The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
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Show HN: A terminal glued to the macOS dock
Every single day of my life since I started programming back in 2020 I open my projects through the terminal/ghostty. "cd path" + "code .". Until today I don't even know how to open vscode first then open a project from there.<p>I usually have 3-4 vscode windows open at the same time, and I like them in separate desktops (for mac users). i gotta admit, i use 8 desktops, 3-4 for vscode, 1 for arc, 1 for docker, 1 for postman etc.<p>So my daily routine when I turned on my mac was: (1) open ghostty; (2) cd-path+code.; (3) drag the vscode window to a desired desktop; (4) get back to the ghostty desktop; (5) repeat until all is open.<p>i was unbothered for 6y. Until i realized how inefficient i was being: (1) opening ghostty just to run one-off commands to open another app felt wrong, like why do I need a terminal if it's not a process I need to watch; (2) the need to go back to the ghostty desktop every time i wanted to open a new project and drag it to a new desktop and switch back... it's funny how we simply accept a habit and don't bother to fix it<p>i wanted a terminal that persisted across desktops AND that was always visible so i could access it anytime AND that wasn't big because i would only run one-off commands. so I created starboard.<p>where could I fit a terminal that was always visible and accessible? i looked at the macOS dock, i looked at the empty space to its right, and I said "that's it".<p>starboard is a floating terminal window that's literally glued to the dock, filling the blank space to the right, tracking its height and position live. it's visible from any desktop, a real companion to the dock, and it's a persistent shell.<p>to close the story on my routine, I now can happily jump straight to the desktop i want my project to be in and open it there through Starboard. i rarely open ghostyy, unless i really need it.<p>here's where feedback is massively important. i built this for the way i work with it, the way my dock is, which is in the bottom. my dock's position and height give me a perfect sized Starboard with 3 visible lines that I can happily work with. hearing from you guys how it appears to you would be essential for further improvement.
Show HN: demake – one source project compiles to any retro game console ROM
This started life as a graphics tool for a specific problem: gen AI can make retro-styled sprites but can't follow exact hardware constraints of pixels and colors.<p>While building this I liked the idea that I can fan-out to any retro videogame console or handheld's specifications.<p>I then devised my own declarative language - Demotic - to express the game you want to build as concisely and naturally as possible without implementation detail. To work on different machines, you use relative units, like vw, vh, vmin, vmax.<p>It has a web UI, CLI and NPM package. Still a work in progress.
Show HN: Wallfacer – A terminal session manager for Claude Code, and more
Show HN: Pokémon Emerald Ported to Raspberry Pi Pico 2
Pokémon Emerald ported to the RP2350 microcontroller. No emulator, 60 fps HDMI output. Recompiled from ARMv4T to Cortex-M33 and the Game Boy Advance's video hardware is reimplemented in software on the second core.
Show HN: Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism
I've been rebuilding old games with Claude. While creating a modern take on SimTower and having election news on TV in the background, I had the idea to build the economy of the game around democratic socialism instead of capitalism.<p>Instead of a real estate tycoon, you are an elected steward of the building, held responsible by the Assembly. Homes are allocated off a waitlist, dues are set on a sliding scale, and you face outside pressures from neighboring capitalist landlords.<p>The crown jewel is attracting a large grant to establish an observatory at the top of your tower, attracting scientists. To get there, you must make sure the people are fed, housed, healthy, and entertained. If the Assembly doesn't have confidence in your abilities, you get voted out.<p>It kinda works, and the potential failures in the game are pretty unique. I'd be interested to hear HN's take. An entire SimCity clone based on a different economy like this could be fun.
Show HN: The Channels SDK – Bring Any Agent to Any Channel (Slack, MS Teams)
Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard
Hi HN, today I’m revealing Altar II, an ultra-low profile (4.75mm) mechanical keyboard designed to replace your Magic Keyboard. It’s the keyboard I wish Apple made.<p>Altar II has fully mechanical switches, plus a magnetically detachable dial, haptic feedback, a red backlight, and a native macOS companion app.<p>I’m a heavy Mac user and I feel that Apple hasn’t given its keyboards the attention they deserve, in terms of hardware, software, and features, so I set out to try and change that.<p>It was a massive undertaking and it has taken almost 2 years to get to this stage. One of the main obstacles was fitting a reasonably sized battery into the chassis, and aggressive power profiling without messing with the user experience. Another issue was we couldn’t fit any components on the underside of the PCB because there was literally no space to do so (and there are a lot of components).<p>Around 4 years ago I posted my first keyboard to HN (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32507172">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32507172</a>). Its response blew me away and ultimately led to me quitting my job and making and selling keyboards full time. I’ve taken some of the feedback from that original post and incorporated it into Altar II (e.g. the detachable dial).<p>I’ll be around to answer any questions. Please let me know what you think, I’d love to get some feedback.
Show HN: Capy – A Git-style platform for managing your team's secrets
Hello HN!<p>We're all spending more and more time making stuff with agents, but I've noticed that one of the things that is the most disconnected from my daily engineering workflow is dealing with secrets and credentials. It often involves a lot of click-ops, copying/pasting, and collaboration, and none of the secrets management products out there have truly scratched that itch.<p>I built Capy to solve this. It's a secrets manager whose entire frontend is a developer CLI, and I find it extremely ergonomic to use by hand. You also don't need to leave the CLI to sign up for and use it! You can install and authenticate without leaving your terminal (or agent) session.<p>It also has very powerful version management with git-like branching and conflict resolution. You can push a version manifest to source control and have collaborators pull a specific version of the secrets at any point in time.<p>The platform itself is extremely secure. It encrypts your local .env files so they can't be read directly. Upon pushing the values to the service, it encrypts them yet again with a service key. That way neither a compromised local machine nor a compromised service alone will result in a leakage.<p>BTW: Since it was released in April, I've been refining it and have evolved the focus a bit. Originally I was going for more TUI and TTY with guided wizards for doing things like deployments, rotations, and connecting services, but I realize that the real future is in making the product work EXTREMELY well with agents.<p>So the next evolution of is a more satisfying Agent ergonomic, and I have been working on something big next on that front.<p>Curious about your thoughts on the idea, execution, and would appreciate any and all feedback!
Show HN: Modern Browsers Don't Need the Cookie Anymore
Show HN: Vocab Top – AI-powered vocabulary builder that helps you retain words
Show HN: A little physical breakout clone
Idea: How about a 5 minute game I can play in my browser and it's actually fun to play.<p>Controls: Mouse or keyboard (left/right, left alt/right alt or A/D), space and esc are pause toggle. Page up / Page Down are next or previous level (if already unlocked).<p>Cheats: Z toggles zapper, M toggles magnets.<p>Debug stuff: I, P, E keys are toggles for various stuff (E lets you change some aspects of physics engine).<p>Game is maybe playable on mobile devices, there is a menu on top right, and then click the circle to select type of control.<p>Physical engine is decoupled from refresh rate and runs at 240 Hz.<p>Fully vibe coded (deepseek, chatgpt), levels are human made with some amount of love.
Show HN: Hacker News with reduced priority for AI driven content
Show HN: SIMD Viterbi Decoder in Rust
I wrote libcorrect in C in 2016 and wanted to revisit it in Rust. Instead of doing just a direct conversion, I went down the rabbit hole of making Rust's std::simd work for me. I ended up with a templated, generic Viterbi decoder for convolutional codes that dispatches the decode at runtime depending on which instruction sets are available. For small rates and orders, the entire decode lives in registers. Larger codes work through memory but take advantage of some acceleration structures.<p>I also spent some time building a tool to find optimal (max d_free) conv codes for a given rate and order. Of course, there are better mechanisms available today, but I'm happy to talk through anything I learned in the process.
Show HN: SIMD Viterbi Decoder in Rust
I wrote libcorrect in C in 2016 and wanted to revisit it in Rust. Instead of doing just a direct conversion, I went down the rabbit hole of making Rust's std::simd work for me. I ended up with a templated, generic Viterbi decoder for convolutional codes that dispatches the decode at runtime depending on which instruction sets are available. For small rates and orders, the entire decode lives in registers. Larger codes work through memory but take advantage of some acceleration structures.<p>I also spent some time building a tool to find optimal (max d_free) conv codes for a given rate and order. Of course, there are better mechanisms available today, but I'm happy to talk through anything I learned in the process.
Show HN: Maple-Preview – Ternary 20B MoE running at 120 tok/s on a iPhone
Show HN: Maple-Preview – Ternary 20B MoE running at 120 tok/s on a iPhone
Show HN: Fine-tune an 8B model on a 4 GB laptop GPU
Show HN: Fine-tune an 8B model on a 4 GB laptop GPU
Show HN: Run an 80B Qwen in 4.3 GB of RAM on a Mac, and a 35B on an iPhone
Show HN: Run an 80B Qwen in 4.3 GB of RAM on a Mac, and a 35B on an iPhone