The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
Latest posts:
Show HN: Allocate poker chips optimally with mixed-integer nonlinear programming
Every time I play a casual cash poker game with friends, we spend the first several minutes struggling to figure out chip denominations. I built this to automate that process.<p>Try it out here (the submitted link goes to the GitHub repo): <a href="https://jstrieb.github.io/poker-chipper/" rel="nofollow">https://jstrieb.github.io/poker-chipper/</a><p>It turns out that picking chip denominations optimally—such that as many chips are distributed as possible, and such that the denominations are nice—is hard (in the computational complexity sense). Upon reflection, the problem seemed to be a perfect fit for constrained optimization.<p>I first got a CLI prototype working with Z3 (an SMT solver with optimization capabilities <a href="https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3">https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3</a>) in Python. Then, I cross-compiled SCIP (<a href="https://www.scipopt.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.scipopt.org/</a>) to web assembly, and ported my code to use SCIP instead of Z3 so it could run in the browser.<p>The web interface is designed to be fast and easy to use on desktop and mobile.<p>I would love to answer questions and discuss design choices. I'm also open to feedback and bug reports. Thanks for taking a look!
Show HN: Allocate poker chips optimally with mixed-integer nonlinear programming
Every time I play a casual cash poker game with friends, we spend the first several minutes struggling to figure out chip denominations. I built this to automate that process.<p>Try it out here (the submitted link goes to the GitHub repo): <a href="https://jstrieb.github.io/poker-chipper/" rel="nofollow">https://jstrieb.github.io/poker-chipper/</a><p>It turns out that picking chip denominations optimally—such that as many chips are distributed as possible, and such that the denominations are nice—is hard (in the computational complexity sense). Upon reflection, the problem seemed to be a perfect fit for constrained optimization.<p>I first got a CLI prototype working with Z3 (an SMT solver with optimization capabilities <a href="https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3">https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3</a>) in Python. Then, I cross-compiled SCIP (<a href="https://www.scipopt.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.scipopt.org/</a>) to web assembly, and ported my code to use SCIP instead of Z3 so it could run in the browser.<p>The web interface is designed to be fast and easy to use on desktop and mobile.<p>I would love to answer questions and discuss design choices. I'm also open to feedback and bug reports. Thanks for taking a look!
Show HN: Bliss – A constructed writing system for fast and beautiful writing
Of course, this is just for fun and is absolutely NOT to be used for anything related to security or secrecy.<p>Anyway, I'd love to hear some feedback :)
Show HN: Tunnelling TCP through a file
This program can be used to tunnel TCP connections through a file.<p>People have used it for interesting things:<p>- Bridging connections which would otherwise be blocked by a firewall<p>- Tunneling through RDP (similar to an SSH tunnel)<p>- Exposing a localhost web server to others<p>Key features I put effort into:<p>1. The shared file is restarted every 10 MB, so it doesn't grow indefinitely.<p>2. Optimisations for latency & bandwidth. (800 Mbps on a Gigabit LAN. 108 Mbps if file tunneling through RDP)<p>3. Synchronisation between two sides (each side can be started and restarted in any order)<p>I'd love to hear about any weird and wonderful uses you might have for it.<p>Thanks, Fidel
Show HN: Tunnelling TCP through a file
This program can be used to tunnel TCP connections through a file.<p>People have used it for interesting things:<p>- Bridging connections which would otherwise be blocked by a firewall<p>- Tunneling through RDP (similar to an SSH tunnel)<p>- Exposing a localhost web server to others<p>Key features I put effort into:<p>1. The shared file is restarted every 10 MB, so it doesn't grow indefinitely.<p>2. Optimisations for latency & bandwidth. (800 Mbps on a Gigabit LAN. 108 Mbps if file tunneling through RDP)<p>3. Synchronisation between two sides (each side can be started and restarted in any order)<p>I'd love to hear about any weird and wonderful uses you might have for it.<p>Thanks, Fidel
Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager
This is a project I've wanted to write for a long time now. I really love the ideas from Nix and I still have a ton of respect for the project, but Nix-the-language never felt intuitive to me and I wanted something with more approachable tooling (although this was circa 2016, so I'm sure Nix has improved a lot since then too-- that was before Flakes were around!)<p>Anyway, I started on the current iteration of Brioche about 6 months ago, and I finally cut an initial release. I'd still consider this a "technical preview" version (performance especially is pretty painful, so that'll be a focus of mine in the coming weeks). But it's finally at a point where it does work end-to-end and folks can take it for a test drive!
Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager
This is a project I've wanted to write for a long time now. I really love the ideas from Nix and I still have a ton of respect for the project, but Nix-the-language never felt intuitive to me and I wanted something with more approachable tooling (although this was circa 2016, so I'm sure Nix has improved a lot since then too-- that was before Flakes were around!)<p>Anyway, I started on the current iteration of Brioche about 6 months ago, and I finally cut an initial release. I'd still consider this a "technical preview" version (performance especially is pretty painful, so that'll be a focus of mine in the coming weeks). But it's finally at a point where it does work end-to-end and folks can take it for a test drive!
Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager
This is a project I've wanted to write for a long time now. I really love the ideas from Nix and I still have a ton of respect for the project, but Nix-the-language never felt intuitive to me and I wanted something with more approachable tooling (although this was circa 2016, so I'm sure Nix has improved a lot since then too-- that was before Flakes were around!)<p>Anyway, I started on the current iteration of Brioche about 6 months ago, and I finally cut an initial release. I'd still consider this a "technical preview" version (performance especially is pretty painful, so that'll be a focus of mine in the coming weeks). But it's finally at a point where it does work end-to-end and folks can take it for a test drive!
Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor
I have spent large parts of the last 10+ years building an SQL Editor. The tool is targeted at data analysts, a lot of effort has gone into charting, visualizing and excel export. If this sounds useful to you, it's Free, please give it a try and let me know any feedback.
Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor
I have spent large parts of the last 10+ years building an SQL Editor. The tool is targeted at data analysts, a lot of effort has gone into charting, visualizing and excel export. If this sounds useful to you, it's Free, please give it a try and let me know any feedback.
Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor
I have spent large parts of the last 10+ years building an SQL Editor. The tool is targeted at data analysts, a lot of effort has gone into charting, visualizing and excel export. If this sounds useful to you, it's Free, please give it a try and let me know any feedback.
Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life
Hey HN!<p>A few years ago someone kept trying to steal my motorcycle, so I decided to make a small camera with really long battery life to catch them.<p>The hardware/software is totally open source, but the companion app only supports macOS currently. (I'm a big fan of native apps, and didn't want to block releasing on Linux/Windows support.)<p>I wrote some blog posts about the process:<p>PCB design: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb</a><p>Enclosure design: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure</a><p>Image pipeline: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/image-pipeline" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/image-pipeline</a><p>Rainproofing: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing</a><p>Source: <a href="https://github.com/toasterllc/Photon">https://github.com/toasterllc/Photon</a>
Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life
Hey HN!<p>A few years ago someone kept trying to steal my motorcycle, so I decided to make a small camera with really long battery life to catch them.<p>The hardware/software is totally open source, but the companion app only supports macOS currently. (I'm a big fan of native apps, and didn't want to block releasing on Linux/Windows support.)<p>I wrote some blog posts about the process:<p>PCB design: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb</a><p>Enclosure design: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure</a><p>Image pipeline: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/image-pipeline" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/image-pipeline</a><p>Rainproofing: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing</a><p>Source: <a href="https://github.com/toasterllc/Photon">https://github.com/toasterllc/Photon</a>
Show HN: I made a tiny camera with super long battery life
Hey HN!<p>A few years ago someone kept trying to steal my motorcycle, so I decided to make a small camera with really long battery life to catch them.<p>The hardware/software is totally open source, but the companion app only supports macOS currently. (I'm a big fan of native apps, and didn't want to block releasing on Linux/Windows support.)<p>I wrote some blog posts about the process:<p>PCB design: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/pcb</a><p>Enclosure design: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/enclosure</a><p>Image pipeline: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/image-pipeline" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/image-pipeline</a><p>Rainproofing: <a href="https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing" rel="nofollow">https://toaster.llc/blog/rainproofing</a><p>Source: <a href="https://github.com/toasterllc/Photon">https://github.com/toasterllc/Photon</a>
Show HN: I'm a doctor and built a responsive breathing app for anxiety and sleep
Hey HN!<p>I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia (<a href="https://www.piahealth.co" rel="nofollow">https://www.piahealth.co</a>) which developed Lungy (<a href="https://www.lungy.app" rel="nofollow">https://www.lungy.app</a>). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been just over a year since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34534615</a>) and it's had a huge update and complete redesign. We rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs / objects that inflate as you breathe. We also made a version for Vision Pro, called 'Lungy Spaces'.<p>My background is as a junior surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were huge numbers of patients coming off ventilators and patients are often given breathing exercises on a worksheet and disposable plastic devices called incentive spirometers to encourage deep breathing. This is intended to prevent chest infections and strengthen breathing muscles that have weakened. I noticed often the incentive spirometer would sit by the bedside, whilst the patient would be on their phone – this was the spark that lead to Lungy!<p>Since making the first version we’ve made exercises fully customisable (you can dial in exact timings for each breath phase), added new breathing indicators, learning modules, e.g. self-care for anxiety symptoms, and lots of new visuals. The free version gives you access to a new breathing exercise each day, whilst premium ($14.99 per year, $39.99 unlimited) unlocks the full library of exercises, exercise data and visuals..<p>The visuals are mostly built using Metal (a couple use SpriteKit) and there are lots to choose from - boids, cloth sims, fluid sims, a hacky DLA implementation, rigid body + soft body sims - each one reacts to breath and touch. The audio uses AudioKit with a polyphonic synth and a sequencer plays generated notes from a chosen scale (you can mess around with the sequencer and synth in Settings/Create Music). The nice thing about the visuals + audio being generative is that the download size is relatively small with no other downloads. We’re still working on improving the breath detection, using ML - currently, it uses microphone input, with optional camera input to guide positioning.<p>We’re also close to finishing the medical device version - <a href="http://lungy.health" rel="nofollow">http://lungy.health</a> - designed as a pulmonary rehab platform for patients with asthma and COPD, it should hopefully be released in the UK early 2025.<p>Thanks for reading - would love to hear any feedback!<p>Lungy Version 2 here: <a href="https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1545223887" rel="nofollow">https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1545223887</a>
Show HN: Minimalist, walkie-talkie for startups
So here's what we are working on at flowy labs.<p>We are <i>not</i> trying to sell you anything as you are not our target buyers; this post is genuinely just to get fresh eyes on it as I value the insights of folks in the HN community.<p>I've done a few posts for a similar concept perhaps some of you will remember, but this one is radically evolved (it's a physical desk gadget now).<p>Happy discussion!
Show HN: Minimalist, walkie-talkie for startups
So here's what we are working on at flowy labs.<p>We are <i>not</i> trying to sell you anything as you are not our target buyers; this post is genuinely just to get fresh eyes on it as I value the insights of folks in the HN community.<p>I've done a few posts for a similar concept perhaps some of you will remember, but this one is radically evolved (it's a physical desk gadget now).<p>Happy discussion!
Show HN: Open-source load balancer for llama.cpp
Stateful load balancer customized for llama.cpp (with a reverse proxy).
Show HN: Open-source load balancer for llama.cpp
Stateful load balancer customized for llama.cpp (with a reverse proxy).
Show HN: Chess Twist
I continue my experiment of transposing classic games onto an irregular grid. I've previously released variants of minesweeper and checkers. And now I'd like to share my variant of Chess.<p>Chess can be a pretty punishing game, but I thought this was nevertheless a way to make it even more challenging by making it trickier to anticipate your opponent, even though both players still have the same information.<p>From the playtests I've done, that challenge is pretty compelling.<p>It also seems to be more fun at 2 people, where both players keep surprising one another.