The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
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Show HN: I built 184 free browser tools – PDF, image, dev, AI tasks, no upload
Show HN: cuTile Rust: Safe, data-race-free GPU kernels in Rust
Show HN: Capacitor Alarm Clock
I made an alarm clock that blows up capacitors to wake you up.<p>There are more details on the Github repo but it's made from an esp32-c3 as the microcontroller, with 3 capacitor slots. There are relays on each capacitor slot to put 15v reverse voltage on the capacitor, with 5.1 ohm resistors on each slot for current limiting in case the capacitor shorts out. I also chucked in an SSD1315 OLED to show the time and a menu to configure it, although there's a web UI as well. The esp32 also means you can fetch the time from NTP.<p>It also functions as a small heater since I used LDOs to step down 15v to 3.3v for the esp32, I was lazy and didn't use a buck converter circuit :)
Show HN: Inkwash, a watercolor sketching app and explanation
I've made a drawing app based on my physical sketching practice, using fluid sim and some shader tricks to mimic watercolor-style ink washes. Best used on iPad or with a drawing tablet. The linked article shows how the core engine works, with plenty of little interactive demos. It was fun to make, sharing in hopes others find it fun too :)
Show HN: High-Res Neural Cellular Automata
Neural CAs model self-organizing pattern formation.<p>Now they can generate patterns at HD resolution in real-time, enabled by turning each CA cell into a Neural Field.<p>Try 3 demos: grow a pattern from a seed (and damage it, it heals), synthesize PBR textures that can regenerate, or create 3D textures like clouds.
Show HN: An 8-bit live gamecast for baseball
Hey HN, I built a website to watch live baseball games in an 8-bit broadcast. It takes live MLB data streams and converts them into near real-time pixel art gamecasts.<p>Been waiting to share this for when there’s actually a good slate of games happening since the site is pretty bare otherwise.<p>Here is today's schedule:<p>Mets @ Reds - 9:40am PDT
<a href="https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/824503" rel="nofollow">https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/824503</a><p>Royals @ Nationals - 10:05am PDT
<a href="https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/822721" rel="nofollow">https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/822721</a><p>Marlins @ Phillies - 10:05am PDT
<a href="https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/823450" rel="nofollow">https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/823450</a><p>Tigers @ Astros - 11:10am PDT
<a href="https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/824178" rel="nofollow">https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/824178</a><p>Padres @ Cardinals - 11:15am PDT
<a href="https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/823044" rel="nofollow">https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/823044</a><p>..and another 14 games throughout the later day.<p>I'm still early on in this project, but I've tried to add little details with actual stadiums, day and night modes, between inning graphics and interstitials, live scoreboards, etc.<p>Would love any feedback and ideas. Thanks for checking it out!
Show HN: Voice Age Verification
I miss the old web. As a kid I could type in "a/s/l" in AOL messenger and chat with someone my own age, without worrying about the dangers that lurk on the web today.<p>After seeing what happened to Omegle, a question stuck: is there a simple way to do age verification that both keeps people safe and doesn't contribute to a surveillance state?<p>After a year of hard work, that question resulted in AGEWARDEN. Each part of the service puts people first. No tracking, nothing stored (it's more difficult these days to NOT collect data :smh:).<p>Please give it a try if you have a moment <a href="https://agewarden.ai/demo" rel="nofollow">https://agewarden.ai/demo</a>. Feedback is very much welcomed.<p>GG
Show HN: VoiceDraw – Talk system design out loud, the diagrams draw themselves
I was frustated by having to draw system design diagrams by hand when discussing it with my team mates or in an interview. So I thought "Wouldn't it be great if someone draws it for me, while I think out loud?".<p>That is when I came up with VoiceDraw. You can just think out loud or discuss your system architecture with a friend/interviewer, the diagrams are automatically drawn along with your reasoning, open questions and tradeoffs beautifully written on to the side.<p>Demo Video: <a href="https://youtu.be/36PgHKSuccE" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/36PgHKSuccE</a>
Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis
I know, it's kind of weird. What is a veterinarian doing creating an analysis tool for lawn problems?<p>Frankly, the idea was born of my own lawn care struggles. Endless lawn care company fees without any actual improvement. Googling problems and finding generic solutions without regional considerations. One time I overseeded my grass not realizing I had to actually put soil down too.<p>One day, I decided to run lawn pictures through AI and found some pretty helpful information. So I decided with my clinical background (the idea of treating the cause, not just the symptoms), as well as tech savvy, I would create an AI tool where homeowners can upload pictures of their lawn, enter their ZIP code, and get a diagnosis tailored to their location with actionable next steps in just 15 seconds.<p>Completely free. The platform is monetized with affiliate sales (if a user elects to purchase through one of our Amazon or other links) and by selling exclusive rights to individual ZIP codes to lawn care companies seeking warm leads. Users can pursue their own DIY plan, purchase a lawn care subscription service, or contact a local lawn care system.<p>I'd love if you'd test it out, toy with it, try to break it, and give me your feedback. Any feature requests would be super helpful.<p>Thanks! Excited to hear your thoughts.<p>Andrew
Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis
I know, it's kind of weird. What is a veterinarian doing creating an analysis tool for lawn problems?<p>Frankly, the idea was born of my own lawn care struggles. Endless lawn care company fees without any actual improvement. Googling problems and finding generic solutions without regional considerations. One time I overseeded my grass not realizing I had to actually put soil down too.<p>One day, I decided to run lawn pictures through AI and found some pretty helpful information. So I decided with my clinical background (the idea of treating the cause, not just the symptoms), as well as tech savvy, I would create an AI tool where homeowners can upload pictures of their lawn, enter their ZIP code, and get a diagnosis tailored to their location with actionable next steps in just 15 seconds.<p>Completely free. The platform is monetized with affiliate sales (if a user elects to purchase through one of our Amazon or other links) and by selling exclusive rights to individual ZIP codes to lawn care companies seeking warm leads. Users can pursue their own DIY plan, purchase a lawn care subscription service, or contact a local lawn care system.<p>I'd love if you'd test it out, toy with it, try to break it, and give me your feedback. Any feature requests would be super helpful.<p>Thanks! Excited to hear your thoughts.<p>Andrew
Show HN: Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art
Hey all, I made this. The archive started with my 2015 BA thesis on Amiga ASCII art when I was curious about the history of ASCII art but found very little on text art that came before it. The historical precursors are often attributed to typewriter art and shaped/visual poetry, but I think letterpress is overlooked. So, I got slightly obsessed and started a personal database of pictures built entirely from metal type, ornaments, and rule, some going back to the 1600s. After eight years, I've managed to find ~2500 images. My friend Adel Faure built the website so it's now browseable by anyone!<p>I would like to note that most images are from public digital collections (Internet Archive, national libraries, etc.) and displayed without permission (for educational purposes). I've tried to source every image, but check the original source and its license before reusing anything. I'd be happy to take down or correct anything.<p>It's also incomplete and surely has errors and misattributions. Corrections to anything are very welcome.<p>If anyone has leads on works I haven't catalogued, I'd love to hear them! The practice and pictures are scattered across languages and keywords (type picture, typosignet, typotectur, Bildsatz, stigmatypie, stunt typography...), so things hide in odd corners of archives. If you've seen something like this, please point me at it.<p>There's also a longer essay on how it began:
<a href="https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?essay" rel="nofollow">https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?essay</a>
Show HN: Garden of Flowers – an archive of pictorial typography before ASCII art
Hey all, I made this. The archive started with my 2015 BA thesis on Amiga ASCII art when I was curious about the history of ASCII art but found very little on text art that came before it. The historical precursors are often attributed to typewriter art and shaped/visual poetry, but I think letterpress is overlooked. So, I got slightly obsessed and started a personal database of pictures built entirely from metal type, ornaments, and rule, some going back to the 1600s. After eight years, I've managed to find ~2500 images. My friend Adel Faure built the website so it's now browseable by anyone!<p>I would like to note that most images are from public digital collections (Internet Archive, national libraries, etc.) and displayed without permission (for educational purposes). I've tried to source every image, but check the original source and its license before reusing anything. I'd be happy to take down or correct anything.<p>It's also incomplete and surely has errors and misattributions. Corrections to anything are very welcome.<p>If anyone has leads on works I haven't catalogued, I'd love to hear them! The practice and pictures are scattered across languages and keywords (type picture, typosignet, typotectur, Bildsatz, stigmatypie, stunt typography...), so things hide in odd corners of archives. If you've seen something like this, please point me at it.<p>There's also a longer essay on how it began:
<a href="https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?essay" rel="nofollow">https://garden-of-flowers.heikkilotvonen.com/?essay</a>
Show HN: machine0 – Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI
Hi HN! Excited to launch machine0, a CLI that makes it easy to create, provision and snapshot persistent NixOS (& Ubuntu) VMs.<p>You can think of machine0 as a modern VPS provider. VMs stay on unless switched-off (with 99.99% uptime), they have static IPs and HTTPS endpoints, 1-60 vCPU, up to 240GB RAM and optionally GPUs. The CLI provides commands to manage lifecycle, snapshots and also provision the VMs using Nix flakes or Ansible playbooks. VMs are priced by the minute of usage.<p>What makes machine0 unique is that it has first class support for NixOS! In a nutshell, NixOS lets you define your entire OS as code (think Terraform but for your Linux). A flake declares your system state (packages, services, firewall rules, users...) and pins all dependencies via a lockfile. Given the same flake.nix and flake.lock, `nixos-rebuild switch` always produces the exact same system.<p>The NixOS ecosystem is mature, and flakes are expressive: at the system level you can define packages, what's in /etc, firewall rules, users & groups etc. At the user level, you can define your shell, aliases, tmux and vim config. Having your entire environment defined as code makes it easy to audit what's installed and how things are set up. You can rollback by reverting the last commit. And agents can write the code for you and test it against disposable machine0 VMs.<p>If you'd like to dive right in, these commands will get you started:<p><pre><code> npm install -g @machine0/cli
machine0 new my-vm --image nixos-25-11 # create a new nixos VM
machine0 provision my-vm ./flake#my-profile # provision it using a nix flake
machine0 ssh my-vm # ssh in
machine0 stop my-vm # stop the VM
machine0 images new my-vm my-snapshot # create a snapshot
machine0 new my-clone --image my-snapshot # create a new VM from the snapshot
</code></pre>
- Demo of installation + NixOS provisioning via Claude Code: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8N0_e3Vfg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8N0_e3Vfg</a><p>- Documentation: <a href="https://docs.machine0.io/introduction/overview">https://docs.machine0.io/introduction/overview</a><p>- machine0 NixOS flakes: <a href="https://github.com/fdmtl/machine0-nixos" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fdmtl/machine0-nixos</a><p>If you're in the habit of using VMs, or want to know what the NixOS fuss is about, would love for you to give machine0 a try!
Show HN: machine0 – Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI
Hi HN! Excited to launch machine0, a CLI that makes it easy to create, provision and snapshot persistent NixOS (& Ubuntu) VMs.<p>You can think of machine0 as a modern VPS provider. VMs stay on unless switched-off (with 99.99% uptime), they have static IPs and HTTPS endpoints, 1-60 vCPU, up to 240GB RAM and optionally GPUs. The CLI provides commands to manage lifecycle, snapshots and also provision the VMs using Nix flakes or Ansible playbooks. VMs are priced by the minute of usage.<p>What makes machine0 unique is that it has first class support for NixOS! In a nutshell, NixOS lets you define your entire OS as code (think Terraform but for your Linux). A flake declares your system state (packages, services, firewall rules, users...) and pins all dependencies via a lockfile. Given the same flake.nix and flake.lock, `nixos-rebuild switch` always produces the exact same system.<p>The NixOS ecosystem is mature, and flakes are expressive: at the system level you can define packages, what's in /etc, firewall rules, users & groups etc. At the user level, you can define your shell, aliases, tmux and vim config. Having your entire environment defined as code makes it easy to audit what's installed and how things are set up. You can rollback by reverting the last commit. And agents can write the code for you and test it against disposable machine0 VMs.<p>If you'd like to dive right in, these commands will get you started:<p><pre><code> npm install -g @machine0/cli
machine0 new my-vm --image nixos-25-11 # create a new nixos VM
machine0 provision my-vm ./flake#my-profile # provision it using a nix flake
machine0 ssh my-vm # ssh in
machine0 stop my-vm # stop the VM
machine0 images new my-vm my-snapshot # create a snapshot
machine0 new my-clone --image my-snapshot # create a new VM from the snapshot
</code></pre>
- Demo of installation + NixOS provisioning via Claude Code: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8N0_e3Vfg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8N0_e3Vfg</a><p>- Documentation: <a href="https://docs.machine0.io/introduction/overview">https://docs.machine0.io/introduction/overview</a><p>- machine0 NixOS flakes: <a href="https://github.com/fdmtl/machine0-nixos" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fdmtl/machine0-nixos</a><p>If you're in the habit of using VMs, or want to know what the NixOS fuss is about, would love for you to give machine0 a try!
Show HN: machine0 – Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI
Hi HN! Excited to launch machine0, a CLI that makes it easy to create, provision and snapshot persistent NixOS (& Ubuntu) VMs.<p>You can think of machine0 as a modern VPS provider. VMs stay on unless switched-off (with 99.99% uptime), they have static IPs and HTTPS endpoints, 1-60 vCPU, up to 240GB RAM and optionally GPUs. The CLI provides commands to manage lifecycle, snapshots and also provision the VMs using Nix flakes or Ansible playbooks. VMs are priced by the minute of usage.<p>What makes machine0 unique is that it has first class support for NixOS! In a nutshell, NixOS lets you define your entire OS as code (think Terraform but for your Linux). A flake declares your system state (packages, services, firewall rules, users...) and pins all dependencies via a lockfile. Given the same flake.nix and flake.lock, `nixos-rebuild switch` always produces the exact same system.<p>The NixOS ecosystem is mature, and flakes are expressive: at the system level you can define packages, what's in /etc, firewall rules, users & groups etc. At the user level, you can define your shell, aliases, tmux and vim config. Having your entire environment defined as code makes it easy to audit what's installed and how things are set up. You can rollback by reverting the last commit. And agents can write the code for you and test it against disposable machine0 VMs.<p>If you'd like to dive right in, these commands will get you started:<p><pre><code> npm install -g @machine0/cli
machine0 new my-vm --image nixos-25-11 # create a new nixos VM
machine0 provision my-vm ./flake#my-profile # provision it using a nix flake
machine0 ssh my-vm # ssh in
machine0 stop my-vm # stop the VM
machine0 images new my-vm my-snapshot # create a snapshot
machine0 new my-clone --image my-snapshot # create a new VM from the snapshot
</code></pre>
- Demo of installation + NixOS provisioning via Claude Code: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8N0_e3Vfg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8N0_e3Vfg</a><p>- Documentation: <a href="https://docs.machine0.io/introduction/overview">https://docs.machine0.io/introduction/overview</a><p>- machine0 NixOS flakes: <a href="https://github.com/fdmtl/machine0-nixos" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fdmtl/machine0-nixos</a><p>If you're in the habit of using VMs, or want to know what the NixOS fuss is about, would love for you to give machine0 a try!
Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding
Hi HN, I'm Djoumé. I've been a developer for over 20 years, and like a lot of you I've been coding almost exclusively through an agent in the past few months.<p>It's been amazing to vibe code prototypes in any stack, but when it comes to building something reliable/scalable, I couldn't effectively guide the agent unless I knew the technology. And the scariest part is that I'm seeing a lot of my technical skills decreasing due to AI coding.<p>Reflecting on my journey, I also worry about how the new "AI native" generation of software developer is going to acquire technical depth.<p>So I built fata.dev: short daily spaced-repetition sessions for programming skills (Rust, CSS, React, Python, TypeScript, Architecture).<p>You can try it in the browser with no signup: <a href="https://fata.app/courses" rel="nofollow">https://fata.app/courses</a><p>It's an offline-first mobile app built with Capacitor, RxDB and Firebase. The first courses were painfully written by hand, but most content is now AI-generated. It takes about 3000 LLM calls to generate a course, and every code samples goes through compilation, linting, unit testing, AI and a final manual review.<p>Would very much appreciate any feedback on the product & website, what works and what could be better. Thanks!
Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding
Hi HN, I'm Djoumé. I've been a developer for over 20 years, and like a lot of you I've been coding almost exclusively through an agent in the past few months.<p>It's been amazing to vibe code prototypes in any stack, but when it comes to building something reliable/scalable, I couldn't effectively guide the agent unless I knew the technology. And the scariest part is that I'm seeing a lot of my technical skills decreasing due to AI coding.<p>Reflecting on my journey, I also worry about how the new "AI native" generation of software developer is going to acquire technical depth.<p>So I built fata.dev: short daily spaced-repetition sessions for programming skills (Rust, CSS, React, Python, TypeScript, Architecture).<p>You can try it in the browser with no signup: <a href="https://fata.app/courses" rel="nofollow">https://fata.app/courses</a><p>It's an offline-first mobile app built with Capacitor, RxDB and Firebase. The first courses were painfully written by hand, but most content is now AI-generated. It takes about 3000 LLM calls to generate a course, and every code samples goes through compilation, linting, unit testing, AI and a final manual review.<p>Would very much appreciate any feedback on the product & website, what works and what could be better. Thanks!
Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding
Hi HN, I'm Djoumé. I've been a developer for over 20 years, and like a lot of you I've been coding almost exclusively through an agent in the past few months.<p>It's been amazing to vibe code prototypes in any stack, but when it comes to building something reliable/scalable, I couldn't effectively guide the agent unless I knew the technology. And the scariest part is that I'm seeing a lot of my technical skills decreasing due to AI coding.<p>Reflecting on my journey, I also worry about how the new "AI native" generation of software developer is going to acquire technical depth.<p>So I built fata.dev: short daily spaced-repetition sessions for programming skills (Rust, CSS, React, Python, TypeScript, Architecture).<p>You can try it in the browser with no signup: <a href="https://fata.app/courses" rel="nofollow">https://fata.app/courses</a><p>It's an offline-first mobile app built with Capacitor, RxDB and Firebase. The first courses were painfully written by hand, but most content is now AI-generated. It takes about 3000 LLM calls to generate a course, and every code samples goes through compilation, linting, unit testing, AI and a final manual review.<p>Would very much appreciate any feedback on the product & website, what works and what could be better. Thanks!
Show HN: Discover Wikipedia articles popular on Hacker News