5 pro are good at finding new ways to transform files using Vim. Kind of silly to have them do that, but I find it kind of cool.
Designing a new VCS, operating system, and GUI framework because those are the three things I am most worried will be taken over by corporate interests.
I don't know which one I will actually implement, though.
I'm trying to make it easier to run clubs, associations & organizations with a platform called embolt.app[1].
We're offering online memberships, event management, and a member database packed with features. Membership management is a crowded space, but it's also a low-tech space with lots of sleeping giants not willing to iterate on their product.
It's been a really fun project so far and even more rewarding to see clubs using embolt for their daily operations.
I’m vibe coding https://vespera.guide, a travel-planning tool that blends AI-driven suggestions with real-time re-planning—aimed especially at people who want to get inspiration and stay organised in their trip planning. Think of it like a curated jumpstart for itineraries, but still flexible enough to keep spontaneity.
I’m building a spaced-repetition flashcards app. Unlike the competitors, the cards have audio, images and sentences. Additionally, it is possible to add words from ebooks, websites and YouTube.
Making a webapp (an inside-messenger mini-app) to create, hold and manage local amateur tennis tournaments.
So far I've built stuff like automatically created and advanced tournament brackets with group stage, match schedules, participation queue and achievements. Not that hard, really, but helped me get into the backend side of web-development.
We currently organize 2-4 events each weekend for 300 people of different skill levels.
So far it's exclusive for our small community, but I'm thinking of offering it to similar groups of people in other cities.
A 3D printable HP Voyager style clone shell, based on my 12c Platinum, Internet photos and lots of eyeballing. It was on the back burner for a while, but I'm moving on to something else. STEP file available publicly, no electrical work had been done.
At the moment, I am validating demand for Rank And File, a platform for employee activism. Think Institutional Investors but instead of suits, it is employees who own a large number of shares in their own company and act as a collective.
R&F aims to provide a private forum for employees to discuss company policies and act as a platform where employees can connect with legal experts and activists who will help them
I re-built a dance event web site one year ago with Django. The site was implemented by somebody else 15 years ago. It has 1M-2M page views per month.
Now I am building into it some features so other people can help me to run it, such as ticketing system (with AI), and statically generated copy of the site to improve availability.
I am also working on a service management tool, based on USM method. USM method is kind of "open source" version of ITIL, although it works on a different level than ITIL.
I am trying out a few new passive greenhouse concepts as well as experimenting with materials. Similarly, crossing some different brassica for hybrids.
The goal is to build a discovery system/algo that surfaces stickiness and fun to give developers a tighter publish/iterate feedback loop so they can really hone their craft on a shorter time frame.
If you have a prototype of a game that can be hosted as a static frontend web rotting away in your "projects/" directory feel free to toss it up on the site. Bugs beware :)
We just did a Show HN last week [1], but we're building dédédé (https://dedede.de/en), a place to share the "good, bad, and why"s of urban spaces. Please check it out if you hadn't already!
Building a tiny ~€50k mountain cabin in the mountains of Cyprus that I hope to Airbnb to then get a retired visa and move to Cape Town.
But pouring my soul into building Afterhours (afths.com); Duolingo for life skills (financial independence, building muscle, writing well, parenting etc)
I am creating a node- and timeline based animation editor for html pages: Nodeflow Studio, ready to start my beta shortly: https://nodeflow.studio
It is designed for users who want to create interactive animations on their websites without the need for coding, making it easier and giving more precise control of the animations.
If you are a web developer and think you will be a good beta tester, then fill out the beta test form on the website.
spat is a Redis-like in-memory data structure server embedded in Postgres. Data is stored in Postgres shared memory. The data model is key-value. Keys are strings, but values can be strings, lists, sets, or hashes.
PortfolioSlice. It’s a website where you can share your investment portfolio and its asset allocations. Then other people can just follow that with an easy to use cash divider.
It currently just has my portfolio that I use (Innovation and Global Growth) and some other generated ones. I wanted to try out SvelteKit and Svelte to replace my Google Sheet into something cooler. Not sure if I want to monetize this.
Inspired by the Dobble card game, a friend and I built an iOS version where the symbols are emojis! You can customize the difficulty with options like “only green emojis” or other themed sets.
We don’t want to put ads in the game, but we’re exploring ways to add non-free features to make a little money from it. Has anyone done something similar? Any insights or past experiences with monetizing a casual mobile game would be really helpful!
I'm trying to make an edison battery (Nickel Iron). My first attempt failed due to expired silver epoxy... I'm now planning to try a nickel paint (meant for electron microscopy).
I've started working on a shared shopping list for group vacations. No sign-up, just create a list and share the link with friends. Emphasis on good sync performance even in bad network conditions, automatic sorting of the list based on where food is found in the supermarket, tags for items on the list. If anybody has ideas for this use-case please comment or email me :).
Not exactly the same but this reminds me of an idea I had for shareable shopping carts. You add things to a shopping cart and then you share it via a link (text, dm, chat, email, etc) and the receiver of that link clicks on it and the contents get added to their cart (alternative could be an import button that you paste the link in to make it more explicit).
Why? Plenty of times I've been ordering food with friends and we just pass around a phone to put in the order or someone dictates their order. Sometimes this can involve a friend who is not physically there and so they text you their order in just plain text. I thought it would be cool for everyone to be able to get on the same site, customize their order how they want, and share their link. That way there's no way that anyone misunderstood or forgot anything when placing the final order.
I'm working on https://www.chessfunforlittleones.com/ - an electronic book to introduce children to chess through LED lights, poems and some cute chracters.
I launched the kickstarter a month ago and am currently finalising the logistics for shipping the books out and putting together the shopify site which should launch at some point in April.
A blog about burnout and recovery that chronicles my experiences going on an extended sabbatical for the last 3 years. The good, the bad, the unexpected, what I'd do differently, what I've learned along the way, etc.
I started the project 1.5 years ago after many people I spoke to expressed interest, but life got complicated and I had to focus on health among other things. It's now back on the front burner, and I'm hoping to launch it later this spring or early summer.
I'm currently hosting this in my private homelab while I build it out, but if you shoot me an email (profile), I'd be happy to share it once it's up and running.
I had an idea to screen the YouTube videos that kids watch through a suitable LLM to assess whether the content was child friendly. There’s an emerging issue with insidious messaging / themes creeping into child-focused content that looks completely innocent on the surface, and I wondered if the current generation of LLMs can pick up on this. (Initial tests seem encouraging.)
I'm right now working on the Managed Postgres offering for our European Serverless cloud provider, https://molnett.com/. We're building it around Neon and are happy with it so far, but are stumbling upon unforeseen issues like query modes (Thank you Pgx for not being compatible by default with PGBouncer).
Working on an interactive SQL tutorial for intermediate+ SQL developers, introducing you to and showing the power of such concepts as JOINs, pivoting (flipping rows to columns & vice versa), subqueries and common table expressions, including recursion, UNIONs, row locks, and some other small things.
The thing will be browser-based and, hopefully, both entertatining and educational.
Finally scanning my writings from jail and have started posting some of my poems on IG @thatsamcliff - so much to do with cartoons, essays, poems, and four screenplays to type up as well.
Hopefully getting Smart Communications to hand over my USPS Mail they blocked while I was in jail. I never agreed to the Terms and Conditions of Mailguard. That doesn’t mean I forfeited my rights. Hopefully some prisoner advocacy groups respond with guidance on what happens next.
I'm working on building my first custom mechanical keyboard, switches (Gateron KS-33 browns), hotswap sockets, and stabilizers should be coming in any day now, just have to do some measurements on the physical stabilizers since the CAD just didn't make sense, then it's time to send off the PCB and print a bunch of keycaps
Im building retro style text editor with Open GL shaders, its a work in progress. I have ported st.c to imgui and have mostly working terminal emulator, now im working on LSP adapters and extending language support.
https://github.com/nealmick/ned
Open source presenter software. If you ever need to show something on screen, this will handle it for you. Useful for any events like concert, conference, camps, etc. You can also use it for things like digital signage.
Still a lot of features to be added, but it's already useful for simple use-cases.
LuaCAD is a scripting library which uses OpenSCAD as engine to create 2D and 3D models. The OpenSCAD language itself is quite limited and has several issues and Lua is much better suited for the job!
So if you're interested in programmatic CAD, please check it out!
I'm working on OnlineOrNot (https://onlineornot.com), a tool for getting an alert when your team vibe-codes your product offline. Just hit 4 years of running the business.
Currently adding the ability to pause checks on a schedule (for when you have scheduled maintenance on your DB and don't want alerts during that time).
A tool for learning German via reading. The main feature is click a word to see its dictionary entry (not always easy with so many declensions). Flashcard creation from the dictionary entry. Real human spoken audio from Wiktionary.
Will be working on some LLM features soon (explain "X" in the sentence "Y" prompt). It'd be nice to get a word frequency ranking dataset integrated, so I don't waste time learning rare words.
I'm porting a Chip-8 interpreter I wrote in Ruby to C. I was planning to do it in Rust but thought it would be good to face the problems Rust is solving first.
Tinkering with a platform for people who're interested in doing analysis/visualisation of data from professional Counter Strike games.
i.e. instead of them having to download demos, extract them, parse them and then only query data. I want to just have a database available so they get to skip all those steps.
Not gonna make me rich but if I can get it to cover it's own costs I'll be stoked.
Very slowly working on a prototype for a game where you learn about a deceased relative by using their old (C64-type) computer, reading their files and playing the games they made.
Because I can't fucking stop myself, I created a fantasy ISA and am working on an assembler and basic interpreter for said fantasy ISA.
We are putting together an automated compliance solution for environmental sustainability. Think of us as Delve.co or Vanta for heavy industries. Currently working on a new landing page. The goal is to make it easy to stay compliant when regulations get updated and maintain a positive compliance posture down to the asset level.
I am working on supporting wildcard custom domains for https://pinggy.io
What we found is that we can issue certificates for a wildcard domain even without asking the user to setup TXT records. If one CNAME record is set, we can set the TXT records on our domain to validate the wildcard domain.
I'm thinking of writing an app to manage ticketing and events in Europe. There's Eventbrite but it mostly for larger cities instead of mid-sized ones. I think there could be a niche for cheaper alternatives especially since student societies get charged like 2.50 euros on top of a 10 euro ticket.
Also, writing a Masters thesis on area-level and individual-level predictors of breast cancer... so a lot of applied ML.
The main side project I'm working on now probably won't apply too much to this audience but it's a weekly urbanism news roundup. The idea is to get global examples to inspire local change. Also, after leaving school I still wanted to keep in touch with what's happening around the world and continue learning.
Oh, also I'm thinking making a little tool so when craiglist emails you for a saved search it deduplicates it before forwarding it to a chat app. My parents would find it very helpful as they still use craigslist a lot but the duplicate notifications for listings really annoys them.
Working on a work distribution network for medium to large size organizations. Some unique design and architectural decisions allow for ease of use and ease of scale. It has legs and I think a real shot at competing with applications like Workday, Asana, and Gloat. I’m planning on going full-time with it next week!
I've been working on https://www.styleadvice.ai, a personal styling tool that gives users tailored advice based on features like face shape, eye shape, skin conditions and more. The idea is to make personalized styling a more accessible and fun.
My team’s building micro AI agents that perform very specific tasks really well. Right now, we see ourselves more as a consulting firm, developing custom agents while we search for the right vertical to specialize in. Eventually, we’d love to turn that into a SaaS product. We only have demos to show yet, but I’d be happy to chat more about it :)
Working on writing my first novel after years of (part time) planning. I’m finding it difficult to do the actual writing, but trying to stick with it. I don’t naturally enjoy the writing process vs writing code, which has been my primary endeavor for 20 years. Advice from other engineer/writers appreciated.
For a long time I used an app called Slowtube to practice guitar.
I recently built my own version with features I always wanted like the ability to save sections of songs for future practice, search YouTube (instead of copying links), and provide cross device synchronization.
I’m using it daily for practice now and after a bit of polish I plan to put it up on my website
I'm working on a webpage to share my notes from science/engineering classes. It includes a node graph of all the topics in a particular course, and you can click on a node to find what I've written about that topic.
I'm working on nothing of importance (well actually it's a notable product from Big Tech). I'm looking to start something new but want to stay in Berlin and want to work on core technology or critical government/public/financial systems. I can either help fund this work and help at an arms length or join up.
An app called Reflect to run self experiments, to prove your new habit or supplement is doing what you want, or to get to the bottom of what relationship your mood has with your lifestyle changes:
I am working on a battle simulation for the game 'The Bazaar'.
I was quite frustrated with how the original devs handled monetization going into open beta, which sparked my motivation.
Trying out Kotlin for the first time and having a blast so far!
Also using an ECS architecture for the first time. It's quite a different way of reasoning about things, but it definitely helps with the dynamic fights that need to be simulated.
Thanks for the heads up!
But that's what I figured, based on how they dealt with the other trackers and overlays.
I am planning to open source it (when I am at least somewhat happy with the implementation) but without any references to the bazaar.
It just so happens that it uses items with cooldown and similar systems that deal with burn, poison, haste etc. ;)
You can then bring your own items and play out the simulations and maybe your items just so happen to be based on the bazaar or maybe you create your own custom items based on lord of the rings or whatever.
Right now, the project's primary purpose is to be an interesting problem that needs to be solved and helping me learn new things.
Btw. your tool looks great! A shame that team tempo is against these kinds of community driven tools
With AI eating graphic designers lunch, I started to pivot and will add features for vectorizing and editing of AI generated images. I think this can become a really exciting product.
I'm working on a tool called Canyon to help jobseekers land their dream job by helping them perfect their resume, be much faster at applying to jobs, and practicing with our mock interview tool.
Working on some starter templates for going from plain English requirements to a ready-to-use applications in a few minutes. Are you a small team looking to go from Excel to something a bit more streamlined but would like to avoid a time-consuming and costly process? Schedule a live demo today. https://genatron.ai
Working on ARC-AGI (2). Trying a few different approaches including gradient descent mechanisms to construct programs in DSLs. Was really inspired by the recent differentiable logic gate networks work from Google, and believe there is a way to adapt it to generate programs instead of cellular automata rules.
it's Flickr but for wildlife photography. A good olde fashioned web app. Made it to learn Nextjs as much as anything which was interesting, but got some good lighthouse scores, so hooray
I'm trying to make my own GUI library in cross-platform C, based on Vulcan. Because evidently I'm a glutton for punishment.
I'm only a couple of weeks in. But it's giving me a break from my programming language that I was working on. (It's a template language, also written in C, also cross-platform, that has a jit compiler with a bytecode fallback.)
Earlier this year I started making music with an m8 tracker, from Dirtywave.
Fantastic device, I highly recommend. It’s my first tracker and took only half a day to feel comfortable and being able to produce simple songs!
It’s so effective that I can have a chord idea at noon, and a song done before the evening
Learning about Rama (https://redplanetlabs.com/) which has been released recently. The tech is very cool and also it's Clojure, but still not sure what would be the best use case for it.
An app for helping groups of friends decide on restaurants, movies, etc using ranked choice voting and a Tinder esque swipe interaction for creating rankings.
Been dabbling in game dev and have been having a good time with a little sailing game that I think could be a cozy “A Short Hike” esque , but where you have to grock how (simplified) sailing works.
I want to SaaS-ify my scraping process. It's gotten to a point that it works nice and reliably for me, now I need to wrap it in a good DX package and call it version 0.1.
(The main drive behind this was not to sell it, but to have a UI for when a website changes its layout and I'm on holidays and don't have access to my terminal and/or my yubikeys)
ServerSearcher (https://serversearcher.com) to make it easier to find cloud/virtual and bare-metal servers that match specific requirements like RAM, location, or CPU. There needed to be an easier way.
Myself. I recorded and livestreamed about 1000 hours of my life last year. Think Google Photos but filling in the gaps. I use AI to generate daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly summaries.
I’ve been thinking lots about the YouTube algorithm, how it’s based on engagement, not educational value, and how it’s such a huge missed opportunity for our kids.
So I’ve been building my own YouTube app, for my own kids. Better blocking of keywords (no more 1,000 MrBeast video recommendations). Better educational themes.
I'm building ProductMe, an app that teaches Product Management. It’s designed to be a viable alternative to traditional PM bootcamps—200x more affordable, with the same learning outcomes: https://productme.org
Speech MCP Server - uses Kokoro TTS under the hood to give your LLM the ability to speak. I use it to have Cursor agents notify me when long running tasks are complete.
A 2D game programming language that lets you code multiplayer like singleplayer. My dream is for it to be a super-engaging way for teenagers to get into coding because everything they make they can actually play with other people.
Still https://grugnotes.com — an htmx/old school but also ai first notes app. Recently added some cursor style features. Best use case is training and workout generations right now. Mostly think about how to make ai useful for every day things.
Writing prose instead of code. Started a Ghost powered newsletter mainly focusing on AI and retro computing. Aiming to be a lightweight general read, not heavy technical stuff. Had a bit of success with a couple of articles posted to HN before.
Working on an FPS aim trainer that has a heavy focus on tracking performance data over time.
I love how MonkeyType lets you see exactly how much you’ve improved over time at typing and it’s inspired me to take a similar approach to this hobby of mine as well
I'm working on a hidden puzzle for the 40th anniversary phrack edition which is scheduled for release this summer. If you're a reader of it be on the lookout for curiosities and scrutinize everything. There is a prize at the end and it's going to be fun. :)
Divepod - comp sci education program based on advisory model[1]. Instead of a fixed curriculum, each student is paired with an advisor who follows their interests and adapt the learning plan as they go. Something I wished I had as a teenager.
As a side project am writing Android app for forward collision warning (FCW), lane departure alert (LDA) along with some ADAS functions. In the mid term an planning to connect it to the cruise control.
p.s. for an old Mitsubishi Delica D5 that I bought for car camping.
Working on sourcing IP geolocation data for my little site https://www.ipparrot.net and adding more sections like Networking Glossary and some networking tools.
I don’t see pricing on the website but the iOS app shows “In App purchases”. Is there a reason why you wouldn’t mention pricing on the website you linked?
I'm working on making it easy for startups to run experiments and do them well.
And I ran my first experiment on Saturday to good effect. Ran a small ad and already got some leads. I feel super pumped about it. And excited to share out the results soon! Definitely an easy experiment to start proving the model.
Back to working on Ensō (write.sonnet.io) and writing/working in public after a short hiatus.
Also, got some feedback for hands.sonnet.io, so I'd like to play with it a little bit if time permits (might be hard to stay inside, Spring has just started in Portugal).
I'm working on https://inboto.com, an AI agent for email support. I'm tried out sending receptive emails, or switching between different platforms to find unified information about the customer.
A German equatorial telescope mount. Right now I'm learning to make gears. After building the hardware I'd like to write the firmware/software for tracking stars and planets. This will be a long term project for sure.
A TRUELLY decentralised web! I’m about a quarter done, it works, and amazed nobody has done what I’m doing before.
Was doing it on the Fuel Network, but now that they let 30% of staff go last week (including me), I’m thinking about starting fresh and doing it on Solana.
I’m working on a fashion brand.
Design, marketing and creating a brand should be challenging and fun.
I’ll create something fun, joyful and fruits inspired.
Anyone tried fashion ? Any recommendation on what to learn ahead of the challenges?
I'm working on a financial education IOS app, to teach young adults how to manage their money through the power of storytelling and games. Think Duolingo mini lessons but financial education lessons instead.
I spent a week building and then a month over-engineering https://roastedreads.com - a site where you get roasted you based on what you read by literary characters (Gollum, Murderbot, Ms.Marple etc).
I wanted to level up my electronics so I decided to build a piece of test equipment. Big bench top PSU, multimeter, active load, logic analyzer, whatever else I can throw in. Plus a detachable wireless touchscreen for extra complication.
The current workflow is create an image with stable diffusion, vectorize it, convert it to Lottie format, and than use a function that can create the Lottie animation keyframes.
How would you rig whatever is in the stable diffusion generated image automatically? You'd have to find a way to identify the objects in the image, segment them into their individual limbs/pieces and rig and animate them.
Maybe Meta's open source segmentation tool would be handy. Maybe you can rig the person/animal/object in the image using one of the object detection tools on HuggingFace.
This seems like a really interesting project. I'd love to check it out if you plan on open sourcing it!
I'm building a dating app for what I think is an untapped market. I'm just worried the apple store is going to reject it. I read back in 2020 they aren't accepting more dating apps but I've also seen a number of new ones pop up.
I am working on a little hobby golf app. Essentially, have LLMs step in as a virtual caddie, providing shot selection options based on course layout, player distances and tendencies, and weather.
I'm building a perp funding arbitrage aggregator. Aggregates funding rates across a number of DEXs to help users track down the most lucrative opportunities.
If there is uptake the plan is to build out a toolset to help with managing a portfolio of arbs.
opkssh (https://github.com/openpubkey/opkssh) it lets you configure OpenSSH so you can ssh using your OpenID Connect identity without adding a trusted party other than the IDP. I'm trying to figure out how to TOFU a MFA HW token (yubikey) on first login so we don't even have to trust the IDP. The trick part is to design so if you lose your HW Token you aren't locked out without reintroducing trust. Maybe use a backup code or backup yubikey or the DKIM trick to allow timelocked resets of the HW Token via an email.
I'd been building a Unicode visualization tool that I think could be awesome if I pull it off right. I got stuck and paused working on it. So, currently I'm working on myself, studying Math Academy every day.
Just shipped my first film for a client's auction gala that was received with high praise! Now itching for more video production. We overproduced it with 4k drone footage, multiple multicam interviews, and I got some incredible b-roll.
I use Apple Pencil with my iPad for figures in documents and wanted a better way to sync with my other work... so writing an iPad app for drawings using git for syncing with remote repos. Goal to release in App Store by end of April.
i've been working on a database management tui called rainfrog (https://github.com/achristmascarl/rainfrog). it supports postgres, mysql, and sqlite, and we recently added several new features such as:
- favorites tab for frequently used queries
- exporting query results to csv
- configuring database connections in the config
Designing and building a full webapp for a tabletop boardgame convention! Really making it a piece of art unlike all the boring business projects I normally work on!
I'm working on a tool to convert any OpenAPI JSON spec to an MCP server, so LLMs can interact with it. If anyone's interested in this, email in my bio. I'll also put it on my Github soon, once I polish up the code.
Not a coding project, but I have been writing a sci-fi novel about a world where time goes backwards and forwards. It has some interesting history in it too. I'm looking for beta readers.
I am working on creating a GAN for predicting the next few heartbeats given an ECG signal and hoping that the administration does not defund this project because I am being paid by a university project funded by the NIH.
I'm automating blog post writing for SEO complete with keyword research, SERP gap analysis, brand voice/service brief analysis etc. Really fun and the results are really good!
Same as last month (no update). Any insight would be awesome!
I’ve deleted all my social media apps. I’m trying to see what’s missing in my life in terms of interacting with friends and family and trying to build it.
I have been working on a bash only static site generator. I don’t think that I’ll share it, but its nice to know I own the tool chain and that I should be able to replicate it forever.
I just submitted a TinyML paper last night, focusing on creating a reproducible pipeline for model selection, compression, and deployment on constrained devices. I hope it gets accepted!
creating a gamified novel writing app that will be a duolingo for novel writing. AI can help you write, review what you've written, all while encouraging engagement by playing for points. Looking for some beta testers if anyone is interested in trying it. Best part, I'm only taking 5% cut of all sales in my shop. Amazon and Barnes and Noble take between 30% and 40%. Hoping it becomes the go to app for future novelists from all over the world.
I've just finished creating a Magic the Gathering rules engine, and now I'm currently training an LLM agent to play games against itself through reinforcement learning.
Wails-powered desktop app using WebRTC for direct P2P file sending, between pertinently online users local folders.
>>both have to be online for this to work...
Looks at counter... 14 Billion certificates. How do you even keep that site manageable, must be close to 100TB of certificates data alone. Are you running trigram index for the domain wildcard search, does that not kill your performance with so many domains?
Building a knowledge graph where AI/ML is used to classify nodes (entity type). Next step is to extract data deterministically. https://github.com/pixlie/PixlieAI
There is a crawler to chase given objective and crawl/store web page results. We use Claude Haiku and Brave Search API (own API keys) and we will support local models soon.
Potential use-cases are lead generation, competitor search, product tracking, contracts search.
i play a lot of destiny 2, and I find a lot of the sites for showcasing destiny builds are absurdly information dense and waste so much time on explaining basic gameplay, and theyre also laid out badly where its hard to put it onto a 2nd monitor to quickly copy, so im working on a site to remedy this for myself
rewriting the backend for https://voidchat.org in TypeScript. it was originally in c++, but i lost the entire codebase (wasn't using git) and figured i'd try something else. lesson learned (maybe)
streaming markdown renderer in the terminal.
As far as I know, the only one in existence that works like this, which is why i felt compelled to write it: https://github.com/kristopolous/Streamdown
i am working on an Applicant Tracking System. with little knowledge in this domain, it is turning out to be much more complex that i imagined. well, i plan to release it as freemium alternative to greenhouse/lever
ever feel buried in applicants and wasting time on interviews that lead nowhere?i’m building an AI tool to help you instantly screen candidates so you only spend time on the best ones (and don’t miss out on great hires while stuck interviewing the wrong ones).
if that hits home, i’d love 30 mins to share what i’m building and get your thoughts. reply here or DM me if you’re up for a quick chat! Calendly link (feel free to lmk if any other times work better for you) - https://calendly.com/vibrane/30min
On the FOSS front, I've been doing some minor things in TXR Lisp land.
Here is one:
When the random/rand functions are called with small moduli, well under 32 bits wide, they still draw a 32 bit word from the PRNG. I fixed that. Now the random state has a 32 bit shift register which it can load from the PRNG and take bits from it (in batches of 2, 4, 8 or 16).
There is a way to do this without any additional state other than that 32 bit word to indicate that the register has run out of bits.
We pretend that the register is 33 bits wide, giving it an indicator high bit that is always 1. Thus whenever the value drops to 1 or 0, it has to be reloaded. We cannot fit that indicator bit into the register, so what we do is: when we are reloading it with a fresh value, we immediately take bits we need from that value, shift it right, which creates the space for the bit. We then mask the bit in the right spot, depending on the shift size.
I worked on enhancing brace expansion in the glob* function. The regular glob* function has brace expansion if it is provided by the POSIX C library one, but the extended glob* has its own. I added numeric and string range expansion to it. It's better than the corresponding features in bash, because you can use more than one character, as in {AA..ZZ}. Also, if you use leading zeros in numeric ranges you get leading zeros in the output, as in {000..999}. The step sizes are supported.
Inspired by the step sizes in brace expansion, I added the same to range iteration:
Been building an automated test builder and an agentic API generator for the past few months.
tl;dr: A 60fps embedded browser on the frontend lets you record manual steps and AI-driven steps (to assert/extract data). It then turns those into test suites. Any test with AI queries can auto-generate an API to be queried later.
Right now, I'm working on an agentic API builder. Example use case: Say you need data from Salesforce and JIRA — you log in, navigate to what you need, add an AI query step (or select elements manually), and set an update interval. The system then handles extraction and monitoring.
Why? Because at all my previous jobs, suggesting hiring QA engineers would get you laughed out of the room. But testing was desperately needed, as well as internal tooling. Burning developer/CTO time on wrangling multiple complex API's just to build some internal tool would take much longer without this. So I'm working on something that makes both vastly simpler for small teams. Hoping to have a workable demo next week!
Very much WIP: I'm working on an alternative to subscriptions for online publications. Instead of subscribing to entire publications / blogs, publishers would register their publication on this network and configure thresholds and pricing. Add a bit of code to the site and a paywall will show up, allowing readers to pay for individual articles. The prices would be minimal, amounting to less than a dollar in most cases. i.e. reading articles using micro-transactions
I know it's been tried before, but I thought I'd attack it with a few different angles - web based, no chrome extension, and thresholds to help verify the article is worth it.
zero-knowledge proof framework to prove for example that a bank has the necessary funds, or for a loan application that I make enough without revealing how much
I’m rebuilding a learning library. Webpage bookmarks (with big help from raindrop.io), PDFs (hundreds of them, mostly book chapters), images, jupyter notebooks, markdowns, etc. using a Jekyll static site generator to minimize the tech stack hairballs.
The interesting part is that nearly all of the content is tagged to associate with two or more domains ex:
Goodreads-history-truecrime
PyTorch-Jupyter
Rubyonrails-Testing
Behavior-Gaslighting
Semiconductors-GPUs
And so on.
It’s an exercise in taxonomy creation. Searching by tag doesn’t quite get it. And we all know PDF auto summaries are tough.
I’m not expecting anybody to be impressed. It keeps me occupied while learning how to be (unfortunately) retired.
Currently homeless, driving Uber and Lyft. I've fixed my mental health after a shit storm of life events, mostly using AI as therapist.
I'm going back to school soon for psychology (figure financial aid can also pay room and board).
I'm wanting to build a mobile journal app with a bunch of AI guided 'games' to help learn DBT skills or work out trauma or do Shadow work or just guided CBT for a purpose.
I've changed my MBTI from intp-t to enfp-a...(I find I revert sometimes when I don't feel safe)... in other words I've become a very outgoing people person at least I'm a lot less afraid in social situations or to act like a fool on the dance floor... etc...
I also want to write a book and do videos on hacking your brain using AI... nobody seems to be doing this... there's a lot of potential for this niche I think.
I fixed hobbies, depression, and social life, all that's left is physical and financial and those are kind of easy when emotions are in check.
american-style intersections function with an order-of-magnitude higher safety and throughput and a much smaller square meter 'footprint' if they switch from 'controlled' intersections (lights, stop signs) to 'traffic beans': [0]
This gets complicated because the reason things are the way they are is _crucial_ to efficient, easy change, and the greater united states is a place obsessed with continuing _ethnic cleansing_. it's sad and tiring to exist inside of, the dehumanization caused every day, anew, by american style road networks, supremacy.
tl;dr american road networks and american zoning is two sides of the coin some groups used to accomplish 'regimes of social control', which was a mix of ethnic cleansing for some neighborhoods, and ensuring conformity for others.
Oh, and a cool data visualization project. Here's a map of most of my travel for the last few years: https://josh.works/mobility-data
Working on my personal blog (https://bryanhogan.com/) recently. Updated some older posts such as the one on creating a gaming backlog (or similar) within Obsidian.
Also making a customizable self-tracking app that can be used as a habit tracker, health log, journal or similar. Goal is to make daily manual entries efficient and worthwhile. It will be local first and without an annoying subscription.
If anyone is personally interested in it or knows someone who could profit from something like this (e.g. because of their health condition) contact me please. Looking for testers and feedback to make it useful for people of various backgrounds and health conditions.
Wanted to start tracking my net worth over weeks/years but wasn't impressed with my options being
1. Boring spreadsheet
2. Half cooked self hosted budgeting app
3. Pay X/month for third party budgeting app
Just wanted simple net worth tracking with a nice easy to use web app.
Maybe in the future i'll add some Plaid syncing of accounts but currently manual inputs for all accounts
I'm writing a brand-new OLTP database with Rust, DataFusion and RocksDB (to be replaced with something in pure Rust later, hopefully). It's still very early days, but I'm soo close to finally being willing to share it.
Close enough to Postgres that apps think it's Postgres, but also runnable as a library like SQLite -- best of both worlds! And then if you're willing to not limit yourself to Postgres compatibility, you also get fancy new technologies like unsigned integers in a database! (Old SQL ecosystem is sometimes ridiculous.)
My personal journey goes something like this:
I've always suffered from both SQLite and Postgres idiosyncrasies, and almost always when deploying I've wanted to start out small, not have a big dedicated database server, and have meaningful tests that don't have multi-gigabyte dependencies and runtime assumptions. The idea of having something "close enough to Postgres to not have to learn much new" database with the low-end abilities of SQLite is something I've been wanting for roughly as long as I've known about SQLite -- even more so if it could also replace Postgres and remove the fear of differences between dev/early-stage vs later.
Much later, I learned about the newly-fashionable OLAP-over-object-store architectures, and I learned about Parquet. That lead to discovering Arrow and DataFusion. Arrow is an in-memory data format intended to be a standard interchange layer. It's basically array per column, which isn't exactly point-query oriented but helps make modern-day CPUs happy; quite well aligned with SIMD processing. DataFusion is a Rust framework that's essentially a query engine, and it has a decent query planner (arguably the hardest part of writing a database). RocksDB supports transactions and does MVCC, which is probably the second hardest part of writing a database. The rest just fell in place: sqlparser-rs is a Rust SQL syntax parser with Postgres etc compatibility nicely worked out. pgwire implements the Postgres wire protocol. Non-legacy clients can use FlightSQL and Arrow IPC for faster data transfer (Postgres wire protocol kinda sucks, it's that old). In-process use from Rust is darn trivial with DataFusion, and other languages can be dealt with by writing a C bridge -- once again, Arrow is an inter-language standard already, so all we need to do is to shove the result data buffers over to a more native "dataframe" library. It looks like I can actually glue these things together with less than a decade of effort!
There's lot to still worry about, but I'm feeling pretty positive about the project. And if and when I get to replace RocksDB with a pure-Rust data store that has all the right bells and whistles (in-house or not), the end result will be pure Rust, and aligned for modern world of NVMe, io_uring, and what not. That's a world I definitely want to live in.
Current status: Getting rid of the last `todo!()`s, unwraps etc that would distract from the "look at how robust this thing is" Rust evangelism too much. I need to put in stress tests and fault injection and make sure I'm configuring RocksDB right for transaction isolation and disk persistence. There's tons of missing features, but very few bugs-as-such (0 known that aren't about C++ integration), and missing features all return a decent explanatory error message instead of eating data. The darn thing already works as a SQL database -- largely because it's just DataFusion's query engine and me feeding it table scans. I wrote a SQL database without ever debugging a JOIN! The shortcuts I've been able to take due to help from preexisting projects are huge. For someone who grew up in the world of "every C project has to write basic data structures for themselves because C isn't very modular", it's downright amazing!
I built https://skeet.build which lets your connect your favorite tools via mcp to Cursor. We focus exclusively on developers and dev tools to build high quality “it just works” experiences for mcp because we found that community mcp quality is low, many mcps were not useful for devs, and SSE remote mcp took a lot of effort to get it to a point where it’s reliable and working well.
Right now, a video game. If there ever will be AI that does the particular assignment no worse, I'll consider it the coming of the age of AGI. (modulo my game getting sucked into the training set, of course)
Right now I'm learning Clojure/script - at the moment I'm just building a toy Sudoku app as a learning exercise, but the eventual goal is to build a fully featured web game
I'm working on Video Clip Library (https://videocliplibrary.com), a desktop app for browsing, searching, and managing large collections of video files locally on your computer.
It's essentially a small search engine for videos that runs locally on your laptop. Previously, the system just extracted information about whole video files and maintained a searchable list of those files.
I'm putting the finishing touches on a major architectural change to solve a request from someone who creates highlight reels for professional soccer matches. They needed to tag and search for specific moments within videos - like all goals scored by a particular player across dozens of camera angles of dozens of matches.
This required re-engineering the entire data model to support metadata entries that point to specific segments of a file entity rather than just the file itself.
Instead of treating each file as an atomic unit, I now separate the concept of "content" from the actual files that contain it. This distinction allows me to:
1. Create "virtual clips" - time segments within a video that have their own metadata, tags, and titles - without generating new files
2. Connect multiple files that represent the same underlying content (like a match highlight with different ad insertions for YouTube vs. Twitch)
3. Associate various resolution encodings with the same logical content
For example, a content creator might have multiple versions of the same video with different ad placements for different channels. In the old system, these were just separate, unrelated files. Now, they're explicitly modeled as variants of the same logical content, making organization and search much more powerful.
I also completely reworked the job system, moving from code running in the Electron main process to spawning Temporal in a child process. I know it sounds like overkill for a desktop app, but it's been surprisingly perfect for a desktop app that's processing hundreds of terabytes of video.
When you're running complex ML pipelines on random people's home computers, things go wrong - custom FFmpeg versions that don't support certain codecs, permission issues with mounted volumes, their local model server crashes. With Temporal, when a job fails, I just show users a link to the Temporal Web UI where they can see exactly what failed and why. They can fix their local config and retry just that specific activity instead of starting over. It's cut my support burden dramatically.
My developer experience is so much better too. The ML pipeline for face recognition has multiple stages (small model looks for faces, bigger model does pose detection, embedding generation with even larger model) that takes minutes to run. With Temporal, I can iterate on just the activity that's failing without rerunning the entire pipeline. Makes developing these data-intensive workflows so much more manageable.
How do you think of this work relative to other organizing systems like Jellyfin or Plex? Is the major new feature you care about the time subsection clips?
I like the virtual clips feature because it does a better job of getting out of the way of how many people think. Before, I was just telling people 'here's your entire video file, good luck.' If you had 5 hours of footage from a sports tournament but your kid was only doing something interesting for 10 minutes total, you were stuck with the whole file.
My perspective is all those hours of raw footage are just raw materials waiting to be shaped into stories, highlights, or presentations. The value is concentrated in a few hotspots.
Jellyfin and Plex appear to have been built on fundamentally different technical assumptions than Video Clip Library. They expect media to remain connected and accessible to the server at all times - when drives disconnect, they often purge those entries from their databases, requiring full rescans when reconnected. It appears Jellyfin only fixed this in Oct 2024.
The reality for many isn't sleek network storage - it's often just a plastic container filled with labeled hard drives sitting in a closet.
Video Clip Library is architected specifically for the archival cold storage workflow where most media is physically offline. The database maintains complete metadata even when drives are disconnected. When you search for 'soccer highlights from 2018,' it not only tells you what file contains that footage but precisely where that physical drive is located: 'in the blue SSD in Alice's desk, bottom drawer'. You can upload pictures of each drive, print out barcodes, write detailed notes. Organization stuff.
This workflow doesn't necessarily make sense for full-time professionals with dedicated workstations, but it's ideal for the long-tail use cases that originally drove me to build this software - normal people with occasional video projects. Of course, as is often the case, people bring it to their day job and start pushing for more business-oriented features. But the genesis of this software was for the individual creator, the freelancer, or small teams of auteurs collaborating on creative projects. A tool to accommodate the stop-and-start reality of passion projects. A poor man's editing with Proxies.
How often do you see yourself updating and editing a particular video clip over time? For a given video, do you find all the relevant clips when you first save it to disk? Or are you accumulating video clips for a source video over time?
I’m generally interested in patterns of revisiting source media
So far everyone is accumulating clip annotations on video files over time.
I'm thinking of clips as essentially write-only/append-only annotations. Labels or metadata attached to sections of videos rather than new files. The system is designed to support overlapping clips and allows you to filter/view all clips for a video.
To clarify, Video Clip Library is purely a search engine - it doesn't composite or edit videos. Although it will let you re-encode to save space. I built it for scenarios like: "I have a catalog of shots from the last five years, and when working on a new project, I might want to reuse B-roll or footage I've already taken." A YouTuber doing a Then and Now will find footage from their first year.
For me personally, the virtual clips feature will improve my learning process. I'm not a professional videographer. Naturally I spend time studying work from more skilled creators, trying to understand what makes it effective. I'm excited to take notes on specific moments - "these are the places across many different videos where I feel afraid" or "interesting rack focus technique here" - with notes and tags scoped to their own clips. I was already taking these notes in Obsidian. But it wasn't great.
I find a beauty in the layering: I can create overlapping clips that represent different aspects of the same footage - one layer for emotional responses, another for technical observations. Note: here I'm creating them manually one hour here, one hour there over months as I find the time or interest waxes. I might only annotate a few thousand clips across a couple hundred films in my lifetime. That's ok. I don't need the computer to understand the videos perfectly frame by frame.
The professional use case that prompted this feature is different - teams collect footage, then editors assemble compilations and marketing materials months later. They will run AI models to annotate videos as they're ingested, or apply new models to existing catalogs. Then someone with a creative concept can quickly search: "Do we already have footage that supports this idea or do we need to shoot something new?"
I want to build a "tokio for C++" where the user can run CPU bound tasks freely without having to worry about introducing tail latencies. For now I gave it the code name Rio, but that may change.
This is at the very early stages where I have a design sketch and some experiments that validate the design. Below is the README:
Rio is an experimental C++ async framework. The goal is to provide a lightweight
framework for writing C++ server applications that is easy to use and provides low
consistent latencies.
Today, async frameworks that focus on efficiency typically use one of two architectures:
1. Shared nothing architectures, also called thread-per-core. This is used by frameworks
such as Seastar and Boost.Asio. In a shared-nothing architecture, each worker thread
runs its own event loop and is intended to run on its own dedicated core. The
application is architected to shard its workload over multiple workers with only
infrequent communication between them. When a task performs a CPU bound task, it
needs to be explicitly run in a thread pool as otherwise it would block other tasks
from running in the current worker (often referred to as a "reactor stall").
2. Work stealing architectures. This architecture is used by frameworks such as Tokio. In
this case there are also multiple worker threads, each running their own event loop.
When a specific worker gets overloaded or runs a blocking task, other threads can
execute ready tasks. This goes some way to prevent reactor stalls. However, even
though other threads can steal ready tasks, they do not poll the event loop for new
readiness events. This means that a task that does not yield back to the runtime will
increase latencies for other requests assigned to that worker.
The thesis for Rio is that in real-world server applications, it gets increasingly
hard to ensure you yield back frequently to the event loop. In particular, there are many
CPU bound tasks that server applications commonly perform, such parsing protocols, or
performing encryption and compression. If tasks take less than ~10 microseconds it is
often not worth it to offload these to a thread pool as the system call overhead of
synchronization will take more time than this. Additionally, putting in various thread
offloads makes it harder to develop, especially in larger teams with individuals of
different experience levels. The result is that there will either be too many work pushed
on thread pools or too little. The net effect will be that latencies will be less
consistent.
Rio is an experiment for a work stealing architecture where completion events can also
be stolen. The Rio runtime uses multiple worker threads to handle asynchronous tasks.
Each worker threads runs its own io_uring, which is also registered to an eventfd. A
central "stealer" thread listens to the eventfds for all workers. When an readiness event
becomes available, the stealer will check if the corresponding thread is currently
executing a task. If so, it will signal an idle worker with a request to process the
completion event and run any tasks that results in it. The stealing logic is aware of the
system topology and will try to wake up a thread that shares a higher level cache with
the task.
Finishing up my PhD thesis on low-resource audio classification for ecoacoustics. Our partners deployed 98 recorders in remote Arctic/sub-Arctic regions, collecting a massive (~19.5 years) dataset to monitor wildlife and human noise.
Labeled data is the bottleneck, so my work focuses on getting good results with less data. Key parts:
- Created EDANSA [1], the first public dataset of its kind from these areas, using a improved active learning method (ensemble disagreement) to efficiently find rare sounds.
- Explored other low-resource ML: transfer learning, data valuation (using Shapley values), cross-modal learning (using satellite weather data to train audio models), and testing the reasoning abilities of MLLMs on audio (spoiler: they struggle!).
[1]https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AH-sLEkAAAAJ&hl=enHi Enis, it seems a very interesting project. I myself with my team are currently working with the non-stationary of physiological and earthquake seismic public data mainly based on the time-frequency distributions, and the results are very promising.
Just wondering if the raw data that you've mentioned are available publicly so we can test our techniques on them or they're only available through research collaborations. Either way very much interested on the potential use of our techniques for the polar research in Arctic and/or Antarctica.
Hi teleforce, thanks! Your project sounds very interesting as well.
That actually reminds me, at one point, a researcher suggested looking into geophone or fiber optic Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) data that oil companies sometimes collect in Alaska, potentially for tracking animal movements or impacts, but I never got the chance to follow up. Connecting seismic activity data (like yours) with potential effects on animal vocalizations or behaviour observed in acoustic recordings would be an interesting research direction!
Regarding data access:
Our labeled dataset (EDANSA, focused on specific sound events) is public here: https://zenodo.org/records/6824272. We will be releasing an updated version with more samples soon.
We are also actively working on releasing the raw, continuous audio recordings. These will eventually be published via the Arctic Data Center (arcticdata.io). If you'd like, feel free to send me an email (address should be in my profile), and I can ping you when that happens.
Separately, we have an open-source model (with updates coming) trained on EDANSA for predicting various animal sounds and human-generated noise. Let me know if you'd ever be interested in discussing whether running that model on other types of non-stationary sound data you might have access to could be useful or yield interesting comparisons.
You should train a GPT on the raw data, and then figure out how to reuse the DNN for various other tasks you're interested in (e.g. one-shot learning, fine-tuning, etc). This data setting is exactly the situation that people faced in the NLP world before GPT. I would guess that some people from the frontier labs would be willing to help you, I doubt even your large dataset would cost very much for their massive GPU fleets to handle.
Hi d_burfoot, really appreciate you bringing that up! The idea of pre-training a big foundation model on our raw data using self-supervised learning (SSL) methods (kind of like how GPT emerged in NLP) is definitely something we've considered and experimented with using transformer architectures.
The main hurdle we've hit is honestly the scale of relevant data needed to train such large models from scratch effectively. While our ~19.5 years dataset duration is massive for ecoacoustics, a significant portion of it is silence or ambient noise. This means the actual volume of distinct events or complex acoustic scenes is much lower compared to the densely packed information in the corpora typically used to train foundational speech or general audio models, making our effective dataset size smaller in that context.
We also tried leveraging existing pre-trained SSL models (like Wav2Vec 2.0, HuBERT for speech), but the domain gap is substantial. As you can imagine, raw ecoacoustic field recordings are characterized by significant non-stationary noise, overlapping sounds, sparse events we care about mixed with lots of quiet/noise, huge diversity, and variations from mics/weather.
This messes with the SSL pre-training tasks themselves. Predicting masked audio doesn't work as well when the surrounding context is just noise, and the data augmentations used in contrastive learning can sometimes accidentally remove the unique signatures of the animal calls we're trying to learn.
It's definitely an ongoing challenge in the field! People are trying different things, like initializing audio transformers with weights pre-trained on image models (ViT adapted for spectrograms) to give them a head start. Finding the best way forward for large models in these specialized, data-constrained domains is still key. Thanks again for the suggestion, it really hits on a core challenge!
Do the recorders have overlapping detections?
If you’re asking whether multiple recorders were active at the same time, then yes, we had recorders at 98 different locations over four years, primarily during the summer months. However, these locations were far apart, so no two recorders captured the same exact area.
oh man that's awesome. I have been working for quite some time on big taxonomy/classification models for field research, espec for my old research area (pollination stuff). the #1 capability that I want to build is audio input modality, it would just be so useful in the field-- not only for low-resource (audio-only) field sensors, but also just as a supplemental modality for measuring activity out of the FoV of an image sensor.
but as you mention, labeled data is the bottleneck. eventually I'll be able to skirt around this by just capturing more video data myself and learning sound features from the video component, but I have a hard time imagining how I can get the global coverage that I have in visual datasets. I would give anything to trade half of my labeled image data for labeled audio data!
Hi Caleb, thanks for the kind words and enthusiasm! You're absolutely right, audio provides that crucial omnidirectional coverage that can supplement fixed field-of-view sensors like cameras. We actually collect images too and have explored fusion approaches, though they definitely come with their own set of challenges, as you can imagine.
On the labeled audio data front: our Arctic dataset (EDANSA, linked in my original post) is open source. We've actually updated it with more samples since the initial release, and getting the new version out is on my to-do list.
Polli.ai looks fantastic! It's genuinely exciting to see more people tackling the ecological monitoring challenge with hardware/software solutions. While I know the startup path in this space can be tough financially, the work is incredibly important for understanding and protecting biodiversity. Keep up the great work!
I'd love to turn my spectrogram tool into something more of a scientific tool for sound labelling and analysis. Do you use a spectrograph for your project?
Hey thePhytochemist, cool tool! Yes, spectrograms are fundamental for us. Audacity is the classic for quick looks. For systematic analysis and ML inputs, it's mostly programmatic generation via libraries like torch.audio or librosa. Spectrograms are a common ML input, though other representations are being explored.
Enhancing frequenSee for scientific use (labelling/analysis) sounds like a good idea. But I am not sure what is missing from the current tooling. What functionalities were you thinking of adding?
How do I download the sounds, seems like a great resource for game developers and other artists
Our labeled dataset (EDANSA, focused on specific sound events) is public here: https://zenodo.org/records/6824272. We will be releasing an updated version with more samples soon.
We are also actively working on releasing the raw, continuous audio recordings. These will eventually be published via the Arctic Data Center (arcticdata.io). If you'd like, feel free to send me an email (address should be in my profile), and I can ping you when that happens.
How can I actually search for audio, I'll check in 6 months or so.
What's the licensing is it public domain
You can search for the "Arctic Soundscapes Project 2019-2024". We are still working out the specifics of the licensing to meet our funding requirements, but it will be permissive.
Very interesting. All the best for your thesis. Mine is not nearly as interesting enough.
Thanks! Appreciate it. Your work looks very interesting too, especially in the distributed systems space. Cheers!
I've been putting together a no-nonsense free invoice generator, for people (like myself) that only occasionally send invoices. It's more-or-less a WYSIWYG editor, and the state is stored in the URL, so you don't have to worry about keeping track of where you stored your copy - if you've sent someone an email with the link, you've got a copy. This project was born out of the frustration of trying to generate an invoice on my phone on the go, I found all the existing solutions to be quite awful (forced signups to paid subscriptions, clunky interface etc).
Would love to hear any feedback the HN crowd has. I'm aware of a couple of alignment issues, will fix them up tonight. Also, yes, there will be a "generate PDF" button, for now if you want a pdf I'd suggest using the Print dialog to "Save as PDF".
https://bestfreeinvoice.com
I built something similar for myself, but with a live PDF preview, support for downloading PDFs in multiple languages (English and Polish), VAT tax deductions, and multiple currencies.
https://easyinvoicepdf.com/
Also it’s open-source https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf
Would love to receive any feedback as well :)
Nice work, this looks better than the established players in this space! You've got some customisation options in yours that I'd love to implement in mine as soon as time permits. Huge props for not forcing people to sign up for an account to use it!
Thank you =)
I really like this, I'll maybe use it once I actually get some clients to respond ;)
I tried implementing my own on my own website, but between all my projects and work I keep pushing my own business website backward...
Most important is for it to have the right number consistently without room for error. You may also use multiple sequences like if you sell cars and crates of bananas you wouldn't want to mix those but you would want to use a single tool.
Anything else can be corrected. It is important to easily make corrections and/or credit nota as those seem to happen at the worse time. Usually the same as the invoice but with amounts in the -
It is also nice to tie the products into it so that you don't have to type it every time and get consistent naming. Same for an address book.
Think you’d need to make it country specific. Some countries have specific requirements around invoices and what needs to be on it
If you could add custom templates, you could let the community add the country specific things
I'm leaving this link here regarding the "EU e-invoicing standard CEN 16931"
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/D...
I don't know how complicated or easy it would be to just create templates which satisfy this.
In Germany it's already required for B2B transactions [0]
[0] https://www.bdo.global/en-gb/insights/tax/indirect-tax/germa...!You can use AI to convert your PDF invoice into XRechnung to comply with EN 16931 should that occur, e.g., https://www.invoice-converter.com/en
Nice work! Would totally have used this when I was freelancing. Honestly love the serif'd fonts, would love to see everything serif'd tbh.
Also back when I had to do these (I used Wave) having a notes section was very useful to include a few things (i.e. I used to include conversion rates). Would probably be pretty easy.
Thanks for the feedback, a notes section is a great idea!
it might be required to name some law
Useful and simple. The pattern could be applied to any templatized document we need to generate.
Yeah it'd be cool to consider this approach for some other domains. Sometime soon I'll make it so you can change the word in the top-left from "INVOICE" to "QUOTE" or "RECEIPT". The nice thing about an invoice is you know there's going to be a relatively small amount of data, so storing the state in the URL is a plausible approach (even if it looks obscene to discerning users ).
Interesting, I’ve been using https://simpleinvoices.io for a couple of years and really like it. Integrates with my Stripe and super easy to configure. Best of luck!
It looks nice at a glance, but there's just no way I can justify $15/mth for the few times a year I need to send an invoice. If https://bestfreeinvoice.com gains some amount of traction I'd love to extend the feature set to justify a paid tier, but the basic experience (i.e. what's currently live) will always be free and genuinely useful.
I have been using simpleinvoices.io for a few years too. It's great. (Just checked, 10 this year).
Pls add support for changing currency and deductions (in India 10% TDS is supposed to be deducted on the amount (ie amount before tax is added)
Overall it’s pretty good solution for occasional invoice generators.
Currency selection is on the roadmap but the need for deductions wasn't on my radar - thanks for the tip!
Awesome. Would suggest considering a built-in URL shortener.
I know the URLs are long compared to what people are used to. Part of the rationale for putting this out there in the current state is I'm curious if people in practise will share long URLs or not.
At some point I'd like to add shortlinks but at the moment everything is clientside, there's no persistence at all (beyond localStorage). I think that's a nice feature from a security perspective.
Not too short or it's too easy to guess.
The app might be stateless right now (I haven't checked); if it is, adding a URL shortener will break that.
How about zipping the state string or, even better, putting it into a KV storage thus exchanging it for a 10-char string.
Correct me if I'm wrong but zipping it would mean it would be encoded in a way that wouldn't be usable as a URL. The state is currently compressed and URL encoded via lz-string fwiw/in case you're curious.
Ha, I was going to say is that url query string a sha256 or something.
Yeah it's compressed and encoded with `lz-string` but I know it's hideous - I'm curious if that will prove a practical problem for adoption, even if a technical crowd isn't fond of the choice. Surprisingly most messaging apps you paste urls into these days don't show the whole thing anyway - when you paste it'll transform the link into a small preview card with just the domain portion of the URL visible.
Not be negative about bestfreevoice, or any other invoicing tool, but it always seems like developers and early-stage entrepreneurs don't understand invoicing.
First major disconnect is that not every country uses invoices, but may use receipts instead. This is true for the USA for example, so many US devs (for example: Stripe in the early days) are not familiar with the concept of invoicing. Technically there is no difference between receipts and invoices, so if you're not familiar with the concept of invoicing, just read this post with /s/invoice/receipt in mind.
The point about invoicing is to act as a non-mutable entry into the ledgers of both parties (seller and buyer). In most countries (especially EU) invoices are mandated by law for B2B transactions, and so is keeping accounts (aka bookkeeping). So for invoicing to be practical it needs to be tied to your books/accounts. Because of this, any business will use some bookkeeping/accounting software, which will have invoicing capabilities built-in. Invoicing as a standalone product doesn't make sense if you have to import it all into your ledgers later.
Then there is the 'design' trap, which many invoicing startups seem to fall for. Invoices are weird things. They are basically very, very inefficient artefacts from the past. An invoice is just a very little amount of transaction data exchanged between buyer and seller. In the days of physical bookkeeping (actual paper books) paper invoices made sense, but nowadays it is all done digitally. So the invoice is effectively a machine-2-machine interface, but for all sorts of legacy reasons we still wrap them in PDF with a fancy design that looks great for humans, but it effectively impossible for machines to read.
There are all sorts of attempts made to improve upon this situation (like OCR, and nowadays AI to extract data from PDF invoices). There are open structured data formats such as UBL to replace / augment PDF invoices, but due to all sorts of politics and lobbying the open standards have been doomed from the beginning. There is a lot of money made in accounting software, and they all rely on vendor lock-in. The major accounting software vendors have very strong incentives to keep us from adopting UBL et al, and most of the established accounting product suck, but you can't easily migrate so you'll be stuck with it.
If you run or own a business, treat your books as an asset of your business, a very important asset for that matter. Books are kept in accounting software, which is typically part of a larger software suite which also features tax filing, HRM, asset management, invoicing, etc. In fancy business terms this is often called ERP. But think of ERP as just your central database, or your 'books'.
Choosing your accounting software an important decision. Choose accounting software that allows exporting your data (very important!), that has an API (also very important), and preferably a web interface. It should be always available, so on-premise software is out. For entrepreneurs: choose your own accounting software, do not be tempted to hire an external bookkeeper that keeps the books in 'their' systems (accountant lock-in). Don't let an accountant recommend your software either, they get huge kickbacks from the software vendors (vendor lock-in). Every sale—whether this being PoS, invoicing, or a payment integration like Stripe—should automatically registered as a ledger entry in the books, preferably with an invoice document attached. Here you can see why an accountant who keeps your books in their systems won't work, you don't want to be stuck having to periodically send an email (or shoebox) filled with invoices for them to process. Your books should be owned by the business, should be automated (at least for the receivable side), and always be up-to-date. You can then give an(y) accountant access to your books for them to do audits, tax filings, etc. For a business, the books are the central database of the business, everything else revolves around it. Do not be tempted to write your own, instead integrate with existing solutions while avoiding vendor lock-in as much as possible.
Integrating your business with the accounting software is an ever-ongoing part of your software development efforts, so not underestimate it. Accepting payments is hard, making sure it is well registered in your books is equally hard. It takes _much_ more time than you'd think (most first-time entrepreneurs actually don't consider it at all). There are no silver bullets here.
In Italy, many of these invoicing challenges have already been tackled through a nationwide standardized system.
Every invoice—whether B2B or even B2C (receipts included)—must be sent electronically using a government-defined XML format. This invoice includes predefined metadata and is digitally signed by the issuing party. Once ready, it gets submitted to the national tax agency’s centralized system, called the Sistema di Interscambio (SdI), which validates and registers it before forwarding it to the recipient.
This system essentially acts as a clearinghouse: it ensures all invoices go through the same format, are verifiably issued, and are automatically recorded on both ends. For consumers (B2C), the invoice still goes through the same pipeline and is made available in their personal portal on the IRS website, while the seller can still email a copy (PDF) for convenience.
This centralized and machine-readable approach has eliminated a lot of the fragmentation seen elsewhere. There’s no vendor lock-in, no OCR, and no AI needed to parse PDFs—just a signed XML file going through a common pipeline. It’s not perfect, but it shows how much smoother things can be when the rules (and formats) are defined at the infrastructure level.
> Every invoice—whether B2B or even B2C (receipts included)—must be sent electronically using a government-defined XML format
So not a universal standard then. Imagine having to implement a different format for every country you do business with...
For the Netherlands there is a similar (but slightly different I believe) XML type format required if you want to do business with the government. Initially a company successfully lobbied to get their closed-specification version to be the mandated standard for government, to get the XML spec you had to become partner (I believe for €8k/year or something).
Luckily they are now performing a XKCD 927 and have defined a few new (this time open) standards, which they aim to consolidate into a new spec that complies to EN 16931. EN 16931 is the EU compliance standard for e-invoicing.
In New Zealand we are also phasing in eInvoicing using Peppol BIS 3.0, which complies to EN 16931.
While all well and true. Some scale is assumed.
There’s plenty of need for basic use invoicing like this. Generate an invoice as a way to bill someone or serve as an estimate for work/project cost. Not everyone is at a place where it needs to be so formal and integrated into a complete solution that tracks the dollars from invoice to balance sheet to income statement, etc. It’s a lot especially for people that are just freelancing and need a similar probably infrequent way to send a bill. They probably are just tracking things in a spreadsheet and not even big enough to use quickbooks or anything else. It would be a poor use of time and over engineering to put that all in place and setup things that cost subscription dollars in perpetuity just to bill for a one off charge. Or even a handful of them.
When I think of people I pay, my lawn guy and my housekeeper both just text me how much I owe them. Then I zelle them. They both have dozens of clients at least and I imagine they are doing this way for them all. If I were a business, in May insist on getting an invoice to load the AP into an accounting flow from my end but they wouldn’t really want to change their system of doing things just to comply with my request. So, they may want something like this that just basically converts the text message info into an official looking invoice.
I feel the real problem is everyone is assuming this side project type thing to solve every edge case that exists in the world. Even the bigger guys like stripe. That’s the wrong take. They offer a solution, you have to evaluate of it fits your needs, if not, use something else. If you’re in a locale that mandates something completely different, use something else. This project is being very transparent about what it does and how it works, which should help you out if you have a requirements list to compare it to.
>First major disconnect is that not every country uses invoices, but may use receipts instead. This is true for the USA for example, so many US devs (for example: Stripe in the early days) are not familiar with the concept of invoicing. Technically there is no difference between receipts and invoices, so if you're not familiar with the concept of invoicing, just read this post with /s/invoice/receipt in mind.
I find this hard to believe. An invoice is a request for payment. A receipt is proof/confirmation of payment. Invoices sometimes double as receipts (or rather the other way around) when the payment is made immediately. But how can a country not have something that represents a formal request for payment by some future time?
I don't even understand this from an accounting perspective. What would accounts receivable and accounts payable even mean without this distinction? How would you date the respective journal entries if there is no distinction?
> But how can a country not have something that represents a formal request for payment by some future time?
There are plenty countries where the vendor will charge the account of the customer, like a 'pull' mechanism. In many countries they'll use (or used) checks/cheques for that, or a different payment account like a credit card. The agreement for this would have been a contract. They may still use invoices for larger transactions, but they aren't always required by law.
I remember that in the old days, Google, Stripe, etc wouldn't send invoices, sometimes you'd get a minimal receipt message by email, but that was about it. This was particularly annoying for EU-based companies where there are minimal requirements for invoices and/or receipts.
Times have changed though. Most companies, including US-based, will now offer invoices that comply with most international regulations.
Except PayPal of course, for some reason they still seem to get away with not offering invoices. You'll have to download your monthly account overview in PDF from their merchant portal, and they just slapped the following text on it: "This statement may serve as a receipt for accounting and tax related purposes.".
>choose your own accounting software, do not be tempted to hire an external bookkeeper that keeps the books in 'their' systems (accountant lock-in).
~30 years ago I worked at a very small business (3 employees) and they used and liked Quickbooks. The accountant convinced them to switch to some "better" system and for around 3 months they had no idea how much money they had, they just lost all visibility into the system because it didn't work in the way they expected. "If things didn't look right, we'd just go through every screen in the system and press Post." At the end of those 3 months they realized they had unexpectedly gotten into $70K in debt -- this was ~35 years ago when a house was around that much. They had to take a second mortgage on their house. Eventually, they figured out the accounting system, righted the ship, and paid back the second mortgage over a few years. Y2K really helped, with that giant bump in sales.
What accounting software would you recommend for first-time entrepreneurs? Are their any open-source solutions that can be self hosted that integrate with existing solutions?
I am just starting my journey into entrepreneurship, and have yet to choose a bank or accounting software, and would appreciate guidance. I am based in the UK, and will only be conducting business in the UK to start off with.
Not OP but there are a few open source options. GNU cash is friendlier for beginners due to the GUI. I like plain text accounting, specifically beancount.
As far as integrations, GNU cash lets you import from various formats like quicken while beancount has lots of plugins from the community like importers for various banks. I don’t believe either offer invoicing but you could integrate it yourself or just manually record.
IMO, the hardest part of keeping your own books is learning double entry accounting.
Thanks for the recommendation for GNU cash will give that a look. What resources would you recommend for learning double entry accounting?
Starling Bank as the bank, and FreeAgent as the accounting software - it'll handle personal tax (self-assessment), corporation tax, VAT, and payroll. If you need an accountancy practice, I very much recommend Maslins - they'll provide FreeAgent access in that case as part of their fee.
Thanks for the recommendation, will take a look at Starling Bank and FreeAgent.
Great friggin name!
Love that it dumps you right into the experience.
Haha thank you, I was amazed the domain was available! And yeah jumping through hoops just to get to the invoice generator is something that frustrated me with existing alternatives, so dumping the user straight into it was one of the foremost decisions the design centered around.
I'm working on pure.md[1], which lets your scripts, APIs, apps, agents, etc reliably access web content in markdown format. Simply prefix any URL with `pure.md/` and you get the unblocked markdown content of that webpage. It avoids bot detection and renders JavaScript-heavy websites, and can convert HTML, PDFs, images, and more into pure markdown.
pure.md acts as a global caching layer between LLMs and web content. I like to think of it like a CDN for LLMs, similar to how Cloudinary is a CDN for images.
[1] https://pure.md
Love the recursion redirect at pure.md/pure.md
You found the easter egg!
It seems to miss URLs?
At: https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing the links for:
https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...
https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/bookI....
https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/defI1....
are rendered as:
_Elements_ _:_ _Book I_ _:_ _Definition 1_
Maybe detect when a page is on gitbook or some other site where there is .md source on github or some other site and grab the original instead?
By default, href values of <a> tags are removed, because they add significant token length without adding more context. Coming soon, you can specify a request header to set whether or not you want links removed from the response. Those underscores you mentioned are from the italics.
Cool project!
Recently discussed, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462894 (10 comments)
Thanks for sharing. I was planning on building something like this in April after hitting too many issues with Jina and Tavily but it looks like you've already done the hard work!
Thanks! Still a work in progress :-)
What a great idea, I will soon be a paying customer. This solves a problem of an app I'm using that I was hesitant to try to develop myself.
Much appreciated!
Very nice, how did you manage to bypass sites with cloudflare turnstile setup?
Flaresolverr most probably
how do you exactly fallback to common crawl? isn't the cost to even hold and query common crawl insane?
With AWS Athena, you can query the contents of someone else’s public S3 bucket. You pay per read, but if you craft your query the right way then it’s very inexpensive. Each query I run only scans about 1MB of data.
Since I was just looking at this accidentally, here are some examples of how to query at a ~cent-per-query cost level (just examples but quite illustrative): https://commoncrawl.org/blog/index-to-warc-files-and-urls-in...
Is there an example we can see?
https://pure.md/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4353323...
Works great on mobile thanks, helpful tool to bypass flaky websites, js and even some paywalls.
Good job on enshittifying the web even more. You must be proud. Also, from the looks of it, there is no difference between pure.md and any generic scraper. It's plain old tactics, designed for bloating the web with more slop
i have no skin in the game and honestly i am wondering how this idea contributes to enshittifying the web more?
this idea just seems like it provides the same content as visiting the site in a different view, like reader mode?
The service seems designed to bypass anti-scraping measures. If site owners don't want their content scraped by AI this is subverting their will.
It also obfuscates responsibility between the AI vendor and the scraping service. One can imagine unethical AI providers using a series of ephemeral "gateways" to access content while avoiding any legal or reputational harm.
I think the parent is referring to the goal of making the web more "LLM friendly".
I built a machine learning library [1] (similar to PyTorch's API) entirely from scratch using only Python and NumPy. It was inspired by Andrej Karpathy's Micrograd project [2]. I slowly added more functionality and evolved it into a fully functional ML library that can build and train classical CNNs [3] to even a toy GPT-2 [4].
I wanted to understand how models learn, like literally bridging the gap between mathematical formulas and high-level API calls. I feel like, as a beginner in machine learning, it's important to strip away the abstractions and understand how these libraries work from the ground up before leveraging these "high-level" libraries such as PyTorch and Tensorflow. Oh I also wrote a blog post [5] on the journey.
[1] https://github.com/workofart/ml-by-hand
[2] https://github.com/karpathy/micrograd
[3] https://github.com/workofart/ml-by-hand/blob/main/examples/c...
[4] https://github.com/workofart/ml-by-hand/blob/main/examples/g...
[5] https://www.henrypan.com/blog/2025-02-06-ml-by-hand/
FOSS MTG inspired digital card game.
I love card games, but for digital card games the business model is beyond predatory. If you need a specific card your option is to basically buy a pack. Let’s say this is about 3$ give or take. But if it’s a specific rare card, you can open a dozen of so packs and still not get the specific card you want.
This can go on indefinitely, and apologists will claim you can just work around this, by building a different deck. But the business model clearly wants you to drop 50 to 100$ just to get a single card.
All for this to repeat every 3 months when they introduce new mechanics to nerf the old cards or just rotate out the dream deck you spent 100$+ to build.
I’m under no impression I’ll directly compete, but it’s a fun FOSS game you can spin up with friends. Or even since it’s all MIT, you can fork and sell.
It also gives me an excuse to use Python, looks like Django on the backend and Godot for the game client. Although the actual logic runs in Django so you can always roll a different game client.
Eventually I’d like different devs to roll their own game clients in whatever framework they want.
Want to play from the CLI, sure
I started building a MtG competitor inspired by Altered and Netrunner. As weird as it sounds, I started with some bash scripts to see how the meta would play out to make sure the card values/strategies were balanced.
I would love to compare game development notes if you're interested in discussing this sometime.
Many years ago Decipher (who made the Star Trek and Star Wars TCGs) rolled out a web platform for playing their games. It was the business model but with none of the advantages of the physical property. You would spend money on their platform to buy their digital cards, to play only there, and when you left the cards just disappeared into the void.
Have you heard about Mindbug[0]? It's a recent MTG-inspired (co-created by one of the authors of MTG) card game. Plays quick and is full of interesting and consequential decisions.
[0]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/345584/mindbug-first-con...
I'm sold. How do I play?
Wait 3 months for me to finish.
So far it's basically just a Django server. You're responsible for self hosting ( although I imagine I'll put up a demo server), you can define your own cards.
You can play the game by literally just using curl calls if you want to be hardcore about it.
I *might* make a nice closed source game client one day with a bunch of cool effects, but that's not my focus right now.
My master's thesis[1] was half research, half dev project, exploring how we can continue to fully fuse traditional RPGs with computers. This goal is my life quest, my life's work.
I think virtual tabletops (VTTs) as they currently stand are barking up the wrong tree[2]. I want a computer-augmented RPG to allow the GM to do everything he does in the analog form of the game. On-the-fly addition of content to the game world, defining of new kinds of content, defining and editing rules, and many other things ... as well as the stuff VTTs do, of course. The closest we've gotten in the last 30 years is LambdaMOO and other MUDs.
The app I made for my thesis project was an experimental vertical slice of the kinds of functionality I want. The app I made after that last year is more practical and focused on the needs of my weekly game, in my custom system; I continue to develop it almost daily.
I'm itching to tackle the hardest problem of all, which is fully incorporating game rules in a not-totally-hardcoded way. I need rules to be first-class objects that can be programmatically reasoned about to do cool things like "use the Common Lisp condition system to present end user GMs with strategies for recovering from buggy rules." Inspirations include the Inform 7 rulebook system.
[1] See my homepage, under Greatest Hits: https://www.mxjn.me
[2] Anything that requires physical equipment other than dice and a regular computer is also barking up the wrong tree. So no VR, no video-tracked physical miniatures, no custom-designed tabletop, no Microsoft Surface... Again, just my opinion.
I'm working on something similar. I'm building a MUD with an LLM playing the role of GM. Currently it just controls NPCs, but I eventually want it to be able to modify the game rules in real time. My end goal is a world that hundreds of players can play in simultaneously, but has the freedom and flexibility of a TTRPG (while still remaining balanced and fair).
That's really cool, Elias. I keep seeing people try to put LLMs into the role of the GM. But I think you're doing something new and important by working to have the rules available to it.
Is your project available anywhere? Best of luck!
If you're interested, because I kept seeing "LLM as GM" projects, I got curious about how well it would work to have LLMs as players instead. So I made this:
https://github.com/maxwelljoslyn/gm-trainer
It's a training ground for GMs to practice things like spontaneous description, with 4 AI players that get fed what each other say so they act in a reasonably consistent manner. It's not perfect, but I've gotten some good use out of it.
how do you feel about Talespire? it allows pretty fast on-the-fly map-making as long you’re not dealing with significant vertical distances, although it’s got very little in common with LambdaMOO. but MUDs generally seem to be MMRPG precursors at this point, unless there’s an underground community I’m unaware of.
I feel the same way about Tailspire as I feel about pretty much every other VTT. They might do okay, even pretty well, at combat maps and/or character sheets, but I want is the whole game world in the computer. Maps are just a fraction of what I need as a GM. I need data on economics and population numbers and power structures. And I need computation over all those things.
For instance, my game rules include an economic subsystem, which takes in the production of goods and services at hundreds of in-game cities, and computes prices for over a thousand player-purchaseable goods. The "second app" that I referred to above allows players to (among many other things) purchase stuff at the market nearest their current location and have those items go straight into their character sheet. If the "item" is actually an animal, a hired mercenary, etc. then a different subsystem generates a new NPC with the right statistics and attaches the player to it as owner/liege.
I could write an extension for a VTT that talks to my economic system over an API, and throws items up on screen, lets players purchase them, moves them into their character sheet using the right function calls in the VTT's extension library, etc. But every step of the way, I would be fighting to cram this subsystem into the VTT's conception that gameplay begins and ends with maps and char sheets.
I am full-time building LLM-based NPCs for a text-based MMORPG. Been doing a lot of work recently on allowing progression through scenarios with them where the rules are in a class, and the LLM takes care of communicating user intent to the rules engine, based on free-text, and writes back to the user with the results.
That's sweet! I think LLMs have incredible potential for descriptions and for NPC behavior, and I really like that you have this bridge between freeform intent and a rules engine. I'd like to pick your brain about it - I'll send an email.
I've been building mentions.us[1] - it sends you alerts when your keywords are mentioned on Hacker News, Reddit, Bluesky, LinkedIn and a few other places. For anyone who uses F5Bot, it's similar but with some extra data sources and a Slack integration.
It's been a fun project. Dealing with the scale of Reddit (~300 posts/second) creates some interesting technical challenges. It's also let me polish up my frontend development skills.
I don't think it will ever be a money spinner - it has ~70 folks using it buy they're all on the free tier. It's felt really good to build something useful, though.
[1]: https://mentions.us
You just got a signup :) Free plan, I'll admit. I don't need or want anything other than email notifications, and the free plan for that is very generous. Thanks for building this.
:D
For the social platforms, are you hooking up to their APIs or just using Google? I'm only interested in emails and would pay a small price for that (say 5-7/month). I've signed up and added my first keyword to test.
That being said, here is an additional feature: being able to track discord/slack/telegram by providing my API key and you streaming the content of the groups I've signed up to.
We’re hooking up to the APIs - the goal is to alert you of mentions as quickly as possible, so waiting for Google to index results would introduce (much) too much lag.
Interesting feature request! I’ll have a think on it.
This is really interesting, thanks for sharing! I'm keen to know how it compares to a tool like Pulsar? I've been quoted a huge amount to use their service, and it looks like mention.us basically fulfills the same social listening function? If it does then I will definitely push my org to sign up!
Thanks! I haven't used Pulsar, but the general answer is that mentions.us is focussed on sending you alerts for notifications, whereas more sophisticated social listening tools provide a lot more analytics (e.g., sentiment analysis).
If your company just wants alerts when their keywords are mentioned on social media then mentions.us should work great for them. If you work for Coca Cola then you likely need something very different from your social listening tool!
Thanks for clarifying, we're a small org and so the few mentions we get could be analysed manually I'm sure. I will flag it to the marketing team!
Perhaps it would be of interest to people into social media marketing or people trying to build social media presence. Keywords mean a lot to them. I'm sure you've thought of it. Perhaps that is where market potential exists for it.
Sounds very cool. I'm curious how you manage to monitor Linkedin though. The only tool that seems capable of monitoring Linkedin is https://kwatch.io , so if you manage to achieve that too it's impressive.
Hey Julien! I’ve seen you advertising KWatch in lots of places, assume you’re connected to it / know the founder?
For LinkedIn monitoring we use the voyager APIs. It’s not perfect because it gets posts but not comments, but it’s pretty good.
your pricing is little confusing, for free you are providing 100 keywords, and for you most expensive plan you are providing also 100 keywords, in fact only diff between these two is slack notification. What's the motivation behind this pricing plan?
I put more details in a reply to another comment, but basically I think the number of people willing to pay for email alerts is small, so I’ve made the service free for them. It’s only teams who want Slack notifications who have paid plans.
I’m not optimising to extract every possible $ from the market with that pricing strategy. Instead I hope it will maximise the number of users whilst breaking even on costs.
Looks very interesting!! I registered and found an issue: when I add the mention keyword, it shows two results, but after saving it, it shows zero results. I tried checking mentions for my side project DollarDeploy.
Thanks for the feedback! For saved terms we show you the number of matches we’ve notified you about, which always starts at zero, whereas during creating we show you how many you would have matched. That’s a confusing UI and I should improve it
This seems very useful. Why not make it paid ? Do you think your customers won’t buy ? Have you tried ?
What would your customers need to make them want to pay for it ?
I think most of the people who sign up for email alerts would never pay. Lots of them are indie hackers or folks with a side project - I've been there, and know how price sensitive those communities are. I'd rather they use the service for free than not at all - I get valuable feedback from that, a marketing boost if they tell others about it, and the validation of having built something other people use.
I do have a paid plan for people who want Slack notifications, and I think those folks ought to be happy to pay. My hope is that I'll eventually get a few paid signups and that those will cover the costs of the service (which are minimal).
I know I lose a bit of revenue with the above approach, but it's a tradeoff I'm happy to make.
How do you get realtime data from Reddit?
how do you get real time acsess to reddit posts?
Through the API - in particular the info endpoint[1], combined with the fact that Reddit IDs are base36 encoded sequentially increasing integers[2]. You can get 100 objects at a time, so if you make ~3 requests a second it's enough to get all of the new posts and comments.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/#GET_api_info
[2] https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/#fullnames
How do you get realtime data from LinkedIn?
For now we use the LinkedIn voyager API's search endpoint
with your account? you never get blocked? that's impressive
Does “vibe coding” count :-) I’m from west Africa and lately been very interested in African fairy tales to read to my daughter. Ended up building ( a GPT-backed interface that can insert her in any African story she wants. We also have a list of African queens who’re not famous anymore but did amazing things (look up Queen Nzinga for example). So I’m doing a series of little children’s books about each queen - have them exported to PDF so I can print them out and bind for her: her own little Collection of fairytales. I plan to put it online later - even if you’re not African I think it’s a great way to explore our history.
This sounds pretty cool. As another commenter asked if you have a write up, I just want to throw my hat in and say, I would enjoy reading a write up what your doing. From the technical bits to a review by your daughter of how well the stories came out.
Thank you. Yes she’s been enjoying them a lot now that we don’t have to repeat the same stories every night :) I’ll share on here once I’m done and also the right up.
I love learning more history, thank you for the recommendation, I would have never discovered this myself.
There is nice list url shortener API https://publicapis.dev/category/url-shorteners and worth try it.
Sounds super unique. Please include me too if you do any public follow up? I'd actually enjoy reading those, myself as I've collected folktale collections for years!
Will do. Hn has no way of tagging people or following up though so I’m not sure how to share once I go live. But if you shoot me a message I’ll update you once done. amrangaye at gmail dot com.
Would love to do something similar. Have you written about the technicals/set up somewhere?
Not yet as I’m still finessing it to her needs. She has a problem getting rid of thumb sucking, and finally asked for a fairy tale with a thumb sucking princess who eventually stops sucking her thumb lol. It’s a fun activity and also letting me learn about LLMs.
We've used them to generate stories about our kids and their favourite characters, too. It's a great use case — your approach sounds excellent. Good luck to you!
I dusted off an old app (2012 or so) that I wrote for me and my girlfriend who are in a long-distance relationship which I call "Date Night Movie Player". It needs updates and she mentioned that she missed using it. Basically it lets two people sync watching a video/movie together, while chatting in a side transparent overlay and has a remote control with interesting buttons like timed "beer break", "bathroom break", along with pause so you can draw an arrow on the screen or circle something of interest. There is also a button that might (it is random chance and you can only do it a few times) let you steal the remote control from the other user. Only the person with the remote can really pause after all! It gives the experience of watching a movie together and being able to comment about things happening like when we are together.
Have you seen the YouTube Watch Together app on Discord? It's built into the client
I have! It was one of those "I should have moved when I had the chance" moments. But such is life as a developer.
I would 100% pay for this as a big movie fan and living away from my gf
Interesting to hear. One big thing I had to address was the fact that she lives in a rural area with very slow internet access and I don't. So I built in and option for us both to select a movie and a time for the date and it would pre-download a high-quality version.
It's a shame that apps like these are "illegal". There's so much fun innovation to be had.
I don't think the apps themselves are illegal any more than VLC is illegal. You could likely watch something on the app that is illegal depending on where you live.
Maybe the legality is clearer if they are self hostable? Then all the liability is on the user who downloaded the movies in the first place
I think this is the way to think about it. Mine was a desktop application with no central server.
Would love to learn about this. I am building something similar for my family
I had this usecase, Ended up using google meet and screensharing.
We’ve been building a new social-enabled git collaboration platform on top of Bluesky’s AT Protocol: https://tangled.sh
You can read an intro here: https://blog.tangled.sh/intro (it’s publicly available now, not invite-only).
In short, at the core of Tangled is what we call “knots”; they’re lightweight, headless servers that serve up your git repository, and the contents viewed and collaborated upon via the “app view” at tangled.sh. All social data (issues, comments, PRs, other repo metadata) is stored “on-proto”—in your AT Protocol PDS.
We don’t just plan to reimplement GitHub, but rethink and improve on the status quo. For instance, we plan to make stacked PRs and stacked diff-based reviews first-class citizens of the platform.
Right now, our pull request feature is rather simplistic but very useful still: you paste your git diff output, and “resubmit” for a new round of review (if necessary). You can see an example here: https://tangled.sh/@tangled.sh/core/pulls/14
We’re fully open source: https://tangled.sh/@tangled.sh/core and are actively building. Come check it out!
How is the support for LFS? Also, what backend language? I have some Go code for implementing an LFS server and auth but did not want to build a full code forge. All of the major Git hosts have woefully bad LFS management (e.g. if you want to purge a file from history have to delete the whole repository).
We don't support LFS at the moment. Everything is in Go.
https://aponlink.com/
I built a no-AI, human-only social network focused on ONLY one thing - keeping people connected.
I'd stepped away from mainstream social media last year due to the overwhelming negativity, privacy violation, etc. Then around early this year, I started to feel I was missing updates from people who actually matter in my life. Instead of going back to traditional platforms, I decided to create a simple solution myself.
The platform emphasizes: - No AI algorithms or content manipulation - No infinite scrolling designed to trap your attention - A simple interface for sharing life updates with close connections (Text and Photos only for now)
We've intentionally made connecting difficult: no user search and no friend suggestions - you only connect with people you already know and care about.
Web: https://aponlink.com/ Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aponlink.a... (iOS version coming soon)
I'd love to hear how this approach resonates with the HN community, particularly from those who've also grown tired of traditional social media.
So I like what you are doing but I think it might be worth having a larger think about this
> no user search and no friend suggestions
I get the intentionality, but the reason that facebook was successful was that it found the people you intentionally wanted to communicate with for you.
The issue is that the social graph overstays its welcome. After its done finding all the people you want to communicate with, it suggests a ton of people you dont.
I actually find this to be similar to netflix and spotify suggestions, both of which were able to find things I wanted to consume early on, but now just give me waves of shit.
Consider doing something a lot smaller, like an opt in, 1 month activation at a time, depth 1 search to find people you might want to connect with, but without the hassle of having to swap details on another platform.
That’s a great insight. I totally agree that early Facebook’s ability to surface actual connections was valuable before it turned into an endless recommendation machine.
The challenge is figuring out how to offer just enough discoverability that doesn't creep users. I like your idea of an opt-in, time-limited, depth-1 search, it keeps things intentional while reducing friction. Definitely something to think about.
Curious: would you see value in a simple "import contacts" option, or do you think that would risk overstepping?
As long as it is isnt intrusive. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have done this to me at some stage or another, and I get endless prompts to try again, and theres also a bunch of users on those platforms that are now recommended to me because of the search.
It would be useful to identify my friends but I dont want a loose thread of some guy I emailed 20 years ago to constantly bug me.
You need an about page with screenshots, ect. I'd like to know what I'm getting into before I invest my extremely valuable time and attention into your site.
---
The links on the bottom of the page (about, privacy policy, ect) don't work.
In general: Non-functioning links / buttons are a huge no-no. When I encounter non-functioning links / buttons in software, I just assume I'm going to waste my time and move on.
I know that sometimes when designing a UI, you want to be able to "see" what the final product will look like. Leaving them in before they work is sloppy, and gives the impression that your product also has more loose ends.
Thanks for the feedback!
1. The bottom nav links are fixed now, really appreciate you pointing that out.
2. > ...an About page with screenshots great suggestion! We’ll work on adding that soon to better showcase what Aponlink is about.
Something like this has been on my mind for a while now -- take the useful, positive elements from across the socials (network of connections, media sharing, events, etc) and create mini-nets that let people who want to, stay in touch.
How do you envision onboarding? Do I join, and then try to convince a handful of people to join as well?
Glad this resonates with you! That’s exactly the goal—keeping the useful parts of social networking while removing the noise and AI-driven manipulation.
> How do you envision onboarding? Do I join, and then try to convince a handful of people to join as well?
Yes, that's been the idea so far for onboarding. But we’re also exploring ways to make the platform more organically discoverable and valuable from day one (without AI).
In my case, it's been easy to convince my network to move and I found they shared a similar level of dismay towards traditional networks.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions on the onboarding process
I wish I had suggestions! The daunting nature of the onboarding is what cooled my jets in the first place, and I never got part the ideation phase with this particular project.
The need is there (at least for some of us!) so the sell shouldn't be so hard, but I feel like I'm missing the "a-ha!" differentiator here. It's not enough to pull the good/useful remnants from the sludge socials are today; it would need an extra something to excite people enough to make the effort to engage with yet another online service.
Trying to sign up, got this error:
Error Firebase: Error (auth/network-request-failed).
Thanks for trying it out! That particular error usually happens due to a temporary network issue or if third-party cookies are blocked. Could you try refreshing or using a different browser?
I’ll also check on my end to make sure everything is running smoothly. Appreciate the heads-up!
I started a small company selling accessories that I design, 3d print, and build for old 16mm film cameras. I recently released a crystal synchronized motor for Arri cameras, which allows you to record sound and have it sync up properly later, that has actually been selling pretty well. My next goal is to get into CNC machining with metal and actually build a modern 16mm film camera.
For my day job I am currently working for an online education company. I have been learning about the concepts behind knowledge tracing and using knowledge components to get a fine grained perspective on what types of skills someone has acquired throughout their learning path. It is hard because our company hasn't really had any sort of basis to start from, so I have been reading a lot of research papers and trying to understand, from sort of first principles, how to approach this problem. It has been a fun challenge.
Hey! Seems a nice job, do you mind if I ask which company and if you found some interesting references on the subject?
Hi! I can't really share the company, but I do love the space and happy to discuss what I've been reading.
So the idea of Knowledge Tracing originated, from my understanding with a paper in 1994: http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/1... this sort of introduced the idea that you could model and understand a students learning as it progresses through a set of materials.
The concept of Knowledge Components was started, I believe, at Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh with the Learn Lab: https://learnlab.org/learnlab-research/ - in 2012 they authored a paper defining KLI (Knowledge Learning Instruction framework): https://pact.cs.cmu.edu/pubs/KLI-KoedingerCorbettPerfetti201... which provided the groundwork for the concept of Knowledge Components.
This sort of kicked things off with regards to really studying these things on a finer-grained level. They have a Wiki which covers some key concepts: https://learnlab.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page like the Knowledge Component: https://learnlab.org/wiki/index.php?title=Knowledge_componen...
Going forward a few years you have a Stanford paper, Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT): https://stanford.edu/~cpiech/bio/papers/deepKnowledgeTracing... which delves into utilizing RNN(recurrent neural networks) to aide in the task of modelling student knowledge over time.
Jumping really far forward to 2024 we have another paper from Carnegie Mellon & University of Pittsburgh: Automated Generation and Tagging of Knowledge Components from Multiple-Choice Questions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.20526 and A very similar paper that I really enjoyed from Switzerland: Using Large Multimodal Models to Extract Knowledge Components for Knowledge Tracing from Multimedia Question Information https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.20167
Overall the concept I've been sort of gathering is that, if you can break down the skills involved in smaller and smaller tasks, you can make much more intelligent decisions about what is best for the student.
The other thing I've been gathering is that Skills Taxonomies are only useful in as much as they help you make decisions about students. If you build a very rigid Taxonomy that is unable to accommodate change, you can't really adapt easily to new course material or to make dynamic decisions about students. So the idea of a rigid Taxonomy is quickly becoming outdated. Large language models are being used to generate fine-grained skills (Knowledge Components) from existing course material to help model a students development based on performance in a way that can be easily updated when materials change.
I have worked through and replicated some of the findings in these later papers using local models, for example using the open Gemma 2 27b models from Google to generate Knowledge components and using Sentence Embedding models and K-means clustering to gather them together and create groups of related Knowledge Components. It's been a really fun project and I've been learning quite a bit.
Thank-you! It's a long time that I have a similar idea and I'm interested in developing it, but never found the time to dig deeper, with those references I will jump start in the subject and refine.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one thinking about that.
The trick for me is that it's a path in a graph for each student, so even if some component is not as strong for one student, he can fill the gap by taking another route. A good framework would be resilient if it finds many possible paths to reach the same result, and not forcing one path. But then, teaching in this way is more difficult.
I released an iOS app last October for users who use Apple Watch to record their workouts - https://mergefit.itwenty.me
It lets users merge two or more workouts into a single one. There have been times when I have been out riding, hiking or whatever and accidentally end the activity on my apple watch instead of pausing it. Starting a new workout means having your stats split across the two workouts.
The "usual" way to merge such workouts is to export all of them to individual FIT files, then use a tool like fitfiletools.com to merge the individual FIT files. You then have a merged FIT file, which is difficult to import back into Apple Health. This process also requires access to the internet, which is not always guaranteed when out in remote areas.
MergeFit makes this process easy by merging workouts right on device and without the need to deal with FIT files at all. It reads data directly from Apple Health and writes the merged data back to Apple Health.
The app reached a small milestone a few days ago - crossing 1000$ in total sales.
Great idea! One other thing that annoys me is the inability to trim workouts, mostly walking workouts which I forgot to stop. Even when the Apple Watch asks you if you want to end the workout, it doesn’t cut off the end where nothing happened anymore. It should be possible to do this (semi-)automatically using the heart rate and movement data.
That's a good problem to solve. Another pet peeve of mine is the inability to modify different streams of fitness data in a single workout. If I record workout on the watch, but use a different device just for heart rate, there's no good way to replace the watch recorded HR data with this other device's HR data.
I am sharing what I learnt building electric cars.
On YouTube: https://youtube.com/@foxev-content
In a learning app: https://foxev.io/academy/
On a physical board where people can explore electric car tech on their desk: https://foxev.io/ev-mastermind-kit/
Backstory: from 2018-2023 I converted London taxis to be electric and built three prototypes. We also raised £300k and were featured in The Guardian. I have a day-job again these days and am persisting what I learnt and sharing it. YouTube is super interesting for me because of the writing, similar for the web app actually because the code isn't that complicated, it's about how do I present it in a way that engaged users, so I am thinking mostly about UX.
Actually why not, here is the intro to the first module (100 questions about batteries - ends in a 404): https://foxev.io/academy/modules/1/
Thanks for sharing. I watched some of canbus video and came back to say it looks really interesting. I am building a prototype diesel electric autonomous vehicle for farm applications at the moment so the videos are somewhat relevant to me.
Thank you means a lot :)
I really love the concept of the mastermind kit. An experimentation product that's geared to learning about a specific niche.
What is the ETA on the kit shipping if I pre-order one?
Not taking payments yet, ETA was Q1 but it's slipping to Q2 as my day job has kept me busy
You can sign up interest and I will send you an email when it's ready.
Working on Runno (https://runno.dev/) as a side project. It's a tool for running code in the browser for educational use.
[Edit]: I wrote a re-introduction to Runno: The WebComponent for Code over the weekend (https://runno.dev/articles/web-component/)
I've been playing around with turning it into a sandbox for running code in Python (https://runno.dev/articles/sandbox-python/). This would allow you to safely execute AI generated code.
Generally thinking about more ways to run code in sandbox environments, as I think this will become more important as we are generating a lot of "untrusted" code using Gen AI.
Awesome! Have you considered pyodide[1]? Pydantic uses this for sandboxing its AI agents [2].
1. https://pyodide.org/en/stable/ 2. https://ai.pydantic.dev/mcp/run-python/
Thanks! Yeah I'm very aware of Pyodide and interested in adopting some of their techniques.
A big difference between my approach and their approach is that Runno is generic across programming languages. Pyodide only works for Python (and can only work for Python).
Big interesting development in this space is the announcement of Endor at WASM IO which I'd like to try out: https://endor.dev/
Amazing!
Myself.
Been a freelance dev for years, now going on "sabbatical" (love that word) shortly.
Planning to do a lot of learning, self-improvement, and projects. Tech-related and not. Preparing for the next volume (not chapter) of life. Refactoring, if you like, among other things.
I'm excited.
Been doing this the last 10 months. Lots of growth and self-discovery. Best wishes on your journey!
Yeah.. I'm starting a LIT-RPG style blog for my personal growth. Skills/attributes tied to personal goals. Spirit as it relates to learning guitar (for instance), Mana as it relates to tech skills.
Right now it's all a flat index.html and simple.css hosted on github pages, but I'll get a site eventually. Writing a blog is part of my goals to become a profitable author. (Creativity ~= blogging, sketching, animation)
Good luck. I plan on doing something similar once I get my permanent residence later this year.
I've got a self-hosted personal library management app more or less done here: https://github.com/seanboyce/ubiblio
An electronic board game similar to Settlers of Catan (https://github.com/seanboyce/Calculus-the-game), just received the much better full sized boards. Will assemble and test over the next few weeks, then document properly. I got the matte black PCBs, they look really cool.
A hardware quantum RNG. Made a mistake in the board power supply, but it still works well with cut trace and a bodge wire. Will probably fix the bug and put the results up in a few weeks. Can push out ~300 bytes of entropy a second, each as an MQTT message.
A hardware device that just does E2E encrypted chat (using Curve 25519). Microcontrollers only, no OS, and nothing ever stored locally. HDMI output (1024x768), Wi-Fi, and USB keyboard support. I originally designed it to use a vanilla MQTT broker, but I'm probably going to move it to HTTP and just write a little self-hosted HTTP service that handles message routing and ephemeral key registration. Right now the encryption, video output, and USB host works -- but it was a tangle of wires to fix the initial bugs, so I ordered new boards. Got to put those through testing, then move on to writing the server.
Iterating on hardware stuff is pretty slow. I try to test more than one bugfix in parallel on the same board. Iteration time is 2-3 weeks and 8$. If I have all the parts in stock. I don't have very much free time right now due to work, so this suits me fine. A rule I live by is that I must always be creating, so I think this is a reasonable compromise.
I'm working on an emulator for 16-bit computer I have designed for teaching students. It's designed to make low level computing more accessible for modern students by making things as visual as possible, for example blinken-lighten for the registers like w/ the old PDPs, color coded memory that shows where the code and data segments are, where the stack is, etc, and a small frame buffer that drives a 64x64 2 bit display that uses the same color palette as the original gameboy. The instruction set is a mashup of MIPS, the Scott CPU and JVM/forth stack operations. I'm excited about it.
here's a screenshot:
https://gist.github.com/1cg/e99206f5d7b7b68ebcc8b813d54a0d38
Nice. I made an 8-bit AVR thing along those lines, 240x180 - 16 color. In browser emulator and assembler.
Can load source from gists https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=ad96329670965dc...
Never really did much with it, but it was interesting and fun.
Working on [redacted], a Chrome extension to make YouTube more time-efficient (and way more fun).
Its main differentiator: hover any thumbnail (homepage, search, shorts, etc.) for an instant mini-summary, like Wikipedia link previews. Also includes detailed summaries w/ timestamps, chat w/ video, chat w/ entire channels, and comment summaries.
Hover & Detailed summaries are free if you plug in your own OpenAI API key ("free for nerds" mode).
Aiming to be the best YouTube-specific AI tool. Would love your feedback. No signup needed for free tier/BYOK. If you try it and email me ([redacted]), happy to give you extended Pro access!
Love the idea and the name! Do you think whether this will worsen the YouTube experience? Because it encourages consuming content at a faster pace than watching the videos themselves.
Thanks!
I think its impact on watch time depends on your goal of that session. When I'm in "looking for a specific answer" mode it does reduce my watch time, but there's plenty of times when I just want to watch youtube–and when I do, it helps me find what to watch, rather than reducing my watch time per se.
nice! can you support safari?
Thanks! This may take awhile to be honest, but have added it to the list.
Me and a friend of mine are designing a HAB (high altitude balloon) payload meant to go on Hack Club's Apex: https://apex.hackclub.com. It's designed to measure how altitude, temperature, and much more affect photosynthesis, and in turn, chlorophyll fluorescence in algae. We learned a while back that when you shine blue light on chlorophyll, it fluoresces red, and it's really quite a cool phenomena. We're designing custom PCBs for powering and processing data, and even. It'll all go to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W which will beam data back to earth over 915Mhz LoRa when it's 100k feet in the sky.
Can you share more info on the LoRa hardware you've chosen and why?
That’s such a cool project!
I’m finishing several esolangs for the first artist’s monograph of programming languages, out in Sept: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553087/forty-four-esolangs/ including a hands-free (and not dictated) language.
I recently completed Valence: a language with polysemantic programs https://danieltemkin.com/Esolangs/Valence on GitHub: https://github.com/rottytooth/Valence
Older work includes Folders: code written as a pattern of folders: https://github.com/rottytooth/Folders , Entropy: where data decays each time it’s read from or written to: http://entropy-lang.org/ and Olympus: where code is written as prayer to Greek gods, who may or may not carry out your wishes: https://github.com/rottytooth/Olympus (a way to reverse the power structure of code, among other things).
I have three more to complete in the next few months.
I'm working on MailTrigger — a customizable SMTP server that turns any email notification into a message on platforms like LINE, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, SMS, or pretty much anything else.
The idea is simple: if your app can send an email, it can trigger notifications across multiple channels with no extra coding. Think of it as "SMTP Server to Anything."
One of the cool parts is MailTrigger supports WebAssembly (WASM), so you can customize your own notification logic and automate workflows. I’ve used it for tasks like monitoring internal systems, forwarding alerts to different chat platforms, and even adding basic decision-making logic before sending notifications. It’s been a huge time saver.
I’ve also experimented with using LLMs to assist in rule creation — you can configure notification rules using natural language instead of writing manual code. It’s like giving your infrastructure a smarter way to handle incidents.
At my company, I’m using MailTrigger for real-time price drop alerts and server health monitoring, along with integrations like Jenkins and Sentry to forward alerts to our DevOps Telegram channel.
It’s still super early, and things like the docs, pricing, and overall user experience are definitely a work in progress. But I’m iterating quickly and would love to hear feedback from this community!
Check it out here: https://mailtrigger.app/
Curious to hear your thoughts!
Sounds like you are making fast progress. Congrats!
I wanted to check it out but using Brave Browser and Chrome on a Samsung A54 it took 10s+ to load. After a few seconds the spinner loaded, then the progress bar moved and then restarted and then loaded.
Thanks for checking it out and for the feedback — really appreciate it!
I’m sorry the loading took so long. I’m not entirely sure if the issue was with the main site or the Join Waiting List process. We’ll definitely investigate and get it fixed as soon as possible.
If it turns out that the waiting list form was the problem and you'd still like to join, feel free to shoot me an email at bear@nuwainfo.com — I'd be happy to add you directly!
Thanks again for flagging this. Your feedback means a lot and will help us improve!
How are you handling validation of inbound emails to prevent spoofing? Depending on your pricing model it could work expensive for someone?
Great question — thanks for bringing it up!
Right now, each MailTrigger mailbox requires SMTP authentication (username/password), so unless someone has the correct credentials, they can’t inject messages. That gives us a basic layer of protection against spoofing from the SMTP side.
For forwarded emails (e.g. from Gmail), we do validate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on inbound messages. Each mailbox acts as a gated endpoint — only verified senders are allowed to trigger actions.
As for pricing — you nailed it, we’re still working that out. We have a few rough ideas, but I’d genuinely love to hear what kind of pricing model would feel fair or sustainable to you.
Would you lean towards usage-based (like number of messages/month), flat monthly per mailbox, or something else entirely? Have you seen pricing models you liked (or didn’t) in similar tools like Zapier or SendGrid?
Your feedback’s incredibly helpful at this stage — really appreciate it!
I'm working on AssetRoom, a free service to email you noise-free, easy to digest summaries of SEC filings from companies you're interested in.
I often read about interesting public companies (from an investment perspective or otherwise), but fail to then keep up with them over time (sometimes reading many months/years later how successful they were - or not!). I built this to make an easy way for me to follow updates from said companies.
https://www.assetroom.net/
Looks nice, my only initial nit is to change “twitter” to “x” in the footer, some people get very touchy about that haha
Signed up but not getting the verification email. Interested in the execution though.
just seen it- i think you made a typo in your email (.clm instead of .com) - I'll correct and re-send!
Thanks! Got it
Only feedback so far — I wish there was a bit of formatting for the numbers. The big blocks of text are hard to scan for important details.
Bullets are the first thing I can think of.
Thanks! Will make a note of this, for sure scope to make them easier to digest.
I was working on a ray-casting game engine in C, with the focus on enabling the largest worlds yet seen in such an engine (Minecraft scale etc). [0]
A ray-casting engine is an old style of game engine (think 1990 - Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem). The most famous, well-known example is probably Wolfenstein-3D created by ID software (John Carmack and John Romero etc!) You don’t see these engines used anymore in modern games.
So to me, they are novel and a great challenge to try and modernise. Especially as a solo dev! And for further context, raycasted levels are usually teeny tiny (Wolfenstein 3D or Shadow Warrior are the largest worlds I’ve seen, so nothing impressively scaled). I have never ever come across a raycaster with levels the scale of something like Minecraft. So that’s what my ambition is.
I spent a period of 2-3 months roughly 8-10 hour days every day on this project, not knowing much C and not knowing anything about game engines or graphics, and average at mathematics.
But I’m on a break from the project and coding after my 7 year relationship broke down. Realised I had tunnel vision with my life and ambitions, and am now “touching grass” daily instead. It’s hard to put effort into your hobbies when you feel other areas of your life are suffering.
So now I’m lifting weights and doing cardio and reading books instead, trying to keep active and my mind occupied.
I do want to pick this project back up, I’m really proud of what I was able to achieve with no knowledge coming in and I think the project has good bones.
And I loved coding, still haven’t found a hobby that scratches a similar itch
[0] - https://github.com/con-dog/chunked-z-level-raycaster/blob/ma...
I'm continuing to develop Uncloud [1] — an open source tool for deploying and managing containerised applications across multiple Docker hosts. Includes WireGuard overlay network, ingress with automatic HTTPS, and simple Docker-like CLI. Unlike traditional orchestrators such as Kubernetes, Uncloud has no state reconciliation or quorum needs which makes it easy to understand and use. If you ever wanted something simpler than Kubernetes for self-hosting your apps on cloud VMs or in your homelab, Uncloud might be for you.
Key updates from the past month:
- New demo screencast [2]: Deploy a highly available web app with automatic HTTPS across cloud VMs and on-premises in just a couple minutes
- Added initial Docker Compose support for service deployment. The same Compose can be used for developing locally and deploying to your cluster
- Completely revamped how service and container specifications are stored, enabling proper implementation of the service 'scale' command and selective container recreation
My goal for Uncloud is to create a more capable and modern replacement for Docker Swarm, which is no longer being actively developed.
[1]: https://github.com/psviderski/uncloud
[2]: https://github.com/psviderski/uncloud?tab=readme-ov-file#-qu...
I’m working on https://pikku.dev
It’s a TypeScript web framework that’s runtime agnostic, so it can work on serverless and servers (similar to Hono).
What’s different is that the focus is primarily just on TypeScript. There’s a CLI tool that inspects all the project code and generates loads of metadata. This can include:
• services used
• all the HTTP routes, inputs and outputs
• OpenAPI documentation
• schemas to validate against
• typed fetch client
• typed WebSocket client (and more)
The design decision was also to make it follow a function-based approach, which means your product code is just functions (that get given all the services required). And you have controllers that wire them up to different transport protocols.
This allows interesting design concepts, like writing WebSocket code via serverless format, while allowing it to be deployed via a single process or distributed/serverless. Or progressive enhancement, allowing backend functions to work as HTTP, but also work via Server-Sent Events if a stream is provided.
It also allows functions to be called directly from Next.js and full-stack development frameworks without needing to run on a separate server or use their API endpoints (not a huge advocate, but it helps a lot with SSR). Gave a talk about that last week at the Node.js meetup in Berlin.
It’s still not 1.0 and there are breaking changes while I include more use cases.
Upcoming changes:
• use Request and Response objects to make it truly runtime agnostic (currently each adapter has its own thin layer, which tbf is still needed by many that don’t adopt the web spec)
• smarter code splitting (this will reduce bundle size by tree-shaking anything not needed on a per-function basis)
• queues (one more form of transport)
Check it out, would love feedback!
My pursuit of happiness, I'm in fear of quitting my current job and go for a working holiday to Australia, I'm excited while still trying to overcome the fear of not having a stable and well paying job because I don't find any joy in this job no more , so I am working on mentally getting out of this, I want to truly let go "money is more important than my happiness" idea.
I embarked on a working holiday to the UK in 1998. Quit my job in South Africa and left with nothing but a backpack. Opened up my world, I worked for Coca Cola, the BBC, an investment bank, got wrapped up in the dot com boom, met my American wife, met the smartest people in the world, some invested in me, moved to the States, started a business that now has millions of customers and a team of 40 that my wife and I 100% own. So I guess I lean towards GO!! NOW!! :-) Best of luck.
I'm at a similar place to GP. Reading this comment and the employment[1] page for Defiant was a great reminder of some of the things I've been struggling with lately (and how alternatives can look). Congrats on taking the leap many years ago and setting up a company with a deliberate work culture that sounds brilliant to be part of!
[1]: https://www.defiant.com/employment/
Wordfence is pretty cool. Heard about it and your security research for years before I ever used the plugin, then started using it with a client in the past couple years. My time with it is ending shortly (see my comment elsewhere on this thread[0]), but it's been great. Thanks!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528309
thanks for the story, one of the reasons I want to do this is to let go of control and to believe in myself so I can face unpredictable future, I will never know if future will get better or not, but I'll definitely be mentally stronger when I do this, cheers!
This is just the right dose of motivation required for me now! Deciding to take a break and hopefully end up like this!
Thanks for this! :)
Not sure what your age and obligations are, but I did this years ago. Highly recommended.
I spent time kicking around, had a work visa through BUNAC[0] but didn't use it, went to some festivals, did some WWOOFing[1] and hiking and climbing. Also took the opportunity to visit other countries near AU that I wouldn't get to otherwise (NZ, Fiji).
One of my life highlights. Two thumbs up! I doubt my experience is super relevant any more, but feel free to send me an email (address in profile) if you want to chat about it.
0: https://bunac.org/
1: https://wwoof.com.au/
I'm 27 and have a bit of saving, I just checked wwoof and it seems pretty cool, I couldn't make up my mind which city I should go and WWOOFing gives me a general idea of the work demands, I'll hit you up sometimes, thank you for the sharing!
That is cool thing to do if you do not have family yet. If you do not, than do it. Life is too short to worry about not having a job for a few months. If.you have savings than why not?
I am doing this myself. I turned in my two weeks' notice a few days ago
I am worried about my decision too, but I think about a few things:
- You got your current job (plus all of the previous roles), so why wouldn't you be able to do it again if and when the time comes?
- Job gaps don't look as bad as they used to. People understand burnout and being stuck in a bad job. Breaking away from those can be seen as a positive, especially if you are pursuing your own health and interests
- There's more to life than draining your useful waking hours for a paycheck at a place that offers little else. With more time and energy, you can explore interests and projects on your own terms
Best of luck in your future endeavors
I guess I'm somewhat worried about not being able to get back to tech again, but I just realized I can still do open source contribution if I want to when doing WH.
I'm in a weird state that I have an okay amount of saving for me to do this, but I'm still worried because I had been through having almost zero money and two years of unemployment, I'm scared to get back to that again.
In the end, I know I have to let this thing go or I'll never become happy even if I'm making tons of money, gotta enjoy life sometimes, thanks for the words!
Best of luck in our journeys too!
I moved to a new city with nothing but a backpack a few years ago. It was tough, and I had a lot of painful experiences, but very cool.
I dove into using LLMs together with MCP servers for the first time this weekend. Absolutely incredible.
In addition to the code assistant, I configured a Grafana's MCP server with Cline, so that I can chat with an LLM while having real-time metrics and logs.
For context, I self host grafana in addition to a bunch of services on a raspberry pi. Simple prompts such as "why has CPU been increasing this week?" resulted in a deep analysis of logs/metrics that uncovered correlations I had never been aware of.
Incredible. I can only imagine what this will all look like in a few years
This sounds really cool. Do you have any guides or notes on how to set this up? I've been looking for something to dive into for LLM and MCP.
Would be interested in this too!
+1
I’ve been dissecting stock market data with code to see how dark pool and automated trading behaviors are evolving and impacting the market. The market is the most adverse possible brain battle where actors constantly try to outsmart and make money off of each-other. Greed and fear playing out and conditions changing constantly. AI is also used but it gets funny when the market adapts and plays against past behavior to take advantage of AI traders as well.
Curious to know more about your findings!
Would love to read the outcomes
Also curious about what you find out. I also thought that the cool billionaire kids were using "private rooms"[0] now and dark pools were for poor boomer hundred-millionaires! :-)
[0]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/darker-dark-pool-welcome-wall...
My toddler has a LeapFrog talking dictionary that drives my teenage daughter crazy. So I just started a project to replace its logic board with a RPi Pico 2 and interfacing with all ~45 of the toy's buttons and LEDs via a couple of GPIO expansion cards.
We'll have about ~300 short audio clips to record, and we'll store/access them via an SPI SD card reader peripheral. Audio output via a MAX98357A combo DAC/class D amplifier that we'll talk to via I2S. Powered by 2 AA batteries. Programming will be in CircuitPython, which is a cool way to teach the kids programming. (There are easy libraries for talking to all those peripherals.)
I’m interested :)
I'm working on a plaintext, decetralized, distributed (multi-device), trustless (multi-user), immutable, schemaless database that's syncable via SyncThing. The trustless part, fundamentally, comes from records being signed by the authors, each device/user keeping track of signatures (ids) seen, and each device periodically publishing all ids it's aware of: that seems to defeat all attacks or accidental corruptions I care about. My most demanding use case is multi-user expense tracking. Legal/financial document (a la google drive), family photo tracking (a la google photos) is also up there.
Also, I've recently picked up modeling my financial choices and circumstances in Python. Modeling uncertainty is especially interesting I've found. I might share the Jupyter notebook some time to get some feedback.
As someone that uses Syncthing for pretty much all the usecases you mentioned that sounds very interesting! Do you mind sharing some details about the process so far?
It's early days.
- It will work as a library that a tool (e.g. family finance tracker) would be based on;
- Every record will be immutable and undeleteable; the whole thing is space inefficient, though I've some mechanisms in mind for pruning away unnecessary records, and it's just plain text, so I'm not worried: should compress well; I wouldn't envision something like this working well on a very large scale though;
- Editing of preexisting records will be implemented as adding a new record that simply references the previous one as its previous version; also, you can implement a ledger by creating a parent-child chain (though the tracking of signatures I mentioned previously might be a simpler approach);
- I like the append-only model because it gives you history of edits for everything, and protects you in case of mistakes (or malice);
- You'll be able to collaborate on records (and the whole db) with other devices/people; every record will be signed by its author/device; conflicting edits (records marking the same record as their parent) will not be deconflicted automatically by the db: the high level app can choose how it wants to do that: throw up an alarm for the user, ignore the older fork, whatever;
- SyncThing-compatibility will be achieved by simply having each device only edit files specific to it; there won't be a single file that is edited by more than a single device/user, thus, SyncThing conflicts can't happen;
- The db will have fairly good guarantees: if it runs its checks and tells you all's good, you can be sure that records were not changed, there is not a new record masquerading as an old record, a record was not secretely deleted, records weren't reordered, another device didn't edit some other device's files, every record's author is its author;
- It was important for me to make the database easily editable and readable via regular text editors, i.e. not only plaintext, but text-editing-centric, but I've not found a way to do that at the lowest level; right now I'm contemplating using some variant of JSON for the records; however, I do envision a text-interface where the database, or a database query/subset, is rendered as a text file, and edits are automatically picked up by a daemon and translated into new records in the actual db, but that would be just another tool using this db, not a feature of the db itself;
- Like for anything synced via SyncThing, the user (or an app using the db) will want to implement some kind of backup (SyncThing is not meant for backups), unless the data is not sensitive to loss.
I’m slowly (on free time) working on my first commercial game for Steam in my spare time, using my open-source 2D engine named Carimbo.
See here: https://imgur.com/a/e3Xo9Io
Carimbo source code: https://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo
More information: https://nullonerror.org/2024/10/08/my-first-game-with-carimb...
I can never wrap my head around game development. Respect. All the best.
Some time ago, I began searching for Python-related events and discovered that many PUGs (local Python User Groups) had disappeared sometime around COVID (at least my local PUGs). After analyzing the ones listed on the official Python website, I found only about 18% were still active, with most hosted on Meetup. This makes sense, as maintaining a community requires time and money, which small PUGs don't have. Meetup can be costly for those starting local Python User Groups, but it's very cheap for big communities. IMO Meetup is not the best place for PUGs, as they are not big by default.
PUGs need a way to communicate and broadcast, to be discovered, but it doesn't necessarily need all of Meetup's features. Also, PUGs probably don't want to be tied to Facebook or other social media platforms. It'd be best if they allowed a simple ownership transfer, once you get tired of organizing.
That's why I created https://pythonuser.group/ - a lightweight side project that, despite being rough around the edges, fulfills the core need: allowing people to discover PUGs worldwide for free. The platform costs me almost nothing to maintain. Allows to subscribe to local PUGs via RSS (not sure if it works). I'll add "export all my PUG data" once someone requests this feature.
It's the first time I share it with the world. Please don't treat it as prod-ready. Feedback welcome at hn@{username}.com
Good work, It looks promising. Perhaps feed it with some group info. If you're expecting people to just show up and list their events I don't think you'll get much traction.
I'm working on a new Event Sourcing database that elevates the WAL into a first class application concept like a message queue. So instead of standing up a postgresql instance and a kafka instance and a bunch of custom event sourcing plumbing, you stand up this database and publish all your application events as messages. For the database part you just define the mappings from event to table row and you get read models and snapshots for free.
The real key here is how migrations over time are handled seamlessly and effortlessly. Never again do you have to meet with half a dozen teams to see what a field does and if you still need it - you can identify all the logic affecting the field and all the history of every change on the field and create a mapping. Then deploy and the system migrated data on the fly as needed.
Still in stealth mode and private github but the launch is coming.
I have done similar for a few customers. I have found that useful pattern is to have both raw queues (incoming data) and clean queue (outgoing data). Outgoing data in single queue only (so all changes are ordered, so we avoid eventual consistency) that has well-defined data model (custom DSL for defining it) and tables/REST api that corresponds 1-to-1 to the data model. Then we need mappings from raw queues to the clean queue.
Interesting experience! Can you explain a bit more about the raw queues vs clean queues? Is it literally just incoming and outgoing queues or was there a problem that you were trying to solve?
Interesting. Sounds like a similar premise to Supabase Realtime. I'll keep an eye out.
What would be the largest difference to Kurrent (former EventStore)?
Sounds very useful! Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!
Neat! How does this differ from KSQL?
It was inspired by KSQL! But really KSQL isn't a database, it just gives you some sql processing. Nobody stands up Kafka and KSQL when they want database of any kind.
The difference is that I'm building a database and exposing the WAL to the application layer. What that means is that you can connect your legacy DB application and have it issuing insert and update queries which are now native messages on a distributed message queue. Suddenly you gain a conokete audit trail for your entities without brittle tables and triggers to track this. Then instead of hooking up Qlik or devezium, you can just stand up another instance of the DB, propagate the realtime WAL and you've got streaming analytics - or whatever new application you want.
I'm working on tooling to turn kids from consumers into creators. I'm focusing on game development initially, but have plans for video production and hands on crafts.
For younger kids I've modified Overcooked 2, a traditionally co-op game. I've replaced the second player with a visual scripting platform that allows kids to code their way through levels — worth noting I haven't removed co-op, there's still room for 2 other players:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ackD3G_D2Hc
For older kids I've been making contributions to GodotJS, which allows you to build games in Godot using TypeScript rather than GDScript. GDScript is pretty nice, but I want to be able to teach kids skills that are more directly transferable to different domains e.g. web development:
https://github.com/godotjs/GodotJS/pull/65
I used to be Head of Engineering at Ender, where we ran custom Minecraft servers for kids: https://joinender.com/ and prior to that I was Head of Engineering at Prequel / Beta Camp, where we ran courses that helped teenagers learn about entrepreneurship: https://www.beta.camp/. During peak COVID I also ran a social emotion development book subscription service with my wife, a primary school teacher.
>I want to be able to teach kids skills that are more directly transferable to different domains
would the ability to pick up a new language/syntax be also a skill worth learning?
Yes, absolutely, but we're talking about teenagers. I've no doubt they're capable of learning multiple languages. But teenagers are most constrained by the limited time they have available for extra curricular activities. If I was to teach interested kids a second language (and I'd like to), then it would probably be lower level so kids can learn about memory management etc.
I guess I did not explain myself well. the way I understand what you are saying is let's not teach them gdscript but TS instead. the rationale is, so they can do webdev also.
but my impression of the godot community is a lot of gdscript,some C#. So they would not easily be growing in the godot community and make games.
as for teenagers learning new languages, if i remember my teens, 200 years ago, learning new computer things was a thrill, not a chore.
and like I said earlier, I see the habit of picking up a new language a wonderful skill.
hope it is clearer. good luck with your quest of teaching kids to make their own games with godot.
I love your Overcooked mod.
I'm a synthetic biologist! And I think a big problem is physically executing biology programs.
I've been working on building a programming method for biology labs. Basically, it is a dynamic execution environment using lua that can have full rewind-ability (for complete execution tracing) and pausing - you can execute some code then wait a week or so to continue execution. The idea is you can have a dynamic environment for executing biology experiments where the route changes on the basis of outcomes - something I haven't really seen anywhere else. Then I focused a bit on the pedagogy of LLMs so that you can ask an LLM to generate a protocol, and then when you execute it and get unexpected results, it can automatically debug its own protocol using a code sandbox.
It all sounds decent in theory but the difference is I actually implemented it and ran a real biology experiment with it (albeit a simple one that I knew wouldn't work)
Demo here: https://github.com/koeng101/autodemo (probably watch the video)
I realized that many seasoned developers do not yet grasp the power and productivity gains that tools like Cursor can not only provide to them, but ESPECIALLY to those that have a lot of experience and broad expertise.
Therefore, I‘m working on a mid- to longform blog post that details how precisely the competencies that senior developers and tech leads already have are the key to fully harness the potential of these tools.
And who knows, maybe I‘m going to develop this into some form of consulting or training side project.
Interesting: I would love to read this article when it is published.
...and here you go:
https://manuel.kiessling.net/2025/03/31/how-seasoned-develop...
Feedback more than welcome!
Same!
As per your request:
https://manuel.kiessling.net/2025/03/31/how-seasoned-develop...
I'm building CAIL – an AI that makes and answers phone calls for you. You type what needs to be done – it calls, talks, waits on hold, asks questions, and sends you a summary. Kind of like a voice assistant, but for actual phone calls. Also built an AI voicemail agent – it can answer missed or declined calls, figure out what they wanted, book a meeting in your free calendar slot, or even mess with spammers if needed.
Started as a personal pain after moving to the US. Now works for both people and businesses. Built our own voice infra. iOS, Android for B2C, and web dashboard for B2B. Building full-time with my wife – just pushed the first version of the mobile app this week.
https://cail.io
Very cool, but isn’t this illegal? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39304736
That's cool! I wondered about this recently -- I'd be pretty annoyed if an AI called me. I would most likely hang up immediately, regardless of what was said. Am I in the minority here? Is that feedback you've gotten before?
I do however think people would be more tolerant of an AI answering a phone call they made, I'm bullish on that half of the equation.
> I do however think people would be more tolerant of an AI answering a phone call they made
Absolutely not.
sweet. how would you hook into my inbound phone calls?
App in review right now in App Store & Google Play! I will send you a link to LinkedIn on release, but now you can try it in web ui on https://app.cail.io But on the web platform you need to deal with forwarding on your own, in our app we have a bunch of instructions for each carrier.
As a native Spanish speaker, I often used ChatGPT to improve my emails in English. It was very time-consuming having to type the same prompt multiple times in a day to set my writing style and format. That's why I decided to build an app to simplify my process. You can set the style and format just once, and with a single click, you can improve your text. You have the option to include the email thread or any relevant context for a more personalized improvement. Additionally, I've included features designed specifically for non-native speakers, like tone detection and the ability to request a few different alternatives for any word/phrase. And of course, you can talk directly with the AI to create a draft or modify the text. Check it out: https://talktext-ai.web.app/
Why not create a GPT
I experimented with it and was able to get everything I wanted, but it required many extra steps and prompts. For instance, my app automatically detects the tone of the message while I am typing, whereas in GPT, I need to manually request the tone after making any changes to the text.
Lots of things! I'm in a gap year.
To start with, there's https://nuenki.app. It's a browser extension that selectively translates sentences into the language you're learning, so you're constantly immersing yourself in text at your knowledge level.
I've also been working with a friend on a device to help blind people without light perception. I'm quite new to electronics. It's pretty simple, conceptually - a coin-sized device on the forehead that takes in the light intensity in a ~15 degree cone, then translates it into high resolution haptic feedback to the forehead.
The idea being that it means people without light perception can gain a sixth sense through neuroplasticity, with helps them navigate the room and understand their surroundings. We're planning on open sourcing the files. My mum used to teach blind kids, and there's been quite a lot of interest!
As for Nuenki, I'm pretty bad at marketing, so I'm doing a final lot of work to see if I can make it work financially - seeing if an exceptionally generous affiliate program will do the trick - before putting it on maintenance mode, since I have a small group of users who really like it. I'm burning through my gap year fast, and really want to focus on the electronics project, tutoring, and practicing maths for my physics degree.
Just installed Nuenki, really excited to give this a try. Amazing how it can hopefully iteratively help me learn Spanish while I don't change my behavior much.
Nuenki is such a good idea, congratulations!
amazing!
I just installed it and enjoying the integration.
https://getapptrack.com/
I wanted a better way to keep track of applications I sent out, A spreadsheet just seemed like a poor way of tracking data. So overtime I built a desktop application to track my job search activity for me. Most alternatives are web-based, but I didn’t love the idea of broadcasting my job search to third parties. This is a native desktop app (Windows/macOS) that keeps everything local.
Still working on code signing (so no scary "unknown publisher" warnings), but otherwise, v1 is ready.
Would love feedback—especially from others who’ve struggled with job-search tracking!
Maybe a kanban view might work? I use that on obsidian right now. I found it easier than a list
I had thought about it, but I found that in practice that the majority of applications I send out wind up in the 'Applied' state and don't get much further, leading to a large list in a narrow swim lane.
That and I am able to customize the flow of applications, and the number of swim lanes would be a bit messy. I have my app setup to track interviews, phone screens, take home assignments, and many more.
I found that a smart sorting algorithm is best for displaying the applications.
But its still early days of the app, possibly someday.
Been slowly chipping away at my browser mmo game http://everwilds.io. I've always been curious about MMO software/netcode architecture thanks to playing Guild Wars (the original) in my youth. It's the reason I became a programmer, I wanted to learn how to make games like those. For those interested in following the progress I made a discord channel: https://discord.gg/b3REbeavaT
Guild Wars 20th anniversary is just around the corner. Some of us are expecting an update like the 15th Anniversary one.
I just finished building a Night Routine manager for me and my wife that help us keep alternating who does the toddler night routine. I needed this because we both have evening activities and trying to figure how to block day for it while keeping the routine fair was hard.
https://github.com/Belphemur/night-routine
I wanted to build everything from the ground up in Go and have it fully integrated with Google Calendar where we have our family calendar.
It setup full day event with the name of the parent in charge of the night routine. To override a routine, any of us can just rename the event with the the other parent name and the software recalculate the following routines.
I also wanted to give a try to Roo Code in VS Code it only took me 2 days (evenings) to code the whole thing with a proper sqlite db.
My wife and I alternate and handle conflicts by exception. Meaning, if we have a conflict the other person subs in. I think calendaring things around your home schedule will be hard for the 'things'. Like, a lot of our evening activities are scheduled events that we can't control (concert, theater, etc) or even a group (dad's dinner, etc) and the occasional work stuff. Anyways, I just think it would be hard to plan for the home duties as a conflict and instead we try to sub in for each other and shoot for something that 'feels fair' over time instead of quantitatively fair on a tracker. I'm all for building tools for youself so if you think this would be of use then that's awesome, just thought I'd share my 2 cents on the 'problem space' :)
Also, FWIW, I think I'm the one that is in the deficit of fair although dad's usually get a bad rep in this regard. I end up doing a lot more night time reps because she does frequent girls nights and has multiple friend groups she's trying to stay engaged with and is in a theater group and mahjong group, etc. However, I balance it with my occasional "take an entire day" to myself. Stuff like this is hard to track and why I think it's important to shoot for what 'feels fair' and make sure you talk about it occasionally so nobody suddenly has repressed feelings of inequality.
This is great advice. In our case, we realized we can't trust our memory anymore, it became hard to remember who done it the most.
We wanted both a system that keeps track of it for us. We want to be sure we can both have activities while still not leaving the other parent on the side and rely on feeling.
In our case we also have recurring events like sport in the evening that happens every week at the same time so this help plan around it and not become unbalanced. We already put everything in the calendar :)
Still plugging away on my linear genetic programming experiments.
The big debate in my head right now is whether a next byte prediction architecture is better or worse than full sequence prediction.
The benefit of next byte prediction is that we only expect 1 byte of information to be produced per execution of the UTM program. The implication here is that the program probably doesn't need a whole lot of interpreter cycles to figure out this single byte each time (given reasonable context size). However, the downside is that you only get 256 levels of signal to work with at tournament selection time. There isn't much gradient when comparing candidates on a specific task.
The full sequence prediction architecture is expected to produce the entire output (i.e., context window size) for each UTM program invocation. This implies that we may need a much larger # of interpreter cycles to play with each time. However, we get a far richer gradient to work with at fitness compare time (100-1000 bytes).
Other options could involve bringing BPE into my life, but I really want to try to think different for now. If I take the bitter lesson as strongly as possible, tokenization and related techniques (next token prediction) could be framed as clever tricks that a different computational model could avoid.
I'm building a website for watching TV news channels from about the world.
https://worldnews24.tv/
With the recent flurry of historic events unfolding, I want to see it from different perspectives (e.g. U.S., Europe, Russia, China, pro-Palestine vs Pro-Israel), therefore I included channels from all these areas, even channels that may be considered propaganda. So keep a critical eye when watching them.
And it's a way for me to try out Vidstack and SvelteKit. Feels like the routing can be improved though.
A website that provides transparency into the new/used car market in Australia: https://carvalue.app/
The goal is to allow anyone to know how much any car is worth at a given age/mileage, and eventually help people make better purchasing decisions.
Be warned: It's still a very buggy prototype at this stage and the data confidence for all but the most popular models is low!
I use CarGurus in the US to find used cars since you can very effectively filter on features and lifespan (age/mileage). Worth thinking about - used-car buyers might be after a specific year-range/model or only after a body type and set of features.
Where do you get the data from?
Have been building drawDB[1] for a while now. It's a database schema visualizer. Currently working on adding support for oracle databases. Wrote a parser[2] to allow importing from oracle sql. Have been struggling with motivation though, the pieces are pretty much there but I've been procrastinating on putting it all together. This has been my main side project for almost 2 years now.. I miss the feeling of novelty.. but can't come up with something worth building..idk
[1] https://github.com/drawdb-io/drawdb
[2] https://github.com/1ilit/oracle-sql-parser
Seems useful, why isn't this more popular?
I love playing solitaire card games. But got sick of all privacy intrusive, subscription, ad-riddled crap out there. So I combined learning macOS/iOS development with doing my own games the way I want them (currently Klondike and Spider); https://menubar.games (originally I intended them to only be accessible through the menubar, but got carried away when I realized how easy it was to make iOS versions).
Will continue to refine and possibly do more - love iterating and polishing as a way to learn.
I have recently started working on a swi-prolog library for unit aware arithmetic[1]. It is still very bare bone (especially in documentation), but I started writing some examples[2] to showcase the library. It is essentially a port of the mp-units[3] library in c++. It was a lot of fun, and I found prolog especially well suited for manipulating symbolic representation of units and quantities.
[1] https://github.com/kwon-young/units
[2] https://github.com/kwon-young/units/blob/master/examples/spe...
[3] https://mpusz.github.io/mp-units/latest/
We're increasing the brain's restorative function during sleep.
Over the last 4.5 years, we've been developing slow-wave enhancement technology which increases the effectiveness of deep sleep.
We've developed the full stack, our own hardware, soft conductive dry (no paste or gel) electrodes, comfortable EEG headband, embedded sleep stage classification and stimulation models, the list goes on and on.
We're currently ramping up for a pre-sale, and getting the marketing inline, along with finalizing industrial design, prepping for manufacturing, etc, etc,
Very excited to see this as I’ve been struggling to increase my amount of deep sleep each night. I sleep 7.5 hours, but only get an average of 1 hour of deep sleep. What’s the timeline look like?
So something that I wrote about in a recent blog post[1], we don't increase the amount of TIME in deep sleep. We increase the restorative function (synchronous firing of neurons) without altering sleep time.
We'll be launching a pre-sale once we complete our fit testing (end of Q2 '25) and shipping Q4.
[1] https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/is-8-hours-of-sleep-the...
Good use of tech. Hardest thing will be corrosion on the fabric electrodes. Muse S has much to teach if you haven't looked at them yet.
We don't use fabric electrodes, we've developed our own conductive silicone. The other thing to learn from Muse S is that mastoid (over ear) electrodes are nearly impossible. We have comb electrodes similar to dreem.
Though, I don't think corrosion is the issue with Muse S, the electrodes tear as I understand it. Either way, they are not robust enough.
Very interesting, what do you estimate the price will be?
We'll be competitive to the high end of other wearable devices (think Oura/Whoop). We aim to make the starting price affordable by offering a subscription plan, though we are also considering a "full fare" for people who hate subscriptions, but that would be considerably more up front.
I'm currently trying to transition from a fairly rigid day job into working as an independent developer. The goal is to build useful online tools and hopefully create a sustainable income stream doing something I find more engaging.
One consistent annoyance in my professional work has been dealing with PDFs – specifically, extracting information into editable formats without losing structure. Copy-pasting often creates a mess.
So, my first project tackling this is an online PDF to Markdown converter: https://pdftomarkdown.pro/
I've focused heavily on trying to maintain good formatting for headings, text flow, formulas, and especially table structure (getting rows/columns right in Markdown). It also has an online editor for quick modifications after conversion.
A key aspect for me was privacy: the application explicitly does not save the content of uploaded PDFs or the generated Markdown files. It only stores minimal metadata (email, filename, page count) for registered users' plan limits.
It's very much a "scratching my own itch" project born out of that PDF frustration. Early days, but hoping it proves useful for others too.
Hey! You sound like an interesting person and I'd like to learn more about your path of transition from employee to an entrepreneur.
I couldn't find a way to contact you, so if you feel like it, drop me an email (email on my website in profile).
I've often wanted a bulk tool that takes the title or some other easy to find value from a pdf and renames the file to that.
Appreciate you sharing that requirement!
The need for batch processing to pull out targeted data points from PDFs (rather than converting the whole document) is a valuable insight.
While the current tool focuses on full conversion to Markdown, enhancing https://pdftomarkdown.pro/ to handle specific data extraction tasks like yours is definitely something I'll consider carefully for the future roadmap. Thanks for highlighting it!
Unfortunately, PDFs are right buggers to work with and there often isn't an "easy to find value" for anything
You're absolutely right, PDFs can be incredibly tricky. That lack of a consistent, easily parsable structure for arbitrary data is the core challenge.
I mean easy in the PDF sense. I have folders full of randomString.pdf and name(15).pdf but those that share a folder all have the same layout.
I'm working on an order and production management system for a company that fulfills orders for print-on-demand ecommerce sites. It handles things like graphics manipulation, imposition layouts (gang sheets), cutlines, printing, order batching and tracking during the production and fulfillment stages (barcodes) and everything necessary from what an order is received via API to when it is shipped.
I've been re-energized to work on some programming things I'd mostly left on the shelf or only picked up once in a blue moon on some quiet weekends. Mostly this is all thanks to LLMs and how enjoyable tools like Claude Code can be to use (when they actually give you what you want!), and how much more social they make the experience for me.
Not a professional developer so I suspect these projects look a lot more like slugging through mud and trying to navigate through a maze in a pitch black environment, and I've found these tools to be helpful especially in small refactorings that would normally result in me just slowly losing interest in the project.
Anyways, https://pianobooth.com is the latest one! Gave me an excuse to learn some Blender as well. It'll play your midi files (well, it might play your midi file) and show the notes being played on a keyboard. :)
Lots of room for improvement. It now works on most of the midi files I've tried, but it's still glitchy and buggy. But at least it works sometimes!
This is great well done! I was literally chatting to an llm about what it'd take to make something just like this on the weekend :)
Thank you!
Maybe I'll finally get some of the more obvious improvements done and have something a bit more polished this week. :)
I am working on a guitar practice app[1]. It's a metronome that captures speed and duration as you practice. This data can then be visualized. It's designed to be used on a desktop/laptop as there are keyboard shortcuts for easily controlling the metronome while playing the instrument, but otherwise it works quite well in mobile browsers too.
It started as a personal project a few months back. Since then, I have been using it myself, alongside building the functionality I need. Lately I have been working on polishing it up in order to put it out there for others.
Based on my usage so far, I've come to realize some good second order effects too -
1. having a list of exercises helps me quickly pick something meaningful to practice rather than noodling for most of the time.
2. At the end of a practice session, the total duration is just 15-20 mins yet it feels like quality practice. So now, even if I have just 20-30 mins of free time, I am motivated to squeeze in a quick practice session. Turns out, this is a game changer (at least for myself).
Feature wise, I'm quite happy with the current state of it although I have some ideas for premium features (if it generates enough interest). In the coming weeks, I am planning to switch gears a bit and focus more on marketing/promotion. I also need to play more, because ironically, my practice time has reduced in the last few weeks in the pursuit of "launching" it! Also, I've set a goal to publish one new exercise in the library every week until the end of this year.
[1]: https://www.captrice.io
https://github.com/Tombert/swanbar
https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-22-swaybar/
I wanted some extra functionality for the Swaybar in the Sway Window Manager. I got a basic thing working with Bash, but I wanted more stuff, and so I rewrote it in Clojure with GraalVM.
I think it's kind of cool, I ended up with a fairly elaborate async framework with multimethods and lots of configuration, and the entire thing has almost no "real" blocking, and can persist state so that it can survive restarts.
The reason for async support was so that I can easily have my Swaybar ping HTTP endpoints and display stuff, without it affecting the synchronous data in the bar. I have TTLs in order to rate-limit stuff, and also have click-event support.
Right now, I have it ping OpenAI to generate a stupid inspirational quote based on something from a list of about two-hundred topics. Right now on the top of my bar it says:
> "Let the flame-grilled passion of life's challenges be your fuel for success" - Patty Royale
I think it's kind of cool, it's building with Nix so it should be reproducible, and with GraalVM, it hovers at around 12-15 megs of RAM on my machine.
Really interesting. I'm bookmarking your comment for later.
One thing you can do is separate the information fetching from your bar completely. I have a service that runs every minute or so to fetch available updates from the arch repositories (including aur), it writes its output to a file and then my bar regularly updates it's displayed information based on that file.
I don't have the service definition uploaded anywhere, but you can see how simple it is to then integrate it with anything here [1]. This is a status bar I'm building with qml. It's not ready to be released yet, I'm at 0.7.0. Only tested on x11/i3wm so far. Last time I launched it in wayland/sway, there were some issues but it's been a while since. Since it's built with qt complex and non-blocking interactions are available out of the box. For example, switching workspace by clicking an icon in the bar, or switching the format of the displayed date time.
[1] https://git.sr.ht/~hantz/buffalo/refs/0.7.0
Yeah, the current design is kind of an iterative process; I started with a considerably simpler thing that just had the clock and date and currently selected program, and then I thought it might be neat to try and add add some async stuff and it ballooned from there.
I do have the state persisted in a msgpack binary, but the data fetching is done within the app. I don’t know that separating it out would necessarily be better, I kind of like that I have the pipeline set up on such a way that the fetching for sync and async stuff can be reused.
I am debating rewriting this to use the slightly lower level NIO selector class instead of core.async, but the memory on this is low enough to where I am not sure that it’s worth it.
I have been writing a lot of helper apps in Rust for Sway as well, mostly as an excuse to play with Rust more [1] [2].
I will take a look at your stuff. I have wanted an excuse to learn a bit more about Qt.
[1] https://github.com/Tombert/rs-new-sway-workspace
[2] https://github.com/Tombert/sway-workspace-indexer
I'm vibe coding a "social media engine."
Basically, I've noticed a bunch of social media protocols like ATProtocol, ActivityPub and Nostr are coming out and I think while having these protocols is a good idea, one thing limiting adoption is lack of differentiated social media sites on these protocols. Basically everyone keeps building twitter on a new protocol without offering anything novel. One bottleneck, I thought, is that there isn't a set of utilities to help build a new social network easily so everyone defaults to building twitter as an MVP. I wanted to make an engine, kind of like a game engine, but to make a custom social media for any particular protocol. Hypothetically this should make it so that development for these kinds of projects go way faster. Basically, like a very opinionated django rest framework. Hopefully developers will build more interesting, novel sites and increase adoption for these protocols
Sounds good
I just released an iPhone app called "KIN: Family Calendar" (https://www.kincalendar.com/). It is a Voice-first, AI-Native Shared Family Calendar. Actually, it is simply a replacement for Fridge Calendar. It solves one problem really well:
Capture everything going on in the Family.
Let me elaborate. Families attempt to use a Shared Calendar when things get hectic, but they don't capture everything going on, because most of these events are just too tedious to enter into a traditional Calendar. Voice Assistants are not tailored to capture the kinds of Events that families have. Examples below. So, families either don't use a Calendar, or one person in the family ends up spending too much time keeping everything in sync.
Examples of flexible events that KIN can handle: 1. Aditi has School board meeting on second Tuesday of every month. 2. Aadi has chess on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 7, and Saturdays at 11. 3. Rushi has after-school Soccer every Wednesday starting April 3rd, for 10 weeks. 4. Create events from Screenshots or Photos.
Coming in next Release: - Send Reminders to other members in the Family! e.g, Remind Aditi to pick up Rushi from School tomorrow at 3 pm.
Not much :)
Which I think is a valid answer. I have a job, family and some health issues.
The main thing I am looking at is blogging. Just posts on a problem I solved that week at work kind of thing. Seems like a low time cost way to promote myself. I might dip my toe in the cooking fat of linkedin engagement using the posts.
As much as that is yuk I feel it may be beneficial. Just need one linked in lurker to be impressed and hire me in a few years time!
And by not posting about AI or working 200 hour weeks I might stand out :)
I think that is a fantastic idea! I would be happy to see your blog take shape. Blogging is something I genuinely enjoy, as it allows me to put my thoughts into tangible form.
Considering quitting my mind-melting corporate job to have the freedom of mind to pursue another attempt of starting my own business. So the decision is, what I'm working on. Background: they announced large scale restructurings last week and that could be my chance of getting some money for leaving (region beta paradox in full swing here).
Anyone else?
Today is my second last day of employment - resigned recently for the same reason. Feels exciting and nerve wrecking at the same time
I wish you luck :)
Same thing. I was happy (?) until a guy from Minnesota went out of his cage to micromanage me. I took cash and left.
Boss of guy from Minnesota was kicked out of the company. I'm told the guy from Minnesota is now sooooo much nicer now.
Yes, in that I have the time but need something meaningful to build with it. Let me know if you might need a partner.
Just working through @munificent's excellent Crafting Interpreters book. I am currently plugging away at the end of the tree walking interpreter section (add your own feature).
https://craftinginterpreters.com/
https://github.com/svieira/crafting-interpreters
(1) Photography: I did two events last month, an indoor track meet
https://www.yogile.com/strides-of-march-2025
and Dragon Day at Cornell, where I am spooling out pictures to
https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social and https://mastodon.social/@UP8
I'm excited that I'm getting paid to do an event next week because that's been one of my goals. I feel like I'm really progressing at understanding event venues to pair up interesting foregrounds with meaningful backgrounds as well as painting events in a strongly positive light when other photographers might do otherwise.
(2) Coding: I have several applications that use arangodb, a document/graph database that unfortunately, like most innovative databases of the 2010s, has a terrible license. I don't feel I can either commercialize or open source these things so I am switching them over to use JSONB support in Postgres. I am building an adaption layer that works like "python-arango"
https://docs.python-arango.com/en/main/
this is not a complete replacement because I'm not using many features like Pregel or Foxx and in some ways it is more functional because it supports primary keys being integers or uuids. Out of about 50 AQL queries I think there is just 1 that might be challenging to write in SQLAlchemy. It's interesting in that I am triangulating between the implementation being simple, being able to modify my applications if necessary, and also developing the API that I really want in the long term.
I’m writing an interpreter for the Starlark language in pure Kotlin (no JVM dependencies).
I had this idea in mind for some time already, it began with me wanting to build a simple programming language (and learn in the process) and interest in Bazel. I got started about a month ago by going through the Crafting Interpreters book by Bob Nystrom (it’s crazy good), but now Im straying further and further away from it.
Overall I find the project a great mixture of fun and challenging.
It’s a private repo for now because it’s in a pretty rough state, and is still missing a lot of stuff, but I will release as OSS at some point. That said if someone would like it could be fun:)
An entirely open-source, peer-based accounting package intended for accountants and end users who like the way that certain popular accounting software used to be, with control placed in the user's hands whether they want to run it locally like a desktop app, cloud-based, or some combination thereof. (You can insert a few buzzwords like "blockchain" if that appeals to you.)
After spending a few years developing it for internal purposes, a customer decided to contribute a significant amount to its ongoing, open-source development, plus additional closed-source commercial add-on modules for their own use: making the accounting software useful for very specific industries.
Currently it's piloted running payroll & profit/loss/balance sheet for a handful of small businesses, with the rest of the usual modules (accounts payable, invoicing, quoting, etc.) slated for release this year.
Technology stack is currently Python plus Preact; "severless" architecture where each node maintains a replica of the data involved and can replicate it to other nodes. User interfaces is either CLI or web-based, with an eye towards eventually replicating the desktop user experience of popular accounting packages of times past. We are taking a hard look at shifting from Python to Rust simply as we rely heavily on third-party packages, and Rust is where a lot of the active development in that space is going.
The most fun I had was finding a module written in Perl and Postscript, porting the Perl part to Python, and realising the existing Postscript was excellent and needed no improvement. (Our team now has more Postscript competency than we ever planned to have.)
If you're interested, see my profile for an email and put "HN" in the subject.
I am building https://www.videocrawl.dev/, an AI companion web application that enhances the video-watching and learning experience. Since I primarily learn from videos, I built this to improve my learning workflow. It is free to use.
It offers standard features like chatting with videos, summarization, FAQs, note-taking, and extracting sources mentioned in the video. We're taking it a step further by extracting relevant information from video frames and making it easily accessible.
I've been working (on and off) on part 2 of my blog post series on the rigid body collisions [0] for over a year now. I burned out on it a few times and got super mega stuck on one particular section for months on end. I think I've finally broken through the worst of my writer's block, so there might be light at the end of the tunnel!
[0]: https://www.sassnow.ski/rigid-body-collisions/1
RankPic (https://www.rankpic.info) is an app to help users crowdsource their best photo. I've been building over the past 3 years. It's grown into a lovely community of people who help each other pick their best pictures for dating apps, professional photos etc.
I've seen some pretty fun novel use cases, such as (multiple!) people using it to pick out glasses, wedding invites & so on -- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rankpic-photo-ranking/id160299... (ios) -- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.rankpic.ra... (android)
Great idea, validate before getting validation on social media. nice.
Thank you!
Still in the earliest R&D phase, but working on a multiplayer voxel game. I don’t intend to share it widely, just something for me and family/friends to play.
I mostly wanted an excuse to play with shaders and WebRTC, but I also like the idea of being a sort of “dungeon master” but instead of writing a campaign, I populate the world through procedural rules, and adjust the rules based on how we all end up playing as we go, adding things to stumble upon and keep it fresh in an organic way.
I've been working on extending Postgres to run on top of FoundationDB, effectively turning Postgres into a distributed database with all the modern features one would expect. Hoping to release an initial version for people to try out very soon!
Can you provide more info? Use-cases, how would it work, where will you publish it?
Sure! So my prototype is implemented as a Postgres extension that hooks into transaction as well table and index storage and implements them on top of FoundationDB.
This makes Postgres itself stateless and all data storage and transaction processing is handled by FoundationDB, turning Postgres into a fully distributed database akin to CockroachDB and others.
This has a number of advantages: - Simple horizontal scaling simply by adding more nodes, including automatic sharding (no need for Citus or similar) - Distributed and strictly serializable transactions across all your data - Automatic replication for durability and read performance. No need to set up read replicas or configure your client to route queries to them. - Built-in fault tolerance that can handle node failures and full zone outages. No need to configure replication and failovers. - Multi-tenancy through FoundationDB's built-in tenants feature
All this while not just maintaining Postgres compatibility but actually being Postgres, so hopefully all the features/extensions you know and love will be supported.
I'm planning on publishing to this repo if you want to keep an eye on it: https://github.com/fabianlindfors/pgfdb. Likely won't publish any of the source at first but just some instructions for testing it out.
I'm building https://www.themoonlight.io/en with a small team of four - it s an AI aided PDF reader, designed to make research papers more accessible :)
Lately, I've seen a growing interest in academic content from non-researchers, so I'm focusing on features like automatic summarization and LaTeX math explanation to lower the barrier. I hope this helps more people engage with research and ultimately push global innovation forward.
If anyone is interested, here's a quick 1 minute demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1i8Yp_APbg Feedback is always welcome!
https://pagecord.com
Blogging by email. The best way to blog.
Pagecord makes blogging so effortless you'll want to write more. Publish posts by sending an email (or use the Pagecord app). Your readers can follow you by RSS, or subscribe to your posts by email.
Share long-form posts or short stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Both look great!
Pagecord is independent, open source and built to last :)
Great idea!
Thank you!
What happens if you combine a full Dungeons & Dragons rules engine with an LLM to act as the dungeon master? Until the recent wave of reasoning models, the answer was mostly 'nothing coherent', but Claude 3.7 with thinking is very good at this! It will probably get rate limited with minimal traffic, but I have a demo up at https://lairsandllamas.com
Working part-time on Lungy, the breathing app I developed whilst working as a doctor during COVID - https://www.lungy.app/
Also, very interested in synthetic biology atm, I’m taking HTGAA - https://www.media.mit.edu/courses/htgaa/
How did you get access to HTGAA? I’ve really wanted to take this course but all of the videos and resources seem locked
Are you able to access last year's: https://howtogrowalmostanything.notion.site/
Otherwise, look out in Jan / Feb next year for applications to be a 'committed listener'.
Yes! This one works. Thank you so much!
Working on a tool to remember things I read.
You select some text with your phone and share it with my app, then the shared text is reformulated to a flashcard (with the help of a llm).
You can then browse your flashcards in the app, but I’m also working on ways to show the cards to you with less friction: Like on the phone lock screen or on the face of your watch.
https://komihag.com
This is really cool. Any chance you can make the backend selfhostable with ollama as an option for the LLM?
Two things:
1. A Haskell client library for Tigerbeetle db: https://github.com/agentultra/tigerbeetle-hs
2. smolstore, the smallest possible event sourcing database: https://github.com/agentultra/smolstore
I work on a LLM driven 3d bin packer: https://3dpack.ing
I'm adding zsh shell completion to my CLI framework ( https://github.com/bbkane/warg/tree/bbkane/the-flattening-2-... )!
I'm writing bigger CLIs with it now and I want to tab through their subcommands and flags, as well as allow customization - suggest values for the current flag based on previous flags' values.
It's been a lot of work (9 months of quite limited side project time)- I had to rearchitect significant parts of the parsing to keep more state around, and learn how I want to approach communication with zsh, but I just need to add some tests and an option or two more and it'll be good enough for most CLIs I wrote.
Oddly enough, I'm procrastinating actually finishing it. I've really enjoyed the "grind" for this feature, and I'm also taking the time to clean up the API if I think of better versions. Being able to noodle around with no pressure (except internal) to deliver keeps the joy in programming going for me.
But, after this is done and integrated into my CLIs, I plan to take a left turn and try to add really good OTEL tracing and visualization to my CLIs- I think I can outut OTEL traces to log files and then embed logdy.dev subcommands for really nice searching and visualization.
I recently launched SpiesInDC, a Cold War history subscription service that delivers reproductions of historical documents and speeches, maps, photos, and even coins and stamps to your real mailbox. I have always loved reading about Cold War history, and I'm an avid stamp collector, so I combined the two together and people really seem to love it.
https://spiesindc.com/
Very cool man. Love this!
I'm working on the next big version of my timer app[0]. I'm adding a Watch companion app.
While doing that, I realized that I actually have some fundamental issues with my architecture.
When I find myself playing whack-a-mole with bugs (especially with a Watch app), then I know the fundamentals are suspect (the app is one that has been in the App Store for over a decade, in one form or another, so it does have some bitrot).
So I'm redoing the engine, and will probably substantially rewrite the app, itself.
[0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/ambiamara
I'm working on Cali Challenge. A calisthenics workout app with a daily challenge that gradually increases in difficulty. It guides you through the different progression levels of core calisthenics moves like push-ups, pull-ups, and dips.
This is a cool idea; like to give it a try!
Thanks! I'll pop you a DM on here when I've got it up on the app stores.
I would use that!
Awesome! If you don't mind, I'll drop you a DM when I've got a beta version ready.
Please count me in too!
I will, thanks for the interest!
Working on getting my life back together.
I've been more or less sick for the most of Q1/25. Always some cold, coughing, sometimes worse. Went to work nevertheless most of the time (stupid, I know), because... I don't know. Guess I think work is more important because it gives me the feeling of being good at something and worth it.
Didn't take much care about eathing healthy, getting my gym routine done or even enough sleep. Lots of other stress, too.
Not sure how much I can change from Q2/2025 on but I'll have to start optimistic. Some clouds are clearing up, some problems and issues are gone or being taken care of, can only go up from here.
All the best for everyone.
thank you for sharing this, as someone going through a rough Q1 too, it's nice to hold this feeling with someone else across the universe as well. Onwards and upwards.
You're welcome. Would have loved to tell something more positive.
Going to work while sick exposes everyone there to whatever you have. That’s a very careless act.
Yes, that's true, not very responsible, nothing to argue about.
Currently, when my brain lets me, I am working on redoing my entire home network infrastructure. My network cupboard is a mess, and I've been slowly CADing and test-printing parts for a 8.5 inch server rack system. I've managed to get some nice side rails, and I'm currently doing some test prints for a mount for a Lenovo M700 computer, which I like for lightweight server stuff (the one I have is currently running my homeassistant and a couple of other docker things, and I'm going to be buying another to use as a NAS). I'm also slowly working on rewriting my website backend to pull projects off external drives, reformat them into blog pages and automatically update my website to use them. Currently I'm still at the early testing stage, and I have quite a way to go, but the basic parts are there.
The 8.5 inch racking system was inspired by Jeff Geerling's video about 10 inch rack, but shrunk even further to allow me to fit it on my 3D printer bed (8.6 inch square). I currently have parts for the top and bottom of the rack, as well as 1U and 2U expansions that you can slot together to make the rack as tall as you want. I'm also thinking about making a side attachment system so you can clip fans onto the side or similar. Once I have a working rack with several units in it, I'll probably end up publishing the parts and a writeup about it
are you using https://zoo.dev/ to help create the cad files? they have a text to cad tool
No, I'm using OnShape to model it manually. If I can't work out how to model something, I probably won't be able to describe it to an LLM for it to attempt to convert to CAD
Want to build a platform to alleviate chronic suffering that can't be understood by one's local doctor.
Suggestions by this platform wouldn't interfere with treatment protocol straight away; it wouldn't ask the patient to stop medicines their doctor has prescribed, or itself prescribe scheduled drugs.
It will suggest complementary interventions. Case in point: anxiety, depression, brain degeneration & other related diseases - there's Rhonda Patrick's protocol of HIIT exercises to breach the blood-brain barrier & deliver positive effects; there's Dr Chris Palmer's method of looking at metabolism & mental health jointly & benefits of a keto diet to solve such issues.
Likewise, there can suggestions from Yoga-Pranayama where deep breathing can solve insomnia & hence other diseases downstream such as hypertension in many cases.
After being on such complementary protocols, the patient's suffering will be reduced, but also the body will heal enough to an extent that their local doctor could reduce/stop medication.
The tech is in the platform, combing through wisdom of all such complementary protocols for a start. If it gains traction, we could start involving experts have system route some queries specifically to them.
I have experience building the ML-LLM part. Anyone wants to join me and build the full stack part?
- there could be a community angle too; with someone in another part of the world suggesting possible remedies. This can take a reddit/quora-for-personal diseases form.
You should consider adding contact info to your profile.
A modern SQL client for web devs. Deeply integrated with your workflow (vscode, drizzle, supabase, etc), a nicer more schema-aware GUI (think Airtable), and smarter ways to save queries and export/share them.
A lot planned, not much built. Just started so follow along if it sounds useful! Also see my prior thoughts on the topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41286912
Sqratch - https://github.com/jkcorrea/sqratch
I am working on Navi, an open source digital twin that helps you review the digital notes you've taken in the past week:
https://github.com/Melvillian/navi
Checkout out the README; it gives you a straightforward idea of how Navi works. Currently only works for Notion, but the idea is to make any notetaking tool (Obsidian, Evernote, Google docs, etc...) be ingestable by Navi.
Next steps are to make an SRS plugin, and to make a HTMX-based website so it's useable beyond just the CLI.
https://gitlab.com/actions3/actions3 - desktop application for displaying AWS metrics and CloudWatch Logs.
I'm doing it for my personal use, but maybe someone will find it useful too ;)
A JVM written in go. [0] We're committed to a high-quality implementation that works reliably--so our test code is > 2.x the size of our production code. We can already run lots of classes, but the finished product won't be ready for alpha testing until, we hope!, end of this year.
[0] jacobin.org
I'm still working on Habitat. It's a free and open source, self-hosted social platform for local communities. The plan is for it to be federated, but that's a while off yet.
I finally cracked ansible/docker-compose provisioning on Ubuntu and plan to expand that out to support Debian also. The groundwork is there. I can finally see an official release in the distant horizon, I just need to put those quality of life features in now, like the ability to delete your own account, change your email address, notifications on comments and all that stuff.
- The idea: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/location-based-social-net...
- A build update and plan: https://carlnewton.github.io/posts/building-habitat/
- The repository: https://github.com/carlnewton/habitat
- The project board: https://github.com/users/carlnewton/projects/2
Would you recommend your tool to use with a single instance for a local community that won't be interested in federating? I mean self hosting by one person, likely via docker, exposing to a few hundred people, not federating at all, all data should be kept within the community, not public.
If yes, do you think it's already mature enough to give it a spin?
> all data should be kept within the community, not public.
I would recommend it for everything you said except for this part. Everything posted is publicly visible by design. I'm afraid I have no intention of changing that. You're free to fork it if you want though.
GitGuard (https://gitguard.dev)
Basically it’s a way to enforce custom policy rules on GitHub PRs without writing any scripts or maintaining any custom Actions. It’s got all of the customization that you wish GitHub’s built in branch protections had.
Things like “make sure the frontend tests pass if there are frontend code changes” or “require 2 approvals only if there are no test files added” are trivial to write and enforce.
I’ve been building https://lowlow.bot, it tracks price changes on any website. I was inspired by https://camelcamelcamel.com, but wanted something that worked for more than just Amazon.
It’s been handy for big purchases I’m ok waiting for and stocking up on recurring non-perishable essentials when they go on sale. It also lets me know when something has come back in stock.
I’ll use it!
Please share feedback if you have any!
I am working on a FOSS google tasks alternative for android with unix-like aesthetics and my desire to take some inspiration from the windows mobile app designs. It's just 84kb apk at the with reproducible build system and also downloadable from IzzyOnDroid fdroid repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/io.github.ronynn.ka...
It's privacy focussed and does not connects to the internet, your notes stay on device which you can backup and import into other devices, and I am working on a quick qr share features too.
My idea was that there are almost no android apps with this kind of design vision even though there are fans of this design out there as can be seen with the trend of people modifying their termux startup screens and the huge downloads of windows mobile styled launchers. And so I want to make a design system that provides an open source go to system for others to make apps with this design
Source code: https://github.com/ronynn/karui
RubyExamples.com [1]
Got inspired by Go by Example [1] while learning Go. Realised there's nothing for Ruby like that and decided to build.
Goal is to have simple urls for one-click navigation for each topic where the page covers a single topic briefly with examples, with relevant links and historic artifacts (for example, it links to the "Programming with Nothing" talk in procs/lamdba page [3]).
It's still a work in progress and I'm not rushing it.
The examples are all my own. It's easy to do with AI, but I'm not going that way. I'm explaining things based on my own 12+ years of ruby experience.
Like GoByExample, this is also desktop only, but mobile-friendly is on the roadmap. The CSS also will change to be someting like RailsGuides. Might also add a video for each topic explaining the code.
[1] - https://rubyexamples.com/ [2] - https://gobyexample.com/ [3] - https://rubyexamples.com/p_and_l
I'm continuing to update my already published ebooks. Apart from catching up to new software versions, it also helps to address typos and other issues found by my readers.
Last week I published a new version for my awk ebook (https://learnbyexample.github.io/cli-text-processing-awk-ann...) and today I'll start working on sed ebook.
I am continuing work on https://reliquary.se - a VPN for the hackers - based on my fully privilege separated and sandboxed VPN sanctum (https://sanctum.se).
It is shaping up nicely towards an actual 1.0 release in the near future, with a little less keccak based AEADs this time around. It was a fun experiment but in the end I have yet to do any cryptanalysis on it or provide security proofs for it - neither which I have time for at this point - so the swap to AES was expected on my end.
For fun I also added a fully e2e p2p voice chat client on top of this as the sanctum protocol is now available as a library (https://github.com/jorisvink/libkyrka) - this voice chat works with one or multiple peers and can is available at https://github.com/jorisvink/confessions.
Either way, I guess you can say I'm having a little bit too much fun with this.
I'm building pgflow, a Postgres-native workflow orchestration engine that keeps the entire DAG's state and orchestration logic inside the database, while a dedicated task queue worker (Edge Worker) handles execution.
This split minimizes external dependencies and makes it easy to manage complex pipelines without leaving PostgreSQL.
I started pgflow because I wanted a fully integrated, Supabase-based system (no separate servers!) for reliable, parallel workflows which keep state in postgres so I can trigger flows from triggers and stream their progress via Supabase Realtime.
Started protytyping it in early November, released serverless task queue worker in January and I'm currently polishing the flow orchestrator pieces, releasing an alpha version in upcoming weeks.
If you're curious:
- More on Twitter/X: @pgflow_dev (https://x.com/pgflow_dev)
- Edge Worker docs (will get flow orchestration docs included soon): https://pgflow.dev
Reddit updates:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Supabase/comments/1jfrky2/huge_mile...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Supabase/comments/1ij9jcl/introduci...
Happy to discuss or collaborate if anyone's interested!
Committed some heresy last week while testing OpenBSD 7.7-beta snapshots on an Apple M1 MacBook Air.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brynet_openbsd-activity-73074...
https://bsky.app/profile/brynet.ca/post/3lklnbwihpk2d
bsd? on a macbook? well I never!
But that's not even the heresy bit!
I'm working on DeskPal. The project still needs a lot of polishing, so it's in private for now. Here is a part of its README. # DESKPAL
## What is DeskPal? DeskPal stands for Desktop Companion - exactly as it sounds: A companion for your desktop.
It's a gadget that will: - Display your media info (From Spotify, etc. - more sources to be added) - Display time - Connect to your phone and display notifications (TBD) - Function as a StreamDeck-like device (TBD)
All of these features should work right out of the box, without installing any new apps on phone or computer: - You can use it with your company laptop, or even with no computer at all - An app may be needed to configure some settings (like StreamDeck macros - TBD)
## Hardware & Software Inside DeskPal is an ESP32S3 MCU that supports both WiFi and BLE. The current configuration has 16MB Flash memory and 8MB of SRAM.
DeskPal runs on Zephyr RTOS, a RTOS that is heavily supported by many vendors. Using Zephyr allows us to leverage a vast ecosystem of hardware drivers and enables easy porting of this project to other MCUs if needed.
DeskPal's software architecture allows adding dynamic apps so that we can install or remove functionality without firmware updates.
I'm working on a small project to bring plain-old-telephones back into our children's lives. Quick, screen-less connections with grandparents, cousins, and friends is as quick as picking up the phone and pressing one button. Imagine that.
https://www.beanstalk.club/
Also consider the elder spectrum. As my father grows older with eye and coordination issues, he cannot use the intricacies of a smart phone.
A GNSS receiver written in Rust. It takes as input IQ data from an rtl-sdr device (or equivalent). It decodes the GPS L1 C/A signal, but I hope to augment it so that it handles Galileo and the other constellations.
It's still a work in progres: https://github.com/mx4/gnss-rcv/
We’re building AI PSY HELP – an AI-powered mental health assistant offering 24/7 anonymous support via voice and text, without appointments or waiting. It’s used by 100,000+ people in Ukraine, including veterans, teens, and first responders.
The AI is trained on 40,000+ hours of real psychotherapy sessions and provides individualized emotional guidance to help users manage stress, anxiety, and trauma. We partner with public institutions to deliver large-scale support and just launched a B2B program for employers.
Now preparing for EU expansion (starting with Germany), mobile app rollout, and voice interaction in Ukrainian. This is not just a chatbot – it’s scalable mental health infrastructure.
→ https://ai.psyhelp.info → https://chat.psyhelp.info → https://chat.dev.psyhelp.info (+voice)
How did you get people to agree to training a chatbot on their sessions? That strikes me as extremely intimate text. Is it a "it's in the T&Cs" deal, or did you seek a separate opt-in?
I'm askng because the answer will shed light on the level of privacy "the average consumer" is comfortable with.
Great question, and I fully agree — privacy in mental health is sacred.
We don’t train on user chats directly. Instead, we collaborate with a team of 42 certified psychologists who work with us to curate anonymized case structures, decision trees, and response strategies based on real but depersonalized therapeutic experience.
These professionals help us model how psychological support is provided — without ever using actual user conversations. Our system is trained on synthesized, anonymized session data that reflects best practices, not private logs.
It’s not buried in the T&Cs — we’re very explicit about our commitment to data ethics and user safety. No session data is used for model training, and user interaction is fully confidential and never stored in a way that links it to identities.
Our goal is to make high-quality support available without compromising trust. Let me know if you’d like more technical or ethical detail — happy to share!
That's a first rate response - and a very thoughtful way to preserve anonymity. Thanks, I appreciate it.
Those decision trees sound interesting - are you, essentially, integrating an LLM and an expert system?
Exactly —
We combine the flexibility of an LLM with a structured layer of expert-driven decision trees and psychological frameworks. This hybrid approach lets us preserve nuance and personalization while maintaining safety, boundaries, and clinical integrity.
The decision tree layer is used both to steer responses contextually and to define escalation protocols (e.g., for suicidal ideation, PTSD triggers, or crisis states). It’s informed by standardized practices like CBT, trauma therapy, and psychological first aid, co-developed with our licensed psychologists.
So yes — think of it as an LLM augmented by a domain-specific expert system, designed for real-world psychological use.
Happy to share more if you’re interested in how we’re scaling this across multilingual and cultural contexts)
No need to go any further - to be honest it's one of those problems I'b be too risk-averse to tackle. But thanks, it was very interesting to hear about your approach.
We're building https://tripjam.com after being frustrated with planning trips in regular group chats and trying to organize information across multiple apps. It combines:
- Group chat that keeps all travel discussions in one thread
- Interactive maps where everyone can pin locations and add notes
- Collaborative itineraries that sync with your calendar
- AI travel assistant that suggests activities and helps optimize your plans
I couldn't find your Privacy Policy so I didn't register. Did I miss it?
Should be linked at the bottom of our landing page. Thanks for taking a look!
Got it, thanks. I appreciate no data is shared with third parties. Good on you.
I've used Notational Velocity for years, but couldn't get a working binary on latest MacOS/Chips and the newer variants I found seem to miss the mark on what made Notational Velocity great (imo).
So I'm working on an electron version[1] that has what I remember of the core UX. I wasn't the best user of NV – I'm sure it had features that I didn't use. If there are features that it had that you used, I'd certainly like to be aware of them.
[1]: https://github.com/ralphsaunders/nv-electron
I'm writing a fictional spy thriller book that takes place in the early 1990s in two countries. I'm about 100 pages in, and expect the end product to be about 200 pages long. Not sure how I'm going to publish it yet; suggestions welcome!
Here's a synopsis of the plot, redacted since I've already revealed too much :)
-----, a college student from ----- majoring in -----, graduates from university and is recruited to work for a mysterious company that has links to -----. Initially hired as a translator, his talent with electronics get noticed quickly and his superiors begin training him for a covert overseas operation in which he will visit ----- as an exchange student while really serving as a spy.
With a soft spot for ----- culture, he is excited to visit ----- for the first time. Although he is fully aware he could be killed or imprisoned there, his confidence in his ----- language skills, plus a bit of youthful naiveté, make him jump at the chance. As he carries out his mission in -----, he uncovers a tangled web of family secrets.
I'm working on a GenAI learning platform (focusing on software engineering). I want it to not suck, not to be another LLM wrapper. I will make it public as soon as I find it useful myself.
- Semi-automated job finder for a job site focused on non-mainstream programming languages [1]. - Eiffel-inspired programming language [2].
It's hard to juggle between the two.
[1] https://beyond-tabs.com [2] https://github.com/andreamancuso/rivar-lang
Very nice on both! I've long had an affinity for non-mainstream programming languages (mostly those with Wirth lineage). I wish there were more projects that used them.
We're building a repairable and fireproof e-bike battery! https://gouach.com
I'm learning FreeCAD and 3D printing. My goals are to be able to print involute gears, and eventually various mechanical arithmetic devices, leading up to a mechanical version of my BitGrid. Also, I want to make an Armstrong shaper.
A friend gifted me a large box of semiconductors, and I'll be testing 7400 and 4000 series chips for the next week once my T48 EPROM Burner/IC tester shows up.
I'm working on a geography guessing game. This is mostly in order to learn the technologies that the team I manage is working on, as I don't get as much hands-on time as I'd like at work. But it's a fun game and it's improving at a rapid clip. I'd love your feedback.
https://guesshole.com/
Really fun, I love playing GeoGuessr, but really like the idea of using videos.
Some notes on the UI:
* I found the 50/50 split between video / map a bit annoying, especially on a 13" MacBook
* The volume slider takes up a lot of valuable space, and felt like your normal scrubber to scroll through the video
* Once you confirm a location, the whole UI changes again
* Overall (especially on my smaller screen), there was a lot of scrolling involved to get to buttons
I’ve been building Velty[1] over the past year as a tool to tame my ever-growing YouTube subscriptions. It’s a web app (PWA) that lets you organize your YouTube channels and videos into folders (with sub-folders), and view all the latest videos in one chronological feed with powerful filtering/sorting.
I built it because I was frustrated with how hard it was to manage a large number of channel subscriptions using YouTube’s default interface.
https://velty.app
This is great! It's very close to something I desperately want to exist: a way to peruse the YouTube videos' my friends are watching.
My algo often gets bad, and the best recommendations for YouTube videos come from friends' suggestions. And sometimes I just want to be recommended something totally different than what my algo would know about.
Would it be possible to add that feature?
The idea behind Velty is to let you consume your YouTube videos mainly in chronological order, without being at the mercy of the YouTube algorithm.
Sorry, I don’t plan to add that feature.
I've got a couple different things I've been hacking on on and off over the last few months.
The one that's furthest along is a database and (currently extremely crude) webapp for asking interesting data type questions about Lotus setlists. I built a little scraper for Nugs and have all their setlists, I just need to take it further and get some of the queries I want implemented and put some kind of halfway decent interface in front.
I also built a little app that uses your Claude API key to generate "generative art," so you send in a prompt and it sends back some visualization code and renders it. It's fun to mess with but I haven't seen anything come out that's wowed me yet.
Got some other little hackeries going too, a lot of my recent hacking time has gone towards getting the -arr apps and their whole little ecosystem set up on my home server. I got a little N100 machine back in December and have been having tons of fun hosting little docker gewgaws.
A DNS zone management tool, made for having decent interface when using coredns as authoritative DNS: https://github.com/holysoles/zoneforge
Also considering working on a traefik plugin + helm chart for sending LLMs that ignore robots.txt to a tarpit like iocaine/nepenthes
I have a startup idea and I’m curious what others think.
Setting up AI agents is way too complicated. I am constantly being sent to GitHub pages with installation instructions that require way too many dependencies, API connections, and more. We’re talking hours of setup and config.
So what if there was an open-source marketplace where you could just search, find an agent, click deploy, get launched into an already configured agent, and just have it do its thing? Essentially a marketplace discoverablity, automated deployment infrastructure and an interface to manage your agents.
I’d also probably create some kind of open-source solution, probably a custom Docker container, so developers can easily build agents and wrap them in a container and upload them for deployment.
Thoughts? Does anything like this already exist?
P.S. No, I don’t want to build or use another crappy AI agent builder. I want to deploy open-source agents already built by actual developers.
Currently rewiring some my home's electricity so I can monitor my PV power production locally (without the shitty built in Chinese cloud garbage with hardcoded wifi passwords).
Using the Shelly Pro EM for energy monitoring (it has 2 CT clamps, one is going on the PV output, the other on the grid input).
The data will be collected in Home Assistant on a HA Green device. Additionally, we have "smart" electricity meters here, these have a port which can be used to fine grained power & gas monitoring, should be possible to integrate that into Home Assistant as well.
It's not anything particularly challenging, it's mostly refactoring my electrical distribution board to make room for the Shelly device, routing ethernet cables, and installing some power sockets and a network switch to tie everything together.
3D Drone Wargame.
(https://horus.sh)
I'm developing a wargame-like 3D simulator designed to train AI drones into elite stealth pilots. By integrating reinforcement learning techniques and utilizing real-life local landscape data, the simulator offers highly realistic mission scenarios.
I've been working since November on an integration between a Quest VR app called Fluid, and MacOS and Windows hosts. The app itself is called Fluid Link, launched just after new years, and has been rolled into official Fluid offerings. It supports full desktop and individual window streaming into the Quest app, shared keyboard and mouse control, and unlike competitor apps also supports multiple hosts and cross platform clipboard sync.
Fluid's website is https://fluid.so and Fluid Link is available for download at https://fluid.so/fluid-link
Fluid is currently free (until tomorrow?) and Fluid Link is free to try up to 15 minutes at a time, with no restrictions on functionality. There's a discord server and in-app support chat for support questions, and videos demonstrating Installation and usage on YouTube.
I'm just drawing stuff, including a comic book about a future run by horrible AIs that find they get the best response from humans when they present as horrible, unctuous clowns.
http://egypt.urnash.com
If you have lots of money to burn and want to support a queer artist in the Gulf South, I have a Patreon.
I'm working on scraper bot filtering software! https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis. This week I'm going to publish the plans for building binary packages (both distribution-specific packages and tarballs full of binaries).
I have been curating a gaming newsletter for a little over 5 years now called The Gaming Pub - https://thegamingpub.com/
This year, I started my first original content, Unmuted, which is a series of interviews with regular gamers about how gaming is part of their lives and their gaming habits. It's going pretty good so far with 2 interviews done. This is the latest one: https://www.thegamingpub.com/features/unmuted-002-mateus-kar...
The hardest part is sourcing the people to be interviewed.
Unmuted is a great name. I like the concept of interviewing regular people, kinda like Manuel's People and Blogs series.
Working on Circuitscript, a language based on python to describe electronic schematics/circuits: https://circuitscript.net/
The motivation for creating Circuitscript is to describe schematics in terms of code rather than graphical UIs. I have used different CAD packages extensively (Allegro, Altium, KiCAD) in the past and wanted to spend more time thinking about the schematic design itself rather than fiddling around with GUIs.
The main language goals are to be easy to write and reason, generated graphical schematics should be displayed according to how the designer wishes so and to encourage code reuse.
Currently trying to improve the docs and also release an online IDE. Please check it out and I look forward to feedback!
I have been working on Hostup, with which I recently got accepted into Antler's residency program.
It's currently an upsell management and fulfillment platform built for hosts and property managers who list on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other travel websites. My goal is to make staying at Airbnbs as great as staying at a hotel (without the downsides) by building experiences for guests.
This currently includes the ability for the hosts to offer things like meal plans, at-home massages, etc. In the future, it will help them offer a faster check-in process, make personal recommendations, add interactive guides, and maybe even neighbourhood treasure hunts that involve other travelers.
[1] https://hostup.ae [2] https://antler.co
Working on a small SQL-based streaming ETL tool.
It reads from a replication stream and allows you to trim/enrich the replicated data by running SQL queries from the database, then writing the result out to another database (also using a custom SQL query, so it's easy to do upserts or joining with other data on the destination database).
It's working really well, and I'm just sprucing up logging and documentation a bit before making the source code public on github. The idea is for it to be a much simpler alternative to things like Debezium for small to medium sized projects.
Currently supports postgres for input, and postgres and clickhouse for output with more databases coming down the road.
I have way too many things that catch my interest, but right now I am designing a paper and aluminum foil based linear electric motor. The idea is to create an electromechanical display that pushes a colored piece of paper into place to create a pixel, and see if this can be done cheaply and at scale. The electronics that I have selected look very promising, all I have to do is test the idea and see if this is worth pursuing further.
I've been working on a documentation system that improves how AI assistants understand project context. The problem I'm solving is that traditional documentation approaches are too fragmented for AI to effectively process.
After struggling with vague outputs from AI coding assistants, I started experimenting with MECE principles (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) to organize technical documentation hierarchically. Think of it as creating a "mental model" for AI rather than just reference docs.
Some early results: - 40% reduction in back-and-forth iterations with AI assistants - Much more consistent code style and architectural patterns - Better preservation of domain knowledge across the project
Currently refining the metadata structure and creating templates for different project types. The system works especially well with Cursor AI and similar assistants that can process structured context.
If anyone else is exploring this space of "AI-optimized documentation," I'd love to exchange notes.
I have 2 fronts actually:
1. Hardware a. Trying to create my own mechanical keyboard: already modeled, how finding a suitable printer. b. Waiting for a display to arrive so I can wire into my digital calendar. c. Waiting my modem HAT to arrive to go to phase 2 of my self hosted server.
1. Software a. Preparing my next blog post. b. Working on my distro.
References:
- Blog: https://blog.terminal.pink - Distro: https://terminal.pink/lin0/tree/index.html
NB: I know my certificate expired.
I am trying to finish the first draft of my whodunnit novel, before I hit the two-year anniversary from when I started out. I've had good periods with streaks where I write 45 minutes in the morning, but also longer periods where the project lies dormant. 100 pages in so far.
I'm working on adding something like https://graphtoy.com/ to my lisp-based 3D art tool https://bauble.studio/. It's really useful to visualize functions like this, especially when writing animation curves that vary over time.
It's easy to add it as a plain overlay over the screen if you're graphing a function, but I really want it to be able to plot arbitrary expressions with free variables where it just infers the axes, so you can just see values overload in the orthographic view (press alt-q to see that). That way you can just write something like (ss p.x 0 10 | graph) on any expression and visualize it as you go. I haven't quite figured out how to make it seamless though...
I've seen Bauble before, although not sure where. Love your work
I'm working on https://reynote.com (not optimized for mobile in case you want to try it out).
It's an AI-powered relationship coach supported by an specialized AI swarm following integrative therapy principles. It started off by me thinking "how would an AI relationship therapist work if they could see both sides of an argument" to me reading up a lot about integrative therapy, experimenting with various AI agent architectures and landing on this approach now.
I'm pretty happy now with how it works. Even my wife, which is not really into AI and is a coach herself is using it regularly.
I'm building and running a Bluesky analytics and post scheduler site, with a couple of tools on top. The network is showing good growth and promise at 33M users at the moment so I'm optimistic about it.
https://theblue.social
Cool man
A language learning platform for Arabic.
https://parallel-arabic.com/about https://github.com/selmetwa/parallel-arabic
I've been working on an open source game backend for Unity and Godot: https://trytalo.com. GitHub: https://github.com/talodev.
I'm aiming to solve the problem of wanting to build a game but having to build all these extra "other" systems around it (leaderboards, stats/analytics, saving and loading game state).
Right now you can drop Talo into your game for player management, authentication, leaderboards, analytics, game saves and player segmentation. There's a dashboard too so you can visualise all of your game's data.
I got really good at rxjs and saw a way to make a custom jsx transform where every element is an Observable of string. I've been using it to make my site/blog and just got done writing a mini self contained jira board to iron out the interactivity aspects.
Since it's strings, I just render to file for backend static site generation, then frontend I use diffDom library to do efficient (enough) updates from html string without destroying dom state.
It works really well, but I also don't allow inline event listeners (they make everything much harder), so I've been learning how to leverage event delegation. All in all a pretty fun side project.
You've sent me down a really interesting rabbit hole as someone who is trying to move away from just writing and understanding how React works. Can you explain a little more why this felt worth pursuing? I'm interested in what sorts of advantages this could have.
Sure! Some ideas come to mind:
1. Async and conditional effects without hopping component boundaries with switchMap
2. React.Context ritual vs oneliner `pipe(shareReplay)` - this is easily the most useful thing, in lines of code alone
3. React is used shallowly for jsx and html, and rxjs is used for events and state and quite literally everything not writing to the dom.
4. Lazy by default, no need for suspense bc it's inherit property of observables.
5. Merge and combineLatest give you algebraic tools for constructing your logic instead of stringing components down a subtree
6. Scan but that's just inline redux reducer but I use it all the time
7. Observables are on standards track for HTMLElements in browser. - element.when('click').map/filter/takeUntil etc.
I view react as promises--. You have to do wildly hacky things using custom API ideas that change between majors, can only use sync functions, yet all your logic is async. It's like the function coloring problem on steroids.
The maiden voyage of my blog will be soon, it's first big write up will be the test page for this jsx transform, then I'm gonna be writing a field guide for how to translate between react and rxjs.
Incredibly good reference imo: https://dev.to/mfp22/rxjs-can-save-your-codebase-49fi
Tried to make this concise but I'm on mobile
A lead generator called snappy leads: https://snappyleads.co.uk/
Input: The website of a company. Any company. Apple.com or Ycombinator.com if you want.
Output: The verified email of every Apple/YC employee we've managed to find. Works for linkedin profiles too — put a linkedin profile in, you get a verified email out.
It's currently cheap as fuck ($10/mo) because it's a hacky piece of software. It doesn't work every time, but it gets improved every 48 hours so it'll be really good soon.
We're also teaching people how to hack sales and advertising, stuff like how to get a 30% response rate with targeted cold email. Basically everyone who's bought a subscription gets a lesson once per week. I've got 10 years of experience teaching skills, so in my opinion it's cool.
Join the discord server here if you want to talk about that: https://discord.gg/2RNwH8ta4A
If you want proof that I can even write an email as good as that: https://imgur.com/a/z9gNgGH
I'm working on Botnet of Ares [0], an incremental hacking game set in a cyberpunk world where everything is connected.
[0] https://tiniuc.com/botnet-of-ares/
I've been dipping my toe further into gamedev. Been working on a game/maybe minimal engine? Been writing about it on a site. It uses a basic raycaster style rendering with billboard sprite. Shout out to pikuma for getting me started down this path. But started as C, tried it in Zig and ended up rewriting the whole thing in C++. Front page of the site has a little demo scene. Dev log contains just some mad scribblings about thing I am doing, thinking about, and trying.
https://forgottenelixir.com
While reading AI Engineering[1], I was inspired to take a crack at an idea I've had for a while - diffusion-based LLM. The accessibility of shakespeare.txt[2] and the proliferation of tinyGPT implementations has made vibe-coding LLM research on the brink of possibility. It does help to have a familiarity in the datascience/ML/AI space in order to check and guide appropriately, but it's amazing how well the virtuous cycle is beginning to work.
1. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/ai-engineering/97810981...
2. https://gist.github.com/blakesanie/dde3a2b7e698f52f389532b4b...
I'm building a lock-free deque in Rust. I'm not sure what you might need it for, or that it will even pan out to be functional, but, it's a start.
https://github.com/meltyness/joque
For the last while I've been working on a link sharing site that allows you to follow subsets of someone's tags, rather than the whole person. It's a kind of "alts by default", moving counter to the audience capture of so many social media sites that forces you to over-simplify yourself.
Reverse chronological is sacrosanct, and it will never have ads (there is a recently added subscription option). I plan to do a proper launch soon but I'll admit anyone who signs up to the waitlist from this post.
I've already found so many cool resources from it and we literally just got our 1000th post!
Other fun milestones:
[x] First user I don't know
[x] First paying customer
[x] First user to surpass my usage
[ ] First lynkmi marriage
Check it out at https://lynkmi.com/
I wrote a small business preventive maintenance and calibration tracker (https://pmcal.net) as a side project.
A few manufacturing companies that I have a close relationship with are using it and love it, but I have kind of hit a wall with other growth avenues (Google Ads, organic promotion on the web).
I have been thinking of marketing directly to ISO 9001 auditors, because “can you get email reminders” is a question they have asked at multiple companies I have worked at. I feel like cold mailing them something branded (e.g. notepads) might work, but I am not sure how much money I want to spend on it if it doesn’t and it’s also a bit nerve-wracking to put myself out there like that.
Thats really nice. I think I want to install this on a small Raspi at the end of a baseball bat and use it to assault some customers.
Nice. A calibration tracker is actually on my list of possible future projects :-) I'm surprised to see it here since it's not typical HN fare!
Thank you. My day job is as an engineer in manufacturing so I felt like I had a unique opportunity to "build what I know" and have seen people use and enjoy.
It's a worthwhile project to build yourself. If nothing else I found out that I definitely do not like the date-fns library in JavaScript. I built it using AWS Amplify, and although I like that it scales to zero, but I think there are too many gotchas to Amplify, and especially DynamoDB, for a startup app that you want to move quickly on. I wrote up one of the major ones after I got really frustrated. [1]
Like I said in my original post, I am trying to figure out how to get it in front of the right people (who are less likely to be on HN). I have kind of decided that the B2C sales experience is not great unless you get a critical mass; my experience doing sales in manufacturing is working the booth at trade shows, talking to people about engineering, and using our process tools to develop a solution to the customer's problem. The more scattered "compete for attention" advertising/promotion sales model doesn't seem great unless you have a lot of money behind it.
I'm rambling, but if anyone likes this or feels it needs a certain feature, feel free to reach out. If you're in Boston / Providence I'll happily grab a drink with you.
[1] https://gist.github.com/rchowe/1db32f1f26d74688a9b4083a19f6a...
Two places that might be useful to learn about additional pain points or features, if you haven't tried them yet:
reddit /r/manufacturing
PracticalMachinist.com has a Metrology section and there's always a healthy discussion going on in the General forum.
Thank you for this. I have been on r/manufacturing and if someone asks for a solution like this I am ready with a link :) I will check out the forum.
I have been working towards building and understanding the shift in search / information retrieval.
To that end, I just did a show HN on a couple of my projects
What if google did not focus on hyper commercialisation? 10 Blue links, but sorted by how they answer your query- https://www.unlob.com
Can we answer questions with lesser hallucinations? A snippet cited answer engine which only picks links that focus on answering your query - https://www.unzoi.com
I am building DollarDeploy [1] - platform to deploy apps to your own server. Think of it as a Vercel but without serverless or public cloud confusing pricing - DollarDeploy + VPS of your choice. DD supports NextJS, React, Python, Docker Compose apps. NextJS and React runs without docker and deploy super fast - around 1min from GitHub push to live with HTPPS, Postgres and Redis db alongside.
Currently in progress of implementing DevOps AI which will configure properly your deployment based on the source code.
- [1] https://dollardeploy.com
I love this!
I am finishing up a 32 year old stretch project (as of this month). 99.9% sure I nailed it. Technically a 42 year old project, but it took me 10 years to find the right way to think about it and craft a formal definition.
The theory seems to check, but I can't/won't be convinced until the tools based on it are complete and working without friction or exception. Many times it has felt like I was tilting at windmills, but every challenge eventually caved.
An epic (for me) black triangle moment approaches! (Discovered that term here on HN.) An algorithmic triad the color of space without light is a poetic, but not misleading description.
Wish me luck!
I am curious about the project. Can you provide a clear description?
It is something I can build a business with, without being transparent about the technical advantage. So perhaps I shouldn't have commented here. But it is a milestone moment, a big milestone after a long haul, and the "What are you working on" subject on this particular month hit me in a celebratory way.
On the business side, things seem to be well lined up.
So my apologies for being indirect. Not trying to be "mysterious".
I just favorited your comment. So at any moment I feel I can be more straightforward I will reply to any comment you make in any other thread. That will be a good moment too.
In what field?
Information theory, with practical applications.
You got this
I made an RSS reader. I have an idea for an infinite canvas dashboard that I meant to use for various things other than RSS because I wanted something to put on my touchscreen portable monitor and projector.
I tried to make the dashboard experience really seamless and even used a physics engine in there. I think I did achieve this though, but I ended up spending more time on the UI than the dashboard contents. IMO infinite canvas UIs are not utilized enough.
Try it out and tell me what you think. Currently, it only shows what I put up there.
https://nitbit.dev/zoopboard
Working on ʻŌlelo Honua, a free and open-source internationalization (i18n) tool that uses AI to translate app content. Now building a CLI so it can integrate seamlessly with tools like Shopify and other platforms. The goal is to make localization effortless for developers without relying on expensive translation services.
https://www.olelohonua.com
Would love feedback—especially on CLI features you'd find useful!
A reactive computational notebook with an effect system. Kinda like a "factorio for workflow processes." I want to use it to build backend pipelines or AI RAG pipelines. I'd be able to replay network effects for debugging. It is multiplayer and can be easily deployed to a server.
I'd always found web app backends to eventually need something that chained background jobs together. And inevitably, it was something bespoke without a lot of observability. It was always frustrating to maintain. And while building AI RAG pipelines, I've run into the same problems.
I don't know how people are so smart here. You people are really so incredibly clever and driven. I've found myself in a data analyst job where we do lots of python and linux stuff. That's cool and all but I am such an exhausted and deeply demotivated person. I don't know what to do next with my career. I am largely banking on building strong passive income streams. I don't think I'm in the right job or career - but I don't know what I'd do otherwise. I am not sure I can afford to do an apprenticeship. Maybe I should speak to a psychologist.
That is probably a great idea!
I just finished adding support for ChatGPT's new GPT4o image generator to <https://martiansoftware.com/chatkeeper> and it's working great. Testing it over the next few days and then it'll be ready for release.
This is a tool meant for heavy users of ChatGPT who want to sync their *entire* conversation history to local markdown files. If that describes you, I invite you to check it out!
My side project now is a websockets based dashboard that acts as a todo list for my easily distracted children in the morning. The tv remote is an lg one that can be used as a mouse, and they pop the tasks on the screen. I used chatgpt to generate some kawaii style stickers (think big eyes and sparkes). They love it. The reward is (in the morning at least) however many Blueys they can watch before the predetermined departure time.
A few improvements to go, but from what I hear from other parents (without raising it) is that they'd take advantage of something like this.
Sounds very cool! Are you displaying this on a dedicated screen or using an app on a lg tv?
Just using the TV web browser. Do you have kids? Mine are so easily distracted in the mornings. It spawned from the bewilderment of them having so few jobs to do in the morning (compared to us parents) and the complete lack of focus
I developed multi-ssh, it's a command-line utility designed to simplify the management of simultaneous SSH connections to multiple remote servers. It leverages tmux to create organized sessions, allowing you to interact with servers in separate panes within a single window or in individual windows per server. Features include synchronized input across panes, executing commands on all servers, copying files using rsync, and customizable configurations via a config file.
https://github.com/arakis/multi-ssh
Thank you for this. I’ve been baffled by how many of the usual tools are a poor fit for persisting work over SSH across multiple servers.
I'm working on a combined registration and timing system [0] for motorsports organizers, mostly rallycross atm. Most RX organizers in CA are using it now. In 2023 32 events ran their timing with it!
It's designed to save organizers time and solve reg & timing problems I got tired of dealing with as a competitor.
Soon I'll be adding QR code support, so we can just scan a QR code on your helmet or car at lap (which helps handle multi driver cars etc).
I plan to rebrand it into other verticals later.
[0] https://sidewaysdata.com
I've been "Vibe Coding" this weekend with the vibe of a micromanaging tech lead or PM. Actually, it's not terrible if you just accept that you need to treat the AI like a year 0 engineer who is really good at googling.
I've run the project through cline and roo. Also tried Claude 3.7 and the 1M context Gemni 2.5 pro model. I'd say Gemini is less creative. But it's still good.
I can see how it is a productivity booster. Or at least it gives you the illusion of one. Really I think best part of it is just building out detailed documentation. That's really the killer app for me.
Try `deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-0324` from 7 days ago.
I am currently working on and beta testing an app called Malak. It is an opensource version of Visible VC/Carta/Angelist. as a previous founder, toolings to send and manage investors' updates, decks, fundraising and others were ridiculously expensive and now I have built one completely open sourced but I have an hosted cloud version.
Product live at https://malak.vc OSS source code at https://github.com/ayinke-llc/malak
Hyper-V as a Service ish?
I have a use case to have a need to provision at will hyper-v instances for others to have control over fully. I've looked into proper things for things like SCVMM and Azure local and really they do suck..
So off to build a set of automation scripts to provision hyper-v inside of hyper-v attached to S2D shares and give students admin access to them and work in teams to build things on their own.
Its going to suck... I've done this exact use case using openstack, incus, proxmox and they all kinda suck...
I need project isolation, I need freedom, I need compliance.
The compliance is where I'm stuck with hyper-v due to the powers to be....
Wish me luck!
I'm working on Dronygon, a map of cool drone flying locations.
Well I just put it live couple of days ago, now I'm just starting to post my own locations.
Had this idea when I wanted to take my drone out but didn't know where to go. And as a plus I really wanted to learn more about working with maps and geolocation for an upcoming project, so this was a perfect way to learn it and make something useful.
https://dronygon.com/
I've been working on a decentralized group chat called River[1], which will be the first truly decentralized group chat and the flagship application on Freenet[1], a general purpose platform for decentralized apps.
Just 2 or 3 bugs remaining before people can start playing with both River and Freenet which hopefully means we're days away (touch wood).
[1] https://github.com/freenet/river [2] https://freenet.org/
Working on a schema migration tool for tortoise-orm (Python async ORM)
https://github.com/tortoise/tortoise-orm/
I’m wrapping up the final audio plug-in in my “Loudness Series” which was designed to bring compressors and limiters into modernity by upgrading their circuitry to using LUFS and True Peak in place of RMS/Peak.
The final plugin is an equalizer which will be focused on loudness but expand the filtering to include more advanced equal loudness contours.
https://apu.software
I'm building an experimental a JSX-like language that embraces more functional features --- has stronger type guarantees that TS, ADTs, and pattern matching, but it's also more familiar than alternatives like Elm (or, I would argue, even Rescript).
My current tag line is "JS with guardrails, without footguns"
https://chicory-lang.github.io/
https://github.com/chicory-lang/compiler
I've got two main projects I'm working concurrently on in my free time:
- Repairing an Apple II+. So far I've converted it to run on 230V and picked up the A2DVI to connect to modern displays. Next working on cleaning up the floppy drives and repairing the one that doesn't work.
- Reverse engineering the Tandy Z-PDA. I want to be able to synchronize with modern desktop Linux applications, and also eventually write my own PEN/GEOS applications for the PDA.
I continue to build the best hardware product design firm in the world. We have designed surgical robots, implanted devices including blood pumps, down bore oil drilling robots, high volume disposables, helped companies bring injection molding in house. On and on.
We are based in the SOMA neighborhood of SF and would love to help anyone with their hardware!!
http://www.iancollmceachern.com http://www.goldebgatemolders.com
You need to include the https :// part of the url for it to be recognised.
I've been and still working on code input (https://codeinput.com). A merge conflict resolution tool that integrates with GitHub. I'm close to move from an alpha to a beta and hopefully it'll be ready to launch in a couple months time. If you dread merge conflicts, or currently have a Pull Request stuck in a conflict state, give it a try. I should re-mention it is still in an alpha state and might bug out during the process.
We are working on a fast reading font which works by using just opentype features (no server or other script required)
https://github.com/Born2Root/Fast-Font
We also created some emoji fonts: https://github.com/Born2Root/Feature-Fonts
I've been working on a free, in-browser "pre" video editor. Upload your clip, use a transcript interface to cut it down to the takes and salient bits you want to keep, then export your cuts to FCP or Resolve to complete your editing. This tool saves me about 25-30% of my editing time.
Uses transformers.js & WebGPU for running transcription, so it's pretty fast. It's still a bit rough around the edges, so I'm looking for feedback.
https://matcha.video
Writing a book on my unique theory on human psychology based on cynicism, military theory, and evolution.
Is has helped me to address all of my problems, from mental health to productivity to learning across all domains like economics, writing, coding, marketing.
Writing daily blog posts, and then piecing together everything into the book. https://www.moderncynicism.com/
Working on an embedded DSL for writing typed LLM workflows in Haskell: https://github.com/outervation/promptyped . It handles the "LLM in a loop" structuring for e.g. forcing an LLM to keep making changes in a loop until unit tests pass, and custom validation so the LLM is forced to retry a task if the validation fails (validation can include using a LLM to check the result, or plain Haskell function, or e.g. running a compiler/unit tests). It also allows structured context management, allowing the user to specify which files are initially provided as context to a task (which may itself be the result of a LLM query), as well as providing the LLM tools to open files it deems relevant, and prompting it to close the least important file when it has too many open (and compressing non-recently-modified source files when many are open).
Currently heavily WIP though and only has a working Go compile/test backend (Go seems particularly easy for smaller LLMs like o3-mini to work with due to being a relatively non-complex language).
I'm working on a few closed source projects that are all built on https://github.com/1backend/1backend, my dream microservices platform I've had in mind for 12 years before starting to implement it.
On the frontend I'm rather happy with Angular but backend-wise I was never really happy. So it was time to build it. Been developing it for more than a year now.
Busy building some personal infrastructure around information. Think mix of scrapping and filtering, scoring and summarization.
Clearly all of the info space is getting ever more polluted and I just don’t trust anyone else (with their own agenda) to manage and filter that for me. If one is to abdicate that sort of responsibility to a system wholesale then I think it has to be fully under one’s control, own data, own design, self hosted etc
A single address space operating system called Fusion¹ implemented in Nim. It currently has the basic building blocks for the kernel. The rest is being built incrementally as time permits. I've also taken the time to document everything I'm doing², which some people found useful.
¹https://github.com/khaledh/fusion
²https://0xc0ffee.netlify.app/osdev
Have been building a design tool for Spatial Computing [0] Me and my co-founder struggled for over a decade working in XR and wanted to simplify the design process for us and everyone else. We've been focused on reducing steps between design iterations by as much as humanly possible. So the tool works live, multi-user, in real-time and immediately across all compatible devices.
Here's a recent example of whats possible from one of our users [1], and a recent project I made for fun that you can try on your iOS [2] or Meta Quest [3] device.
[0]: https://ordinary.space
[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/matt-rice-sennep_mixedreality...
[2]: https://app.ordinary.space/#/share/b2d3d7
[3]: https://app.ordinary.space/#/share/96b9cf
I'm working on a Dutch dictionary for immersion learning; https://hetnederlands.com. Structured outputs combined with react router renders a chain of thought on demand. With most "learners dictionaries", you're limited to the basic words. This enables getting a perfectly laid out learners dictionary explanation of any word in the entire language.
I got frustrated with the current web becoming more and more unusable and made a browser extension to fix that.
It's an addon that allows one to modify any web page behavior. You can write rules for things like redirecting reddit to old reddit or keeping youtube videos playing in the background.
It's like Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey/etc but it works on HTTP request level and can modify scripts/styles/markup before they are ever rendered making it considerably more powerful.
Currently it only works on Firefox (and Firefox Mobile) because it's the only browser that supports the necessary APIs. It's seen its first release already but the UI is a bit lacking :)
AMO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-defuser/
Sources: https://gitlab.com/gear54/web-defuser
Example rules: https://gitlab.com/gear54/web-defuser/-/snippets
I have been bedroom DJing, and wanting to expand what I can do with the hardware I already have.
Using `midiex` for Elixir I’ve written a fully fledged driver for Ableton Push, letting me use it as essentially a 4-deck version of Pioneer’s DDJ-XP2 sub controller with Rekordbox.
It implements basic statefulness so that the rotary encoders can be used, as well as a paging system so the 64 performance pads can be mapped to different functions. It also supports track browsing and loading, which is helpful if you want to use say DVS with an external mixer and don’t want to be hunched over a laptop dragging tracks around.
It’s also got some additional capabilities which I’ve not seen on other hardware like dedicated faders for stem separation levels.
It’s been a great exercise in combing two hobbies, learning about MIDI as well as being able to personalise my setup for my own use. I haven’t open sourced any of it just yet whilst I’m still tweaking things but I’d be interested in collaborating with anyone who also has one of these devices and has programmed it. I’m looking to use the display on it next, whose protocol Ableton have some (albeit scant) documentation for.
Writing a science fiction book this year - after a year of planning (while working on other projects).
Also hoping to find some time to add a feature or two to my Video Hub App
https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
This is probably one of the most redundant project out there, but a RSS reader app designed with Tauri, Sveltekit, Tailwind. I wanted to build this to stay in sync with product development as I don't get to do this a lot in my day-to-day job. I also want to build a game, but it is so much effort. I do wish to pursue it in near future.
https://github.com/rahuldshetty/reader-project/releases/tag/...
I'm working on MindRoot, which is a plugin-focused agent framework with a fully customizable chat UI and swappable services and commands as well as pipes, agents and personas. The goal is to be fully user-friendly while also easily expandable for programmers. And to make it easy to share tool commands and agents. Hopefully someday with a public plugin+agent+persona registry built in.
https://github.com/runvnc/mindroot
Started working on a case discussion platform for students around 18 months ago. Mostly for dentistry and medicine, but it's template-based so works well for other purposes (e.g. teachers, social workers, etc.). It's going well and is being used by three universities right now.
On the way, I developed lightweight image editor and 3D model viewer components, which I've open sourced [1].
[1]: https://github.com/kigun-org/
I have a good understanding of how to create likely-correct software: https://www.osequi.com/studies/list/list.html
Now I'm learning AI/LLMs from the perspective of correctness. So far I have two 'maxims' to guide me:
- AI shines where humans struggle (for prompt engineering)
- An LLM is nothing but an API call (for software engineering with AI)
Working on my plain text cricket live cricket site[1]. Just realised after starting that getting reliable live cricket or sport data is super hard. Tried a paid provider[2] and it’s frustratingly inaccurate. Need to figure out a better way!
Also, figuring out a way to visualise manhattan chart, score worm, wagon wheels etc using plain text ascii
[1] https://criclite.com [2] https://cricdata.org
All kinds of personal FOSS projects I have mostly yet to release.
[1] noscrypt - portable C cryptography library for nostr [2] vnlib - C# + C libraries for server applications, eventual high performance alternative to ASP.NET. It's really just a collection of libraries that are optimized for long running server applications. [3] vncache - vnlib cache extensions and cluster cache server over web-sockets [4] cmnext - self-hosted, vnlib based, json-file CMS + podcast 2.0 server [5] simple-bookmark - kind of deprecated, vnlib based, self hosted bookmark server
My software homepage (most up-to-date) https://www.vaughnnugent.com/resources/software/modules
I know most of yall will probably want GitHub links so here [1] https://github.com/VnUgE/noscrypt [2] https://github.com/VnUgE/vnlib.core [3] https://github.com/VnUgE/VNLib.Data.Caching [4] https://github.com/VnUgE/cmnext [5] https://github.com/VnUgE/simple-bookmark
Https://AppGoblin.info
Free online database of all apps and their third party trackers.
I made an Android app that lists the trackers on your phone.
You can checkout that app by going to https://AppGoblin.info/about and clicking the link there. It is a test url for an open source ad tracking software. (ie track where an install came from, in this case the about page of the site).
Feel free to reach out if you're interested in either project.
Just a friendly ping that your first link is throwing a 502, could be a gentle hug of death? Will check back later, it sounds very intriguing to me!
Thanks! I think it was, though the hug was gentle, haha.
I'm working on a PostScript interpreter. This is a retirement project. I wanted something substantial to sink my teeth into without any commercial pressure. I wanted to see if I could get back that intrinsic motivation that I for had for programming before I started my career. Back in the eighties I worked for the QMS distributor in the UK, QMS were Adobe's second OEM after Apple and made a range of PostScript printers. I was working in support at the time and would never have thought of taking on a project like this.
I have an original Apple LaserWriter which I can use through the serial port (but it won't print). I've pulled the ROM's in it and got them working through the MAME game emulator. This is great as I can debug the 68000 code, for instance I was able to reverse engineer the random number generator and the password for internaldict. Ghostscript is handy as well although I try not to rely on it too much as there are some differences between the two implementations.
The plan is to keep it as close as possible to the LaserWriter so that means level 1. PostScript is quite interesting in that it starts executing PostScript code as soon as you power on the printer. That code is responsible for initialising the printer, handling errors, managing the serial ports then receiving and executing the incoming PostScript job. You can load and dump this internal code with a simple script.
The interpreter is complete along with the 125 programming operators, core types and error handlers. The next stage is the graphics operators. I'm going to target PDF for output as the drawing model is the same as PostScript. I'm assuming that handling the fonts is going to be the bulk of the work.
It's written in Rust, so far about 14,000 lines and 650 unit tests. In some ways it would have been easier in C as I could have followed the exact memory layout in the original interpreter however I really dislike C.
Working on adding features to my app. I wrote BVCalc because I wanted a calculator that would show not only the numerical result value but also show the corresponding algebraic expression that I entered so that I could check for entry mistakes and more easily keep track of calculations. I also wanted this feature to work even when the calculator is in RPN mode. That is, I wanted to be able to use RPN entry, and have the calculator show both the result value and the corresponding algebraic expression (displayed using infix notation, not RPN) for each item on the stack.
I was surprised that such a feature was not available on any existing calculators and so I wrote my own. Runs on macOS, iPhone, and iPad.
BVCalc Lite (free version, no ads): https://apps.apple.com/app/bvcalc-lite/id6544784034
BVCalc (paid version): https://apps.apple.com/app/bvcalc/id6560108221
I've been thinking about hobby projects I can work on in retirement (in a few years) that have a large scope that I would find fun. So, I've started work on a game development library in C that combines a few projects I've started over the years but never finished. It's not very far yet.
I'm building the 2d parts of it in the GLFW library and modern OpenGL (this will eventually also be used as an overlay system when I get to the 3d portions of the project). I'm also adding in simple text menuing so I can quickly build text prototypes of the games so I can also be working on game data structures and basic mechanics while the graphical engine comes together.
So far I've started two basic games, an old school rogue-like on a large scale using tiles and a similar game that combines factory building with the rogue-like parts. I have plans to bring in some other games that will stretch different parts of the engine.
I built an app to help in improving English vocabulary:
https://www.woor.app/
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/woor-vocabulary/id6740453162
Initially started as small webapp to help me learn Dutch words. Made it out of the frustration that in Duolingo I cannot specify the words I want to learn and Quizlet exercising and progression felt limited. I also wanted to target the specific meanings of the words.
Then I decided to try out CapacitorJS and wrapped it into the mobile app. For now only English is available as the target language as it was easier to validate the content, but more languages are coming.
Along with it also started the podcast with language tutors about the teaching & tech. Please find the links here: https://www.woor.app/tutorandtech
To aid my process to shortlist house for purchase I am creating a web app for this.
The app will use genai to extract the details of houses listed for sale and then update my custom database.
For example I can input a youtube url and it will fetch the transcript and use llm to generate Json response based on predefined schema.
I can review and shortlist the houses based on various custom parameters using the web interface.
The mvp is done in a proprietary tech stack, I just need to port it to open source tech stack with React and FastAPI
Hi there, I'm working on something similar for the UK. Happy to chat if you'd be interested in exchanging ideas.
I've been working on a library for Node (using TypeScript) that encrypts environment variables and generates typings for accessing said environment variables.
e.g. you init a project (`obelisq init`) and use `obelisq set -k <key> -v <value>` (e.g. `obelisq set -k SERVICE_KEY -v ABCDEF`) to set your environment variables:
When you run `obelisq generate`, code will be generated that allows you to do this: Partially inspired by my own article: https://www.carlos-menezes.com/post/type-first-configI've been slowly building https://www.hamradiolog.net/
As part of that, I made an ADIF (ham radio logs) parser to learn go. It's more than 2x faster than parsing the same data in json format with the go standard library.
https://github.com/hamradiolog-net/adif
Working on the Monokai Pro website for my color theme for code editors, and the Monokai Pro plugin for JetBrains, which has just been released. Working out some optimizations, which will be pushed in the next update.
Monokai Pro has been running for more than 5 years now for VSCode and Sublime Text, and the original Monokai almost 20 years.
https://monokai.pro
I'm thinking about how to properly test AWS Step Functions. The problem is that I can either mock the entire response for every state in JSON only, or call out to a lambda. What I want is to type check the evaluated JSONPath payload and the mocked JSON response, to ensure that my tests always adheres to global contracts/types written in JSON Schema.
I think it's doable by dynamically creating lambdas based on test cases I define in one way or another, perhaps like mocked integration services, that does nothing but validate if the event from SFN matches a schema, and that the mocked response also matches a schema.
My concern is that I can't find prior projects doing this. My use case is mostly (exclusively at the moment) calling out to lambdas, so perhaps I can get away with this kind of type checking. But it's just weird that something like this doesn't already exist! Past experiences have taught me that if no one have tried it before, my idea is usually not that good.
Let me know what you think!
(Would have liked to use durable execution which totally solves the typing issue, but can't in this case)
Email Sanitization Service based on Dangerzone.
1. User on allow list forwards suspicious email to service directly from their inbox. 2. The email is parsed, opened, and sanitized in a sandbox environment. Attachments are scanned into raw pixel data and then converted to PDF. 3. Reply email with sanitized content is sent back to original sender. 4. Server is rebuilt, forgetting all previous jobs to protect privacy.
- A FOSS Python package for record linkage and deduplication at scale called Splink: https://moj-analytical-services.github.io/splink/
- A library for fast, accurate matching (geocoding) of UK addresses that uses Splink under the hood: https://github.com/RobinL/uk_address_matcher
- An npm library that generates maths mental arithmetic problems that align to the UK national curriculum, that can be used to power maths games: https://github.com/RobinL/maths-game-problem-generator
- A breakout maths game that uses the above: https://github.com/RobinL/maths-game-problem-generator
I'm working on a calorie & macro tracker called FitBee. Tracking my food has been tremendously helpful in terms of improving my health, but it's always been kind of a PITA. These past couple of months have been really exciting as I'm leaning into using AI to make it less of a hassle to track & provide more insights.
https://fitbee.app
I clicked because I have strong opinions about calorie-tracking apps (just since I've tried all of the major ones and know what features I like). I'm impressed! Love the UI.
I'm working on revitalizing a FPGA DSP from my first failed startup. It's a RISC-V processor with a vector machine glued onto the side. It's capable of 30 second rapid testing of new algorithms which normally takes hours in FPGA land. Looking for a clear way to describe this novel approach to DSP.
Reimagining personalized food, prepared on demand and directly from fresh ingredients, as an always available urban utility. A vertically integrated ready to eat food retail and logistics network with order of magnitude improvements to value proposition, unit economics, scalability and risk profile. Consolidating nearly a decade of R&D for US go to market, our systems are way ahead of the competition by footprint (2m²/20ft²), cost per location (~$25K), degree of automation (complete) and drone integration (integrated multi-drone airport with autonomous handover, recharge, precision recapture). Think last mile delivery aggregator with zero people in prep/packaging/pickup/(post FAA BVLOS normalization ~2Q 2026 in some areas)delivery, meaningful personalization, fresher food, and 24×7 operations. Rough complexity ~10K parts BOM. Internal manufacturing. We aim to grow at ~2× historic QSR rates right out of the gate, then accelerate. Simultaneously, spinning off a few industrial ventures filling gaps in what's available on the market we've had to build for ourselves. Prior unicorn. Currently raising for US GTM, email in profile.
I’ve been building two things that kinda go hand-in-hand to scratch a few personal itches. [1] is an interactive fretboard tool for guitarists. I wasn’t quite happy with the way existing tools approached visualization, so I made my own. Too many felt littered with ads or just didn’t work the way I was hoping for.
It goes beyond just plotting notes there are options to show scales using intervals, roots, note names, etc., plus a chord mode that highlights triads, voicings, and inversions. I’ve found it useful for routine practice start the built-in metronome, pick a voicing or scale pattern, and run through it in time.
There are also pages covering theory topics like modes and progressions, but the fretboard’s the main draw. It’s something I built for myself and figured others might get some use out of too. I plan to keep adding to it as I think of more things I want to reference probably adding support for additional strings or tunings next?
The other solves a very specific problem (mostly out of laziness) I do most of my playing using the standalone Neural DSP application on Windows, but I don’t really want to do any mixing in it. So I built a dead simple recording application [2] that doesn’t require firing up a DAW, but still offers a decent UX. It lets me quickly capture riffs and ideas, and later I can just send them to my Mac for mixing if anything seems promising. Haven’t shipped it yet, but I’ve been using it daily and having some friends try it out.
[1] https://www.theorycrvft.com/fretboard
[2] https://theorycrvft.gumroad.com/l/otocapture
That fretboard is amazing! Thanks for working on it and sharing.
I have been filling my brain.
A long time ago I played around with neural net stuff and had some fun making tiny little things. To give an idea of time frame, this was before people were using ReLU.
Going back to it after the recent advances was incredible seeing how much has happened. So many times I'd see something and wondered how I could have missed it the first time only to realise it hadn't been invented yet when I did things last time.
It feels like there is a much higher focus on statistical mathematics now in a way that it permeates everything. That in itself requires a whole lot of new learning to get to grips with, but I also feel like there might be some value in looking at a lot of these things from a different perspective. I think I tend to look at things from a more geometric point of view.
In that vein I have been looking at some transformers using unit n-sphere embeddings with V values as geodesics, just to see what happens.
As I learn new things, I keep finding fun new ideas to muck around with, I'm just an amateur, so I'm not really restricted by areas I look at. Today I'm wondering about whether Wasserstein distance could be quickly approximated by a learnable method (especially if the inputs had access to parts of the ml components that generated the things being Wasserstein compared).
I'm almost certainly treading ground well explored by others, but my way of learning seems to be to rapidly jump between many different things picking up a small understanding of each as I go until I just seem to know things that I didn't before. Focusing on a topic and pushing in that direction never seemed to work for me so much. This is probably why I am an amateur :-)
> I'm almost certainly treading ground well explored by others
This is a good thing. One requires smoothed pathways to run!
I'm building modular home audio speakers. Wireless, self-powered, upgradeable, repairable. Think Sonos meets the Framework laptop. Check out my prelaunch page here:
https://prelaunch.com/projects/audioblocs-audioblocs
This seems cool, but I think many people have been burned by smart speakers of various types. If your system does Spotify and Pandora and such then it's going to have a phone app and then if the phone app enshittifies the entire investment in the 'ecosystem' goes to waste. Nobody wants to throw out their speakers because of software updates.
I think a better smart amplifier could be a good product -- and then people can bring their own speakers. Or you can make great wireless speakers and then people can bring their own amplifier. But the moment the speakers and amp become an 'integrated solution' I hear the e-waste bells toll in the distance.
People have been burned by sonos and don't expect their framework laptop to last more than a couple of years. Meanwhile my 25 year old dumb speakers are still going strong.
I would respectfully disagree with your assertion regarding Framework laptops. Their entire business model is predicated on building computers that DO last more than a few years....
There are plenty of streaming audio amp solutions currently on the market - Wiim builds a nice one. But some of us don't want to run speaker wires through the walls for a home theater.
I've given a lot of thought to building a system that will work without a dedicated internet connection and this system won't require a central server to check-in to. I too have 25+ year old speakers that work just fine (Paradigm Titan's from 1998) and that's partly my inspiration. I wanted more sound from them but there's no way to upgrade traditional passive speakers. I don't want these speakers to be bricked if my company fails. They also don't need an app to work. The TV can control it through the eARC connection.
I appreciate your thoughts!
I'm working full time but looking at these streams outside of work
SaaS - I'm working on this https://prfrmhq.com - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538744 [Show HN: My SaaS for performance reviews setting goals and driving success] - Shows I can use AI and I've integrated into AWS Bedrock - Shows I can integrate with Stripe for payments
Consulting (Architecture, Strategy, Tech) - I'm working on getting my consultancy running but the market is hard atm. https://architectfwd.com
Next SaaS - Starting a SaaS for managing core strategy and tech concepts
I've been thinking about the natural handicaps certain sports teams have. Things like weather, elevation, travel distance in a season, etc.
I think it's interesting to think about how much something like that might affect the career of an athlete, especially early in their career or someone who is on the margin of getting into professional sports. Would choosing to play at a university that has a lot of natural handicaps be the difference between making it into pro sports? I wonder.
Anyway, I ended up making a page showing how much baseball teams in MLB have to travel this season: https://calcubest.com/sports/mlb2025 which I think does an OK job of highlighting how much less time athletes playing on central division teams have to travel.
Working on a text client for the web: https://youtu.be/Q_w6_zDwNWM
JavaScript works, scrolling - but layout is still being figured out! Also missing are form controls, etc etc.
It's meant to just be text (no images, etc) and to work in your terminal. It's NOT meant to alter/condense the layout to something like "reader mode" - just to be a faithful "GUI -> TUI" rendering in the terminal.
Like Lynx, but upgraded for the modern web. So maybe I'll call it Jaguar, but probably not! The idea is that other options like Brow.sh may be overcomplicated, hard to maintain, focused on a kind of graphical fidelity. Whereas this is more BBS style text only, but still usable. Minimum viable text, so to speak.
Leave your email if you want to know when it's ready to try out: https://tally.so/r/wbzYzo
I am working a SaaS document asset management services called Doccie
At the same time I am exploring the boundary of my ability to think deeper
Thus writing a monthly newsletter that will span for 10 years. Right now it has a open rate over 70%
https://connectingdotsessay.substack.com/
Here are the essays
## Eight Grade syndrome - why grand narrative vision is killing your startup
If you think crafting a grand narratives of your idea is the crucial first step of building a startup, this essay is for you.
## Explorer Mindset - In a world where algorithms decide what we see, how can we rediscover the joy of unexpected discoveries?
If you feel trapped in a narrow view point, surrounded by the veil, and lack of creation muse, this article is for you.
## Why I show up everyday. The peddle, podium, creators and us.
If you are interested in why I started this newsletter and what I learned from it so far, this essay is for you.
Any feedback is appreciated!
I'm working on Babla, an open-source tool that helps doctors spend less time on documentation. It transcribes and structures medical conversations automatically. What's cool is the flexibility - you can deploy it with Docker and either run it completely locally with open models for HIPAA compliance or connect to external providers. It exports to multiple formats that work with existing systems. We just launched it as free, open-source software. Now we are looking how to make it even better.
https://notetaker.healthion.dev/
I built https://emojithis.com, which automatically adds emojis to text. Although it’s essentially an AI wrapper, with meaningful UX and some useful touches, there’s something surprisingly useful in there. My friends and I use it a lot, and the people who try it tend to come back!
I'm working on an interactive book that introduces young readers to the world of entrepreneurship. Readers get to join the protagonist, Daphne, on a fun, week-long adventure launching her own mini-businesses. Readers help her make smart decisions, solve fun challenges, and learn about money and problem-solving in the process. Featuring several storylines in a single book, readers learn about the fundamentals of business, smart saving, and the rewards of creative effort.
https://tendollaradventure.com
The book has been a fun endeavor in both writing the manuscript and code! On the latter, I wrote an exporter for Twinery to Org Mode and an Emacs Org export backend to do the reverse.
The book is currently open to beta readers - Happy to let a few more in through the sign up page here: https://tendollaradventure.com/#get-notified
The AI company I've been working at ran out of money last week so I'm taking a month long break.
I've been playing around with defining a standard that is easy to implement for serializing tabular data using the ASCII delimiters.
So far I've got:
Which seems like a good way to avoid all the trouble of escaping separators in CSV files, if a bit clunky since you need to end each record with US RS and each file with US RS GS.I also accidentally found another test that _all_ LLMs fail at (including all the reasoning models): the ability to decide if a given string is derivable from a grammar. I was asking for tests before I started coding and _every_ frontier model gave me obvious garbage. I've not seen such bad performance on such low hanging fruit for automated training in over a year.
Hey, good to see someone using ASCII
Don't forget File Separator 0x1c
This week I got back into Zig. I wanted to build a Zig library from end to end to find out all the wrinkles in publishing it as a package. Ended up building a topological sorting library that does the followings:
- Build dependency graph from dependency pairs.
- Generate the topological sort from the graph.
- Ordered parallel task sets (i.e. subsets of nodes that can run in parallel, within the overall topological order).
- Cycle detection and reporting the cyclical nodes.
https://github.com/williamw520/toposort
It's feature complete, but I still have problem publishing it as a library. Kept getting "unable to find module 'toposort'" error when importing it in a separate project.
Edit: Alright, finally figured out why the module was not published. The default project creation template in Zig 15 uses createModule() in the generated build.zig, which creates a private module. Switched to use addModule() to create a public module and my library can be imported and used by other projects.
I'm working on designing a survey to help assess the degree to which enterprise tech buyers believe that they need to invest in improving data access, metadata management, architecture, storage, and integration as a necessary prerequisite to getting value out of AI investments.
The backstory is that AI investments are proceeding, but companies seem to be struggling to get things into production, so the ROIs are beginning to slip. Where I have first party knowledge, there is a (small sample size) trend of businesses kicking off significant data modernization processes.
Most interesting to me, is that organizations finally seem to be figuring out that it is worth managing "information" for the business and "data" in their applications as separate work streams, and seem to be acting on separating those responsibilities.
It would be interesting to ask if EU companies are now looking for EU based solutions and shunning the US.
We are definitely seeing a renewed interested in "Sovereign Cloud" A.K.A. cloud with local ownership and regional AZs that are regulatorially aware.
Hi folks,
Ive written a simple app [1] that crawls tech corporate sites daily looking for job postings, and sends you an email with the new jobs that match your profile.
The profile matching is currently very basic - just job title category and location(s). There is also a recommendation agent that is yet to be released (WIP).
I would be grateful for feedback and thoughts. So far I have personally (and others) found this to be very helpful in allowing me automate the daily checking of hundreds of sites.
You can also add specific companies to the crawler, which is nice if you are passively looking at specific companies. A possible feature addition might be to limit the search to only pre-defined companies that interest you.
I would appreciate any thoughts and feedback.
[1] https://www.hoofhires.com/
I am writing a newsletter, https://www.clientserver.dev, which started with the writing prompt “what if someone tried to make Money Stuff for software engineering?” I’m still iterating on the format a bit, but I just crossed 100 subscribers and made the Hacker News front page, so I feel like I’m on the right track.
I had a daughter almost 2 years ago, and for a while I didn’t have any free time. But once I started getting a few hours in the evening, I wanted to start up side projects again. I found it frustrating to work on coding projects in 1-2 hour windows. But writing is a little easier; I feel like progress is a little more linear with writing, and having the Monday/Thursday deadline has helped me just ship.
I have been working on an open-source customizable start page like iGoogle or Netvibes (I know I am showing my age with these references)
URL: https://boxento.app/
GitHub: https://github.com/sushaantu/boxento/
A buddy and me have been working on https://microfn.dev for a while: A platform for creating, managing and composing tiny (micro) javascript functions and using them from different places like webhooks, cron, MCP or AI agents.
It's still very heavy in development but the gist is: Say you have a cool idea for something small you want to automate or run - instead of thinking about hosting, workers, lambdas and what not, you just open microfn, open the editor (or the function generator), write your function, hit save - done! All the complexity is tucked away on microfn, and your place of use just has to authenticate with microfn and nothing else. We run it for you and keep you productive.
Now you can use that function from anywhere: From the terminal, periodically with a cron, add it to an AI agent as skill, use it through an MCP (not released yet), through Siri shortcuts, share it with your friends and so on.
Say you want to have an agent or function that gets the weather and sends it through Telegram: You can either quickly generate 2 functions through the AI function generator that get the weather ("I want a function that gets the weather for Tokyo") and another one for sending a message on telegram, or you can use what's already available (such as https://microfn.dev/david/getweathertokyo). Equipping them to an agent works like in a video game - each function is a new "skill" or "tool" the agent can use, and if someone else already has some cool skills, you can fork them without needint to re-implement everything from scratch.
So like a toolbox full of small composable hammers and tools that can be used across different scenarios and places, to be plugged into existing workflows, automation or to even be used in autonomous agents and through MCP.
Again, super heavy in development and not really a 1.0 yet, more like an early alpha, but wanted to share here anyway. Feedback greatly appreciated!
Sounds neat, but please make testing first class - it should be easy to run functions locally, or to have the same code "infrastructure" run in dev/test/prod environments, etc
A website that lets users create and collect digital trading cards (not NFC or blockchain stuff). Currently trying to get the first active artists to join but it's hard. At least its a place for me to create my little artworks.
https://misocards.com
I'm making a log search engine that fits in your pocket: https://humanlog.io/
The idea is to be able to ingest your logs locally and run queries against them without having to resort to a hosted prod-like environment. It's all focused on localdev-first experience. I use it when the o11y tools at work don't do what I need: I can just pull the raw logs locally and run my queries there.
It's still very rough around the edges but it gets better day by day. I want to add features like alerts and monitoring, metrics and tracing. A full o11y platform in a single binary with zero config. I would love any feedback.
(Also please excuse the poor onboarding experience, I haven't polished it as this is a side project and I have a day job)
I'm building an AI DJ for Spotify called Listen to Luther. It's open source here: https://github.com/jacobheric/luther. Currently it responds to prompts with a list of songs that can be queued, played or added to playlists on Spotify. Next I'll give it proper memory and the ability to adjust and remix on the fly. I built it because I was frustrated by the mostly passive experience of Spotify's own AI DJ. There is no path to commercialization here as Spotify's TOS does not permit it (I asked them). So I host it for myself and a few friends and made it open source for anyone who's handy enough to run it themselves.
I've been polishing up an old project that allows people to play games on Discord, e.g. Pokemon, via text chat
I'd love to make this a free/break-even service at some point!
https://github.com/shepherdjerred/discord-plays-pokemon
Dusting off the game I made during the pandemic and trying to actually grow the player base in earnest.
It's turn-based two-player game sorta like chess, but the pieces take up multiple spaces.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/kingbit/id1565583669
I just launched ‘The Phonics App’ to teach kids phonics.
I made a v1 about 5 years ago just for my daughter because I didn’t like any of the apps available. They were just games with a sprinkling of learning on top. She’d spend hours on there and learn F all except how to be addicted to dopamine.
So I made something very clean and very simple that we’d do together for 3 minutes a day. She learned to read really fast!
But… then I forgot all about it for 4 years, only remembering it when my second daughter needed to learn to read. She’s 3 and I taught her the first 26 sounds already.
At this point I wondered if it’d be good for other people so I contacted a phonics expert and they liked it too, so we spent the last 6 months making it into a proper app.
https://apps.apple.com/app/the-phonics-app/id6742649576
It’s going well so far. Lots of lovely messages from parents! If you have a 3-6 y old please let me know what you think of it!
I’m writing a journaling app, for myself first. It’s already usable and I’ve gone from not writing to writing each day.
The idea is the app should be very easy to submit entries (entries can be small) as a way to get thoughts and emotions out of your head.
I want to focus on an interesting search functionality that aggregates entires into a single document about similar subjects.
Rewriting the Elixir parser for QueueMetrics live for Teams, my company's service to keep track of call and queue statistics for Microsoft Teams telephony, in a way that's better than the PowerBI examples that come in the box. It's at https://www.queuemetrics.com/teams.jsp?lid=H990
It's quite a mess as we have to aggregate multiple data sources that come with their own timing and sequence issues - plus we are seeing massive adoption so resource usage will be interesting for v2.
The plus side is that building massively parallel and redundant services in Elixir is, if not actually fun, at least more feasible than in other environments.
I'm building an ERP to encapsulate the whole "customer" journey. I'm building it to be a business operating system of sorts with a goal of creating clear line-of-sight visibility for all activities along journey's like lead-gen to churn (but in a variety of settings).
The goal is make it easier for organizations to work with external parties that affect finances (customers, investors, vendors, etc.).
The idea was born out of personal frustration that I've faced in a variety of leadership roles in organizations, that lead to wasted effort, slower decision making, bad decisions made with equally unhygienic data.
I've solved this successfully in the past form of internal tools and a data governance layer (data warehouse with much more authority).
Payroll desktop application with python that works closely with an old time clock that only generates xls files (i know i should use c++ but I'm too lazy to learn it and I just need to get it done lol). I'm planning on open sourcing the project once it's in a more usable state.
Also, I just started on building a web application with golang that will make it easier for hobbyists to share their creative works (like manga, paintings, etc.) by providing a much better platform for their creativity to show. Right now it's pretty bare bones but it'll be a cross between myspace and patreon essentially. Main difference being the ease of use and the ability to showcase your work directly on the same app, without having to host your works on a separate service and promote it on another.
Lots of ideas, so little time to implement them.
I made this spectrum analyzer/music visualizer recently. It's meant to be easy to use by just going to the URL and looks great on a 4K screen, jameskdouglas.github.io/frequenSee/
For some clients, electronics for a low impedance guitar pickup (pick up all the signal then process it later instead of building in filtering to the pickup).
And an automated design app that turns a 3D model from Fusion into something that's easy to change the parameters on. That way people can easily just type stuff in and move on to manufacturing. This started for staircases - for companies that make like 20 sets of wood staircases on site every day they want to turn that 1hr of drawing into 60s of data input.
For anyone interested in the tabletop Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight Games / Edge Studio - a friend and I have been working on some small typescript libraries starting with dice rolling and monte carlo simulations that we can eventually use with web apps.
Open source tools and art assets: https://github.com/swrpg-online
A quick repl.it one-shot UI using the monte carlo library: https://dice-pool-simulator-chrispan5.replit.app/
SWRPG Combat Simulator: https://swrpg-combat-sim.com/
Working on a frontend dice roller that utilizes the open source dice SVG files and rolling utility.
We could also stand to fill a slot in our online play group if you want to reach out! :)
I'm working on https://photoboost.app, a tool that turns a handful of selfies into professional AI-generated headshots. Think studio-quality photos without the studio — powered by LoRA fine-tuning and smart prompting.
The goal: minimal input, fast turnaround, and results good enough to use on LinkedIn or resumes. Currently experimenting with ways to reduce training time and improve accuracy with as little as 5-8 images. Also exploring automatic gender/style detection to optimize prompts while keeping everything privacy-friendly.
Would love feedback — what would you expect from a tool like this? What features or improvements would make it a no-brainer to use?
It's an OKLCH color picker, as well as a converter for other color spaces.
https://cmringmaker.github.io/OKLCH-Picker/
https://github.com/cmRingmaker/OKLCH-Picker/
I was inspired by the article over at evilmartians[0] about OKLCH, and I loved their oklch picker. Decided I wanted to learn more about OKLCH by implementing my own tool that I've released this week. Had a lot of fun with this project, and am getting plenty of usage out of it already.
[0] https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/oklch-in-css-why-quit-rg...
I am working on a versatile and powerful platform for ingesting, transforming, and searching through structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data. It allows for interactive searches, dashboards, alerts, and more.
We are in open Alpha at the moment, but plan on offering affordable plans while keeping the source code available. While in open Alpha and during the upcoming Beta, it is free to use for any purpose.
We will be selling Fair-Source license, meaning that the source code will be released under MIT 2 years after release.
Check it out here: https://github.com/DelveCorp/flashlight/
Feel free to ask any questions here or open an issue in the repo.
I'm working on Torch Lens Maker [1], an open-source Python library for differential geometric optics. The goal of this project is to design optical systems with modern numerical optimization (PyTorch autograd). The website has a detailed roadmap of what I have planned.
I also had a recent blog post [2] do fairly well on HN, and now I'm kinda thinking about a new design for version 2 of that project because I can't help it I guess.
[1] https://victorpoughon.github.io/torchlensmaker/
[2] https://victorpoughon.fr/i-tried-making-artificial-sunlight-...
I’m working on SocialWeaver, an employee advocacy platform that helps businesses scale their marketing and reach by getting employees engaged with social content directly from Slack and Microsoft Teams.
I’m sure many of you were asked to engage with some product announcement, hiring post, or whatever on LinkedIn. With SocialWeaver, we remove all friction from that process by letting employees like, share, and comment directly within Slack and Teams. On top of the core use case, marketing teams also get analytics, employee leaderboards, content scheduling, etc.
https://www.socialweaver.com
I've been building https://notionbackups.com for almost 4 years now.
It's mostly feature complete at this point, but there are still some rough edges.
Notion's API is far from complete, and updates are few and far between. This has led me to work around some of its limitations in creative ways. For example, there is still no way to create top-level pages in Notion, which makes restores impossible. Instead, I ask customers to create a top-level page themselves and write backups there.
Personally, the hardest part of working on a project for an extended period is not getting burnt out repeteadly. Sometimes it helps to work on something else, and other times you just need to step away from the game entirely for a while
Continuing to build on my programmable server for Server-Sent Events. Built in Rust/Tokio, programmable with Lua.
https://tinysse.com/
https://github.com/benwilber/tinysse
I've been building a productivity tool for content writing teams called Vewrite (https://vewrite.com/).
The problem that I'm trying to solve is that when you are writing a lot of content as a team you often lose track of the state of things because it is passed through email or google docs (or whatever). People tend to manually manage these types of projects with spreadsheets or trello or whatever, but that means that you are manually updating the status.
Vewrite has an integrated editor and a workflow manager, meaning that as you progress through the workflow while doing the actual work, your project management status is constantly kept up to date, too.
I've been working on Zigpoll as a one-man project for a while now: https://www.zigpoll.com/ it has traction and solid growth (~100% YoY for the past 3 years) but the larger the numbers the harder it gets to double each year.
In a past life I would have thought this would be the easy part given the product market fit but it's hard to figure out growth channels that are scalable and cost-effective at this stage. Burning what would otherwise be a large salary month on month in search of growth is mentally taxing when it doesn't deliver. Metrics across the board only seem to tell part of the story so it's tricky to figure out what needs changing and what's worth doubling down on.
If anyone has experience doing this sort of thing - please get in touch!
For those few living in NZ, I've made a site that lists all the bank saving rates (and TDs), and ranks them by best to worst. This is mostly intended for people who know what they're doing. So don't just pick the highest and roll with it. Higher return usually comes with more risk.
Also, the biggest banks usually have the worst rates, this also goes for Kiwisaver, don't put your Kiwisaver with a bank, it'll do poorly compared to the lowest fee options we got in NZ. e.g. InvestNow (Foundation Series funds) / Kernel / Simplicity.
Still needs some work, like showing which rates are variable, or extra high risk.
Pretty quickly hacked together, to be very utilitarian, and practical. Don't see ever making money on it, made it more for me.
https://savingrates.netlify.app/
Highlights.Email [1] - a service to email yourself book highlights from your Kobo E-Reader!
Exporting book highlights from a Kobo was slow and inconvenient; you’d need to connect the device to your computer via USB and run a script, or upload the onboard sqlite database to a website to extract book highlights. With Highlights.Email, you tap a button on-device and in a few seconds have a nicely formatted email with all your book highlights!
So, I’m just scratching my own itch mainly while learning how to build and launch something to the world. There’s two parts to this service: Rust program that runs on-device and a SveltKit app (w/ a Supabase backend) for auth and sending emails.
[1]: https://highlights.email
RSS reader through Bluesky custom feeds: https://github.com/tfederman/stroma-news
Bluesky API library spun off from the other project: https://github.com/tfederman/pysky
Haven't really started it yet, but a master list of RSS feeds and the code I used to source them: https://github.com/tfederman/huge-rss-list
And also a new project to fetch all links seen in the Bluesky firehose and gather metadata to build a database of sites and pages at a more granular level than the domain. For example, is account X posting video links from one YT channel or many?
I'm building v2 of MyNixOS, which is an experimental platform to help users navigate, create, and run software configurations using Nix/NixOS.
Just shipped the first phase of v2 which lets you navigate Nix store objects.
Give it a spin here: https://v2.mynixos.com/nix/store/16s8kjwv6zz7xyv3hjr890n7v0d...
(Adjust settings in the upper right corner menu to control what is streamed).
More info here and in FAQ on front page: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mynixos-v2-release-updates/622...
Taking shader programs (they have a main() functions), hacking up their source code / AST to turn the into modularized code packages, and then enabling composition of shaders by injecting the output of one module into another (essentially calling the main function of one shader in another). This enables arbitrary shader composition. One application is Photoshop-style stacking of shaders as layers, like https://shaderfrog.com/2/editor/cm6y90vai002mpaxio3zjhfvq
Or getting real freaky with it by composing many effects deep https://shaderfrog.com/2/editor/cm1s7w23w000apar738s9d1x0
Continuing to grow MedAngle, the world's first Super App for future and current doctors. Everything that students and graduates could need for premed/medical and dental school, in one place. 90k+ users, 100m+ questions solved, billions of seconds spent on the apps.
Working on treetags[0] an effort to use tree-sitter to get basic code navigation support for multiple languages on vim/nvim.
[0] https://github.com/jha-naman/treetags
I'm in the exploratory phase of a few projects, meaning I haven't decided if they are compelling enough (or within my skillset) to push me to develop them properly. That said, the one project I've explored multiple times, each time getting a little closer to making the full mental commitment, is a word processor.
Not a "text editor" for code and whatnot, but a real-deal word processor for writing novels and such. I cloned Visicalc (onto the Pico-8), so my "How does a spreadsheet work?" itch has been scratched. I think it's finally time to answer for myself, "How does a word processor work?" (in pure C, to level-up those skills as well) So lately I've been working on small programmatic experiments to understand the underlying subsystems necessary to build one.
I'm beta testing a SaaS called ChimeraHR that helps bridge the divide between developers and HR when it comes to assessing programmer's skill. The main idea is that the programming languages we use reveal a lot about how we think and problem solve.
When devs put their top languages on their resumes, they are also saying a bit about how they prefer to work and what they value. This signal is largely lost on HR since a lot of it is insight you get from actually coding over time. I strongly believe that we can get more people hired and into the right organizations and cultures if people could see beyond the surface level of the keywords on a resume.
I'm looking for first customers now and people to give feedback on the idea and the upcoming offerings. There's a proof of concept now that hints at how it all works.
HR don't know what coders want, but sadly most of their clients do not care that much either. This is a pity, because happy developers are the key to retention.
I'm working on a personal AI notebook called Lightpage.
I've always found it useful to have scratch notes about whatever's on my mind -- a mix of journaling/reflection, planning, project ideas, notes on things I'm reading, etc. But I wanted to be able to chat with an LLM that has full context & memory from these notes.
It's been surprisingly helpful for me and some of my friends! Some ways I've used it:
- Talking through fuzzy ideas & ideas to clarify them
- Having it re-inforce the healthy habits I want to build
- Using it to reflect on feelings or whatever's been bothering me
https://lightpage.com
I'm working on an alternative frontend for GitHub https://githero.app/
The focus is on providing a better experience: faster, with smoother interactions, with higher information density and a lot more focused on your daily work (with features such as bookmarks and drafts).
It's web-based but there will be also desktop apps (thanks to tauri) that will integrate with your local git.
If you start using it and want to ask for feature requests or notify bug reports please go to the discord server: https://discord.gg/RHCJvUSbr5 Thanks!!
We're building the killer app for books
Starting with a native iOS app to to track and discover books [1]
Focusing on notetaking and cozy social this year as we try to grow from 100k to 1m+ users
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6737528718
Neat. Will try :)
:) hmu at paul@margins.app with any questions or feedback!
I'm building Recon Wave (https://reconwave.com) - we monitor companies online perimeter and let them know when something's wrong.
Recon Wave basically finds and scans all their services - DNS, IPs, Apps, Ports - and notify customers when it breaks some policy (aka. "no ports than 443 should be open") or when some service is straight vulnerable.
I'm former security engineer and I hated all that "critical reports" that reported missing CSP header.
We're now playing with an idea to build LLM pentesting agent that could run agains the whole infra of our customers.
I'd hope companies practice Zero Trust nowadays and don't just close off all the ports (and leave things vulnerable, just inside a VPN...)
I'm all for in for it. Sadly, companies host wild stuff and forget about it.
What we build is primarily focused on companies that have at least hybrid stack - some on prem, some in cloud. If you completely behind load balancer and have strict change management, we can't bring you any value.
In ideal world, we wouldn't have any business. But oh boy... Companies host wild stuff.
Every single conversation I had with clients ended up with us showing some of their infra and the response was "wow, we didn't know this is ours".
> In ideal world, we wouldn't have any business.
Said every security company ever. :)
I'm working on a configuration file format. I see a lot of complexity in the current space, and not enough thought put into the use-cases for a configuration language.
YAML is prone to typos, TOML does not seem obvious to me, and JSON is not as easy to edit.
I've been designing CLEO:https://code.nicktrevino.com/cleo/
The focus is on a configuration language that a single application would use. Not a system-level configuration that might need control flow, etc.
It is at a solid state right now, though it's not officially released yet as I slowly validate it with usage.
Bacon Wrapped Urns: https://baconwrappedurns.com
Mortality is so hot right now so why not celebrate with a custom urn to enjoy your journey into the spirit world in style.
Recipin: https://recipin.com
Private recipe archiving/bookmarking. No ads, no AI, no javascript . Join a server or host your own (https://github.com/bradly/recipin). Screenshot: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bradly/recipin/main/public...
I’ve been developing an observability platform [0] for small teams and indie developers where they can track logs, live metrics, and get alerted in realtime through webhooks. I intend to develop a dead simple on-call calendar as well in the coming weeks.
After using tools like Sentry on apps serving millions of users, I always felt I was missing a cheap and dead simple approach to following what happened in my apps and apis, and basically became my first customer for all of my side projects and even got some friends using it for their SaaS and apps.
[0] https://app.getboringmetrics.com
I'm continuing work on my Saas for hairdressers.
I'm happy to say I'm no longer stuck on endless little business logic decisions. Now I'm mostly stuck on essentially creating a (more) complicated google calendar interface. (React + MUI) I stopped work when everything was still wonky but i could quickly make appointments on the fly with it. A few days ago when trying to wrap my head around my own code i kind of regretted that decision. It's a bit more complex of a UI piece than what i've tried my hand at before and my current holdup is (re-)implementing proper drag & drop to edit appointments after i rewrote a piece of the underlying stuff.
I’m building a on-device AI App that supports a good variety of open-weight LLM Models. It’s mostly so that I can gain an intuition on what goes on when we do inferencing, but my longer term plan is
1. Support on-device RAG to allow chatting with your own documents on mobile offline 2. Support MCP on-device, taking advantage of information that’s (only) available on your phone, like calendar events, health data, etc. These shouldn’t need to be anywhere but on-device. 3. Allow on-device AI to use shortcuts(?)
I think most of the functionality are well served on desktop front with Ollama and LM Studio, but moving these functionality to mobile offers a great learning opportunity.
I'm still working on my newsletter: https://ciamweekly.substack.com/ , all about customer identity and access management (CIAM).
Recently added a free tier, so working on making sure both the free subscribers and the paid ones get value out of it. I've asked people to pay for my time as a consultant and books I've written in the past, but it is pretty scary to ask folks to pay for my knowledge via a newsletter.
Finding the balance between technical dives, standards reviews, interviews, and CIAM use cases while doing this as a side hustle is an interesting balance as well. And, the weekly cadence can be brutal. But it does keep me on my toes.
I have an idea that you can steal (would be cool if you send me some of the spoils if it moons lol). This might be right up your alley, Google and Apple devs.
Generated voice profiles (you can use "AI" to sell it to your bosses) to narrate text messages in the sender's voice. Many texts are already sent by speech to text, why not carry that voice to the reciever? Simply recording is not ideal due to the background noise and extra bandwidth, so regenerating the speech on the reciever side seems to be the better approach after generating the speech profile from some sample of initial messages.
I used to work for an assistive tech company that did part of this. For people who have degenerative diseases like ALS, we would create speech profiles for them before they lost their voice so that once they did, their computer-generated voice (through eye tracking software and hardware) would be their own and not a generic voice.
What company if you don't mind? Sounds like work I've been interested in. Thanks!
Reasoning Gym (https://github.com/open-thought/reasoning-gym)
A library that procedurally generates datasets for training reasoning models (like o1/r1) with verifiable rewards.
Just partnered with an old friend. We want to see if we can tackle movie recommendations in the streaming age. Exited to begin the journey. https://pressplay.app/
Just get a cert error…
https://link-society.github.io/flowg/
It's a log management/processing software, with visual scripting.
Started out of frustration towards OpenObserve and its inability (at the time) to properly/easily refine/categorize logs: we had many VMs, with many Docker containers, with some containers running multiple processes. Parsing the logs and routing them to different storages was crucial to ease debugging/monitoring.
It was initially built in Go + HTMX + React Flow encapsulated in a WebComponent, I then migrated to React (no SSR). It integrates VRL using Rust+CGO.
It is by far easier to use than Logstash and similar tools, and in fact it aims to replace it.
Contributors are welcome :)
I'm making an NES emulator in Go. Not because other ones don't exist, but because I've been wanting to get more familiar with low level system principles, and there ain't a better way than building one.
I suppose I'll post the link someday. I literally just started today.
I am currently testing the hypothesis that RAG can reduce the likelihood of LLM hallucination when it comes to software architecture (existing or proposed enhancements or tech debt reduction) of complex systems. To that end, I recently launched a web spa https://www.exploravention.com/AskArchitect/ where you can ask the software architect questions about various popular open source projects. I hope that you participate in this experiment.
A site to find the right weather for your next trip or relocation:
https://weatherflip.com/
I'm looking for co-founders to explore monetization routes. Feel free to reach out.
It would be great to have the option to select a specific region or continent; right now, it searches the entire globe.
Working on (mostly weekends) <https://pluswhois.com> (part-time) – a tool to simplify brand name research. It checks domain availability, allows one to monitor taken domains, checks social handle availability, and links to basic trademark search tools.
If a domain is taken, it shows full ownership data with great UX — not just a raw JSON dump. Clickable links to social profiles, business info, tech stack, DNS records, and more.
Built it to streamline my own workflow for naming and branding projects. Still early, but already saving me time. More features coming!
https://github.com/bhavesh-kratos/type-faster
Its a Offline-first desktop app with auto suggestion and auto correct feature to help you type faster.
A hobby project to learn AI techniques RAG, vector databses etc. Wrote something about it haha. Its been inactive for last 2 months tho coz of travelling, but I am going to revive it this week https://bhavepant.substack.com/p/typingfast-my-journey-into-...
I'm building an amateur radio logging tool. Yes, there's a million out there, but I wanted one specifically for hunting Parks on the Air and Summits on the Air activators:
https://gitlab.com/harford/xflog
I've also built a tool in Rust for munging ADI (amateur radio contact logging) files:
https://gitlab.com/harford/adifsurgeon
After being laid off, it's given me lots of time to play on the radio :-/
I'm working on a tool specifically for viewing log files, it started when I wanted to open logcat files and have filtering but I couldn't really do that with a lightweight tool, Wireshark works well and I found a cool tool called lognote. so I started making my own, and I wanted to display things different ways and make it easy to add features. it's still a work in progress but I'm proud of it so far
https://github.com/aedrax/logdor
You should also be proud of the name!
Still working on my software project for live music production [1]. At the moment, it only creates, forwards, and records MIDI note events, so it can't produce audio on its own. It has to be connected to external or virtual MIDI devices that can create sound. Turns out this is too much of a hassle and kind of a deal-breaker for most people (and to be fair, it is a hassle), so now I'm working on adding VST hosting support directly inside the app. If you're not familiar, VST (Steinberg Virtual Studio Technology) is pretty much the industry standard plugin system that most DAWs support. Different VSTs can create and filter audio data, and in a hosted context audio data can be sent between VST instances before going out to the speakers.
It's been tricky but interesting. VST plugins are basically packaged as DLL files of Windows COM(-ish) objects. Despite primarily being a Windows dev myself, I never worked directly with COM libraries or objects before. My app is written in C#, and .NET does have built-in "COM Interop" support, so it is possible. A few years ago, .NET added a new COM Interop Source Generator system [2, 3], and I'm trying to get it working with that. So far I've been making some progress, but it's still a lot of tedious work to setup.
(There are libraries/packages out there that implement VST in .NET already, but they mostly focus on plugin creation while I only need hosting. They're a lot heavier and more capable than I need. They also didn't use the newer Source Generator approach, so I figured I'd give it a shot myself.)
1. https://www.pulselyre.com/
2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/native-int...
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZd1SGd7dSU
working on TRMNL[1], a hardware startup with a web app companion (Ruby / Rails 8).
this weekend specifically, setting up an in-house assembly area. decided to renovate my barn and be our own fulfillment center.
[1]: https://trmnl.ink
I'm working on a AI automation tool to updates docs at with every git commit.
The tool just does one thing "Keeps your docs upadated always"
Why am I trying to solve this?
I have dealt with the pain of keeping the docs updated. It is mundane and boring at times. so I wanted to check if the pain is universal.
I need the fourm's help to solve this, please take 30 seconds to fill this survery that will help me with some cricital insights around this problem:
https://app.youform.com/forms/apmvipej
happy to help you in any way possible in return
I recently built a quick SwiftUI app to pin quotes and posts from X to my home screen.
I found I was liking/bookmarking insightful content on X I rarely saw again and wanted a way to resurface them somewhere I would see multiple times per day.
Can import from X via share sheet or manually enter them. It's minimal, but I've found having:
"i hate how well asking myself "if i had 10x the agency i have what would i do" works"
there every time I unlock my phone, was worth the development effort.
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/lumatta/id6740705796
Hacking on new online music apps for http://dopeloop.ai and also fixing bugs in my online daily roguelike at http://rogule.com.
No sound ios brave dopeloop
I am working on nothing which by the is something important and precious because it is something to works on nothing. By the way, nothing else matter, which mean that everything keep my mind on working on the thing of nothing.
Nothing is something indeed
- A typescript SDK for creating local-first applications to browse the Fediverse (https://codeberg.org/mushroomlabs/activitypub-client). I want to be able to use this SDK to work on a fork of Elk (Mastodon client) and Voyager (Lemmy Client) and swap the API-based libraries they use.
- Adding support to WhatsApp/Discord/Signal bridges to Communick's Matrix server. For some reason, last week I got a handful of handful of customers saying that they would be willing to pay more than the $29/year of the standard plan if they could get those bridges on Communick's Matrix server
A mostly vibe coded(since I don't plan to ever go commercial with it) app for music composition, which I suspect real musicians would mostly not like..
You can create patterns, play those patterns on a specific beats, add melodies(HTML tables of notes!) with lyrics, add chord changes to determine how the patterns are played, etc.
It's meant to be CAD-like, so you're working as high level as possible, not looking at some raw notes and having to go look up what chord it is every five seconds.
There's plenty of features that don't exist but look like they do, but it does work.
https://eternityforest.github.io/songcad/
CTHULOOT, a fun arcade coop game that will soon be released on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2283410/CTHULOOT/
Looks great. Any plans to release for the Switch?
Yes! Switch version is in QA so we hope it will only be few months away from PC release.
Building Based Security (https://www.basedsec.io), a startup in the zero trust/identity space creating immovable, attestable, hardware backed identities that can be used for strong and continuous authentication but not moved from the device. We can guarantee the user and the device are known, the user is assigned the device they are using, and characteristics of the identity matches the defined policy. The initial product offering is tied to GitHub/GitLab, offering secure authentication for git over ssh operations with plans to expand to general ssh access and additional systems with pluggable access control.
That's really cool. Are you using OpenSSHes yubikey support or building your own?
We’re leveraging ssh certificates which are backed by keys stored in a variety of hardware. For yubikeys we’re leveraging piv and the standard ssh tooling. We’re determining whether we’ll be able to use a pkcs11 implementation for TPMs and Secure Enclave or whether we’ll need to build a custom agent.
I'm an app developer, and I've had such a terrible experience with deferred deep linking providers like Branch and Appsflyer that I decided to build a competitor - https://DeepLinkNow.com
Why I think it's good: deferred deep linking has become an also-ran feature for MMPs whose primary focus is tracking users and advertising.
It's so bad that I can't even open deep links for Tiktok on my home network, because onelink links are blocked by adguard.
So that's why I built DLN. It's brand new and open for beta testing, I'd love some feedback and feature requests + to know how people use deferred deep linking.
I am building "Scharf", a blazing-fast security scanner for reporting and hardening third-party GitHub actions.
For whoever aware of recent `tj-actions/changed-files` security incident, I built a mutable-reference scanner that performs a deep scan across branches to identify all third-party GitHub actions used in organization Git projects. The output report can be exported to CSV or JSON (default).
Using mutable references (version tags, main/master/dev etc.) is a security vulnerability that can result in supply-chain attacks.
Project link:
https://github.com/cybrota/scharf
I'm working on a VS Code extension, so I don't have to write code
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Ridvay.r...
My own functional programming language. I'd done an imperative before but wanted one that has pattern matching, would let me do currying _and_ uses a bidirectional type-checker. All of this is currently implemented but not for all type constructs. It's name? Marmelade. Because Lady Marmelade and thus files with a lady suffix. m.lady.
https://github.com/pandemonium/marmelade
I've always wanted workout tracking apps to take into respect how to track gymnastic rings, but no luck. So I decided to build my own: https://gravitygainsapp.com/
I was getting stuck in some manager <> direct report situations and wanted to figure out a way to practice tough conversations, so I started putting together https://practicecallai.com/.
You can choose from common difficult scenarios or create a custom one and get connected with a conversational AI voice agent to practice. Started out with just manager use cases but now testing out sales calls, interviews, pitches, etc.
Mostly built on Replit (would recommend - is amazing & keeps getting better) and relying on a mix of ElevenLabs / OpenAI / Anthropic for the voice & LLM tech.
For several years now, my free (programming) time goes into experimenting and making a REBOL based language:
https://ryelang.org
March was quite productive:
* there was major (somewhat breaking) upgrade to the language
* We have a working web (wasm) console again
* full binary builds with some improvements for Windows that before didn't get much attention.
* full function reference with unit tests should arrive soon
I try to post about what I'm working on on Rye's reddit group:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ryelang/
I'm still iterating on a WCAG accessible palette creator for web design/UI:
https://www.inclusivecolors.com/
I use it myself for making branded palettes for projects because it gives you full control over the hue, saturation and lightness curves (instead of these being mostly autogenerated), and it helps you make tint/shades for multiple swatches at a time that go together (rather than a single swatch at a time).
Get in touch if you have any feature requests!
I am working with a colleague of mine on Handout Generator (https://handouts.cthulhuarchitect.com) which is a website you can use to create fake documents and handouts to be used in different TTRPG, especially investigative ones like Call of Cthulhu.
It is going pretty well, already 17k users signed up. There are many people using it daily which give me the motivation to continue working on this.
I just wish I had more time to spend on this instead of the boring CRUD app I work on for living.
Japan Top 100 (restaurants) app
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japan-top-100/id6741251616
Only public on iOS store for now, due to Google requires larger # of testers to authenticate the app.
This app idea came from my last Japan trip. I had a hard time finding good local restaurants (not tourist traps). So I decided to build this app with Japanese-oriented lists, due to lists' lacked of maps, etc. The app actually helped me discover some great spots, since it lists places all over Japan. Please give it a try and let me know if you have any feature requests or ideas.
Unfortunately I don't have an iPhone to try when we go to Japan but I will ask my friend to try it out. We will travel to Japan later this year.
Will let you know once android version is public
I am working on a standalone CLI tool that can do analytics find it here: https://github.com/nafey/minimalytics
Motivation for the project:
> This project was born out of the need for a lightweight analytics tool to track internal services on a resource-constrained VPS. Most SaaS analytics products either lack the scalability or exceed their free tier limits when tracking millions of events per month. Minimalytics addresses this gap by offering a minimalist, high-performance solution for resource-constrained environments.
I recently did a Show HN which you can find on my profile.
Connecting my website builder funnel system to multiple payment providers for various reasons. Not for payments, but for easy up sells or email marketing.
Working on In or Out. Anyone with Elixir Phoenix experience are welcome to help with the project.
Side project for Fantasy football offline drafting. We aren't allowed any electronics just up to date print outs. However drafting takes forever with stickers. I'm making a Elixir Phoenix liveview app to replace the board and player picks with timer and fun prizes.
I've been working on an alternative to JSON called XferLang, and along with that a "CLI construction kit" that will let the user create a CLI for interacting with RESTful APIs (and, eventually, more).
https://github.com/paulmooreparks/Xfer https://github.com/paulmooreparks/Xfer/tree/master/ParksComp...
Seems interesting tough more complicated. In json you can't have multi line strings? Does your format supports it?
I am currently contributing to [1], a preconfigured *arr stack on NixOS.
I am also working on Plundrio [2], a put.io Download Client for *arr.
My other project Server Radar [3] has been neglected lately, but I wanna move to D1 completely (currently still using DuckDB on the frontend).
[1] https://nixarr.com/
[2] https://github.com/elsbrock/plundrio/
[3] https://radar.iodev.org/
I am working on this mobile app that is a cross between karaoke and musical instrument practice. Through playing music for a long time, I realize that playing with a band or with the actual song is important to get a good feel of music, specially for starting musicians. Hence the app. Currently I have Nepali songs up. I am finding it difficult to get more subtitle files or generate them quickly (for lyrics layout). Through this I would want to ask how I can quickly generate lyrics file. I really would appreciate the help.
https://guitaraoke-app.web.app/
This weekend I’m working on mobile app that allows you to upload photos and it turns everything into a stitched anime (ghibli or not) with movements and eventually sound and script. Great to make mini animes from your day or travels or anything.
2 things: (1) trying to find a job, and (2) continuing work on my software.
I've been working on a new software product (native Windows) that is for analysis of SQLite databases. It's geared towards non-technical and slightly technical who may not know anything about SQL. The software includes an ER diagram, ability to browse table data, query building, and charting (bar, column, histogram, line, pie, scatter). Trying to get it finished up so that it can be released (hopefully in next few weeks).
I am building an image gallery as a side project to play with AI coding tools. I got really far in just 2 days and plan to open source it soon. It:
- Uses an encrypted badgerdb to keep track of metadata - Uses rclone (with an encrypted backend) for file storage in s3 or any backend rclone supports - Automatically indexes and generates video thumbnails and transcodes to webm to be streamed in the browser - Slideshows - has a fairly decent ui that doesn’t look like it was developed by a backend engineer
The goal was to be able to attach my own s3 storage and keep all data encrypted at rest. It’s written in go and deploys as a single binary.
Maybe you should be friends with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529823
But for real, I've also been working on large-scale photo/video management, and the question of where to keep additionally metadata has bothered me. It seems right to want to keep it "in" the file, and so I want to write it into EXIF, or even steganography, or something.
I’m working on a live voice chat for settling rule disputes during tabletop gaming. It uses OpenAI’s realtime API to allow anyone to call in a “ref”, trained on the rules of the games, to answer questions about the rules.
How do you feed rules to OpenAI?
Every now and then I add new touches to my hobby project at
https://nobsutils.com
It's a collection of small tools that run locally in your browser which, over time, I've built to serve my needs mostly. This has been living on my home NAS for a while. When I created the flashcards maker to help my 10 years old son prepare for a Spelling bee word quiz, it became popular with his schoolmates and I got some new drive to make it public.
I built a free and open-source invoice generator with a live PDF preview that runs in your browser.
It supports multiple currencies, VAT tax deductions, and lets you download PDFs in multiple languages (English and Polish for now, with more coming soon). You can also share your invoice by clicking “Generate a link to invoice” button.
Try it out: https://easyinvoicepdf.com/
Check it out on GitHub as well:
https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf
Would love to hear your feedback =)
I made Periplus (https://periplus.app), a new interface for exploring and learning with LLMs.
It generates interconnected learning documents, a bit like personalized wiki articles. Features include courses on any topic, generative flashcards for spaced repetition (think Anki), as well as a chat alongside each document.
Would love to hear your feedback!
https://periplus.app
I'm working on a parody of the lofi hip-hop radio YouTube streams, but for Byzantine music (chanting) of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The end goal is a community-focused study/prayer/chill sound generator for an Orthodox Christian audience
Half of a team here of former journalists building a platform for news -- its a news feed, where all posts come from pre-vetted journalists:
https://www.forth.news
Working on v2 of our n+1-proof/reactive TypeScript ORM, Joist (https://joist-orm.io/), that moves to using the new-ish postgres.js driver (instead of knex/node-pg), so that we can leverage postgres.js's statement pipelining within transactions.
I'm anticipating a really sweet perf increase (as shown by some proof-of-concepts), but now that everything is actually working on the v2 branch, I'm putting together benchmarks that show the benefit in practice.
Love to have anyone poke around/ask questions/hang out on discord.
I bought a 150 year old house. Need I say more?
I'm working on the next release of Cyphernetes. It's a query language for Kubernetes that allows doing most complex k8s management operations in a much more compact and concise form (compared to writing shell scripts, using jsonpath+jq, nested kubectl, writing API code etc.). Recently merged a visual overhaul to the Cyphernetes web UI and now working on adding support for ORDER BY, LIMIT and SKIP to the language.
Github: https://github.com/AvitalTamir/cyphernetes
I'm expanding my website Bingeclock (online since 2014) into mobile. Both the iOS and Android apps were approved for open testing last week, so I'm very happy about that!
https://www.bingeclock.com/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bingeclock...
https://testflight.apple.com/join/YtfK4enW
I've been building an email archiving system [1] which ingests emails sent by a company to it's customers. The hypothesis is that this data is largely un-indexed and once it's indexed, it can be really valuable tool for market insights.
[1]https://pandorasinbox.com
I'm working on a VSCode extension that lets me quickly copy code from a workspace into a structured format for LLMs. This makes it easy to provide context so the LLM can continue developing the codebase.
There are other similar tools out there—mostly web apps or CLI-based—but I found a VSCode extension to be the fastest and most convenient option for VSCode users.
Here’s the extension link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=H337.c2p
I'd love to get any feedback.
I just launched the beta for Table Slayer. It lets you build animated maps for in person RPG games (DnD, Pathfinder...etc) where you have a digital table top. It's built on Svelte + Turso + websockets.
The video here best shows it off. The source is available and free to use for non-compete, personal use.
https://bsky.app/profile/davesnider.com/post/3lkvum6xtjs2e
Mostly a labor of love. I don't expect there to be a super large audience for this one, it was just something I needed myself.
BiasScanner - a non-profit project to fight non-neutral news reporting with a special LLM model wrapped in a Firefox plugin (that marks biased sentences yellow when you read your news online). In JavaScript and Python -- see https://biasscanner.org
IdeaFunnel - capturing, tracking and evaluating ideas in organizations; as innovation is topic that I am conducting research in and will be teaching a block course in July on. (Being rapid prototyped in PHP.)
ltools -- a set of command line tools in Rust.
Also starting a new multi-year computer science book project...
I'm mid-rebooting https://webhooks.fyi/ and doing another "state of webhooks" report to review which providers are doing what.
If you know of a webhook provider not in my list - https://webhooks.fyi/docs/webhook-directory - let me know and I'll make sure it's added.
I've built austen [0] which generates story relationships between book characters using Mermaidjs diagrams.
[0]https://github.com/herol3oy/austen
I built a reverse proxy similar to Cloudflare Tunnels that can be self-hosted:
https://tunlr.dev
This came about because of how awkward Cloudflare Tunnels is to use in a development environment.
I'd love something like this, however the pricing isn't clear. It looks like I have to pay for a $100/yr server license and self-host it?
If you want to use your own domain and certificates, yes. Otherwise you can use the Cloud version for free with a dynamic hostname, or you can contact us for a static hostname setup.
I am trying to become a business and financial programmer. Right now i am focusing on SAP technologies and ABAP, UI5 and GUI. I would like to become an expert in anything that is financial informatic related or business programming in relation to companies. Meaning Financial modules, Databases and Dashboards, automation of bank transactions and secure economic data communications. I would like to become the expert that when enters the room people say "Thank god you're here!"
I'm building Magical.pm – an AI product management co-pilot.
Today, it generates clean, formatted product requirements from natural language and includes templates for different use cases (bug fixes, usability adjustments, etc.).
Soon, it will use RAG to incorporate knowledge of your system into the product requirements and perform inference on key down to help product managers write better specs with AI.
https://magical.pm
Working on a full on Riichi Mahjong web client because I really like the game and want to make a more serious english client without anime.
Did it also to learn rust, which made it easy to convert the engine code into webassembly and create a hand score calculator for the game :)! https://cerpins.com/mahjong-tool
Plans now are to finish the client, then freshen up the calculator with some QOL and visuals, surely a bug fix might be needed here and there as well.
'tis a broad umbrella, but my co-founder and I are deep into transforming excess green energy (wasted because of curtailment) into ML / AI compute.
Focusing on training and fine-tuning, because of lower bandwith requirements.
We're collaborating with a few AI researchers through offering a sponsorhips program for the right people. If you know anyone, send them our way.
PS. If anyone has experience with Marimo, give me shout!
[1] https://enverge.ai/
This month I've been working on automating the data collection and processing for my property research website [0]. I'm testing out DuckDB to process geospatial data, and so far the process has been quite pleasant.
As long as you don't need many advanced spatial functions (where PostGIS shines), and you make sure to minimize the use of GDAL to perform operations, it parallelizes processing quite nicely (most queries on large datasets saturate as many cores as you throw at it).
[0] https://wynds.com.au
an API that helps AI and SaaS companies management user entitlement (i.e. provision seats, tokens/credits, feature gating, etc.)
basically built this system when working on other projects and decided to turn this into a product in case useful to others
https://gater.dev
Trappist, a space exploration / city builder game in the Trappist-1 solar system. It is inspired by the classic Alien Legacy, with more modern gameplay in the style of the Anno-series.
I've been working to time an update and demo release with the Steam City Builder & Colony Sim fest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2769820/Trappist/
I threw together a ratio calculator for Dyson sphere project to get the last two achievements done.
https://wohlben.github.io/factory-fractals/recipes/75?target... It's not really optimized for mobile though, and I actually forgot to give mobile users the recipe picker.
And there seems to be a strange bug only with the rare quartz recipe (it thinks it'll provide 1/4 more items then it does).
Manabi Reader - learn Japanese by reading on iOS/maCOS https://reader.manabi.io
I quit my job a couple years back to work on this app full-time, as well as its companion flashcard app, Manabi Flashcards. The goal is to help you learn through immersion.
What's special about it? Manabi Reader became popular as an Japanese-focused alternative to services like LingQ in that it locally tracks and analyzes all the words and kanji you read and study. It shows you which words are new and which you're currently learning via flashcards, so you can easily find content that suits your level and see what flashcards to prioritize adding. It also passively accumulates an on-device (and in your personal iCloud) corpus of example sentences from your reading.
I had built this part-time while working over many years (starting with flashcards and then the reader app) but going full-time gave me the time to do a full rewrite: SwiftUI, native iOS + macOS, and an offline-first architecture that syncs with iCloud and my server in the background.
Although it has a companion SRS algorithm (SM-2) flashcard app, it's also excellent for mining Anki cards. This works with AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiConnect on desktop.
You can use it like a web browser for the web, or subscribe to RSS feeds. It comes with a bunch of curated content by level. Recently I added EPUB support, pitch accents, and note-taking with todos.
I'm now almost done adding a manga mode via Mokuro.
Next I plan on adding more media types (video, YouTube, PDFs), AI functionality (grammar explanations, document Q&A, etc), Yomitan/Yomichan dictionaries for bilingual/monolingual EPWING and Wiktionary support, and more service integrations such as 2-way sync for WaniKani, JPDB, and existing Anki decks. I've begun work on these items and hope to share more soon.
I'd also like to make this app much more beginner-friendly so that people with zero Japanese knowledge can start learning. Currently it assumes you can read kana at least.
Previous discussion [2023]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36674259
A tool for using Python in OpenSCAD:
https://pythonscad.org/
to make DXFs and G-code:
https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview
The next big step is a house-cleaning one, need a vendor-agnostic system for numbering tools:
https://forum.makerforums.info/t/what-tooling-are-folks-usin...
Been learning a lot in the process: brushed up on trigonometry and so-forth using _Make:Geometry/Trigonometry/Calculus_[1] and various other books, some of which I am still reading through; lots about programming, esp. useful was John Ousterhout's _A Philosophy of Software Design_[2] and the next stages are Bézier curves/NURBS, a system for single line fonts (which may get extended into an interactive METAFONT programming system), and a mastery of conic sections _and_ algorithms sufficiently efficient that the 1" x 2" x 1" test case which took ~18 minutes to calculate on an i7 and which generated a ~127MB toolpath file can be done a bit more reasonably.
The big thing it makes me thing about is whether I should try to get a Master's and then go on to get a PhD (but that's a hard sell w/ the finance committee when I'm 59 and still making house payments).
1 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58059196-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123127774-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61739368-make
2 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39996759-a-philosophy-of...
Whisp [1] - Pure* PHP SSH server specifically designed for devs to build fun TUIs
Ended up having to write a decent chunk of C using FFI mind, no wonder people write SSH servers in Go/C, and why every AI tool told me it's really difficult and shouldn't be done :D
Bit of fun though, and I know more than I would ever want to know about the SSH protocol now!
- [1] https://github.com/whispphp/whisp
High quality translation app powered by ChatGPT:
High quality translation requires context. Mainstream translation apps (Google Translate) guess based on probabilities based on what the user would commonly mean, but this can results in confusing translations.
web: https://app.698expat.com
ios: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/698-expat/id6642713544
Downloaded!
I am building viewer for link meta data
https://rumca-js.github.io/music
https://rumca-js.github.io/search
https://rumca-js.github.io/bookmarks
https://rumca-js.github.io/internet
A basketball shot chart. I’m about done with it, but one thing I was happy to have figured - out coaches often want to tag a shot as a particular type. So like a three pointer, mid range, or whatever else it may be. With my shot chart, it automatically tags the shot based on where they added it, which I think is pretty neat.
https://bsky.app/profile/jordanmorgan10.bsky.social/post/3ll...
Building a game similar to Zombies! Run but with slightly modified gameplay. Narrative heavy with point and click elements, quests, and choose your own adventure decision making elements.
I've been hacking on a similar idea since about 2016 but only recently picked it back up. I want to support walking and cycling - any activity as long as it's outdoors (no treadmills).
I have a few ideas about the narrative that I think should be fun and timely.
Why no treadmills?
Friend and I are working on https://finbodhi.com/
It's a double entry based personal finance tool, to help families and individuals, track, understand and plan their finances.
It's local first. Synched across devices via a sync server. Financial data is encrypted before it leaves your local devices. By design, we don't have access to your data.
We are still in early phase, and looking for active users, and their feedback.
Is "bodhi" the Buddhist term for enlightenment? (Or the tree that frequently appears at Theravada Buddhist temples?)
kinda both :)
Low cost monocular headset display for rugged outdoor use (cycling, sailing, err golf). Idea is your phone sends low bandwidth data to the display for handsfree info, so more simple data display than xR.
I am working on a site that makes it easier for people to learn Vim. It started with me delving into containerization and Neovim plugins and then took on its own identity. It's called:
vimgolf.ai
Right now, only has two levels but I soon plan to add all the Vim motions and use reasoning models as bots that start off the level with you. Apparently, reasoning models like o3-high, Claude 3.7 thinking, and Gemini 2.5 pro are good at finding new ways to transform files using Vim. Kind of silly to have them do that, but I find it kind of cool.
Designing a new VCS, operating system, and GUI framework because those are the three things I am most worried will be taken over by corporate interests.
I don't know which one I will actually implement, though.
I'm trying to make it easier to run clubs, associations & organizations with a platform called embolt.app[1].
We're offering online memberships, event management, and a member database packed with features. Membership management is a crowded space, but it's also a low-tech space with lots of sleeping giants not willing to iterate on their product.
It's been a really fun project so far and even more rewarding to see clubs using embolt for their daily operations.
[1] https://embolt.app
Adding features to Mummy Maze: Pocket Edition
+hint system for when players get stuck
+swipe navigation for easier moving
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/mummy-maze-pocket-edition/id67381...
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.itch.ksylve...
I’m vibe coding https://vespera.guide, a travel-planning tool that blends AI-driven suggestions with real-time re-planning—aimed especially at people who want to get inspiration and stay organised in their trip planning. Think of it like a curated jumpstart for itineraries, but still flexible enough to keep spontaneity.
I’m building a spaced-repetition flashcards app. Unlike the competitors, the cards have audio, images and sentences. Additionally, it is possible to add words from ebooks, websites and YouTube.
https://vocabuo.com
Making a webapp (an inside-messenger mini-app) to create, hold and manage local amateur tennis tournaments.
So far I've built stuff like automatically created and advanced tournament brackets with group stage, match schedules, participation queue and achievements. Not that hard, really, but helped me get into the backend side of web-development.
We currently organize 2-4 events each weekend for 300 people of different skill levels.
So far it's exclusive for our small community, but I'm thinking of offering it to similar groups of people in other cities.
Working on a minimalist tool to archive web pages:
https://arcv.me
This web app is an off-shoot of a command-line archiving tool I wrote to scratch my own itch.
In its current form it's tripped up by bot detection and often struggles with heavyweight pages, but it works on enough pages to be somewhat useful.
Archived pages aren't retained long-term, but you can download them as static HTML files. (So kinda like a hosted version of SingleFile.)
A 3D printable HP Voyager style clone shell, based on my 12c Platinum, Internet photos and lots of eyeballing. It was on the back burner for a while, but I'm moving on to something else. STEP file available publicly, no electrical work had been done.
https://numpad0.com/calculatorshell/
https://rankandfile.me
At the moment, I am validating demand for Rank And File, a platform for employee activism. Think Institutional Investors but instead of suits, it is employees who own a large number of shares in their own company and act as a collective.
R&F aims to provide a private forum for employees to discuss company policies and act as a platform where employees can connect with legal experts and activists who will help them
I re-built a dance event web site one year ago with Django. The site was implemented by somebody else 15 years ago. It has 1M-2M page views per month.
Now I am building into it some features so other people can help me to run it, such as ticketing system (with AI), and statically generated copy of the site to improve availability.
I am also working on a service management tool, based on USM method. USM method is kind of "open source" version of ITIL, although it works on a different level than ITIL.
I am trying out a few new passive greenhouse concepts as well as experimenting with materials. Similarly, crossing some different brassica for hybrids.
A platform for indie devs to publish WIP web games: (https://flipkick.gg)
The goal is to build a discovery system/algo that surfaces stickiness and fun to give developers a tighter publish/iterate feedback loop so they can really hone their craft on a shorter time frame.
If you have a prototype of a game that can be hosted as a static frontend web rotting away in your "projects/" directory feel free to toss it up on the site. Bugs beware :)
high score: 88
I've been learning Russian off and on for 15 years and was having trouble keeping up in the group chat texting my Russian friends
Most language apps make you select whole words rather than type, so I made an app that focuses on text first
It's helped me find the letters on the keyboard much quicker and rattle off common responses
Check it out! Would love your feedback
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/texttutor/id6741771741
Multiple things AI Wireframe to https://wireframes.org/
SEO Extension Enhancements https://www.crawlspider.com/seo-pataka/
Two more chrome extension: Youtube Transcript Summary
Wirify like extension to generate wireframes from any website
We just did a Show HN last week [1], but we're building dédédé (https://dedede.de/en), a place to share the "good, bad, and why"s of urban spaces. Please check it out if you hadn't already!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43465740
KNOWRA - A tool to learn about a topic quickly https://knowra.ai Looks at multiple sources and links expand in place.
Building a tiny ~€50k mountain cabin in the mountains of Cyprus that I hope to Airbnb to then get a retired visa and move to Cape Town.
But pouring my soul into building Afterhours (afths.com); Duolingo for life skills (financial independence, building muscle, writing well, parenting etc)
A blog for learning all things ML – concepts, interview tips, online ML courses: https://www.trybackprop.com
I am creating a node- and timeline based animation editor for html pages: Nodeflow Studio, ready to start my beta shortly: https://nodeflow.studio
It is designed for users who want to create interactive animations on their websites without the need for coding, making it easier and giving more precise control of the animations.
If you are a web developer and think you will be a good beta tester, then fill out the beta test form on the website.
I'm working on spat https://github.com/Florents-Tselai/spat a Postgres extension.
spat is a Redis-like in-memory data structure server embedded in Postgres. Data is stored in Postgres shared memory. The data model is key-value. Keys are strings, but values can be strings, lists, sets, or hashes.
It's still alpha, but it works.
PortfolioSlice. It’s a website where you can share your investment portfolio and its asset allocations. Then other people can just follow that with an easy to use cash divider.
https://portfolioslice.com/
It currently just has my portfolio that I use (Innovation and Global Growth) and some other generated ones. I wanted to try out SvelteKit and Svelte to replace my Google Sheet into something cooler. Not sure if I want to monetize this.
Inspired by the Dobble card game, a friend and I built an iOS version where the symbols are emojis! You can customize the difficulty with options like “only green emojis” or other themed sets.
We don’t want to put ads in the game, but we’re exploring ways to add non-free features to make a little money from it. Has anyone done something similar? Any insights or past experiences with monetizing a casual mobile game would be really helpful!
I'm working on a drop-in replacement for Django admin with better UI/UX and useful features like custom forms that Django Admin lacks.
I'm trying to make an edison battery (Nickel Iron). My first attempt failed due to expired silver epoxy... I'm now planning to try a nickel paint (meant for electron microscopy).
https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/february2012_Noon
https://www.waitwhensyourbirthday.com/
a small social network to keep track of your friends birthdays
I've started working on a shared shopping list for group vacations. No sign-up, just create a list and share the link with friends. Emphasis on good sync performance even in bad network conditions, automatic sorting of the list based on where food is found in the supermarket, tags for items on the list. If anybody has ideas for this use-case please comment or email me :).
Not exactly the same but this reminds me of an idea I had for shareable shopping carts. You add things to a shopping cart and then you share it via a link (text, dm, chat, email, etc) and the receiver of that link clicks on it and the contents get added to their cart (alternative could be an import button that you paste the link in to make it more explicit).
Why? Plenty of times I've been ordering food with friends and we just pass around a phone to put in the order or someone dictates their order. Sometimes this can involve a friend who is not physically there and so they text you their order in just plain text. I thought it would be cool for everyone to be able to get on the same site, customize their order how they want, and share their link. That way there's no way that anyone misunderstood or forgot anything when placing the final order.
Actually I really like this idea, especially in the context of shared food ordering it makes a lot of sense!
I'm working on https://www.chessfunforlittleones.com/ - an electronic book to introduce children to chess through LED lights, poems and some cute chracters.
I launched the kickstarter a month ago and am currently finalising the logistics for shipping the books out and putting together the shopify site which should launch at some point in April.
A blog about burnout and recovery that chronicles my experiences going on an extended sabbatical for the last 3 years. The good, the bad, the unexpected, what I'd do differently, what I've learned along the way, etc.
I started the project 1.5 years ago after many people I spoke to expressed interest, but life got complicated and I had to focus on health among other things. It's now back on the front burner, and I'm hoping to launch it later this spring or early summer.
Do you mind sharing link?
I'm currently hosting this in my private homelab while I build it out, but if you shoot me an email (profile), I'd be happy to share it once it's up and running.
I recently made a joke invoice generator to bill my friends for fake stuff, https://jokeinvoice.com.
I had an idea to screen the YouTube videos that kids watch through a suitable LLM to assess whether the content was child friendly. There’s an emerging issue with insidious messaging / themes creeping into child-focused content that looks completely innocent on the surface, and I wondered if the current generation of LLMs can pick up on this. (Initial tests seem encouraging.)
My non-technical co-founder is in NY for Antler's 6-week residency program[1] to validate & launch a startup for autism. She just published https://brightpathforautism.com using https://lovable.dev
[1] https://www.antler.co/residency
I'm right now working on the Managed Postgres offering for our European Serverless cloud provider, https://molnett.com/. We're building it around Neon and are happy with it so far, but are stumbling upon unforeseen issues like query modes (Thank you Pgx for not being compatible by default with PGBouncer).
Hope to launch it soon!
Working on an interactive SQL tutorial for intermediate+ SQL developers, introducing you to and showing the power of such concepts as JOINs, pivoting (flipping rows to columns & vice versa), subqueries and common table expressions, including recursion, UNIONs, row locks, and some other small things.
The thing will be browser-based and, hopefully, both entertatining and educational.
Finally scanning my writings from jail and have started posting some of my poems on IG @thatsamcliff - so much to do with cartoons, essays, poems, and four screenplays to type up as well.
Hopefully getting Smart Communications to hand over my USPS Mail they blocked while I was in jail. I never agreed to the Terms and Conditions of Mailguard. That doesn’t mean I forfeited my rights. Hopefully some prisoner advocacy groups respond with guidance on what happens next.
I'm working on building my first custom mechanical keyboard, switches (Gateron KS-33 browns), hotswap sockets, and stabilizers should be coming in any day now, just have to do some measurements on the physical stabilizers since the CAD just didn't make sense, then it's time to send off the PCB and print a bunch of keycaps
Working on “AI automations for Jira” to help Jira admins create automation scripts using AI.
- secure and complaint as it runs on Atlassian
- easy to create automation as AI does the heavy lifting of creating the automation scripts for Jira
- unlimited which was a major limitation in native Atlassian offering.
https://ai-automation.123x.dev/
Im building retro style text editor with Open GL shaders, its a work in progress. I have ported st.c to imgui and have mostly working terminal emulator, now im working on LSP adapters and extending language support. https://github.com/nealmick/ned
Open source presenter software. If you ever need to show something on screen, this will handle it for you. Useful for any events like concert, conference, camps, etc. You can also use it for things like digital signage.
Still a lot of features to be added, but it's already useful for simple use-cases.
https://github.com/Vija02/TheOpenPresenter
I'm working on https://ad-si.github.io/LuaCAD/
LuaCAD is a scripting library which uses OpenSCAD as engine to create 2D and 3D models. The OpenSCAD language itself is quite limited and has several issues and Lua is much better suited for the job!
So if you're interested in programmatic CAD, please check it out!
I'm working on OnlineOrNot (https://onlineornot.com), a tool for getting an alert when your team vibe-codes your product offline. Just hit 4 years of running the business.
Currently adding the ability to pause checks on a schedule (for when you have scheduled maintenance on your DB and don't want alerts during that time).
I'm thinking a lot about RSS/Atom, how great email is to read content, and the intersection of these ideas with the W3C WebMonetization spec.
I think there's an opportunity to do novel things in this space, and LLMs might help in terms of providing summaries that people actually want.
I'm building this for me, but I think it could be useful for other people, too.
TIL that there is a W3C WebMonetization spec - thanks for sharing.
Taking a look, it seems quite underwhelming[0] :( Lack of monetization on the web gave us the ad-driven content model that LLMs are now hovering up.
Have there been any other proposals for monetization?
[0] https://webmonetization.org/specification/
Make a combination of RSS/Atom and the MCP protocol.
A tool for learning German via reading. The main feature is click a word to see its dictionary entry (not always easy with so many declensions). Flashcard creation from the dictionary entry. Real human spoken audio from Wiktionary.
Will be working on some LLM features soon (explain "X" in the sentence "Y" prompt). It'd be nice to get a word frequency ranking dataset integrated, so I don't waste time learning rare words.
I’d check this out
I'm developing an application that utilizes a genetic algorithm to optimize compilation flags.
I'm porting a Chip-8 interpreter I wrote in Ruby to C. I was planning to do it in Rust but thought it would be good to face the problems Rust is solving first.
Tinkering with a platform for people who're interested in doing analysis/visualisation of data from professional Counter Strike games.
i.e. instead of them having to download demos, extract them, parse them and then only query data. I want to just have a database available so they get to skip all those steps.
Not gonna make me rich but if I can get it to cover it's own costs I'll be stoked.
I am working on journaling app targeted at language learners: You write inna target language and see mistakes and corrections. It’s as pre-order in the app store: https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/language-diary-writing-w-ai/id...
An open source database (lsm tree)
https://github.com/tidesdb/tidesdb
Very slowly working on a prototype for a game where you learn about a deceased relative by using their old (C64-type) computer, reading their files and playing the games they made.
Because I can't fucking stop myself, I created a fantasy ISA and am working on an assembler and basic interpreter for said fantasy ISA.
We are putting together an automated compliance solution for environmental sustainability. Think of us as Delve.co or Vanta for heavy industries. Currently working on a new landing page. The goal is to make it easy to stay compliant when regulations get updated and maintain a positive compliance posture down to the asset level.
https://carbonimpacthq.com
I am working on supporting wildcard custom domains for https://pinggy.io
What we found is that we can issue certificates for a wildcard domain even without asking the user to setup TXT records. If one CNAME record is set, we can set the TXT records on our domain to validate the wildcard domain.
Very excited about it.
AI email assistant https://apps.apple.com/us/app/email-agent/id6740051485
Google Firebase mobile client https://apps.apple.com/us/app/littlefire-firebase-mobile/id6...
I'm thinking of writing an app to manage ticketing and events in Europe. There's Eventbrite but it mostly for larger cities instead of mid-sized ones. I think there could be a niche for cheaper alternatives especially since student societies get charged like 2.50 euros on top of a 10 euro ticket.
Also, writing a Masters thesis on area-level and individual-level predictors of breast cancer... so a lot of applied ML.
The main side project I'm working on now probably won't apply too much to this audience but it's a weekly urbanism news roundup. The idea is to get global examples to inspire local change. Also, after leaving school I still wanted to keep in touch with what's happening around the world and continue learning.
https://urbanismnow.com/
Oh, also I'm thinking making a little tool so when craiglist emails you for a saved search it deduplicates it before forwarding it to a chat app. My parents would find it very helpful as they still use craigslist a lot but the duplicate notifications for listings really annoys them.
If anyone is interested, i'm looking for someone to take over a port of Windows alt+tab window switching for the Mac.
The app is very mature, yet it could still be improved in interesting ways.
https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos/issues/1179
Happy user for many years!
Wishing you good luck with finding a maintainer.
I'm putting about an evening a week into Advent of Code 2015, in C, to try to learn a bunch of stuff that I won't unless I push myself: https://git.thomasballantine.com/thomasballantine/Advent_of_...
Still writing a Dev Runbook for my canvas library. I forgot how much of a monster it's become over the years ... https://github.com/KaliedaRik/Scrawl-canvas/pull/119
Network infrastructure for Bluetooth: https://blecon.net
Thats an interesting project. Thanks for sharing.
Working on a work distribution network for medium to large size organizations. Some unique design and architectural decisions allow for ease of use and ease of scale. It has legs and I think a real shot at competing with applications like Workday, Asana, and Gloat. I’m planning on going full-time with it next week!
I've been working on https://www.styleadvice.ai, a personal styling tool that gives users tailored advice based on features like face shape, eye shape, skin conditions and more. The idea is to make personalized styling a more accessible and fun.
My team’s building micro AI agents that perform very specific tasks really well. Right now, we see ourselves more as a consulting firm, developing custom agents while we search for the right vertical to specialize in. Eventually, we’d love to turn that into a SaaS product. We only have demos to show yet, but I’d be happy to chat more about it :)
Working on writing my first novel after years of (part time) planning. I’m finding it difficult to do the actual writing, but trying to stick with it. I don’t naturally enjoy the writing process vs writing code, which has been my primary endeavor for 20 years. Advice from other engineer/writers appreciated.
I’ve been mostly been getting all my shit out of various clouds and trying to get more things offline where I can control the tenancy, risk and cost.
I'm building Matrixbird - an experimental email powered by matrix.
https://matrixbird.com
For a long time I used an app called Slowtube to practice guitar. I recently built my own version with features I always wanted like the ability to save sections of songs for future practice, search YouTube (instead of copying links), and provide cross device synchronization. I’m using it daily for practice now and after a bit of polish I plan to put it up on my website
I spend most of my time developing Slurm-web, an open source web interface for Slurm, the workload manager for HPC & AI clusters.
It's fun, with good mix of interesting technologies and it seems to solve a real problem for many users in HPC community!
https://slurm-web.com/
I'm working on a webpage to share my notes from science/engineering classes. It includes a node graph of all the topics in a particular course, and you can click on a node to find what I've written about that topic.
Here's a demo (click on "Limiting Reactant"):
https://owenpalmer.com/webnotes/
Working on a tool to make playlists on Spotify using Autogen + Deepseek's R1. https://github.com/anshumankmr/sporky
Got the basic happy path to work, albeit still some tweaks are needed to get it working a bit better and seem more conversational.
I'm working on nothing of importance (well actually it's a notable product from Big Tech). I'm looking to start something new but want to stay in Berlin and want to work on core technology or critical government/public/financial systems. I can either help fund this work and help at an arms length or join up.
An app called Reflect to run self experiments, to prove your new habit or supplement is doing what you want, or to get to the bottom of what relationship your mood has with your lifestyle changes:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
I am working on a battle simulation for the game 'The Bazaar'.
I was quite frustrated with how the original devs handled monetization going into open beta, which sparked my motivation.
Trying out Kotlin for the first time and having a blast so far!
Also using an ECS architecture for the first time. It's quite a different way of reasoning about things, but it definitely helps with the dynamic fights that need to be simulated.
Watch out for DMCAs. They're, ah, not very fond of third-party development.
Best wishes,
The former developer of Bizarre Insights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2yQXDFVRPQ
Thanks for the heads up! But that's what I figured, based on how they dealt with the other trackers and overlays.
I am planning to open source it (when I am at least somewhat happy with the implementation) but without any references to the bazaar. It just so happens that it uses items with cooldown and similar systems that deal with burn, poison, haste etc. ;)
You can then bring your own items and play out the simulations and maybe your items just so happen to be based on the bazaar or maybe you create your own custom items based on lord of the rings or whatever.
Right now, the project's primary purpose is to be an interesting problem that needs to be solved and helping me learn new things.
Btw. your tool looks great! A shame that team tempo is against these kinds of community driven tools
I am further improving my already very usable SVG editor Hyvector (https://www.hyvector.com)
With AI eating graphic designers lunch, I started to pivot and will add features for vectorizing and editing of AI generated images. I think this can become a really exciting product.
I'm working on a tool called Canyon to help jobseekers land their dream job by helping them perfect their resume, be much faster at applying to jobs, and practicing with our mock interview tool.
https://www.usecanyon.com/
Working on some starter templates for going from plain English requirements to a ready-to-use applications in a few minutes. Are you a small team looking to go from Excel to something a bit more streamlined but would like to avoid a time-consuming and costly process? Schedule a live demo today. https://genatron.ai
Working on ARC-AGI (2). Trying a few different approaches including gradient descent mechanisms to construct programs in DSLs. Was really inspired by the recent differentiable logic gate networks work from Google, and believe there is a way to adapt it to generate programs instead of cellular automata rules.
This sounds cool, could you elaborate more?
Subscribed
For the last couple of months I've been building a file upload platform.
https://github.com/Merkoba/Harambe
But the last thing I did was this function to make my irc bot program itself:
https://rentry.org/aircprogramrule
Toggr: https://toggr.io/
it's Flickr but for wildlife photography. A good olde fashioned web app. Made it to learn Nextjs as much as anything which was interesting, but got some good lighthouse scores, so hooray
I am still working on Java bindings for io_uring https://github.com/davidtos/JUring
The goal is to bring fast random read/writes to Java. Fun project with lots of great challenges around performance while maintaining a nice API.
I'm trying to make my own GUI library in cross-platform C, based on Vulcan. Because evidently I'm a glutton for punishment.
I'm only a couple of weeks in. But it's giving me a break from my programming language that I was working on. (It's a template language, also written in C, also cross-platform, that has a jit compiler with a bytecode fallback.)
Earlier this year I started making music with an m8 tracker, from Dirtywave. Fantastic device, I highly recommend. It’s my first tracker and took only half a day to feel comfortable and being able to produce simple songs!
It’s so effective that I can have a chord idea at noon, and a song done before the evening
Working on a fast key value caching engine from scratch in golang with no dependencies
https://github.com/nubskr/nubmq
Learning about Rama (https://redplanetlabs.com/) which has been released recently. The tech is very cool and also it's Clojure, but still not sure what would be the best use case for it.
An app for helping groups of friends decide on restaurants, movies, etc using ranked choice voting and a Tinder esque swipe interaction for creating rankings.
Been dabbling in game dev and have been having a good time with a little sailing game that I think could be a cozy “A Short Hike” esque , but where you have to grock how (simplified) sailing works.
I want to SaaS-ify my scraping process. It's gotten to a point that it works nice and reliably for me, now I need to wrap it in a good DX package and call it version 0.1.
(The main drive behind this was not to sell it, but to have a UI for when a website changes its layout and I'm on holidays and don't have access to my terminal and/or my yubikeys)
I was trying to reproduce the NeuralSVG paper but it's hard. In the process I had to learn about diffusion and flow matching.
ServerSearcher (https://serversearcher.com) to make it easier to find cloud/virtual and bare-metal servers that match specific requirements like RAM, location, or CPU. There needed to be an easier way.
I am developing a dataset and research tool for Algebraic Structures.
https://j-stubbs.gitlab.io/algebraic_structures/
It's all very POC right now but the idea is to eventually add many improvements including documenting the Python API.
Myself. I recorded and livestreamed about 1000 hours of my life last year. Think Google Photos but filling in the gaps. I use AI to generate daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly summaries.
https://www.kenwarner.com/p/how-was-your-2024
A simple tool to continuously vectorize your PostgreSQL tables with the flexibility of your own embedding pipelines.
https://github.com/BarnacleLabs/RAGmatic
I’ve been thinking lots about the YouTube algorithm, how it’s based on engagement, not educational value, and how it’s such a huge missed opportunity for our kids.
So I’ve been building my own YouTube app, for my own kids. Better blocking of keywords (no more 1,000 MrBeast video recommendations). Better educational themes.
Email me if you’re interested in testing.
jim.jones1@gmail.com
I'm building ProductMe, an app that teaches Product Management. It’s designed to be a viable alternative to traditional PM bootcamps—200x more affordable, with the same learning outcomes: https://productme.org
A Cursor/ VS Code extension which adds custom pets to your IDE - all original pixel art :)
https://github.com/blairjordan/codachi
I just made it possible for them to appear in the Explorer (and not just in a Panel).
Some minimalist tactical shooter, similar to counter strike. Low poly graphics, bullet drop, and other things. On Godot.
Hi, I've got open-source project(s) focused on low-level C/C++ mostly around kernels, toolchains and boot infrastructure.
Check it out: https://github.com/amlel-el-mahrouss (it's on the pinned repositories)
Speech MCP Server - uses Kokoro TTS under the hood to give your LLM the ability to speak. I use it to have Cursor agents notify me when long running tasks are complete.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/speech-mcp-server
I'm working on my web framework Mayu. Haven't had much time lately but I found some time to make a few improvements.
https://github.com/mayu-live/framework
https://mayu.live/
A team of researchers and I are building a data visualization tool to help understand the impact of proposed NIH cuts:
https://scienceimpacts.org/
Pretty fun to see how easy it is to put together a decent website on a shoestring budget (R2 hosting, all react frontend)
https://easel.games/about
A 2D game programming language that lets you code multiplayer like singleplayer. My dream is for it to be a super-engaging way for teenagers to get into coding because everything they make they can actually play with other people.
I develop an app that makes it easy to create charts in your style, while following best data visualization practices.
Upload your CSV, write a prompt, and get a journal-worthy chart.
https://charts.quesma.com/
Cool stuff! I was thinking about something similar yesterday when walking the dog :) Good job!
Still https://grugnotes.com — an htmx/old school but also ai first notes app. Recently added some cursor style features. Best use case is training and workout generations right now. Mostly think about how to make ai useful for every day things.
Writing prose instead of code. Started a Ghost powered newsletter mainly focusing on AI and retro computing. Aiming to be a lightweight general read, not heavy technical stuff. Had a bit of success with a couple of articles posted to HN before.
https://newslttrs.com
Large scale classifications of text using LLM
What kinds of text?
Whatever text I can get. But I’m starting with project Gutenberg
...and why use LLMs specifically?
In many cases, other methods run faster/scale better/use less energy.
Because LLMs are one million times easier to use and they give very good results.
Working on an FPS aim trainer that has a heavy focus on tracking performance data over time.
I love how MonkeyType lets you see exactly how much you’ve improved over time at typing and it’s inspired me to take a similar approach to this hobby of mine as well
I'm working on a hidden puzzle for the 40th anniversary phrack edition which is scheduled for release this summer. If you're a reader of it be on the lookout for curiosities and scrutinize everything. There is a prize at the end and it's going to be fun. :)
Divepod - comp sci education program based on advisory model[1]. Instead of a fixed curriculum, each student is paired with an advisor who follows their interests and adapt the learning plan as they go. Something I wished I had as a teenager.
[1]https://www.divepod.to
As a side project am writing Android app for forward collision warning (FCW), lane departure alert (LDA) along with some ADAS functions. In the mid term an planning to connect it to the cruise control. p.s. for an old Mitsubishi Delica D5 that I bought for car camping.
Any advices are highly appreciated.
Working on sourcing IP geolocation data for my little site https://www.ipparrot.net and adding more sections like Networking Glossary and some networking tools.
I'm building an app for splitting bills with friends, mainly for holidays and roommates: https://quicksplit.io
It does one thing and it does it well. I built it with a friend and we released the iOS app last year. Currently building the Android app
I don’t see pricing on the website but the iOS app shows “In App purchases”. Is there a reason why you wouldn’t mention pricing on the website you linked?
I'm working on making it easy for startups to run experiments and do them well.
And I ran my first experiment on Saturday to good effect. Ran a small ad and already got some leads. I feel super pumped about it. And excited to share out the results soon! Definitely an easy experiment to start proving the model.
Back to working on Ensō (write.sonnet.io) and writing/working in public after a short hiatus.
Also, got some feedback for hands.sonnet.io, so I'd like to play with it a little bit if time permits (might be hard to stay inside, Spring has just started in Portugal).
https://github.com/pokulabs/twilio-frontend
I threw together a UI for sending & receiving Twilio SMS messages. Was surprised by the lack of free options, FOSS or otherwise.
I'm working on https://inboto.com, an AI agent for email support. I'm tried out sending receptive emails, or switching between different platforms to find unified information about the customer.
A German equatorial telescope mount. Right now I'm learning to make gears. After building the hardware I'd like to write the firmware/software for tracking stars and planets. This will be a long term project for sure.
Relay - A real-time collaboration plugin for Obsidian. [0]
Relay transforms Obsidian into a collaborative environment with real-time collaborative editing, comfortably private folder sharing, offline support, and self-hostable Relay Servers.
[0] https://relay.md
Matrimonial App for Indians settled Abroad (with paying members) - https://www.nrimeet.app/
Neighborhood App for Indians - https://neighar.com/
A TRUELLY decentralised web! I’m about a quarter done, it works, and amazed nobody has done what I’m doing before.
Was doing it on the Fuel Network, but now that they let 30% of staff go last week (including me), I’m thinking about starting fresh and doing it on Solana.
I’m working on a fashion brand. Design, marketing and creating a brand should be challenging and fun. I’ll create something fun, joyful and fruits inspired. Anyone tried fashion ? Any recommendation on what to learn ahead of the challenges?
Working on a new version of the deployment service [1] for my full-stack JS framework [2].
[1] https://cheatcode.co/push
[2] https://cheatcode.co/joystick
I am working on a project called LakyAI.
LakyAI will help you build your brand by creating and sharing content online.
Right now I am working on a good blogging experience, but more is coming.
https://lakyai.com x.com/laky_ai
A linter for LLM application code (including prompts), i.e. programs that do LLM calls, scanning code issues related to security or performance:
https://github.com/kereva-dev/kereva-scanner
I'm working on a financial education IOS app, to teach young adults how to manage their money through the power of storytelling and games. Think Duolingo mini lessons but financial education lessons instead.
A decentralized, peer-to-peer, encrypted chat written in Python: https://github.com/FluxChat/fluxchat-py
Also want to write a client in Zig.
Huge threads like this are why I wish there was a way of sorting by most upvoted
I spent a week building and then a month over-engineering https://roastedreads.com - a site where you get roasted you based on what you read by literary characters (Gollum, Murderbot, Ms.Marple etc).
I've just completed solving Cursor IDE model completion problem called Character prefix conditioning.
https://github.com/Anilturaga/Character-Prefix-Conditioning
I wanted to level up my electronics so I decided to build a piece of test equipment. Big bench top PSU, multimeter, active load, logic analyzer, whatever else I can throw in. Plus a detachable wireless touchscreen for extra complication.
A Lottie animation generator that allows to create a Lottie animation from an image and text input.
That sounds really cool. How would you create such a thing?
The current workflow is create an image with stable diffusion, vectorize it, convert it to Lottie format, and than use a function that can create the Lottie animation keyframes.
How would you rig whatever is in the stable diffusion generated image automatically? You'd have to find a way to identify the objects in the image, segment them into their individual limbs/pieces and rig and animate them.
Maybe Meta's open source segmentation tool would be handy. Maybe you can rig the person/animal/object in the image using one of the object detection tools on HuggingFace.
This seems like a really interesting project. I'd love to check it out if you plan on open sourcing it!
I'm building a dating app for what I think is an untapped market. I'm just worried the apple store is going to reject it. I read back in 2020 they aren't accepting more dating apps but I've also seen a number of new ones pop up.
What's the idea?
https://already.dev -- find out if your idea, product or service is already out there and who's doing. Saves hours of research!
I worked on a 3d game in three.js infinite procedural generation. Please check , it should run properly give it some time to load,
https://github.com/sktguha/aqua-horizons
I am working on a little hobby golf app. Essentially, have LLMs step in as a virtual caddie, providing shot selection options based on course layout, player distances and tendencies, and weather.
I'm making a tiny tiny LLM in rust (using candle) to teach myself AI https://github.com/antoineMoPa/rust-text-experiments
I've been working on an app that records RAW video on Android devices [1].
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motioncam....
An open source system to build web-based assistants. SaaS like, API-first and multi-LLM. Feedbacks are welcome! https://sermas-eu.github.io/
I’ve been working away on my subscription management and billing system. Replaces Stripe Billing, Stripe Taxes, Stripe Checkout, etc.
Https://billabear.com HTTPS://github.com/billabear/billabear
I'm building a perp funding arbitrage aggregator. Aggregates funding rates across a number of DEXs to help users track down the most lucrative opportunities.
If there is uptake the plan is to build out a toolset to help with managing a portfolio of arbs.
What does this mean? I have no idea what niche you're even working in
opkssh (https://github.com/openpubkey/opkssh) it lets you configure OpenSSH so you can ssh using your OpenID Connect identity without adding a trusted party other than the IDP. I'm trying to figure out how to TOFU a MFA HW token (yubikey) on first login so we don't even have to trust the IDP. The trick part is to design so if you lose your HW Token you aren't locked out without reintroducing trust. Maybe use a backup code or backup yubikey or the DKIM trick to allow timelocked resets of the HW Token via an email.
I'd been building a Unicode visualization tool that I think could be awesome if I pull it off right. I got stuck and paused working on it. So, currently I'm working on myself, studying Math Academy every day.
Just shipped my first film for a client's auction gala that was received with high praise! Now itching for more video production. We overproduced it with 4k drone footage, multiple multicam interviews, and I got some incredible b-roll.
So fun!
I'm building an AI agents platform: https://aiconstrux.com
The copy on the landing page needs to be updated, as more general use cases will be supported.
I use Apple Pencil with my iPad for figures in documents and wanted a better way to sync with my other work... so writing an iPad app for drawings using git for syncing with remote repos. Goal to release in App Store by end of April.
Oh yes please. Do you have a "preorder" on the App Store yet?
No, but I'll look into that as I get closer to having something ready.
April Fools joke/release for my test prep business https://crucialexams.com/.
Hoping it will get some viral sharing and lead to some good quality backlinks.
i've been working on a database management tui called rainfrog (https://github.com/achristmascarl/rainfrog). it supports postgres, mysql, and sqlite, and we recently added several new features such as: - favorites tab for frequently used queries - exporting query results to csv - configuring database connections in the config
feature requests and bug reports are appreciated!
How is rainfrog different from harlequin[0]
[0] https://github.com/tconbeer/harlequin
i haven't used harlequin extensively, but from what i know:
- rainfrog is more keyboard centric, and it's built around vim-like keybindings
- rainfrog has minimal requirements to run (harlequin requires python)
- harlequin supports a lot more DBs and has a lot more drivers right now
Still working on moviematey from time to time - a movie recommender engine * https://moviematey.com/
A Survivors clone with Control & Stranger Things vibe and some secrets.
Designing and building a full webapp for a tabletop boardgame convention! Really making it a piece of art unlike all the boring business projects I normally work on!
I'm working on a tool to convert any OpenAPI JSON spec to an MCP server, so LLMs can interact with it. If anyone's interested in this, email in my bio. I'll also put it on my Github soon, once I polish up the code.
Not a coding project, but I have been writing a sci-fi novel about a world where time goes backwards and forwards. It has some interesting history in it too. I'm looking for beta readers.
got a link?
I am working on creating a GAN for predicting the next few heartbeats given an ECG signal and hoping that the administration does not defund this project because I am being paid by a university project funded by the NIH.
- https://Web3Wizz.com, no code web3 interfaces.
Thinking of doing a set of widgets for stablecoins
A budgeting app that comes with a built-in checking account https://envelopebudgeting.com/
Currently trying to convert the SwiftUI app to Compose using Skip.
I'm automating blog post writing for SEO complete with keyword research, SERP gap analysis, brand voice/service brief analysis etc. Really fun and the results are really good!
Did a redesign of my leaderboard app: https://leaderboard.fun and planning on adding mobile apps for iOS and Android :)
Same as last month (no update). Any insight would be awesome!
I’ve deleted all my social media apps. I’m trying to see what’s missing in my life in terms of interacting with friends and family and trying to build it.
BlinkMore, an open-source macOS app to help with digital eye strain: https://github.com/oxremy/BlinkMore
FlowStorm A FOSS time travel debugger for Clojure https://www.flow-storm.org/
A new runtime: Elide, which brings GraalVM and its benefits to new ecosystems. Runs Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Pkl.
https://elide.dev
An interactive narrative environment (language+runtime+tooling) with probability as a first class citizen.
It’s meant to be used as a middleware in game engines and designed to empower writers that are not programmers.
Working on an editor to write CQL (Clinical Quality Language)
Anyone writing FHIR / Clinical Quality Language queries would love to give access and get some feedback.
Feel free to reach out
I'm building Incidenthub.cloud - a B2B SaaS that monitors public status pages of third-party dependencies.
It was born out of a personal need in past roles and teams. I launched it last year.
I am working on https://wakana.io an open source alternative to Wakatime
Working on Blockchain Node Infrastructure as a Service. Launched the MVP a few days ago: https://www.bithub.com
I'm working on https://github.com/librempeg/librempeg
I have been working on a bash only static site generator. I don’t think that I’ll share it, but its nice to know I own the tool chain and that I should be able to replicate it forever.
I just submitted a TinyML paper last night, focusing on creating a reproducible pipeline for model selection, compression, and deployment on constrained devices. I hope it gets accepted!
Adding Error Logging to https://uxwizz.com, plus a couple of side-projects (one with music, and one with shopping).
(1) My blog, over at oddlynx.com. Been tinkering with branding and design and (2) some leatherworking for a custom pocket notebook design! :D
I built a minimalist player’s player voting tool. If you play sports, Enjoy!
https://vote.gameon.futbol/
creating a gamified novel writing app that will be a duolingo for novel writing. AI can help you write, review what you've written, all while encouraging engagement by playing for points. Looking for some beta testers if anyone is interested in trying it. Best part, I'm only taking 5% cut of all sales in my shop. Amazon and Barnes and Noble take between 30% and 40%. Hoping it becomes the go to app for future novelists from all over the world.
I've just finished creating a Magic the Gathering rules engine, and now I'm currently training an LLM agent to play games against itself through reinforcement learning.
How did you do it?
https://vote.gameon.futbol/
I built a player’s player voting tool. If you play sports, enjoy!
Wails-powered desktop app using WebRTC for direct P2P file sending, between pertinently online users local folders. >>both have to be online for this to work...
https://skoterbanken.se/ a snowmobiles database and index.
Rebuilding my personal website. A friend had bought me a .su domain (since my card can't buy online) but he disappeared years ago.
So I'm updating it and putting it back online!
https://github.com/abhimanyu-jain/PRML_Solutions
Working on an email assistant that mines emails + your calendar.
Gives you context on upcoming meetings you scheduled a week ago but cant remember what it was about :)
Small iphone app to show the nearest tube station next train platforms in London mostly. Learning SwiftUI and just using TFL API.
Autonomous project management for developers (https://lanes.pm)
I am working on Merklemap, a CT search engine: https://www.merklemap.com/
Looks at counter... 14 Billion certificates. How do you even keep that site manageable, must be close to 100TB of certificates data alone. Are you running trigram index for the domain wildcard search, does that not kill your performance with so many domains?
I’m writing an MCP DSL and server implementation in elixir.
I just finished my Mac speech to text app: https://whispertype.com
a tool to make software more user-friendly by hiding advanced features for new users:
[1] https://vykee.co
Daily journaling app, Markdown format, with Excel-like composable formulas (find, ask, etc.) Email in my bio if you want to be an alpha tester.
iOS app size analysis running locally on your mac: https://dotipa.app/
I am working on an AWS Lambda clone, an app for indian farmers and a hackathon projects which involves multiple agent interactions
Building a knowledge graph where AI/ML is used to classify nodes (entity type). Next step is to extract data deterministically. https://github.com/pixlie/PixlieAI
There is a crawler to chase given objective and crawl/store web page results. We use Claude Haiku and Brave Search API (own API keys) and we will support local models soon.
Potential use-cases are lead generation, competitor search, product tracking, contracts search.
i play a lot of destiny 2, and I find a lot of the sites for showcasing destiny builds are absurdly information dense and waste so much time on explaining basic gameplay, and theyre also laid out badly where its hard to put it onto a 2nd monitor to quickly copy, so im working on a site to remedy this for myself
Bundless.dev - A non-intrusive 35kb client side react compiler
Easyjobapps.com - autofill job forms with tailored resumes and replies.
Working on a products/services trends discovery and analysis tool for small and medium businesses.
A new programming language inspired by XY, Forth, APL.
This is a Fibonacci example. This code evaluates to 8:
[1 1 (x-1$ + x-2$)] 5
I am working on A tool to help governments better serve their citizens by using AI to automate complex multi-party workflows.
A social network for techies, https://wonderful.dev
rewriting the backend for https://voidchat.org in TypeScript. it was originally in c++, but i lost the entire codebase (wasn't using git) and figured i'd try something else. lesson learned (maybe)
I am developing a new to-do app designed to assist individuals with ADHD and task management anxiety.
streaming markdown renderer in the terminal. As far as I know, the only one in existence that works like this, which is why i felt compelled to write it: https://github.com/kristopolous/Streamdown
drive.py - simple comparison of directories and finding duplicate files tool https://github.com/web3cryptowallet/drive-py
Thinking of putting together web app that uses an LLM for conversion of a resume to json resume
Mostly snowboarding. Trying to get 30 days this season! A few more weeks to go (I’m at 26)
working on Gainline (https://gainline.app/) with a couple of friends, an app for rugby fans to follow their favorite teams and leagues.
I have started exploring missile guidance system on my own. Starting out with basics.
Degenerate amateurish quantitative analysis modeling copy-trading on the Solana network.
Stream processing/materialization engine written in rust that can be compiled to wasm.
Graffiti art.
i am working on an Applicant Tracking System. with little knowledge in this domain, it is turning out to be much more complex that i imagined. well, i plan to release it as freemium alternative to greenhouse/lever
https://jmeter.ai
ever feel buried in applicants and wasting time on interviews that lead nowhere?i’m building an AI tool to help you instantly screen candidates so you only spend time on the best ones (and don’t miss out on great hires while stuck interviewing the wrong ones).
if that hits home, i’d love 30 mins to share what i’m building and get your thoughts. reply here or DM me if you’re up for a quick chat! Calendly link (feel free to lmk if any other times work better for you) - https://calendly.com/vibrane/30min
On the FOSS front, I've been doing some minor things in TXR Lisp land.
Here is one:
When the random/rand functions are called with small moduli, well under 32 bits wide, they still draw a 32 bit word from the PRNG. I fixed that. Now the random state has a 32 bit shift register which it can load from the PRNG and take bits from it (in batches of 2, 4, 8 or 16).
There is a way to do this without any additional state other than that 32 bit word to indicate that the register has run out of bits.
We pretend that the register is 33 bits wide, giving it an indicator high bit that is always 1. Thus whenever the value drops to 1 or 0, it has to be reloaded. We cannot fit that indicator bit into the register, so what we do is: when we are reloading it with a fresh value, we immediately take bits we need from that value, shift it right, which creates the space for the bit. We then mask the bit in the right spot, depending on the shift size.
I worked on enhancing brace expansion in the glob* function. The regular glob* function has brace expansion if it is provided by the POSIX C library one, but the extended glob* has its own. I added numeric and string range expansion to it. It's better than the corresponding features in bash, because you can use more than one character, as in {AA..ZZ}. Also, if you use leading zeros in numeric ranges you get leading zeros in the output, as in {000..999}. The step sizes are supported.
Inspired by the step sizes in brace expansion, I added the same to range iteration:
... and other stuff. There are a number of items remaining on the TODO list marked for next release.CryptoQuant clone with geography-specific features tailored for banking clients.
Been building an automated test builder and an agentic API generator for the past few months.
tl;dr: A 60fps embedded browser on the frontend lets you record manual steps and AI-driven steps (to assert/extract data). It then turns those into test suites. Any test with AI queries can auto-generate an API to be queried later.
Right now, I'm working on an agentic API builder. Example use case: Say you need data from Salesforce and JIRA — you log in, navigate to what you need, add an AI query step (or select elements manually), and set an update interval. The system then handles extraction and monitoring.
Why? Because at all my previous jobs, suggesting hiring QA engineers would get you laughed out of the room. But testing was desperately needed, as well as internal tooling. Burning developer/CTO time on wrangling multiple complex API's just to build some internal tool would take much longer without this. So I'm working on something that makes both vastly simpler for small teams. Hoping to have a workable demo next week!
building the quickest AI chrome extension (700k downloads): https://chatgptwriter.ai
Kafka TUI application, only in my brain though, I haven't started yet
Very much WIP: I'm working on an alternative to subscriptions for online publications. Instead of subscribing to entire publications / blogs, publishers would register their publication on this network and configure thresholds and pricing. Add a bit of code to the site and a paywall will show up, allowing readers to pay for individual articles. The prices would be minimal, amounting to less than a dollar in most cases. i.e. reading articles using micro-transactions
I know it's been tried before, but I thought I'd attack it with a few different angles - web based, no chrome extension, and thresholds to help verify the article is worth it.
You can see the proof-of-concept here: https://paperwall.io/
I think it's a great idea. Feel free to email me if you're interested in feedback.
zero-knowledge proof framework to prove for example that a bank has the necessary funds, or for a loan application that I make enough without revealing how much
i'm improving my chat site aimed at programmers and technology lovers <https://chat-to.dev>
A revolutionary product to disrupt sustainable agriculture.
lambdamoo rewrite https://github.com/rdaum/moor/
Frontline evacuations of animals in East Ukraine
FPV drone production
Writing an fft core in vhdl. Pipelining is not easy.
Not exactly Nobel worthy. :-)
I’m rebuilding a learning library. Webpage bookmarks (with big help from raindrop.io), PDFs (hundreds of them, mostly book chapters), images, jupyter notebooks, markdowns, etc. using a Jekyll static site generator to minimize the tech stack hairballs.
The interesting part is that nearly all of the content is tagged to associate with two or more domains ex:
Goodreads-history-truecrime
PyTorch-Jupyter
Rubyonrails-Testing
Behavior-Gaslighting
Semiconductors-GPUs
And so on.
It’s an exercise in taxonomy creation. Searching by tag doesn’t quite get it. And we all know PDF auto summaries are tough.
I’m not expecting anybody to be impressed. It keeps me occupied while learning how to be (unfortunately) retired.
Currently homeless, driving Uber and Lyft. I've fixed my mental health after a shit storm of life events, mostly using AI as therapist.
I'm going back to school soon for psychology (figure financial aid can also pay room and board).
I'm wanting to build a mobile journal app with a bunch of AI guided 'games' to help learn DBT skills or work out trauma or do Shadow work or just guided CBT for a purpose.
I've changed my MBTI from intp-t to enfp-a...(I find I revert sometimes when I don't feel safe)... in other words I've become a very outgoing people person at least I'm a lot less afraid in social situations or to act like a fool on the dance floor... etc...
I also want to write a book and do videos on hacking your brain using AI... nobody seems to be doing this... there's a lot of potential for this niche I think.
I fixed hobbies, depression, and social life, all that's left is physical and financial and those are kind of easy when emotions are in check.
bookhead - zapier for independent bookstores: https://bookhead.net
american-style intersections function with an order-of-magnitude higher safety and throughput and a much smaller square meter 'footprint' if they switch from 'controlled' intersections (lights, stop signs) to 'traffic beans': [0]
[0]: https://zoningverydifferentthanours.substack.com/p/a-pattern...
This gets complicated because the reason things are the way they are is _crucial_ to efficient, easy change, and the greater united states is a place obsessed with continuing _ethnic cleansing_. it's sad and tiring to exist inside of, the dehumanization caused every day, anew, by american style road networks, supremacy.
tl;dr american road networks and american zoning is two sides of the coin some groups used to accomplish 'regimes of social control', which was a mix of ethnic cleansing for some neighborhoods, and ensuring conformity for others.
Oh, and a cool data visualization project. Here's a map of most of my travel for the last few years: https://josh.works/mobility-data
polylines for daaaaaaaaaaays
I‘m building a Duolingo for Jazz Language.
Interesting. What exactly does that mean? Harmony or Jive?
Working on my personal blog (https://bryanhogan.com/) recently. Updated some older posts such as the one on creating a gaming backlog (or similar) within Obsidian.
Also making a customizable self-tracking app that can be used as a habit tracker, health log, journal or similar. Goal is to make daily manual entries efficient and worthwhile. It will be local first and without an annoying subscription.
If anyone is personally interested in it or knows someone who could profit from something like this (e.g. because of their health condition) contact me please. Looking for testers and feedback to make it useful for people of various backgrounds and health conditions.
Sounds fun! Subscribed. Always interested in more tinkering with note-taking systems and methods.
ocaml gui text editor. very early stage right now but i'm learning a lot about ocaml and performance. :)
Making a POC of a carbon accounting product.
Making a POC of a railway scheduling system.
Battling the cloud that quells my passions.
Making a POC of a data governance product.
A molecular viewer and docking tool.
Simple net worth tracking: https://argos.techbrohomelab.xyz
Wanted to start tracking my net worth over weeks/years but wasn't impressed with my options being 1. Boring spreadsheet 2. Half cooked self hosted budgeting app 3. Pay X/month for third party budgeting app
Just wanted simple net worth tracking with a nice easy to use web app.
Maybe in the future i'll add some Plaid syncing of accounts but currently manual inputs for all accounts
a childrens book about GPT and a biomorphs/biocrabs habitat simulation
Retirement.
I'm writing a brand-new OLTP database with Rust, DataFusion and RocksDB (to be replaced with something in pure Rust later, hopefully). It's still very early days, but I'm soo close to finally being willing to share it.
Close enough to Postgres that apps think it's Postgres, but also runnable as a library like SQLite -- best of both worlds! And then if you're willing to not limit yourself to Postgres compatibility, you also get fancy new technologies like unsigned integers in a database! (Old SQL ecosystem is sometimes ridiculous.)
My personal journey goes something like this:
I've always suffered from both SQLite and Postgres idiosyncrasies, and almost always when deploying I've wanted to start out small, not have a big dedicated database server, and have meaningful tests that don't have multi-gigabyte dependencies and runtime assumptions. The idea of having something "close enough to Postgres to not have to learn much new" database with the low-end abilities of SQLite is something I've been wanting for roughly as long as I've known about SQLite -- even more so if it could also replace Postgres and remove the fear of differences between dev/early-stage vs later.
Much later, I learned about the newly-fashionable OLAP-over-object-store architectures, and I learned about Parquet. That lead to discovering Arrow and DataFusion. Arrow is an in-memory data format intended to be a standard interchange layer. It's basically array per column, which isn't exactly point-query oriented but helps make modern-day CPUs happy; quite well aligned with SIMD processing. DataFusion is a Rust framework that's essentially a query engine, and it has a decent query planner (arguably the hardest part of writing a database). RocksDB supports transactions and does MVCC, which is probably the second hardest part of writing a database. The rest just fell in place: sqlparser-rs is a Rust SQL syntax parser with Postgres etc compatibility nicely worked out. pgwire implements the Postgres wire protocol. Non-legacy clients can use FlightSQL and Arrow IPC for faster data transfer (Postgres wire protocol kinda sucks, it's that old). In-process use from Rust is darn trivial with DataFusion, and other languages can be dealt with by writing a C bridge -- once again, Arrow is an inter-language standard already, so all we need to do is to shove the result data buffers over to a more native "dataframe" library. It looks like I can actually glue these things together with less than a decade of effort!
There's lot to still worry about, but I'm feeling pretty positive about the project. And if and when I get to replace RocksDB with a pure-Rust data store that has all the right bells and whistles (in-house or not), the end result will be pure Rust, and aligned for modern world of NVMe, io_uring, and what not. That's a world I definitely want to live in.
Current status: Getting rid of the last `todo!()`s, unwraps etc that would distract from the "look at how robust this thing is" Rust evangelism too much. I need to put in stress tests and fault injection and make sure I'm configuring RocksDB right for transaction isolation and disk persistence. There's tons of missing features, but very few bugs-as-such (0 known that aren't about C++ integration), and missing features all return a decent explanatory error message instead of eating data. The darn thing already works as a SQL database -- largely because it's just DataFusion's query engine and me feeding it table scans. I wrote a SQL database without ever debugging a JOIN! The shortcuts I've been able to take due to help from preexisting projects are huge. For someone who grew up in the world of "every C project has to write basic data structures for themselves because C isn't very modular", it's downright amazing!
I’m working on yet another markdown, FOSS, self hostable personal note taking web app.
Check it out at https://panino.sh
Fyi the three dots menu popover for the documents opens up mostly off screen to the right.
Firefox android
I built https://skeet.build which lets your connect your favorite tools via mcp to Cursor. We focus exclusively on developers and dev tools to build high quality “it just works” experiences for mcp because we found that community mcp quality is low, many mcps were not useful for devs, and SSE remote mcp took a lot of effort to get it to a point where it’s reliable and working well.
[Sequential thinking](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/sequentialthinking) - it’s like enabling thinking but without the 2x cost
[Memory](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/memory) - I use this for repo / project specific prompts and workflows
[Linear](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/linear)- be able to find and issue, create models a branch and do a first pass, update linear with a comment on progress
[github](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/github) - create a PR with a summary of what o just did
[slack](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/slack) - send a post to my teams channel with the linear and GitHub PR link with a summary for review
[Postgres](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/postgres) / [redis](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/redis) - connect my staging dbs and get my schema to create my models and for typing. Also use it to write tests or do quick one off queries to know the Redis json I just saved.
[Sentry](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/sentry) - pull the issue and events and fix the issue, create bug tickets in linear / Jira
[Figma](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/figma) - take a design and implement it in cursor by right clicking copying the link selection
[Opensearch](https://skeet.build/docs/integrations/opensearch) - query error logs when I’m fixing a bug
Right now, a video game. If there ever will be AI that does the particular assignment no worse, I'll consider it the coming of the age of AGI. (modulo my game getting sucked into the training set, of course)
Right now I'm learning Clojure/script - at the moment I'm just building a toy Sudoku app as a learning exercise, but the eventual goal is to build a fully featured web game
ScalarLM.com
porting yjs to go
I'm working on Video Clip Library (https://videocliplibrary.com), a desktop app for browsing, searching, and managing large collections of video files locally on your computer.
It's essentially a small search engine for videos that runs locally on your laptop. Previously, the system just extracted information about whole video files and maintained a searchable list of those files.
I'm putting the finishing touches on a major architectural change to solve a request from someone who creates highlight reels for professional soccer matches. They needed to tag and search for specific moments within videos - like all goals scored by a particular player across dozens of camera angles of dozens of matches.
This required re-engineering the entire data model to support metadata entries that point to specific segments of a file entity rather than just the file itself.
Instead of treating each file as an atomic unit, I now separate the concept of "content" from the actual files that contain it. This distinction allows me to:
1. Create "virtual clips" - time segments within a video that have their own metadata, tags, and titles - without generating new files
2. Connect multiple files that represent the same underlying content (like a match highlight with different ad insertions for YouTube vs. Twitch)
3. Associate various resolution encodings with the same logical content
For example, a content creator might have multiple versions of the same video with different ad placements for different channels. In the old system, these were just separate, unrelated files. Now, they're explicitly modeled as variants of the same logical content, making organization and search much more powerful.
I also completely reworked the job system, moving from code running in the Electron main process to spawning Temporal in a child process. I know it sounds like overkill for a desktop app, but it's been surprisingly perfect for a desktop app that's processing hundreds of terabytes of video.
When you're running complex ML pipelines on random people's home computers, things go wrong - custom FFmpeg versions that don't support certain codecs, permission issues with mounted volumes, their local model server crashes. With Temporal, when a job fails, I just show users a link to the Temporal Web UI where they can see exactly what failed and why. They can fix their local config and retry just that specific activity instead of starting over. It's cut my support burden dramatically.
My developer experience is so much better too. The ML pipeline for face recognition has multiple stages (small model looks for faces, bigger model does pose detection, embedding generation with even larger model) that takes minutes to run. With Temporal, I can iterate on just the activity that's failing without rerunning the entire pipeline. Makes developing these data-intensive workflows so much more manageable.
How do you think of this work relative to other organizing systems like Jellyfin or Plex? Is the major new feature you care about the time subsection clips?
I like the virtual clips feature because it does a better job of getting out of the way of how many people think. Before, I was just telling people 'here's your entire video file, good luck.' If you had 5 hours of footage from a sports tournament but your kid was only doing something interesting for 10 minutes total, you were stuck with the whole file.
My perspective is all those hours of raw footage are just raw materials waiting to be shaped into stories, highlights, or presentations. The value is concentrated in a few hotspots.
Jellyfin and Plex appear to have been built on fundamentally different technical assumptions than Video Clip Library. They expect media to remain connected and accessible to the server at all times - when drives disconnect, they often purge those entries from their databases, requiring full rescans when reconnected. It appears Jellyfin only fixed this in Oct 2024.
The reality for many isn't sleek network storage - it's often just a plastic container filled with labeled hard drives sitting in a closet.
Video Clip Library is architected specifically for the archival cold storage workflow where most media is physically offline. The database maintains complete metadata even when drives are disconnected. When you search for 'soccer highlights from 2018,' it not only tells you what file contains that footage but precisely where that physical drive is located: 'in the blue SSD in Alice's desk, bottom drawer'. You can upload pictures of each drive, print out barcodes, write detailed notes. Organization stuff.
This workflow doesn't necessarily make sense for full-time professionals with dedicated workstations, but it's ideal for the long-tail use cases that originally drove me to build this software - normal people with occasional video projects. Of course, as is often the case, people bring it to their day job and start pushing for more business-oriented features. But the genesis of this software was for the individual creator, the freelancer, or small teams of auteurs collaborating on creative projects. A tool to accommodate the stop-and-start reality of passion projects. A poor man's editing with Proxies.
How often do you see yourself updating and editing a particular video clip over time? For a given video, do you find all the relevant clips when you first save it to disk? Or are you accumulating video clips for a source video over time? I’m generally interested in patterns of revisiting source media
Thanks for the questions!
So far everyone is accumulating clip annotations on video files over time.
I'm thinking of clips as essentially write-only/append-only annotations. Labels or metadata attached to sections of videos rather than new files. The system is designed to support overlapping clips and allows you to filter/view all clips for a video.
To clarify, Video Clip Library is purely a search engine - it doesn't composite or edit videos. Although it will let you re-encode to save space. I built it for scenarios like: "I have a catalog of shots from the last five years, and when working on a new project, I might want to reuse B-roll or footage I've already taken." A YouTuber doing a Then and Now will find footage from their first year.
For me personally, the virtual clips feature will improve my learning process. I'm not a professional videographer. Naturally I spend time studying work from more skilled creators, trying to understand what makes it effective. I'm excited to take notes on specific moments - "these are the places across many different videos where I feel afraid" or "interesting rack focus technique here" - with notes and tags scoped to their own clips. I was already taking these notes in Obsidian. But it wasn't great.
I find a beauty in the layering: I can create overlapping clips that represent different aspects of the same footage - one layer for emotional responses, another for technical observations. Note: here I'm creating them manually one hour here, one hour there over months as I find the time or interest waxes. I might only annotate a few thousand clips across a couple hundred films in my lifetime. That's ok. I don't need the computer to understand the videos perfectly frame by frame.
The professional use case that prompted this feature is different - teams collect footage, then editors assemble compilations and marketing materials months later. They will run AI models to annotate videos as they're ingested, or apply new models to existing catalogs. Then someone with a creative concept can quickly search: "Do we already have footage that supports this idea or do we need to shoot something new?"
I want to build a "tokio for C++" where the user can run CPU bound tasks freely without having to worry about introducing tail latencies. For now I gave it the code name Rio, but that may change.
This is at the very early stages where I have a design sketch and some experiments that validate the design. Below is the README:
Rio is an experimental C++ async framework. The goal is to provide a lightweight framework for writing C++ server applications that is easy to use and provides low consistent latencies.
Today, async frameworks that focus on efficiency typically use one of two architectures:
1. Shared nothing architectures, also called thread-per-core. This is used by frameworks such as Seastar and Boost.Asio. In a shared-nothing architecture, each worker thread runs its own event loop and is intended to run on its own dedicated core. The application is architected to shard its workload over multiple workers with only infrequent communication between them. When a task performs a CPU bound task, it needs to be explicitly run in a thread pool as otherwise it would block other tasks from running in the current worker (often referred to as a "reactor stall").
2. Work stealing architectures. This architecture is used by frameworks such as Tokio. In this case there are also multiple worker threads, each running their own event loop. When a specific worker gets overloaded or runs a blocking task, other threads can execute ready tasks. This goes some way to prevent reactor stalls. However, even though other threads can steal ready tasks, they do not poll the event loop for new readiness events. This means that a task that does not yield back to the runtime will increase latencies for other requests assigned to that worker.
The thesis for Rio is that in real-world server applications, it gets increasingly hard to ensure you yield back frequently to the event loop. In particular, there are many CPU bound tasks that server applications commonly perform, such parsing protocols, or performing encryption and compression. If tasks take less than ~10 microseconds it is often not worth it to offload these to a thread pool as the system call overhead of synchronization will take more time than this. Additionally, putting in various thread offloads makes it harder to develop, especially in larger teams with individuals of different experience levels. The result is that there will either be too many work pushed on thread pools or too little. The net effect will be that latencies will be less consistent.
Rio is an experiment for a work stealing architecture where completion events can also be stolen. The Rio runtime uses multiple worker threads to handle asynchronous tasks. Each worker threads runs its own io_uring, which is also registered to an eventfd. A central "stealer" thread listens to the eventfds for all workers. When an readiness event becomes available, the stealer will check if the corresponding thread is currently executing a task. If so, it will signal an idle worker with a request to process the completion event and run any tasks that results in it. The stealing logic is aware of the system topology and will try to wake up a thread that shares a higher level cache with the task.
Nothing.
Quite frankly, it feels great!
agentic rag