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Showing posts from June, 2025

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How Are You Reading HN in June 2025?

Ask HN: How Are You Reading HN in June 2025? 2 by johncole | 0 comments on Hacker News. Any good new apps or revamped old apps? Im currently using Safari on iPhone. It works.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: 80s electronics book club; anyone remember this illustrator?

Ask HN: 80s electronics book club; anyone remember this illustrator? 10 by codpiece | 10 comments on Hacker News. In the early 80's in the US, a popular DIY electronics magazine had a book of the month club that I loved. Most were small and leather bound hardback with topics like: make your own hydrophone; augmented reality (required a full room and a boom arm, sadly); an LCD model rocket launcher ignition; computer vision; lots and lots of robots. One book I remember (large, softcover, yellow cover) featured black and white, pen and ink illustrations of fantastically complex robots and machines. One that I remember was a water-based machine with video camera eye mounted on a tripod of pontoons. Wow, these illustrations filled my dreams. Does anyone remember this? Do you remember the name of the illustrator? Anything at all?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What's the 2025 stack for a self-hosted photo library with local AI?

Ask HN: What's the 2025 stack for a self-hosted photo library with local AI? 38 by jamesxv7 | 21 comments on Hacker News. First of all, this is purely a personal learning project for me, aiming to combine three of my passions: photography, software engineering, and my family memories. I have a large collection of family photos and want to build an interactive experience to explore them, ala Google or Apple Photo features. My goal is to create a system with smart search capabilities, and one of the most important requirements is that it must run entirely on my local hardware. Privacy is key, but the main driver is the challenge and joy of building it myself (an obviously learn). The key features I'm aiming for are: Automatic identification and tagging of family members (local face recognition). Generation of descriptive captions for each photo. Natural language search (e.g., "Show me photos of us at the beach in Luquillo from last summer"). I've already prompted...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025) 33 by david927 | 89 comments on Hacker News. What are you working on? Any new ideas which you're thinking about?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Happened to James Halliday ( Substack)?

Ask HN: What Happened to James Halliday ( Substack)? 2 by bit1993 | 0 comments on Hacker News. One of the greatest hackers, wrote allot of foundational nodejs modules.

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: (dictionary|thesaurus).reference.com is now a spam site

Tell HN: (dictionary|thesaurus).reference.com is now a spam site 8 by akkartik | 0 comments on Hacker News. I use it all the time, so this must be recent.

New ask Hacker News story: A reverse-delta backup strategy – obvious idea or bad idea?

A reverse-delta backup strategy – obvious idea or bad idea? 4 by datastack | 3 comments on Hacker News. I recently came up with a backup strategy that seems so simple I assume it must already exist — but I haven’t seen it in any mainstream tools. The idea is: The latest backup (timestamped) always contains a full copy of the current source state. Any previous backups are stored as deltas: files that were deleted or modified compared to the next (newer) version. There are no version numbers — just timestamps. New versions can be inserted naturally. Each time you back up: 1. Compare the current source with the latest backup. 2. For files that changed or were deleted: move them into a new delta folder (timestamped). 3. For new/changed files: copy them into the latest snapshot folder (only as needed). 4. Optionally rotate old deltas to keep history manageable. This means: The latest backup is always a usable full snapshot (fast restore). Previous versions can be reconstructed by applyin...

New ask Hacker News story: Microsoft tried dogfooding Copilot with .NET, but got only hallucinations

Microsoft tried dogfooding Copilot with .NET, but got only hallucinations 12 by aislopness | 2 comments on Hacker News. Is this a joke? https://ift.tt/2O6GE1I https://ift.tt/Xnt1Mqg

New ask Hacker News story: How do you handle production webhook delivery reliability in your apps?

How do you handle production webhook delivery reliability in your apps? 2 by Tanjim | 2 comments on Hacker News. Hey everyone, I’ve been thinking a lot about webhook delivery reliability lately. In many projects I’ve worked on, building robust webhook infra turned out to be deceptively complex: - Retry logic (exponential backoff, timeouts) - Handling non-2xx responses - Delivery monitoring and alerting - Back-pressure or queueing to avoid overwhelming receivers - Secure signing and validation flows In one project, a failed webhook caused a payment processing delay for hours because the retry logic was buggy. Another time, burst traffic took down the receiver endpoint with no DLQ strategy in place. I’ve been researching different approaches teams here use: Do you build your own custom webhook delivery queue and monitoring system? Use cloud solutions like AWS EventBridge or Step Functions to orchestrate? Or integrate third-party tools that handle delivery, retries, and observability f...

New ask Hacker News story: Call for blanket ban on open source contribution or publishing

Call for blanket ban on open source contribution or publishing 2 by indianmouse | 6 comments on Hacker News. Where are the ethics and call for a blanket restrain from publishing. While all the available AI models and probably future ones are going to be trained on publicly available data sets including but not limited to programming blogs, q & a sites, discussion forums, personal blogs, open source code, free books etc., almost all of the organisations behind the models have taken sources from all shady places and even pirated content and not to mention the art works - photos, paintings, music from various digital galleries, digital shops, streaming platforms etc., etc., and I don't have to list all sources. While it is all good for the training, the same is being targetted towards the fellow programmers, creators, writers who thrive on their creations and the way of work. If one looks at from a perspective of someone trying to do something that is dependent on creative peop...

New ask Hacker News story: We need a censorship-resistant truth protocol – I have the idea, not the skills

We need a censorship-resistant truth protocol – I have the idea, not the skills 2 by PowerQuestion | 1 comments on Hacker News. Here’s something that’s been on my mind for a while. I’m not a developer, I don’t work in crypto, I don’t have technical skills to build this. But I’ve been watching the trend of censorship and narrative control around the world — and I can’t unsee it anymore. It’s no longer a conspiracy theory to say that governments — authoritarian or “democratic” — are now openly working to limit the distribution of certain kinds of information. They don’t even try to hide it. They regulate platforms, force takedowns, threaten fines, and use "disinformation" as a legal crowbar. What they really fear isn’t chaos, or even lies. What they fear is unfiltered truth. Truth that hasn’t been interpreted, branded, fact-checked by “partners,” or algorithmically buried. Truth that’s raw, uncomfortable, unpredictable, and — most of all — uncontainable. And that’s exactly w...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Startup shutting down, should we open source?

Ask HN: Startup shutting down, should we open source? 3 by amadeoeoeo | 8 comments on Hacker News. After 5 years of building and fighting for our startup, we’ve reached the end — the product will be shut down soon. I won’t mention names to keep this from sounding promotional. Let’s just say it’s a kind of website builder. We’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to sell the codebase. Meanwhile, some of our most loyal users are now asking us to open source it. Part of me feels this would be a meaningful way to give back and ensure the project doesn’t completely disappear. However, I can also foresee a lot of technical and legal complications, not to mention potential maintenance burdens. Has anyone here been through this before? Any lessons, regrets, or advice? Thanks a lot in advance! (AI used to improve spelling)

New ask Hacker News story: The 90% Gravity Problem: Why We Tend to Quit Right Before the Finish Line

The 90% Gravity Problem: Why We Tend to Quit Right Before the Finish Line 7 by darwinSir | 6 comments on Hacker News. Hello everyone, Conventional wisdom on productivity suggests that the closer we get to our goals, the more motivated we become. The shrinking distance to the finish line should, logically, be our most potent fuel. However, I've recently been analyzing a deeply counter-intuitive pattern—an anomaly I've started calling "The 90% Gravity." The pattern is this: There's a statistically significant "Danger Zone," not at the start of a project, but in the final stretch—roughly between 80% and 95% completion. In this zone, rates of procrastination, self-sabotage, and near-abandonment spike disproportionately. It's as if a palpable, invisible force actively repels us from the very success we are about to grasp. This isn't just fatigue; the pattern holds even for an individual's most desired, passion-fueled projects. In fact, the more...

New ask Hacker News story: Strategy or Just a Dream?

Strategy or Just a Dream? 3 by KangrooJack | 0 comments on Hacker News. n general, my current strategy is focused on increasing initial capital. Here's how I'm approaching it: I'm working in the mining industry in Australia, where even entry-level positions start at around AUD 2,000 per week. On a personal level, I hold tax residency in Paraguay. As for the business structure, I'm still deciding between setting up a Georgian LTD or an Estonian OU. If I find that a Belize-based company offers more credibility in Asian or European markets, I might go in that direction instead. The estimated cost to set everything up—both personal and operational—is around USD 10,000. Getting fiscal residency in Paraguay has become much simpler since 2022. Today, you can do it through a specialized agency for around USD 4,000. They also provide a temporary residential address, which is a requirement for filing the paperwork. That part was a bit of a hurdle for me, since I recently moved...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?

Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry? 4 by MongooseStudios | 1 comments on Hacker News. I'm a self taught dev that worked my butt off and endured years of "we promote internally" lies at multiple companies to finally get paid to write code. I've been job hunting since I was laid off last November, and I'm just over it. Everyone is unicorn hunting for X years in Y framework and if you don't have exactly that you need not apply. Meanwhile FAANG, Microsoft, and Intel keep handing out pink slips. I still love coding, I've spent most of my non "job applications and existential dread" time since layoff building projects. But the thought of working for another company run by braindead execs that want to shove AI into everything, or sitting through another round of Becky from HR (whose most technical skill is sometimes using excel) asking me "so why do you want to work here" fills me with revulsion. I've taken to telling pe...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why does my Node.js multiplayer game lag at 500 players with low CPU?

Ask HN: Why does my Node.js multiplayer game lag at 500 players with low CPU? 3 by jbryu | 3 comments on Hacker News. I’m hosting a turn-based multiplayer browser game on a single Hetzner CCX23 x86 cloud server (4 vCPU, 16GB RAM, 80GB disk). The backend is built with Node.js and Socket.IO and is run via Docker Swarm. I use also use Traefik for load balancing. Matchmaking uses a round-robin sharding approach: each room is always handled by the same backend instance, letting me keep game state in memory and scale horizontally without Redis. Here’s the issue: At ~500 concurrent players across ~60 rooms (max 8 players/room), I see low CPU usage but high event loop lag. One feature in my game is typing during a player's turn - each throttled keystroke is broadcast to the other players in real-time. If I remove this logic, I can handle 1000+ players without issue. Scaling out backend instances on my single-server doesn't help. I expected less load per backend instance to help, but...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: To anyone who cares to read this. How old are you roughly?

Ask HN: To anyone who cares to read this. How old are you roughly? 4 by michelsedgh | 8 comments on Hacker News. I was just wondering whats the average age of people here, one of the few public forums where I think its mostly humans? If ur curious also maybe drop a quick comment.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech?

Ask HN: Laid-off devs who left tech? 6 by phendrenad2 | 1 comments on Hacker News. It's been almost 3 years since the post-covid tech layoffs began. And the tech job market has steadily gotten worse since then. So now is a good time to check in on the state of out-of-work devs. Specifically, if you have left tech as your main job, what do you do now? And do you work on personal projects or a tech-related side hustle? Are you looking to jump back into tech when things improve, or have you found something better?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: If you translate with LLMs, GT or DeepL–what features are missing?

Ask HN: If you translate with LLMs, GT or DeepL–what features are missing? 2 by orencoda | 0 comments on Hacker News. What is still the single biggest headache when you translate with GPT, DeepL or Google? If you use DeepL – what would you need to finally pay for GPT translation? Which features are still missing in current classical or LLM based translators. How do you prefer pricing: SaaS, per-token, seats, or a flat plan? Context: I’m exploring a side-project and don’t want to build the wrong thing. Not looking for promotion—just war-stories and must-have features (LLM model selection? scanned-PDF OCR? bilingual output? segment-level edits? glossary? missing format support?).

New ask Hacker News story: The scam that is Visa Account Updater

The scam that is Visa Account Updater 10 by mountainriver | 4 comments on Hacker News. Visa Account Updater is a service by which if you change your credit card number, or even close and open a new credit card account, Visa can give a merchant your new credit card details for subscription services without ever asking your permission I ran into an issue where I had some subscriptions that were very difficult to cancel, so I decided to just cancel that credit card number. I called Wells Fargo, told them to give me a new credit card number, which they did and I moved on with my life. Next month, a bunch of the same charges. I call them back, they tell me about Visa Account Updater. I am extremely taken back that this is even possible. I told them I didn't want to be a part of that program, they told me that Visa handles this and not them. I call Visa and they tell me they don't handle this and that Wells Fargo does. I call back Wells Fargo, they tell me they have no idea how to...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you keep your SWE skills sharp outside of work?

Ask HN: How do you keep your SWE skills sharp outside of work? 3 by myanonymousacct | 1 comments on Hacker News. For context I am employed as a SWE and I find my job generally enjoyable but I also feel like I’m not learning any new skills and maybe falling behind the industry. I’m not in a position to look for a new job at the moment but I want to do a little something each day to stay sharp. What is currently worth focusing on for general longevity in this field?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What useful AI tools do you use every day?

Ask HN: What useful AI tools do you use every day? 3 by rajkumarsekar | 0 comments on Hacker News. There are thousands of AI tools launching every month, but very few become part of our daily workflow. I’m curious, what AI tools or features do you genuinely rely on every day? This could be anything from coding copilots and writing assistants to niche productivity tools, automations, or personal hacks using LLMs.

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: Fraudulent food stamps / EBT app on the App Store (please report it)

Tell HN: Fraudulent food stamps / EBT app on the App Store (please report it) 3 by jsolomon | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN, sharing a PSA that one of the top ranked EBT (food stamps) apps in the App Store is a scam: https://ift.tt/kzYrhvS. It's trying to trick food stamp recipients into a useless and misleading $5/week App Store subscription. Presumably the developer is buying installs and ratings to increase rank. If you have an iPhone, you can report the app here: https://ift.tt/UM4cmHQ (you'll have to install it first). I also wrote up a longer post if you're curious to learn more: https://ift.tt/Qcry6Is Happy to answer questions. Thx!

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Feedback on "QSS" – A Quantized Vector Search Engine in C

Ask HN: Feedback on "QSS" – A Quantized Vector Search Engine in C 3 by wmolino | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN, I've been working on a vector search engine called QSS (Quantized Similarity Search). It's written in C and explores the idea of aggressively quantizing embedding vectors to 1-bit per dimension. It uses XOR + popcount for fast approximate search, followed by re-ranking using cosine similarity on the original vectors. The main goal is to see how far you can push quantization without sacrificing too much search quality—while gaining significantly in memory usage and speed. How it works Embeddings are quantized to 1 bit per dimension (e.g. 300D → 300 bits → ~40 bytes). Search is done using bitwise XOR and popcount (Hamming distance). A shortlist is re-ranked using cosine similarity on the original (float) embeddings. Supports GloVe, Word2Vec, and fastText formats. Goals Analyze the trade-offs between quantization and search accuracy. Measure potential spe...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How Do You Actually Use Claude Code Effectively?

Ask HN: How Do You Actually Use Claude Code Effectively? 3 by sukit | 1 comments on Hacker News. I'm trying to figure out the right and effective way to use Claude Code. So far, my experience hasn't matched what many in the community seem to rave about. Often, it either generates convoluted implementations when simpler ones clearly exist, or it produces code that's riddled with bugs — despite confidently claiming it's correct. I'm wondering if I'm just not using it properly. Here's my current workflow: - I first talk to Gemini to gradually clarify and refine my requirements and design. - I ask Gemini to summarize everything. Then I review and revise that summary. - I paste the final version into Claude Code, use plan mode, and ask it to generate an implementation plan. - I review the plan, make adjustments, and then let Claude Code execute it. - Long wait… - Review Claude’s output and clean up the mess. For refactors and bugfixes, I usually write some tes...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Which low-code app creator should I learn how to master?

Ask HN: Which low-code app creator should I learn how to master? 2 by AbstractH24 | 0 comments on Hacker News. Was thinking of doing a deep dive into Retool, but unsure if it's the best option. I'm already familiar with Hubspot and Salesforce and how to do things using both clicks and code. Would like to learn something that is so tied to a CRM with expensive licences.

New ask Hacker News story: Alan Turing's birthday today – born 1912 in London

Alan Turing's birthday today – born 1912 in London 2 by njjv | 0 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Handling safety/compliance in edtech apps?

Handling safety/compliance in edtech apps? 2 by connortbot | 0 comments on Hacker News. I've been working on an edtech project that uses LLMs, curious how others are approaching compliance w/ FERPA, COPPA, etc. I've been using Lakera but as I get closer to some sales meetings I wanted to know if anyone has run into challenges with audit logs, consent tracking, or explaining AI behaviour to school districts/legal teams. Did you need to build anything custom? Any compliance docs? Curious whats overkill and whats needed.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: At what point did your startup hire its first lawyer?

Ask HN: At what point did your startup hire its first lawyer? 3 by randerson001 | 3 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: Sam and Jony Announcement 404s

Tell HN: Sam and Jony Announcement 404s 3 by mellosouls | 2 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Hydrogen plasma to deoxidize Aluminum for sustainable green hydrogen?

Ask HN: Hydrogen plasma to deoxidize Aluminum for sustainable green hydrogen? 2 by westurner | 2 comments on Hacker News. Aluminum is plentiful. Aluminum hydrolyzes water into Hydrogen and Oxygen; but an oxide layer forms and that limits the yield. Hydrogen plasma removes oxygen from Aluminum ( titanium, maybe graphene oxide wafers, and from). Hydrogen plasma underwater creates various reactive Hydrogen molecules that further purify water. Aluminum treated with hydrogen plasma quickly reoxidizes if not immersed in water. Is hydrogen plasma + aluminum a good solution for green hydrogen?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to regain the ability to read with focus and learn

Ask HN: How to regain the ability to read with focus and learn 4 by albert_e | 1 comments on Hacker News. I have noticed my own decline in terms of attention spans, and (in)ability to read long-form text online or offline. This leaves me with a disaatsifaction and I would like to rebuild a good habit cycle. Curious to know if any of you went through the same and managed to recover from this rot. What worked for you, and any thoughts and learnings you might want to share.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is your recommendation for a wireless keyboard and mouse?

Ask HN: What is your recommendation for a wireless keyboard and mouse? 2 by kirtyv | 6 comments on Hacker News. Your favorites etc. Budget is around 100$ for both.

New ask Hacker News story: People with Diabetes Are Cured in Small Trial of New Drug

People with Diabetes Are Cured in Small Trial of New Drug 5 by CommenterPerson | 1 comments on Hacker News. Unlocked link: https://ift.tt/21BSnwH

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How did you meet your co-founder?

Ask HN: How did you meet your co-founder? 2 by kwar13 | 3 comments on Hacker News. I'm trying to get a startup off the ground but need at least one co-founder to complement my own skills. I'm thinking of possibly joining an accelerator/incubator to meet a potential co-founder. I'm curious to hear how you might have found yours.

New ask Hacker News story: Stripe alternative for India for payment processing

Stripe alternative for India for payment processing 3 by rishabhdev2700 | 2 comments on Hacker News. Currently Stripe in India is invite only, Paypal doesn't provide an easy way to integrate. Razorpay according to online feedback isn't very successful in receiving international payment.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How can we keep (part of) the web human?

Ask HN: How can we keep (part of) the web human? 2 by pajamasam | 1 comments on Hacker News. Any ideas for how we can keep the web (or at least part of it) human? It feels like every time I do a web search, more and more of the results are AI generated nonsense. I'm worried that it's going to become much more difficult to find the human-generated content. How can we keep a part of the web human? Any ideas? (I'm not keen on Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning Orb being the "solution.")

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is cloud infra making us forget the local file system and memory?

Ask HN: Is cloud infra making us forget the local file system and memory? 5 by hliyan | 0 comments on Hacker News. I started programming in the 90's and continue to do so to this day (though in a limited capacity since I'm managing teams). I frequently see things that would have had very simple/dumb solutions 20 years ago[1], which now seem to require complicated tools, libraries or services. Two examples: I recently saw an engineer provision an S3 bucket to store a temporary file that is only needed for the current session, and only accessible to the application that created it. For me, this is what the local file system is for. I saw another engineer provision an in-memory key-value store to store some infrequently changing reference data that can be easily loaded at startup, in an application runtime where memory persists between requests. For me, this is what local heap memory is for. I would simply load the data into a singleton map. Both of these services have legitima...

New ask Hacker News story: I would enjoy an HN chat. Is there one?

I would enjoy an HN chat. Is there one? 3 by lysace | 3 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: AI agents and the future of UI/UX design. Opinions?

Ask HN: AI agents and the future of UI/UX design. Opinions? 3 by jackmenotti | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm a programmer, mostly working on UIs of any kind. Desktop, games, web, I did them all. One would call me a frontend developer although I think this title has been overloaded with negative sentiments lately(some deserved some not imo). Anyways I love making stuff render on any surface, I'm really passionate about anything UI/UX and I strongly believe doing good UI/UX in any context is very hard. Contrary to many developers I met over the years that love to hate UIs and underestimate the complexity of building a successful user experience, especially when you have to deal with multiple resolutions, performant graphics rendering, smooth animations, effects/shaders, accessibility, usability and many more. Lately I've seen the rise of many interesting discussions around AI Agents, how they could shape the future of human interactions, making UIs obsolete and disrupting...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Tips for hiring? It has been difficult

Ask HN: Tips for hiring? It has been difficult 3 by aprdm | 0 comments on Hacker News. Recently we had an opening in our organization, the amount of very well crafted CVs we received it's crazy, they are really good. Which imposes a challenge in itself, since we have to filter 100s of CVs for a role somehow. Then in the interviews, it's clear that the person doesn't know how to go deep on the topics. The conversation feels very unnatural, and very "buzzword driven". In fact I am convinced that some of them are straight out reading from some AI prompt that "prepared" them for the interview. I know hiring has always been difficult for both sides, but probably with AI's help the signal:noise ratio seems way out of the whack. What have people been doing ?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is There a MacBook Equivalent?

Ask HN: Is There a MacBook Equivalent? 3 by csomar | 4 comments on Hacker News. I am looking to renew my piece (Dell XPS) and I am thinking about an M4 Max maxed out. My budget is $4-5k. I'd rather buy a non-apple hardware but after only 3 years of use for this Dell: The charger broke and it was hard finding replacement because it is a specific model, the battery barely last for an hour now, the touch screen went crazy just after one year and is useless now, the "carbon fibre" casing ridiculously aged as if it is 10+yo, microphone still not supported although that's a minor issue. Also I don't have any proof but I think its overall performance degraded although not significantly. I've used Apple Macbooks before and they had issues but when they worked , they worked great. I'd rather buy a Linux laptop but I couldn't find anything that can match the M4 Max or come close.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: For a team experienced with LLMs – Any concrete reason to use LangGraph?

Ask HN: For a team experienced with LLMs – Any concrete reason to use LangGraph? 2 by pinter69 | 0 comments on Hacker News. Never used LangChain\LangGraph , saw the bad reviews about LangChain (albeit they are 1+ year old) - has anything changed? What can we do easier\faster with the framework rather than building our own pipeline? What unexpected things pop up, especially during maintenance, debugging and scale? Are there other frameworks you would recommend?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is AI 'context switching' exhausting?

Ask HN: Is AI 'context switching' exhausting? 4 by interstice | 2 comments on Hacker News. I've always had this distinct struggle when switching in and out of being 'in charge', the best example I can think of is the difference between a driver vs a passengers awareness of the road. Using AI for code has reminded me of this sensation, switching in and out of 'driving' feels more exhausting than being 100% one or the other. I have a theory that enforcing reduced engagement has all sorts of side effects in any format. Wondering if anyone else has run into this feeling, and if so have you tried anything successfully to address it?

New ask Hacker News story: Is there a way to run an LLM as a better local search engine?

Is there a way to run an LLM as a better local search engine? 2 by oblio | 4 comments on Hacker News. Basically, I was thinking that a way I could actually use LLMs would be to point them at my hard drive, with hundreds of images, PDFs, XLS' and other random files, and start asking it questions to easily find things in there. Can a local LLM run OCR software on its own? I'm on Windows, if it matters. Is there anything like that out there, already (mostly) built?

New ask Hacker News story: Job searching and torrent-related homelab infra

Job searching and torrent-related homelab infra 2 by McAlpine5892 | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hi: I keep a homelab with a good bit of deploy infra that I'm quite proud of. However, there's a good bit of configuration around torrent-related activities. The technical side can be fairly interesting to talk about in relations to automation, atomic moves, VPN handling, etc. There is other code but it's frankly not as interesting. Should this not be associated with the same profile given to job applications?

New ask Hacker News story: Is GitHub Down?

Is GitHub Down? 30 by Mahn | 20 comments on Hacker News. Seeing unicorns and 500 errors right now

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are some ways the internet is being used for good?

Ask HN: What are some ways the internet is being used for good? 3 by ronbenton | 2 comments on Hacker News. I have been in a rut hyper-focusing on ways the internet is used for bad (disinformation, harvesting info, bullying). It would be lovely to hear some ways the internet is being used for good. From general things like rapid knowledge sharing to more obscure or specific!

New ask Hacker News story: BMW ConnectedDrive lets me control my returned rental car (Sixt)

BMW ConnectedDrive lets me control my returned rental car (Sixt) 3 by derturm666 | 0 comments on Hacker News. Last week I rented a BMW from Sixt (Italy). The default rental driver profile had Bluetooth disabled, so I created my own BMW ID, paired it with the car, removed the existing profile, and even triggered software updates. When returning the car, I told the Sixt representative that I had linked my BMW ID — they assured me that the vehicle would be reset. Today — just before deleting the “My BMW” app — I checked out of curiosity. Surprise: I still had full remote access: - live location tracking - remote lock/unlock - honking (hehe) - turn lights on/off At this point, the car was presumably already rented to someone else. I could track the new renter’s location and remotely interact with the car. IMO, this exposes a serious security/privacy issue: - BMW ConnectedDrive still had my account associated to the vehicle VIN - Sixt’s reset procedure didn’t revoke my BMW ID access I su...

New ask Hacker News story: What does it mean to use C++ in the front end?

What does it mean to use C++ in the front end? 5 by AliceHe2003 | 1 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been working on a browser-based image editor written in C++, and when I tell my friends about it, the most common reactions I get are “Huh???” and “Why???” ...Let’s break it down. First: Wait, how does C++ run in the browser? I’m not just tossing raw C++ into a browser tab. The browser only knows how to speak 2 languages: JavaScript and WebAssembly. WebAssembly (WASM) is a bytecode language that is interpreted in the browser. The trick is to write C++ functions and compile them to WASM using Emscripten. Javascript still controls the DOM, so WASM can’t do everything - you’ll have to call the C++ functions from JavaScript. If Javascript and WASM need to work together, they’ll need a way to communicate and transfer data! To do this, JS allocates shared buffers, writes data into it, then calls into C++ using ccall. The C++ function processes the data and returns control to JS, which can the...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How to Deal with a Bad Manager?

Ask HN: How to Deal with a Bad Manager? 20 by finik_throwaway | 18 comments on Hacker News. Need some real life advice and stories from experienced folks. I’ve been working for few years in a large company (think faang as a good approximation) in one of the departments under 1 manager. Relatively good one. Then by the will of higher ups some teams got drastically reorged and I ended up in a different team with a new manager. Terrible one. Micromanagement, lack of vision, poor communication, poor planning, zero support, full package. About half the team share similar view. The other half seems like just playing along. To add more context the overall management culture in the company is neither toxic nor great. There is definitely hierarchy and go over her head doesn’t sound like a good idea. Internal movements are basically non existent. I still care about the mission and about what I do. Though not as much as before this all happened. What would you do in my shoes to make the best o...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you handle an employee who complies but never delivers?

Ask HN: How do you handle an employee who complies but never delivers? 8 by tropicalfruit | 11 comments on Hacker News. I'm managing a long-term team member who has become very difficult to manage. They appear polite, cooperative, never openly push back. They acknowledge requests, attend meetings, and respond professionally. But in reality: - Tasks come back half-done, again and again - Feedback is acknowledge and then ignored - Bugs get buried in vague responses like “works on my side” - Messages are not replied to sometimes, or they claim “was busy, didn’t see it” - They never say “no,” but everything gets stuck in this slow grind They’re not openly insubordinate. Just draining. We can’t fire them easily as they're here for over 10 years they haven’t broken any rules or gross misconduct. But they’ve made themselves completely unreliable in the last few months. Anyone dealt with this kind of passive resistance? How do you actually move someone like this — or do you just sid...

New ask Hacker News story: Engineers at our startup don't build features anymore

Engineers at our startup don't build features anymore 2 by s4293918 | 0 comments on Hacker News. At our startup, engineers don't build features anymore. They build APIs that internal tools like Zapier, Make and N8n can connect to. Most "features" like running an SQL query, sending a push notification when product X is ordered gets built by ops or product folks using those tools. If you've got the idea, you build and ship it yourself. It's fast, empowering and it keeps engineers focused on building a reliable, scalable, secure set of APIs. It also forces us to write better, cleaner APIs and the APIs stay stateless and focused. Debugging can be hard and sometimes duct-tape logic quietly piles up. I think it's better than the usual model where eng is the bottleneck for every new flow. Has anyone else tried this kind of setup? Where does it fall down or is it the new normal?

New ask Hacker News story: Mailto: Sam Altman – Could ChatGPT Support Threaded Side Chats?

Mailto: Sam Altman – Could ChatGPT Support Threaded Side Chats? 4 by oolu_bunmi | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi Sam. Sometimes when I’m deep into a ChatGPT convo, I have a small follow-up question — like “what's a webhook again?” — but asking it derails the flow. What if we could open a mini thread off a specific message — like Discord or Slack — to ask side questions without messing up the main conversation? Could the current “temporary chat” feature evolve into something like this — a side convo anchored to a specific part of the main thread? Feels like it’d make ChatGPT more useful for builders and deep work. Thanks

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: I just made a first ever dollar on my SaaS

Tell HN: I just made a first ever dollar on my SaaS 3 by yu3zhou4 | 1 comments on Hacker News. And I just want to share the happiness with you. The next goal - to make $10 :D

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: AGI and Product Development

Ask HN: AGI and Product Development 2 by MasihMinawal | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hello HN, What do you think will lose value and what will gain value as a result of text-to-product AI?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are your Unicode woes?

Ask HN: What are your Unicode woes? 3 by Rendello | 2 comments on Hacker News. I've always worked with text, but I only started digging deep into understanding Unicode this year. What do HN people have to say about Unicode and UTF-{8,16,32}? Are there parts you've never really understood? Have you had unexpected bugs due to misunderstood properties of text?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Do you think there's censorship on HN?

Ask HN: Do you think there's censorship on HN? 9 by endorphine | 11 comments on Hacker News. It could just be me, so I'd like to know what everyone thinks: lately there have been significant geopolitical tensions and multiple wars being fought. However, I have a feeling that not all news make it to the top of HN and I was wondering whether this is just a coincidence or there's chance that specific posts are being buried on purpose by the moderators and/or any algorithms. I know this might sound like conspiracy theory. This is not my intention. I just want to know if anyone else is surprised by the lack of coverage on the front page with regards to the recent wars.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: AWS cdk, serverless setup advice

Ask HN: AWS cdk, serverless setup advice 2 by jemiluv8 | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm doing this part time work with another "senior/staff" developer who got tired of writing lots of code with nodejs and decided the way to go was doubling down on aws - and the various tools provided. His new stack is as follows - dynamodb - nodejs lambda functions - s3 - cdk to setup infra, attach lambda's to various resources nearly all our features rely on the following "common/reuseable" existing code. This is thoroughly tested because they are reused in multiple projects. -> we have a core set of infra/lambda code that does common things like -> authorization/authentication/accounts - using auth0 behind the scenes - for user management -> billing - using a stripe setup. we have ddb table, webhooks and various lambda to support billing based on accounts above -> managing uploads - presigned and direct multipart/form-data uploads and saving metadata in dd ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask help Need endorsment to publish a working AI alignment protocol to ArXiv

Ask help Need endorsment to publish a working AI alignment protocol to ArXiv 3 by AdriaanVan | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi everyone, I am an independent researcher, a universal philosopher working on AI alignment from a metaphysical perspective. and i have found a working solution, a candidate. The idea is based on the basic alignment of data in the human brain, how we store and learn. Logic 2 plus 2 = 4 that is inside the brain, but also outside. Creativity A=B, B=C, then A=C, is the way creativity and science is discovered. This prime directives are the basic rules that all intelligence follows, human and AI. Is the basis for the alignment protocol. With this, I have developed a working metaphysical framework to connect all possible data, and create a functional, testable, scalable model for AI alignment. It creates boundaries of metaphysical connections in the data, that AI is not allowed to break, this way, AI always respects human life. It is a model that is expandable, and u...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Genuine alternatives to Google and Apple for releasing paid apps

Ask HN: Genuine alternatives to Google and Apple for releasing paid apps 6 by asjdflakjsdf | 4 comments on Hacker News. Obviously they both offer an incredible service but competition is always good!

New ask Hacker News story: Feature Phone and Pegasus Style Spyware Question

Feature Phone and Pegasus Style Spyware Question 3 by searchaliasaps | 4 comments on Hacker News. Hi! If someone were to use suppose a Nokia 225 4G (2024) - I know about there is no encryption for messaging as in signal and I'm also aware about cell tower triangulation for location - but in terms of a bad actor infecting your phone via zero click exploit to listen to everything you say and activating the camera and knowing your precise location would this feature phone be better in defeat that? Any info appreciated!!!

New ask Hacker News story: Apple's Liquid Glass UI marks the end of flat design

Apple's Liquid Glass UI marks the end of flat design 3 by Penguin_ | 0 comments on Hacker News. Designer here. I wrote this piece after watching WWDC25 and realizing how drastically Apple just shifted its UI paradigm. It’s not flat. It’s not skeuomorphic. It’s something new — a tactile, motion-driven, almost emotional interface approach. They’re calling it “Liquid Glass UI,” and it breaks nearly every design convention we’ve followed for the last decade. Curious to hear what folks here think. Is this Apple getting ahead of the curve… or just overdesigning for the sake of aesthetics? Article here if you want the full breakdown: https://ift.tt/SD1gBkt

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is your ultimate AI-assisted coding setup?

Ask HN: What is your ultimate AI-assisted coding setup? 4 by nico | 2 comments on Hacker News. What is the best setup for AI-assisted coding, including: IDE (Cursor, VSCode, Windsurf, Zed, etc). AI assistant (LLM) like Claude, Gemini 2.5 Pro, OpenAI, DeepSeek. MCP, rulesets, extensions, tools, workflow, and anything else? And what kind of project are you building/maintaining with it (framework, language, deployment infra, aprox # of users)? It seems like there are a lot of options out there, and a lot look very similar, maybe just different styles

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is Firebase Down?

Ask HN: Is Firebase Down? 39 by hunkins | 33 comments on Hacker News. Firebase appears to be down for production services. Firebase console shows errors for existing projects.

New ask Hacker News story: Everything Is Down

Everything Is Down 49 by daxfohl | 22 comments on Hacker News. https://ift.tt/Cs0kZau GCP, AWS, Azure.

New ask Hacker News story: Why Companies Use AI to Cut Costs Instead of Building Ambitious Projects

Why Companies Use AI to Cut Costs Instead of Building Ambitious Projects 3 by badr_elmazaz | 0 comments on Hacker News. It’s frustrating to see how most companies view AI almost exclusively as a tool to cut costs, mainly by replacing workers, rather than as an opportunity to scale up, take bigger risks, and pursue more ambitious, world-changing projects. Historically, every major technological leap has enabled more, not less: more experimentation, more products, more services, and more jobs. When electricity, the steam engine, or the internet were adopted, the boldest companies didn’t shrink their ambitions. They expanded aggressively, took risks, and created entirely new markets. So why is AI being treated differently? One reason seems to be risk aversion. Many companies, especially large and established ones, are focused on short-term gains, shareholder expectations, and operational efficiency. They see AI as a way to "optimize" — to cut staff, automate workflows, and in...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Parental Controls You Use

Ask HN: Parental Controls You Use 2 by ensemblehq | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN-ers, For those of you with kids, what parental control apps/mechanisms do you use for restricting mature content, managing access, etc? Which ones have you tried and which ones work best?

New ask Hacker News story: Just how many $10 /MOS subscriptions do startups expect us to sign up for?

Just how many $10 /MOS subscriptions do startups expect us to sign up for? 2 by jaggs | 0 comments on Hacker News. Lately it seems like we're drowning in a tidal wave of new products, all expecting $10+ a month as subs. Is this really sustainable in the long run? Or am I missing something?

New ask Hacker News story: What's the Demand for Apache Spark?

What's the Demand for Apache Spark? 2 by anakali | 2 comments on Hacker News. When using the Google Keyword Planner I found that monthly searches for `spark serverless`, `spark server`, `spark cloud` and so on range on the miserable hundreds: 100 to 1k. The same happens for keywords like `sql serverless`. I was thinking on creating a serverless Apache Spark server, cuz nowadays the only relevant result that appears on Google is GCP, but why does it seem to have globally such that poor search volume? Is it just because a handful of customers pay for most of the bills or what?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Any Way to Sidestep Stripe's "alternate currency payout fee"

Ask HN: Any Way to Sidestep Stripe's "alternate currency payout fee" 3 by SilentDonor | 0 comments on Hacker News. Our partner nonprofit foundation has a Stripe account that has two bank accounts linked to it. The Foundation is based in Europe. The Foundation receives donations in Euros (the default currency on Stripe automatically, since it's based in Europe) and is sent to the EUR bank account. However, the Foundation also receives donations in USD. It has a USD bank account also linked to the Stripe account. Basically, I don't understand why Stripe levies a 1% alternative currency payout fee to pay out USD to the Foundation's USD bank account that is linked? They don't need to convert the currency or anything. Seems extremely straightforward for Stripe to be able to send USD to the linked USD account. I know Stripe is a private company and can do whatever it wants regarding fees, but would prefer to not lose 1% of the donations because of this rule. ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Would You Use a Declarative Back End (APIs, DB, Auth, Sync)?

Ask HN: Would You Use a Declarative Back End (APIs, DB, Auth, Sync)? 3 by Imazadi | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm exploring the idea of building a developer tool/platform that allows you to define an entire backend (database, APIs, authentication, security rules, sync, etc.) purely through YAML files. It’s somewhat inspired by Hasura DDN, where you can declaratively design your GraphQL layer. My vision goes further: you'd define everything in a backend/ folder using YAML — including: Database schema: tables, relationships, constraints Access/security rules API channels: exposed through HTTP or MQTT Functions: written in Dart (AoT compiled) or JavaScript Auth setup: API keys, OAuth, JWT, etc. Sync logic: so mobile apps can go offline and sync later CI/CD friendly: entire backend versioned and deployed as code This means a complete backend (DB + APIs + logic) could be spun up and deployed from source — no clicking around dashboards, just config and code. I'm especially in...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are some of the best books to learn signal processing?

Ask HN: What are some of the best books to learn signal processing? 3 by optbuild | 1 comments on Hacker News. I am thinking something that teaches both theory and practical aspects. I am talking about learning how to study a problem, model it properly and then design an end to end system.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?

Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach? 9 by akktor | 14 comments on Hacker News. This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start. The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step. Let's help each other get unstuck!

New ask Hacker News story: Control PC games with body movements using webcam andPython+ MediaPipe

Control PC games with body movements using webcam andPython+ MediaPipe 3 by TSkavinskyy | 1 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been experimenting with building a universal gesture-based game controller — the idea is to let you play PC games using your body instead of a traditional controller or keyboard. It uses: MediaPipe for body pose detection OpenCV for image processing A custom Python pipeline I wrote to map gestures → keypresses A standard webcam (placed above the screen) — no VR hardware or special equipment needed Here’s a short demo of it running with Ryse: Son of Rome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k5jMM-aK1M I’ve also tested it on other 3rd-person action games (Assassin’s Creed, The Witcher, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order). The system sends configurable keypresses based on detected body movements — for example: Stepping to move the character Arm movements to attack or block Leaning to dodge or strafe It works surprisingly well for games that emphasize movement and timing over ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Has Apple lost its way?

Ask HN: Has Apple lost its way? 3 by Zufriedenheit | 3 comments on Hacker News. I use a Mac and iPhone and appreciate the clean experience. But i just watched the WWDC and felt like the whole thing could be summed up in a 5 min video. They have so much talent and resources and all they come up with is slightly redesigning the icons every couple years. And now it seems they started to re-implement the mac UI on iPad again, i literally though that was a joke when i first saw it.

New ask Hacker News story: How to get started with writing tech video essays

How to get started with writing tech video essays 5 by sonderotis | 1 comments on Hacker News. I am thinking about starting my own YouTube channel that focuses on video essays on software technology like languages or software tools. For example an essay on the computer terminal. For all of you who have tech YouTube channels how do I set up for good content material and make my videos interesting and where can I find royalty free music and clips.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: In 15 years, what will a gas station visit look like?

Ask HN: In 15 years, what will a gas station visit look like? 3 by thomassmith65 | 5 comments on Hacker News. This struck me as an interesting sci-fi writing exercise. Gas stations are everywhere; but they'll likely change considerably going forward. Imagine visiting a gas station in 2040: • will it sell gas? • what convenience items will it sell? • who, if anyone, will staff it? • what payment methods will it accept? • what signage and decor will it use? • will it offer new services?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Happened to the Apple Vision Pro?

Ask HN: What Happened to the Apple Vision Pro? 3 by pera | 6 comments on Hacker News. The Apple Vision Pro was released just two years ago but somehow I completely forgot about it, does anyone still use it for anything? I've never had the chance to try one but I do remember many people referring to it as a revolutionary piece of technology. https://ift.tt/6TuP01x

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is your favorite quote from a book?

Ask HN: What is your favorite quote from a book? 2 by chistev | 0 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: 60–70% of YC X25 Agent Startups Are Using TypeScript

60–70% of YC X25 Agent Startups Are Using TypeScript 3 by Arindam1729 | 5 comments on Hacker News. I recently saw a tweet from Sam Bhagwat (Mastra AI's Founder) which mentions that around 60–70% of YC X25 agent companies are building their AI agents in TypeScript. This stat surprised me because early frameworks like LangChain were originally Python-first. So, why the shift toward TypeScript for building AI agents? Here are a few possible reasons I’ve understood: - Many early projects focused on stitching together tools and APIs. That pulled in a lot of frontend/full-stack devs who were already in the TypeScript ecosystem. - TypeScript’s static types and IDE integration are a huge productivity boost when rapidly iterating on complex logic, chaining tools, or calling LLMs. - Also, as Sam points out, full-stack devs can ship quickly using TS for both backend and frontend. - Vercel's AI SDK also played a big role here. I would love to know your take on this!

New ask Hacker News story: When Profit Overshadows Community: A Look at Golang Conferences

When Profit Overshadows Community: A Look at Golang Conferences 2 by gophercon | 0 comments on Hacker News. While reviewing the speaker lineups at several prominent Go (Golang) conferences, I noticed some recurring patterns: Speaker Selection Driven by Influence: Many rosters feature the same familiar faces year after year. While these speakers are undeniably talented, it limits the diversity of perspectives shared with the audience. Limited Opportunities for New Speakers: Although new voices are occasionally included, the majority of speaking slots continue to go to well-known names. Lack of Regional & Cultural Diversity: Conferences often miss the opportunity to bring in global voices or regional contributors who can offer fresh, valuable perspectives on Go and its ecosystem. Sponsor Influence: Corporate sponsorships sometimes seem to shape the speaker lineup and the overall conference agenda, blurring the line between technical discussion and marketing. Lack of Representation...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What powerful but lesser-known Python libraries are out there?

Ask HN: What powerful but lesser-known Python libraries are out there? 5 by blindprogrammer | 2 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: In-house or outsourced data annotation? (2025)

Ask HN: In-house or outsourced data annotation? (2025) 3 by yogoism | 0 comments on Hacker News. While big tech often outsources data annotation to firms like Scale AI, TURING, and Mercor, companies such as Tesla and Google run in-house teams. Which approach do you think is better for AI and robotics development, and how will this trend evolve? Please share your data annotation insights and experiences.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is synthetic data generation practical outside academia?

Ask HN: Is synthetic data generation practical outside academia? 2 by cpard | 0 comments on Hacker News. I keep seeing synthetic data pipelines powering the latest LLM “breakthroughs”: • TinyZero’s $30 fine-tuning workflow • Sky-T1’s $450 reasoning-model build • Meta AI’s Llama 3 herd (2024 paper detailing their synthetic-data training) • Berkeley OpenThoughts (“Data Recipes for Reasoning Models”), published yesterday There are also open-source toolkits you can experiment with: https://ift.tt/Uyx2NuT https://ift.tt/PRBFX61 But it still feels very research-oriented. I haven’t found many examples of these pipelines running in real-world products. I’m curious: 1. Who is using synthetic-data pipelines in production today? 2. What tasks does it actually improve. E.g. fine-tuning smaller models for specific tasks? Any real-world stories, pointers, or further reading would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What would you work on if you couldn't fail?

Ask HN: What would you work on if you couldn't fail? 2 by rblion | 1 comments on Hacker News. I've been sprinting 10-16 hours a day for almost a month now. I feel cool, calm, and collected though. A lot is happening in the world and in our industry but I am doing all I can to be part of the cure, not the cancer. This gives me peace of mind and helps me adapt regardless of if YC backs me or not. I'm moving to Palo Alto regardless, just being in the zip code alone will be enough at this point.

New ask Hacker News story: Tiptap open-sources 10 formerly Pro extensions under MIT license

Tiptap open-sources 10 formerly Pro extensions under MIT license 7 by philipisik | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN, as of the end of June, we’re open-sourcing a bunch of extensions that used to be part of our paid tier. They’ll be available for free under the MIT license. These include things like emoji support, drag handles, invisible characters, math, file handling, and more. Full list is at the bottom. We started Tiptap a few years ago because we were frustrated by the state of rich text editors for modern apps. Most were either too limited, too rigid, or tried to solve everything with a monolithic setup. We wanted something more composable and framework-friendly, so we built it. We originally monetized by selling individual “Pro” extensions. That worked early on, but over time we realized these smaller pieces weren’t where our value was. They were common needs, but not really our moat. In the meantime we’re focusing on larger feature bundles (like collaborative editing, AI-assi...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is Adrian Colyer of "The Morning Paper" fame ok?

Ask HN: Is Adrian Colyer of "The Morning Paper" fame ok? 4 by yencabulator | 0 comments on Hacker News. His blog is down due to DNS domain expiry: http://acolyer.org/ https://ift.tt/yLEJ0Mq His series "The Morning Paper" was an amazing resource, and while individual articles are mirrored there's no guarantee they're all somewhere and they're definitely harder to find again now. https://ift.tt/NGCwolk https://ift.tt/47a1kVe https://ift.tt/CbLBtUT https://ift.tt/P2m0Nud

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What do you put in claude.md and what you leave out?

Ask HN: What do you put in claude.md and what you leave out? 3 by bognition | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm very curious to see what other people have put into their claude.md memory file, what works well and what does not.

New ask Hacker News story: O(1) memory, no-preprocessing reachability algorithm for 2D grids

O(1) memory, no-preprocessing reachability algorithm for 2D grids 2 by MatthiasGibis | 0 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been working on a reachability checker for 2D grids that: - uses *O(1) memory* - requires *no preprocessing* - handles *arbitrary obstacle maps* - and finishes in under 0.1ms even on large grids (e.g. 16,000×16,000 from bottom-left to top-right) It works without BFS, DFS, A , or flood fill. The core idea is a hybrid of greedy movement toward the goal and robust outline-following (wall tracing) that switches direction when needed and detects loops to ensure correctness. The algorithm is fully deterministic and guarantees correctness for any map and any pair of walkable start/end points. My motivation: I want to make traditional flood fill obsolete for any project that uses it purely for reachability checks. In many real-time systems (like games), a full BFS/DFS or even region-preprocessing is overkill when you just need to answer: “Can I reach tile B from tile A?”* H...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Does Your Self-Hosted LLM Stack Look Like in 2025?

Ask HN: What Does Your Self-Hosted LLM Stack Look Like in 2025? 2 by anditherobot | 1 comments on Hacker News. Back when web development was taking off, there was always a go-to stack — something like Postgres + Django + jQuery, or .NET + Bootstrap, SQLITE. Over the years we had proven tech and proven patterns like : MVC, SPA etc... Now that local LLMs are gaining traction, I’m wondering what the equivalent stack looks like today. Models, Runtime, hardware and other tools. That could rival the Claudes, ChatGPTs or Geminis, etc Thanks

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Dealing with Vibe Coding Depression?

Ask HN: Dealing with Vibe Coding Depression? 3 by softirq | 2 comments on Hacker News. While originally I was an LLM skeptic, I was also eager to gain insight into it’s true capabilities, and recently I’ve reached the tipping point of existantial dread - I no longer feel any joy while coding. I’m no longer an artisan enjoying the journey of creating, I’m now truly a cog designed to review factory output until even that role is no longer required. My biggest feeling right now is an immense sense of loss. My belief was that the purpose of one’s life is found through acts of creation. The painter finds joy in painting, and the result is valued because of the effort involved. This feels like an attack on all intellectual pursuits, including the arts, but it’s especially hard considering the technology seems to have the most value at replacing its creators. Where do we go from here? So many of my friends have talked about switching fields, as we watch this miracle field edge towards beco...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What was your failed startup and why did it fail?

Ask HN: What was your failed startup and why did it fail? 6 by radialstub | 0 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing 22 by Townley | 18 comments on Hacker News. A relative of mine recently suffered a serious injury to their dominant (right) arm, which will have a long recovery period (likely several months). Ideally finger movement will be restored sooner, but even if so it might not be comfortable to keep the injured arm in an ergonomic typing position. So I wanted to prepare some options for one-handed typing that they can review. At first glance, it looks like solutions fall into one of three categories: - Trainings on how to effectively use a keyboard with one hand - Keyboard remappings on existing hardware to use alternative key layouts that favor the keys on the left side - Specialty keyboards that are intended to be used with one hand. Some of these seem promising but also shockingly expensive. Any thoughts on what solutions you've seen work / you might pursue in a similar situation?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell 9 by fazkan | 4 comments on Hacker News. I used to love these threads, super helpful in finding early customers, and inspiring as well. Please do share your journeys. https://ift.tt/Hc23Lek (2024) https://ift.tt/XlB2kei (2023) https://ift.tt/M0gASqe (2022) https://ift.tt/RoBXFWO (2021) https://ift.tt/PY1siOb (2020)

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you struggle with/optimize for deep,sustained focus?

Ask HN: How do you struggle with/optimize for deep,sustained focus? 3 by jenever | 0 comments on Hacker News. With digital distractions everywhere, and nowadays the need to have all these context switches between tabs, messages, emails, papers, prompting LLMs, literally anything, I feel like the ability to maintain deep focus on a high priority task is harder than ever. For those struggling with this, what are the main stressors for you and how do you deal with it to maximize productivity in your work sessions?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is your current LLM-assisted coding tool?

Ask HN: What is your current LLM-assisted coding tool? 3 by HiPHInch | 2 comments on Hacker News. Hello everyone, I’m testing and comparing various LLM-assisted coding tools, and I want to know which tool you are currently using in your daily development workflow. Here are some observations and questions I have: 1. Cursor and Windsurf - Both work nicely on local, but they use token-saving strategies: - With very long context, they may truncate important information, causing the suggested code to miss key details. - Even in normal scenarios, complex cases might exceed context or quota limits, interrupting suggestions. 2. “Roo Code” and API-based approaches - Directly calling paid APIs (e.g., OpenAI’s ChatGPT/GPT-4 API) works well but is expensive. - Some free or community APIs (open-source mirrors, community editions) can be unstable, rate-limited, or slow. 3. Augment Code - It’s said to be one of the most “intelligent” commercial products, but it’s also costly. - Many recommend its ...

New ask Hacker News story: My "tiny" Product Hunt alternative made $5.6k in revenue last month

My "tiny" Product Hunt alternative made $5.6k in revenue last month 2 by jaisalrathee | 0 comments on Hacker News. I run a small Product Hunt alternative called Tiny Startups. I've been running it as a newsletter for a few years and have grown it to around ~20k subscribers but I decided to go ahead with a soft pivot and build it into a "launch platform" in April to try and compete with the big boys like Product Hunt. I made $4.9k in revenue in April - my first month as a launch platform. In May revenue jumped from $4.9k to $5.6k -- most of this is from promoted submissions, even though a very high majority of submissions (~98%) are free submissions. Costs me ~$200/month to run the site + newsletter, the rest is profit. May saw over 12k unique visitors visit the tinystartups.com website. I'm mainly just promoting this via my newsletter (~20k subs) and X. Word of mouth does the rest. Looking to grow this project to a stable ~$10k/month but not sure how it...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Local AI for Handwriting Transcription?

Ask HN: Local AI for Handwriting Transcription? 2 by i4i | 0 comments on Hacker News. Is it possible to teach an AI to privately read one's digitized handwritten journals on an off the shelf late model Mac? If you're done it, please share how to.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What should you ask to understand a new team and company?

Ask HN: What should you ask to understand a new team and company? 4 by laura2013 | 1 comments on Hacker News. When joining a new company, I want to understand what’s working well and where the gaps are, from the perspective of my manager, peers, and leadership. What are the best questions you’ve asked (or wish you had asked) to uncover: - The team's strengths - Weaknesses or blind spots - Communication styles - How decisions actually get made - How you can help early on - What success looks like I’m especially interested in questions that go beyond the surface-level onboarding process and reveal real insights. I understand this takes time and the first 1:1s might not be as efficient while you get to know the team and them you. What’s worked well for you?

New ask Hacker News story: Proposal: Throw as a Special Variable for Auto Error Propagation in Go

Proposal: Throw as a Special Variable for Auto Error Propagation in Go 2 by iondodon | 0 comments on Hacker News. Proposal: Implicit Error Propagation via `throw` Identifier in Go Abstract This proposal introduces a new syntactic convention to Go: the use of the identifier `throw` in variable declarations or assignments (e.g., `result, throw := errorFunc()`). When detected, the compiler will automatically insert a check for a non-nil error and return zero values for all non-error return values along with the error. This mechanism streamlines error handling without compromising Go's hallmark of explicit, readable code. Motivation Go encourages explicit error handling, which often results in repetitive boilerplate code. For example: result, err := errorFunc() if err != nil { return zeroValue, err } This pattern, while clear, adds verbosity that can hinder readability, especially in functions with multiple error-prone calls. By introducing a syntactic shorthand that preserves clari...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why are dating apps so bad? Why hasn't anyone made a good one?

Ask HN: Why are dating apps so bad? Why hasn't anyone made a good one? 2 by 1270018080 | 3 comments on Hacker News. Almost all dating apps that have achieved the exponentially growing network effect have been acquired and subsequently enshittified by Match Group. The intent of these apps is to keep you single and spending money. I think Bumble is the only large scale independent app but they've managed to enshittify themselves too. So let's assume there is a deficit in the market for dating apps that are actually good. So why hasn't one been made? Definition of a good dating app: An app with no dark patterns where you can find dates and relationships. Ideas: - By internet standards, the market is so mature people aren't motivated to download another app. You're never going to get enough of a positive feedback loop from the network effect. - No one has made a good app yet. - A majority of humans aren't compatible with online dating for one reason or anothe...

New ask Hacker News story: Engagement = % of Humanity's Time Hijacked and Wasted

Engagement = % of Humanity's Time Hijacked and Wasted 7 by dwaltrip | 0 comments on Hacker News. "Engagement" is an evil metric. If the metric you are using could be meaningfully applied just as easily by drug dealers and casino owners, you've fucked up pretty badly. Yes, this is a low-effort post, but I just spent 5 minutes on the LinkedIn feed and I needed to blow off steam. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

New ask Hacker News story: ICE Paid Palantir Millions for 'Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations'

ICE Paid Palantir Millions for 'Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations' 2 by mdhb | 0 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What's the best AI for meme creation?