Wednesday, 31 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Fifteen Most Famous Transcendental Numbers

Fifteen Most Famous Transcendental Numbers
14 by vismit2000 | 3 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: I built a universal clipboard that syncs realtime on multiple devices

Show HN: I built a universal clipboard that syncs realtime on multiple devices
9 by imgopaal | 9 comments on Hacker News.
I’m Gopal, the guy behind QuickClip. I built this out of pure frustration. Copying items between my phone and laptop was very painful. Sending notes and links on WhatsApp. Saving random drafts I’d forget about. It was total waste of time. So I made QuickClip for myself first. A dead simple way to move text, links and images between devices instantly. No setup drama. No thinking. Fully encrypted I use it every day. Shipping it publicly now to see if anyone else has the same problem. Would honestly love to hear, how you move stuff between devices today, what’s broken or slow and what would make this actually useful for you Happy to answer anything and take suggestions. Thanks for checking it out.

New top story on Hacker News: Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design [pdf]

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design [pdf]
12 by tosh | 0 comments on Hacker News.


Friday, 26 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Codex vs. Claude Code (today)

Codex vs. Claude Code (today)
21 by gmays | 11 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: What I learned building "comfortable" LED strip lighting

What I learned building "comfortable" LED strip lighting
4 by emmasuntech | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I built a small workspace lighting setup using LED strips and ended up learning more than I expected. On paper it was simple: stick a strip somewhere, add a diffuser, done. In practice, the stuff that mattered wasn’t the spec sheet—it was power delivery, optics, and human perception. A few notes that surprised me: Power planning > “just buy a bigger PSU.” Long runs behave like distributed loads. Voltage drop shows up as uneven brightness, and on RGB/RGBW it can show up as color shift (“white” gets warmer at the far end). The fix isn’t only wattage—it’s where you feed power, wire gauge, and connector losses. Diffusion is not cosmetic. Without enough distance or diffusion, you get hotspots and glare. A cheap milky diffuser in an aluminum channel gets you most of the way there, but what helped the most was increasing LED-to-diffuser distance (depth of the channel) rather than chasing “premium” diffusers. Indirect beats direct for comfort. Bouncing light off a wall/desk surface looked dimmer on paper but felt more usable and less fatiguing. It also hid the fact that LEDs are point sources. Signal integrity is a separate problem (for addressable). A lot of “flicker” is actually data/ground/reference issues, not power. Short data lines, solid ground, and sometimes level shifting helped more than swapping power supplies. Questions for folks who’ve done larger installs (10–50m) or more “production” setups: Do you design power delivery first or physical layout first? Any favorite diffuser/channel profiles that minimize hotspots without killing too much output? For long addressable runs, what’s your go-to strategy for signal conditioning (buffers, differential, etc.)?

New top story on Hacker News: Geometric Algorithms for Translucency Sorting in Minecraft [pdf]

Geometric Algorithms for Translucency Sorting in Minecraft [pdf]
7 by HeliumHydride | 10 comments on Hacker News.


Monday, 22 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Backlog – a public repository of real work problems

Show HN: Backlog – a public repository of real work problems
6 by anticlickwise | 2 comments on Hacker News.
AI has made building fast and cheap, but finding the right problems still feels hard. I built World’s Backlog ( https://ift.tt/dXAuvJZ ) to collect real problems directly from people working inside different industries. Contributors post workflow pain, others validate it, and builders can study severity, frequency, and willingness to pay before building anything. Would love feedback from builders and people who feel real pain at work.

New top story on Hacker News: The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice

The ancient monuments saluting the winter solstice
10 by 1659447091 | 1 comments on Hacker News.


Wednesday, 17 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Short-Circuiting Correlated Subqueries in SQLite

Short-Circuiting Correlated Subqueries in SQLite
3 by emschwartz | 0 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Mephisto – A RAM-only, ad-free disposable email PWA built with React

Show HN: Mephisto – A RAM-only, ad-free disposable email PWA built with React
10 by benmxrt | 8 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I built Mephisto because I was frustrated with the current state of disposable email services—most are riddled with intrusive ads, trackers, and captchas. I wanted a tool that felt like a proper developer utility rather than a spam farm. The stack is React, Vite, and Tailwind. Key architectural decisions: 1. Volatile Memory: The backend writes nothing to disk. Once a session terminates, the data is irretrievable. 2. Client-Side Entropy: The password generator runs locally in the browser; keys are never sent to the server. 3. PWA: It's installable and designed for low latency using WebSockets for incoming mail (no polling). 4. Mobile Handoff: You can transfer an active session to mobile via an encrypted QR code. It is completely free and open for public use. I'd love to hear your feedback on the implementation and UI.

New top story on Hacker News: AI's real superpower: consuming, not creating

AI's real superpower: consuming, not creating
2 by firefoxd | 0 comments on Hacker News.


Friday, 12 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: From text to token: How tokenization pipelines work

From text to token: How tokenization pipelines work
7 by philippemnoel | 0 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: You are dating an ecosystem

You are dating an ecosystem
12 by razor_blog | 1 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Jottings; Anti-social microblog for your thoughts

Show HN: Jottings; Anti-social microblog for your thoughts
6 by vishalvshekkar | 1 comments on Hacker News.
I built Jottings because I was tired of my own thoughts getting trapped inside algorithmic feeds where I had to perform. There was a huge mental load before posting something on X or Instagram. Every time I wanted to share something small or unfinished, I opened Twitter and lost 20 minutes to the timeline. Writing a blog post felt too heavy for those smaller, quick thoughts. I just wanted a place to write something down quickly and hit publish. Jottings is that place. It gives you a clean microblog on a domain you own. Posts show up in simple chronological order. No likes. No followers. No feed trying to decide what matters. What Jottings is - A microblogging platform that builds fully static microblog sites - A free subdomain (you.jottings.me) or connect your own domain on PRO plans - Markdown, tags, RSS feed, links with preview, and image uploads - An optional AI writing helper when you are stuck or lazy to fix grammar - Optimized for SEO and AI search friendly - Analytics for your sites What it is not - Not a social network - Not an engagement funnel - Not trying to keep you on the site - Not a replacement for long-form blogging, though you can use it that way How it works Each Jot publish triggers a static site rebuild. The site is stored in Cloudflare R2 and served directly at the edge. Custom domains go through Cloudflare SSL for SaaS. I built it to be boring, reliable (barring Cloudflare's latest issues), and cheap to run. Pricing Free tier for a subdomain, text posts, and a lot more. USD5 per month for custom domains, images, full Markdown, and the writing helper. I priced it to be an easy yes. Limitations - No comments (on purpose) - No native apps yet (iOS is coming) - The writing helper is helpful but not magic - I am a solo founder, so features move at human speed I use Jottings regularly to document what I build. It has been the lowest-friction way I have found to publish anything publicly. Demo of Jottings site for product updates: https://ift.tt/gJBGUfF Demo of my personal Jottings site: https://ift.tt/WSqX6nC (with custom subdomain) I would love feedback from this community. What would make this better or more useful for you? Check it out here: https://jottings.me (2 min set up) Feel free to write to me at vishal@vishalvshekkar.com — Vishal

Thursday, 11 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: South Korea – A Cautionary Tale for the Rest of Humanity

South Korea – A Cautionary Tale for the Rest of Humanity
4 by barry-cotter | 1 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Local Privacy Firewall-blocks PII and secrets before ChatGPT sees them

Show HN: Local Privacy Firewall-blocks PII and secrets before ChatGPT sees them
15 by arnabkarsarkar | 0 comments on Hacker News.
OP here. I built this because I recently caught myself almost pasting a block of logs containing AWS keys into Claude. The Problem: I need the reasoning capabilities of cloud models (GPT/Claude/Gemini), but I can't trust myself not to accidentally leak PII or secrets. The Solution: A Chrome extension that acts as a local middleware. It intercepts the prompt and runs a local BERT model (via a Python FastAPI backend) to scrub names, emails, and keys before the request leaves the browser. A few notes up front (to set expectations clearly): Everything runs 100% locally. Regex detection happens in the extension itself. Advanced detection (NER) uses a small transformer model running on localhost via FastAPI. No data is ever sent to a server. You can verify this in the code + DevTools network panel. This is an early prototype. There will be rough edges. I’m looking for feedback on UX, detection quality, and whether the local-agent approach makes sense. Tech Stack: Manifest V3 Chrome Extension Python FastAPI (Localhost) HuggingFace dslim/bert-base-NER Roadmap / Request for Feedback: Right now, the Python backend adds some friction. I received feedback on Reddit yesterday suggesting I port the inference to transformer.js to run entirely in-browser via WASM. I decided to ship v1 with the Python backend for stability, but I'm actively looking into the ONNX/WASM route for v2 to remove the local server dependency. If anyone has experience running NER models via transformer.js in a Service Worker, I’d love to hear about the performance vs native Python. Repo is MIT licensed. Very open to ideas suggestions or alternative approaches.

New top story on Hacker News: Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content
26 by ta988 | 2 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: A "Frozen" Dictionary for Python

A "Frozen" Dictionary for Python
24 by jwilk | 3 comments on Hacker News.


Tuesday, 9 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Morphisms All the Way Down: API Design as Arrow-First Thinking

Morphisms All the Way Down: API Design as Arrow-First Thinking
3 by ibrahimcesar | 0 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns

Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
4 by henwfan | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I built AlgoDrill because I kept grinding LeetCode, thinking I knew the pattern, and then completely blanking when I had to implement it from scratch a few weeks later. AlgoDrill turns NeetCode 150 and more into pattern-based drills: you rebuild the solution line by line with active recall, get first principles editorials that explain why each step exists, and everything is tagged by patterns like sliding window, two pointers, and DP so you can hammer the ones you keep forgetting. The goal is simple: turn familiar patterns into code you can write quickly and confidently in a real interview. https://algodrill.io Would love feedback on whether this drill-style approach feels like a real upgrade over just solving problems once, and what’s most confusing or missing when you first land on the site.

New top story on Hacker News: The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn

The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn
4 by tosh | 2 comments on Hacker News.


Saturday, 6 December 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Linux Instal Fest Belgrade

Linux Instal Fest Belgrade
9 by ubavic | 1 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Autism's Confusing Cousins

Autism's Confusing Cousins
2 by Anon84 | 0 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: How America's "truck-driver shortage" made the industry a hellscape

How America's "truck-driver shortage" made the industry a hellscape
12 by ilamont | 7 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?

Ask HN: How many people got VPNs in response to laws like UK Online Safety Act?
21 by hodgesrm | 4 comments on Hacker News.
I was reading The Free Press (thefp.com) from London and an article was automatically blocked to ensure conformance with the UK Online Safety Act. I thought the site was broken. It took a few minutes to diagnose the problem. 15 minutes later I had Mullvad installed and was back online. Talk about unintended consequences. How many other people have done the same?