The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
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Show HN: Metaspec: The DpANS3R Common Lisp Spec in S-Expr and HTML Format
I started this project back in 2015, to translate the TeX original specification into an easily parsed format (s-doc), and to create an HTML rendering of that format as a proof of concept.<p>The project is homed here: <a href="https://codeberg.org/dlowe/metaspectre/" rel="nofollow">https://codeberg.org/dlowe/metaspectre/</a><p>Differences from the Hyperspec (from the README):<p><pre><code> - Most importantly, it is free to modify and distribute.
- The original TeX is very hard to parse and use for things other than
generating a printed copy. The Hyperspec is an HTML rendering which
can be parsed as HTML, but loses a lot of information. The Metaspec
has an easily parsed intermediate form that can be used for all kinds
of purposes, like converting into lookups.
- Math equations are rendered using MathML.
- Includes the acknowledgements and appendix sections.
- Uses progressively enhanced Javascript to provide search and
light/dark theme switching.
- Incorporates over 145 patches for content, using corrections
accumulated over the years, and documented in the errata page.
- Includes TeX comments, which can contain interesting historical data.
- Includes links and identifiers to bibliographical references.</code></pre>
Show HN: Running a vision model on every screenshot on-device
hi author here, Screenmind is privacy first Microsoft recall alternative .
It runs on gemma 4 which is one of the fewer models supporting vision audio and reasoning all 3, so your data never leaves you machine.<p>With screenmind you can keep a track of your timeline , how much time you spent on what..search any screenshot with any text on it.. and the coolest thing, you can chat with your screen history, like what did alex texted me on discord or did i received any mail from Microsoft, if it was on your screen , you can prompt it in the cha. and also you can make automations on top of it, like send me my whole day report on slack(it has integrations )..you can also write automation either though plain English for not so coders or use the python for devs who want to deep dive, and you can save voice memos(with a screenshot) with just a hotkey, and get you meeting transcribed and summarised(auto detects meeting)<p>the hardest part which i faced was keep running screenmind as a background service it would not have been not hard if chat feature didn't existed, as running local model requires compute ..and keep analyzing screenshots continuously will keep all the resouces hogged up for that i came up with a perceptual has cache .. the three tier cache system reduces inference upto 40% for an average user(which is me)..and to reduce the inference time more i came up with three modes..fast balanced and accurate..where the tradeoff is between time and accuracy<p>for now i use it daily on my 4gb gtx 1650 with fast mode, works pretty fine also it would be much faster on high end machine , it also has a mcp server so you can just ask claude desktop/cursor about the bug you saw in morning..<p>supports windows/mac/Linux<p>being upfront about rough edges , it is not extensively tested on mac and installation has some friction , for which i m working on one click installer thing<p>(reposting- i put up an earlier version a few days back, comments got flagged cuz of new account so couldn't reply to any )<p>repo:github.com/ayushh0110/ScreenMind<p>curious about anyone have idea for how to approach multi monitor support
Show HN: Appaca – AI Workspace for Operators
Appaca is my third pivot.<p>A couple of years ago, I started working on an idea on no-code platform that generates code. The goal is to help devs and agencies ship products faster for their clients. I went through Antler startup accelerator and got initial funding. I was working on the right problem, but wrong solution. Instead of no-code, I should have jumped into LLM a lot earlier. I felt defeated when Lovable, Base44, and Bolt came out strong, showing the world what LLMs can do in software development. No one cared about my product anymore.<p>I pivoted my startup second time after that, to an AI agent builder for businesses. After my first MVP launched, I got some decent tractions with that. A lot of people wanted to make AI agents that they can monetise. So, I focused on making a platform that helps them build and ship monetisable AI agents. The product made some revenues, but the churn was super high. Later, more mature companies like Zapier and N8N started their AI agents. My competitors in the US and Europe are raising serious money. As a solo founder in Australia, I couldn't get the funding to compete with them. I realised some of my users are using it for their internal operations.<p>So, my last pivot before running out of my current runway is Appaca. With my experience building an app builder to AI agent builder, I rebuilt the entire platform and make it an AI workspace where the team can build and run their internal ops tools by chatting with AI, and connect tools with their existing system. This space seems a bit competitive as well. But, I have a conviction that Appaca can be the platform people use to run their businesses.<p>Appaca is different from general vibe coding tools. The goal of Appaca is to give users a user experience, rather than a builder experience. All apps built on Appaca runs directly in the platform without any concept of hosting, deployment or bug fixing. I want people who use Appaca to feel like the platform itself evolves and adapts to the way they work. Each tools they created should feel like it's part of Appaca. It's still in a very early stage. I am currently working on the right positioning and messaging.<p>I hope you give it a go, and please let me know your honest thoughts. Thanks.
Show HN: FSM – an advanced system monitor for Linux
Show HN: NanoEuler – GPT-2 scale model in pure C/CUDA from scratch
Hi everyone,<p>I started working on nanoeuler after the ban of anthropic's fable because my ambition and dream is to work in the AI field in anthropic. The two interesting reasons that led me to create nanoeuler were (1) interfacing with llm does not mean understanding how they are composed and (2), working on llm with a very low-level layer to understand the correlation between parameters and data and growth of the model and how the GPU works and how some layers can be optimized.<p>So I started working on it with a research aspect by making nanoeuler grow more and more but doing one step after another starting from Shakespeare.txt and understanding what a text generation model understands at 23 million parameters. For example, nanoeuler at that number had understood that Name: started a line and wrote that line with sense.<p>I wrote everything in CUDA because I wanted to not use any intermediary between the model in training and inference and what it had to do. Then the use of SFT and much more, even if in small ways, were really useful to understand the various step to make an llm like a chatbot.Any feedback, help, or suggestions are absolutely welcome!
Show HN: NanoEuler – GPT-2 scale model in pure C/CUDA from scratch
Hi everyone,<p>I started working on nanoeuler after the ban of anthropic's fable because my ambition and dream is to work in the AI field in anthropic. The two interesting reasons that led me to create nanoeuler were (1) interfacing with llm does not mean understanding how they are composed and (2), working on llm with a very low-level layer to understand the correlation between parameters and data and growth of the model and how the GPU works and how some layers can be optimized.<p>So I started working on it with a research aspect by making nanoeuler grow more and more but doing one step after another starting from Shakespeare.txt and understanding what a text generation model understands at 23 million parameters. For example, nanoeuler at that number had understood that Name: started a line and wrote that line with sense.<p>I wrote everything in CUDA because I wanted to not use any intermediary between the model in training and inference and what it had to do. Then the use of SFT and much more, even if in small ways, were really useful to understand the various step to make an llm like a chatbot.Any feedback, help, or suggestions are absolutely welcome!
Show HN: Bash4LLM+ – A lightweight, dependency-free Bash wrapper for LLM APIs
Bash4LLM is a single-file Bash wrapper for interacting with LLMs from the terminal. I created it because I wanted something simple that worked without installing Python, Node, or any other runtime.<p>It uses only Bash, curl, and jq. You can send prompts, start a small chat, process files line by line, stream output, and save session metadata in JSON format.<p>I tried to make it safe and predictable: no use of the system /tmp, no use of eval. Groq is supported by default, and other providers can be added with dedicated Bash scripts in the extras/providers/ folder.<p>Example:<p><pre><code> echo "explains the command: ls -l" | ./bash4llm</code></pre>
Show HN: Bash4LLM+ – A lightweight, dependency-free Bash wrapper for LLM APIs
Bash4LLM is a single-file Bash wrapper for interacting with LLMs from the terminal. I created it because I wanted something simple that worked without installing Python, Node, or any other runtime.<p>It uses only Bash, curl, and jq. You can send prompts, start a small chat, process files line by line, stream output, and save session metadata in JSON format.<p>I tried to make it safe and predictable: no use of the system /tmp, no use of eval. Groq is supported by default, and other providers can be added with dedicated Bash scripts in the extras/providers/ folder.<p>Example:<p><pre><code> echo "explains the command: ls -l" | ./bash4llm</code></pre>
Show HN: DRM-Free Books
After several years of mandatory DRM lockdowns from most commercial book sources, now authors have a choice when it comes to DRM for their books. Pick authors and books that are DRM-free, or download DRM-free classics that are out of copyright.<p><a href="https://frequal.com/Perspectives/DrmFreeAuthors.html" rel="nofollow">https://frequal.com/Perspectives/DrmFreeAuthors.html</a>
Show HN: DRM-Free Books
After several years of mandatory DRM lockdowns from most commercial book sources, now authors have a choice when it comes to DRM for their books. Pick authors and books that are DRM-free, or download DRM-free classics that are out of copyright.<p><a href="https://frequal.com/Perspectives/DrmFreeAuthors.html" rel="nofollow">https://frequal.com/Perspectives/DrmFreeAuthors.html</a>
Show HN: Zanagrams
Show HN: Zanagrams
Show HN: Decomp Academy – Learn to decompile GameCube games into matching C
Over the past few months I've been heavily involved in the decompilation community. I've been hands-on decompiling a beloved game from my childhood (Star Fox Adventures). I started this journey with zero prior decomp experience—and to make things worse I had never really touched C nor assembly either.<p>Learning how to decompile was challenging. It's difficult to find any good learning resources for it and any open-source projects for this are inactive and/or contain little actual learning material.<p>So I put together Decomp Academy! Decomp Academy is an interactive way to learn how to decompile PowerPC assembly back into C. The site runs a live Metrowerks CodeWarrior GC/2.0 compiler, converts your C into assembly, and then checks how close your assembly matches the target. If even 1 instruction or bit is off, that's a fail. This is the gold standard for video game decompilation and this is much stricter than a normal decompile.<p>As of writing there are 250+ lessons on the site and the lessons start at the very basics so anyone with a little programming experience should be able to jump straight in, even if you're not a C expert. Some lessons also have real functions taken from live open source decomp projects (Star Fox Adventures, Mario Party 4, Pikmin, Metroid Prime). The idea being you learn everything you need to know to be able to jump in and contribute to a real decompilation project when done.<p>The site is completely free, open source and you have access to all lessons without having to sign up. All lessons are stored in markdown in the repo (src/curriculum), it's trivial to add or modify lessons. The site is very new and the lessons are rapidly changing every day with a whole C++ section on the way. The site has already been well received by the decomp community and I'm happy to share it with HN. I'm very keen on others to contribute to this project and I hope this becomes the best resource on the internet for learning the art of decompilation. Please let me know what you think!<p>Source: <a href="https://github.com/JackPriceBurns/decomp-academy-fe" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/JackPriceBurns/decomp-academy-fe</a>
Show HN: Decomp Academy – Learn to decompile GameCube games into matching C
Over the past few months I've been heavily involved in the decompilation community. I've been hands-on decompiling a beloved game from my childhood (Star Fox Adventures). I started this journey with zero prior decomp experience—and to make things worse I had never really touched C nor assembly either.<p>Learning how to decompile was challenging. It's difficult to find any good learning resources for it and any open-source projects for this are inactive and/or contain little actual learning material.<p>So I put together Decomp Academy! Decomp Academy is an interactive way to learn how to decompile PowerPC assembly back into C. The site runs a live Metrowerks CodeWarrior GC/2.0 compiler, converts your C into assembly, and then checks how close your assembly matches the target. If even 1 instruction or bit is off, that's a fail. This is the gold standard for video game decompilation and this is much stricter than a normal decompile.<p>As of writing there are 250+ lessons on the site and the lessons start at the very basics so anyone with a little programming experience should be able to jump straight in, even if you're not a C expert. Some lessons also have real functions taken from live open source decomp projects (Star Fox Adventures, Mario Party 4, Pikmin, Metroid Prime). The idea being you learn everything you need to know to be able to jump in and contribute to a real decompilation project when done.<p>The site is completely free, open source and you have access to all lessons without having to sign up. All lessons are stored in markdown in the repo (src/curriculum), it's trivial to add or modify lessons. The site is very new and the lessons are rapidly changing every day with a whole C++ section on the way. The site has already been well received by the decomp community and I'm happy to share it with HN. I'm very keen on others to contribute to this project and I hope this becomes the best resource on the internet for learning the art of decompilation. Please let me know what you think!<p>Source: <a href="https://github.com/JackPriceBurns/decomp-academy-fe" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/JackPriceBurns/decomp-academy-fe</a>
Show HN: DBOSify – Drop-in Temporal replacement built on Postgres
Show HN: DBOSify – Drop-in Temporal replacement built on Postgres
Show HN: Hacker News on a train station-style flip board
Although the page itself is more just fun to have made and look at (I like the flip sound), the fun part is how I made it to verify the (and I hate to say it) vibe host service I've been working on. The recent flip board back and forth's on Twitter (X) are what inspired me.<p>The idea here is that people (like me or you) can create something neat like this, and others can remix it, change it and publish their own version. This is that all in action and it worked great. I wrote a blog about it (the blog is dogfooding, it's just an app hosted on quickish that uses the built in db lib).<p>For the HN version of this flip board I use their firebase api via the built in quickish server functions that make use of the fact that the front-end can get realtime updates (now that you mention firebase) from cloud function db updates. Of course that's over-kill but I wanted to show something fun. You can remix and host your own version for free, just need a google oauth login that's it.<p>OG flip board I built (Portland Based - Current Weather): <a href="https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview" rel="nofollow">https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview</a><p>Blog post that dives a tiny bit deeper: <a href="https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-flap-board/" rel="nofollow">https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-...</a>
Show HN: Hacker News on a train station-style flip board
Although the page itself is more just fun to have made and look at (I like the flip sound), the fun part is how I made it to verify the (and I hate to say it) vibe host service I've been working on. The recent flip board back and forth's on Twitter (X) are what inspired me.<p>The idea here is that people (like me or you) can create something neat like this, and others can remix it, change it and publish their own version. This is that all in action and it worked great. I wrote a blog about it (the blog is dogfooding, it's just an app hosted on quickish that uses the built in db lib).<p>For the HN version of this flip board I use their firebase api via the built in quickish server functions that make use of the fact that the front-end can get realtime updates (now that you mention firebase) from cloud function db updates. Of course that's over-kill but I wanted to show something fun. You can remix and host your own version for free, just need a google oauth login that's it.<p>OG flip board I built (Portland Based - Current Weather): <a href="https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview" rel="nofollow">https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview</a><p>Blog post that dives a tiny bit deeper: <a href="https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-flap-board/" rel="nofollow">https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-...</a>
Show HN: Adrafinil – keep a lid-closed Mac awake only while agents work
A month ago there was a wave of posts and tweets about engineers walking around cafes and parks with their MacBooks propped half-open, as fully closing the lid forces sleep that stops their AI agents. Some people made snarky comments about using tmux or Amphetamine, and some defended their choice with “but I only need it sometimes, and forgetting to disable Amphetamine and finding my laptop discharged in my bag is worse.”<p>This is a solution to this problem. Unlike caffeinate, it will prevent your MacBook from sleeping even with the lid closed, with no external power or display, using pmset disablesleep 1. Unlike other sleep-preventing apps, Adrafinil only activates when there’s an agent actively doing something. It detects agent activity through hooks it installs into Claude Code, Codex, and others. To reassure you it’s working, the app shows the active status in the menu bar, and it plays a chime when you close the lid.<p>Once the agent is done, Adrafinil detects it and lets the laptop go to sleep by setting pmset disablesleep back to 0. It will also let it sleep in case of overheating. And if you want to manually toggle it, you can install an optional MCP and tell your agent to keep the MacBook awake for a specific time.<p>It has four binaries, one of which is a root helper exposing a single setSleepBlocked call. All the logic and policy live in the unprivileged parts. They’re all notarized, and the app is fully open source (MIT).
Show HN: Adrafinil – keep a lid-closed Mac awake only while agents work
A month ago there was a wave of posts and tweets about engineers walking around cafes and parks with their MacBooks propped half-open, as fully closing the lid forces sleep that stops their AI agents. Some people made snarky comments about using tmux or Amphetamine, and some defended their choice with “but I only need it sometimes, and forgetting to disable Amphetamine and finding my laptop discharged in my bag is worse.”<p>This is a solution to this problem. Unlike caffeinate, it will prevent your MacBook from sleeping even with the lid closed, with no external power or display, using pmset disablesleep 1. Unlike other sleep-preventing apps, Adrafinil only activates when there’s an agent actively doing something. It detects agent activity through hooks it installs into Claude Code, Codex, and others. To reassure you it’s working, the app shows the active status in the menu bar, and it plays a chime when you close the lid.<p>Once the agent is done, Adrafinil detects it and lets the laptop go to sleep by setting pmset disablesleep back to 0. It will also let it sleep in case of overheating. And if you want to manually toggle it, you can install an optional MCP and tell your agent to keep the MacBook awake for a specific time.<p>It has four binaries, one of which is a root helper exposing a single setSleepBlocked call. All the logic and policy live in the unprivileged parts. They’re all notarized, and the app is fully open source (MIT).