The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
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Show HN: Drivr – VR with real vehicles [video]
This project combines VR with a real vehicle that you are controlling (or is controlling itself, in some scenarios). One advantage this has over traditional VR motion experiences is that your senses all agree with each other, thus greatly reducing the likelihood of motion sickness.<p>The go-kart seen in this video is drive-by-wire and steer-by-wire, so the system will not let the player exit the defined safe area. If a player goes off course, the vehicle will take control, and return them to the start. The autonomous capabilities also allow for games where the player can focus on other objectives other than driving, such as target shooting.<p>No infrastructure is required other than the vehicle and an open place to drive (which honestly has been the most challenging part lately).<p>If you're interested in this project, I'd love to connect!
Show HN: I built a website to create financial models for any stock online
Show HN: I built a website to create financial models for any stock online
Show HN: I built a website to create financial models for any stock online
Show HN: I built a website to create financial models for any stock online
Show HN: I built a website to create financial models for any stock online
Show HN: Chessdream – Generate realistic chess positions with AI
For no specific reason, I trained a neural network to generate random chess positions that look similar to positions from actual games (from lichess db). I also made it so you can condition it on some fixed pieces, and adjust the number of pieces.<p>It turned out to be quite effective and I find it surprisingly fun and instructive to generate e.g. endgame positions with a certain pawn structure (set low temperature, place some pawns and position the kings, adjust number of pieces to get an endgame), and then figure out how to win vs. the computer in those positions.<p>I hooked it up so that you can easily play vs. a computer, either via lichess analysis → continue from here, or via my own project Noctie.<p>I’m thinking about whether I could develop it further to create position variants on a certain theme that the AI thinks I need to practice, or maybe make a PvP feature where you play a random position vs. a human. Ideas or feedback?
Show HN: Chessdream – Generate realistic chess positions with AI
For no specific reason, I trained a neural network to generate random chess positions that look similar to positions from actual games (from lichess db). I also made it so you can condition it on some fixed pieces, and adjust the number of pieces.<p>It turned out to be quite effective and I find it surprisingly fun and instructive to generate e.g. endgame positions with a certain pawn structure (set low temperature, place some pawns and position the kings, adjust number of pieces to get an endgame), and then figure out how to win vs. the computer in those positions.<p>I hooked it up so that you can easily play vs. a computer, either via lichess analysis → continue from here, or via my own project Noctie.<p>I’m thinking about whether I could develop it further to create position variants on a certain theme that the AI thinks I need to practice, or maybe make a PvP feature where you play a random position vs. a human. Ideas or feedback?
Show HN: I built a LLM-powered Ask HN: like Perplexity, but for HN comments
Hi HN!<p>I'm Jonathan and I built Ask Hacker Search (<a href="https://hackersearch.net/ask" rel="nofollow">https://hackersearch.net/ask</a>), an LLM-powered version of Hacker News' Ask HN.<p>Unlike Ask HN, Ask Hacker Search doesn't solicit new contributions from HN readers. Instead, it leverages Hacker News' historical data to answer questions, and offers LLM-generated summaries of those. I've used it for questions like "Should I use Drizzle or Prisma?" or "What is a good screen capture that allows easy zooming effects on Mac?".<p>It is particularly useful when you're interested in understanding HN readers' sentiment about a topic, or when looking for expert insights on topics of interest to HN readers. I've been using it continually while building it, and have found it particularly useful to find software libraries recommended by HN or get quick vibe checks on hot topics.<p>This builds on my release of Hacker Search two weeks ago
(<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509</a>), which offered a semantic search engine over top HN submissions. It's not just a small upgrade: covering comments was the #1 requested feature after that launch, so I rebuilt the near entirety of the product to support that.<p>Please try it out and let me know what you think of it! I have to limit the number of LLM summaries each person can get for free, as this is entirely self-funded. If you hit the limit, you can subscribe for more summaries generated by a better model ($8/month), or bring your own compute by running inference on Ollama on your machine!
Show HN: I built a LLM-powered Ask HN: like Perplexity, but for HN comments
Hi HN!<p>I'm Jonathan and I built Ask Hacker Search (<a href="https://hackersearch.net/ask" rel="nofollow">https://hackersearch.net/ask</a>), an LLM-powered version of Hacker News' Ask HN.<p>Unlike Ask HN, Ask Hacker Search doesn't solicit new contributions from HN readers. Instead, it leverages Hacker News' historical data to answer questions, and offers LLM-generated summaries of those. I've used it for questions like "Should I use Drizzle or Prisma?" or "What is a good screen capture that allows easy zooming effects on Mac?".<p>It is particularly useful when you're interested in understanding HN readers' sentiment about a topic, or when looking for expert insights on topics of interest to HN readers. I've been using it continually while building it, and have found it particularly useful to find software libraries recommended by HN or get quick vibe checks on hot topics.<p>This builds on my release of Hacker Search two weeks ago
(<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509</a>), which offered a semantic search engine over top HN submissions. It's not just a small upgrade: covering comments was the #1 requested feature after that launch, so I rebuilt the near entirety of the product to support that.<p>Please try it out and let me know what you think of it! I have to limit the number of LLM summaries each person can get for free, as this is entirely self-funded. If you hit the limit, you can subscribe for more summaries generated by a better model ($8/month), or bring your own compute by running inference on Ollama on your machine!
Show HN: I built a LLM-powered Ask HN: like Perplexity, but for HN comments
Hi HN!<p>I'm Jonathan and I built Ask Hacker Search (<a href="https://hackersearch.net/ask" rel="nofollow">https://hackersearch.net/ask</a>), an LLM-powered version of Hacker News' Ask HN.<p>Unlike Ask HN, Ask Hacker Search doesn't solicit new contributions from HN readers. Instead, it leverages Hacker News' historical data to answer questions, and offers LLM-generated summaries of those. I've used it for questions like "Should I use Drizzle or Prisma?" or "What is a good screen capture that allows easy zooming effects on Mac?".<p>It is particularly useful when you're interested in understanding HN readers' sentiment about a topic, or when looking for expert insights on topics of interest to HN readers. I've been using it continually while building it, and have found it particularly useful to find software libraries recommended by HN or get quick vibe checks on hot topics.<p>This builds on my release of Hacker Search two weeks ago
(<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509</a>), which offered a semantic search engine over top HN submissions. It's not just a small upgrade: covering comments was the #1 requested feature after that launch, so I rebuilt the near entirety of the product to support that.<p>Please try it out and let me know what you think of it! I have to limit the number of LLM summaries each person can get for free, as this is entirely self-funded. If you hit the limit, you can subscribe for more summaries generated by a better model ($8/month), or bring your own compute by running inference on Ollama on your machine!
Show HN: I built a LLM-powered Ask HN: like Perplexity, but for HN comments
Hi HN!<p>I'm Jonathan and I built Ask Hacker Search (<a href="https://hackersearch.net/ask" rel="nofollow">https://hackersearch.net/ask</a>), an LLM-powered version of Hacker News' Ask HN.<p>Unlike Ask HN, Ask Hacker Search doesn't solicit new contributions from HN readers. Instead, it leverages Hacker News' historical data to answer questions, and offers LLM-generated summaries of those. I've used it for questions like "Should I use Drizzle or Prisma?" or "What is a good screen capture that allows easy zooming effects on Mac?".<p>It is particularly useful when you're interested in understanding HN readers' sentiment about a topic, or when looking for expert insights on topics of interest to HN readers. I've been using it continually while building it, and have found it particularly useful to find software libraries recommended by HN or get quick vibe checks on hot topics.<p>This builds on my release of Hacker Search two weeks ago
(<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40238509</a>), which offered a semantic search engine over top HN submissions. It's not just a small upgrade: covering comments was the #1 requested feature after that launch, so I rebuilt the near entirety of the product to support that.<p>Please try it out and let me know what you think of it! I have to limit the number of LLM summaries each person can get for free, as this is entirely self-funded. If you hit the limit, you can subscribe for more summaries generated by a better model ($8/month), or bring your own compute by running inference on Ollama on your machine!
Show HN: I'm 17 and wrote a guide on how to build your own programming language
Hey! I’m JC. I’m 17 and part of Hack Club, a nonprofit where we help teenagers ship programming projects with their friends while growing technically.<p>A while ago, I asked myself the question, “How exactly do programming languages work behind the scenes?”
It seemed really daunting until I went to a half hour workshop at a high school hackathon about writing a tree-walk interpreter and realized that getting started was actually super fun.<p>This guide is designed in the vein of that - to get people, especially teenagers, started on learning how to build a programming language in a literal weekend by actually shipping one. It’s a stepping stone for learning the big things - compilers, optimizations for performance, etc.
It’s very inspired by Crafting Interpreters and why’s poignant guide, but meant to be approachable in a weekend.<p>Some backstory on me: A year ago I finished high school early and joined Hack Club full-time to build projects like this. I’ve been programming since COVID, and learned how to code primarily by shipping things that seemed daunting to me and taking inspiration from people taking the time to break down various topics online.<p>Give it a try and take it out for a spin! Constructive feedback is also really appreciated.<p>It’s open source on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/hackclub/easel">https://github.com/hackclub/easel</a>
Show HN: I'm 17 and wrote a guide on how to build your own programming language
Hey! I’m JC. I’m 17 and part of Hack Club, a nonprofit where we help teenagers ship programming projects with their friends while growing technically.<p>A while ago, I asked myself the question, “How exactly do programming languages work behind the scenes?”
It seemed really daunting until I went to a half hour workshop at a high school hackathon about writing a tree-walk interpreter and realized that getting started was actually super fun.<p>This guide is designed in the vein of that - to get people, especially teenagers, started on learning how to build a programming language in a literal weekend by actually shipping one. It’s a stepping stone for learning the big things - compilers, optimizations for performance, etc.
It’s very inspired by Crafting Interpreters and why’s poignant guide, but meant to be approachable in a weekend.<p>Some backstory on me: A year ago I finished high school early and joined Hack Club full-time to build projects like this. I’ve been programming since COVID, and learned how to code primarily by shipping things that seemed daunting to me and taking inspiration from people taking the time to break down various topics online.<p>Give it a try and take it out for a spin! Constructive feedback is also really appreciated.<p>It’s open source on GitHub at <a href="https://github.com/hackclub/easel">https://github.com/hackclub/easel</a>
Show HN: I made a Chrome extension to clean up your Gmail inbox locally
Hi everyone,<p>My motivation for building this was to address the trouble of mass unsubscribing from unwanted emails and deleting bulk emails while ensuring privacy and control over the process. With this Chrome extension, emails are not sent to any external servers. All calls to the Gmail API happen locally on your device.<p>Feedback and suggestions are welcome!
Show HN: I made a Chrome extension to clean up your Gmail inbox locally
Hi everyone,<p>My motivation for building this was to address the trouble of mass unsubscribing from unwanted emails and deleting bulk emails while ensuring privacy and control over the process. With this Chrome extension, emails are not sent to any external servers. All calls to the Gmail API happen locally on your device.<p>Feedback and suggestions are welcome!
Show HN: I wrote a symmetry game with a daily puzzle
I’ve been working on a puzzle game for a few years as a side project.<p>The game is based on a small region of tiles in a grid that is mirrored, modified, and mirrored again. It’s based on a novel phenomenon I noticed where, once these mutations happen a few times, the original region can be hard to recognize. You have a feeling there are symmetries in the image, but they are just out of grasp. Going further, if only part of the region is visible, such as mirroring off the edge of the board, it adds to the feeling and it becomes a satisfying puzzle to solve.<p>I originally published this on the app stores, but after spending some money on marketing, I didn’t have line of sight to something people would pay for. I had built it around a hosted level API to tweak levels between version releases, making it prone to software rot over a few years. SSL certs would expire, credit cards would expire, App Store agreements need to be renewed, etc.. Without a continual drip of effort I wasn’t motivated to put in, it defaulted to broken.<p>With that software rot in mind, and hoping to make something that would be around for a while for my friends and family to play, I started making a web-only, client-side only version. Still prone to rot, but not nearly as many moving pieces. It’s missing some of the polish of the original and the puzzles aren't hand curated with a graduating difficulty, but it’s playable on many modern devices. The generated puzzles are good ~75% of the time. I’m still working out how to detect the dud puzzles- they are playable, but not fun. I’ve got ideas on what defines a “good” puzzle, but haven’t formalized them into a fitness function yet.<p>One other note– while there are almost definitely UI bugs (please report!), if it says the puzzle can be solved in X taps & flips, it can. Those numbers are derived from how the puzzle itself renders, so it’s (thankfully) not prone to producing impossible to solve puzzles. Merely ones that may appear so at first-- hence the name.<p>Today’s puzzle is a good difficulty to start with, a new one generates daily at midnight EST. There's no cookie or tracking, so let me know if you're playing!
Show HN: I wrote a symmetry game with a daily puzzle
I’ve been working on a puzzle game for a few years as a side project.<p>The game is based on a small region of tiles in a grid that is mirrored, modified, and mirrored again. It’s based on a novel phenomenon I noticed where, once these mutations happen a few times, the original region can be hard to recognize. You have a feeling there are symmetries in the image, but they are just out of grasp. Going further, if only part of the region is visible, such as mirroring off the edge of the board, it adds to the feeling and it becomes a satisfying puzzle to solve.<p>I originally published this on the app stores, but after spending some money on marketing, I didn’t have line of sight to something people would pay for. I had built it around a hosted level API to tweak levels between version releases, making it prone to software rot over a few years. SSL certs would expire, credit cards would expire, App Store agreements need to be renewed, etc.. Without a continual drip of effort I wasn’t motivated to put in, it defaulted to broken.<p>With that software rot in mind, and hoping to make something that would be around for a while for my friends and family to play, I started making a web-only, client-side only version. Still prone to rot, but not nearly as many moving pieces. It’s missing some of the polish of the original and the puzzles aren't hand curated with a graduating difficulty, but it’s playable on many modern devices. The generated puzzles are good ~75% of the time. I’m still working out how to detect the dud puzzles- they are playable, but not fun. I’ve got ideas on what defines a “good” puzzle, but haven’t formalized them into a fitness function yet.<p>One other note– while there are almost definitely UI bugs (please report!), if it says the puzzle can be solved in X taps & flips, it can. Those numbers are derived from how the puzzle itself renders, so it’s (thankfully) not prone to producing impossible to solve puzzles. Merely ones that may appear so at first-- hence the name.<p>Today’s puzzle is a good difficulty to start with, a new one generates daily at midnight EST. There's no cookie or tracking, so let me know if you're playing!
Show HN: I wrote a symmetry game with a daily puzzle
I’ve been working on a puzzle game for a few years as a side project.<p>The game is based on a small region of tiles in a grid that is mirrored, modified, and mirrored again. It’s based on a novel phenomenon I noticed where, once these mutations happen a few times, the original region can be hard to recognize. You have a feeling there are symmetries in the image, but they are just out of grasp. Going further, if only part of the region is visible, such as mirroring off the edge of the board, it adds to the feeling and it becomes a satisfying puzzle to solve.<p>I originally published this on the app stores, but after spending some money on marketing, I didn’t have line of sight to something people would pay for. I had built it around a hosted level API to tweak levels between version releases, making it prone to software rot over a few years. SSL certs would expire, credit cards would expire, App Store agreements need to be renewed, etc.. Without a continual drip of effort I wasn’t motivated to put in, it defaulted to broken.<p>With that software rot in mind, and hoping to make something that would be around for a while for my friends and family to play, I started making a web-only, client-side only version. Still prone to rot, but not nearly as many moving pieces. It’s missing some of the polish of the original and the puzzles aren't hand curated with a graduating difficulty, but it’s playable on many modern devices. The generated puzzles are good ~75% of the time. I’m still working out how to detect the dud puzzles- they are playable, but not fun. I’ve got ideas on what defines a “good” puzzle, but haven’t formalized them into a fitness function yet.<p>One other note– while there are almost definitely UI bugs (please report!), if it says the puzzle can be solved in X taps & flips, it can. Those numbers are derived from how the puzzle itself renders, so it’s (thankfully) not prone to producing impossible to solve puzzles. Merely ones that may appear so at first-- hence the name.<p>Today’s puzzle is a good difficulty to start with, a new one generates daily at midnight EST. There's no cookie or tracking, so let me know if you're playing!
Show HN: I wrote a symmetry game with a daily puzzle
I’ve been working on a puzzle game for a few years as a side project.<p>The game is based on a small region of tiles in a grid that is mirrored, modified, and mirrored again. It’s based on a novel phenomenon I noticed where, once these mutations happen a few times, the original region can be hard to recognize. You have a feeling there are symmetries in the image, but they are just out of grasp. Going further, if only part of the region is visible, such as mirroring off the edge of the board, it adds to the feeling and it becomes a satisfying puzzle to solve.<p>I originally published this on the app stores, but after spending some money on marketing, I didn’t have line of sight to something people would pay for. I had built it around a hosted level API to tweak levels between version releases, making it prone to software rot over a few years. SSL certs would expire, credit cards would expire, App Store agreements need to be renewed, etc.. Without a continual drip of effort I wasn’t motivated to put in, it defaulted to broken.<p>With that software rot in mind, and hoping to make something that would be around for a while for my friends and family to play, I started making a web-only, client-side only version. Still prone to rot, but not nearly as many moving pieces. It’s missing some of the polish of the original and the puzzles aren't hand curated with a graduating difficulty, but it’s playable on many modern devices. The generated puzzles are good ~75% of the time. I’m still working out how to detect the dud puzzles- they are playable, but not fun. I’ve got ideas on what defines a “good” puzzle, but haven’t formalized them into a fitness function yet.<p>One other note– while there are almost definitely UI bugs (please report!), if it says the puzzle can be solved in X taps & flips, it can. Those numbers are derived from how the puzzle itself renders, so it’s (thankfully) not prone to producing impossible to solve puzzles. Merely ones that may appear so at first-- hence the name.<p>Today’s puzzle is a good difficulty to start with, a new one generates daily at midnight EST. There's no cookie or tracking, so let me know if you're playing!