The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
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Show HN: I made my personal website a Pokémon-style minigame using Phaser 3
Repo here: <a href="https://github.com/ariroffe/personal-website" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ariroffe/personal-website</a>
Show HN: I made my personal website a Pokémon-style minigame using Phaser 3
Repo here: <a href="https://github.com/ariroffe/personal-website" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ariroffe/personal-website</a>
We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
Hi! This is Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi, the founders of Substack, with Sachin Monga, the head of product. Yesterday, we launched an iOS app for Substack, so you can read all your Substack subscriptions in one place, with no distractions.<p>Readers have been tweeting at us for years now to ask when we’d have an app. We’ve long wanted one too, and we suddenly got the manpower to be able to build a good one when we acquired Sachin’s company Cocoon (W19) last year.<p>Soon after starting Substack, we found it easiest to explain what we do as “We make it simple to start a paid newsletter.” Even then, a Substack was more than just an email newsletter: it was also a blog, and it could host embedded video and audio, and people could leave comments and participate in discussion threads. But the term “newsletter” was useful shorthand because everyone kind of got what that meant. All along, though, we’ve been quietly building the tools for what we call “personal media empires,” encompassing different media formats (natively) and community discussion (which we intend to make better and better).<p>By a similar token, right from the start we’ve been intending for the company to do more than just provide subscription publishing tools. We’re excited by the vision of Substack becoming a network, where writers and readers benefit from being part of a larger ecosystem. For writers, it means they can be discovered by readers who might not otherwise have found them. For readers, it means being able to connect directly with writers and other readers and to explore a universe of great work.<p>The app is a key part of the network vision. Nothing changes in terms of writers and readers being in control. The writers still own their mailing lists, content, and IP and can take it all with them anytime they want. Anyone who signs up to a Substack through the app still goes on to that mailing list. And readers still get to choose what appears in their “inbox,” with the power to subscribe and unsubscribe from whatever they want (you can also add any RSS feed into the app via reader.substack.com). But now we’ll have more and better ways to surface recommendations from writers and readers, to show people’s profiles, and to deliver notifications inside and outside of the app.<p>This is just a start for the Substack app. We want to keep improving it, so please give us feedback and ask us the hard questions. What do you think we’re doing wrong? What could be better? What could be great? What might we not have thought of?<p>We’re here for the next couple hours. Ask us anything.<p><a href="https://on.substack.com/p/substackapp" rel="nofollow">https://on.substack.com/p/substackapp</a>
Show HN: World’s first £3 flat fee (0% FX markup) money transfer service
Good morning everyone! My co-founder and I recently moved to the UK after working at Robinhood for over 5 years. We were stunned at the fees it was costing us to move money across borders with existing fintech solutions, so we decided to start Atlantic Money - the world’s first fixed fee (with no FX markup) money transfer product. For £3 you can transfer up to £1M. Let us know if you have any questions!
Show HN: Top headlines of the world to start the day
Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own
A new calculator software cannot really bring attention (<a href="https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/" rel="nofollow">https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/</a>)<p>However, I wrote a full article explaining why I had to build something "new" that does not behave like usual desktop calculator softwares :<p><<a href="https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html" rel="nofollow">https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html</a>><p>TL;DR
All "small" calculator softwares I know share the same design flaws. And the GUI is not the only stumbling block in their poor efficiency. Handling correctly numerical approximations - expected or not - is crucial to trust the results. It is usually not done in lightweight tools. It should. So I prove that if I could do it, OS manufacturers could as well.
Build or don't build a software feature?
Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Backblaze
Creator here. I was looking for something as simple as Backblaze Personal [1] but privacy focused and open source. This is my attempt to build that.<p>Uses PyQt6 [2] for the GUI and Pyinstaller [3] for creating the platform specific binaries. The backup engine under the hood is Restic [4]. The server code is written in Laravel [5]. All the code is on GitHub [6].<p>I actually really like Backblaze (even use B2 for this offering behind the scenes) so this isn't meant to throw shade their way. Just wanted a private open source alternative. Something like Bitwarden but for backups.<p>[1] <a href="https://backblaze.com" rel="nofollow">https://backblaze.com</a><p>[2] <a href="https://pypi.org/project/PyQt6" rel="nofollow">https://pypi.org/project/PyQt6</a><p>[3] <a href="https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable" rel="nofollow">https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable</a><p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/restic" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/restic</a><p>[5] <a href="https://laravel.com" rel="nofollow">https://laravel.com</a><p>[6] <a href="https://github.com/blobbackup/blobbackup" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/blobbackup/blobbackup</a>
Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Backblaze
Creator here. I was looking for something as simple as Backblaze Personal [1] but privacy focused and open source. This is my attempt to build that.<p>Uses PyQt6 [2] for the GUI and Pyinstaller [3] for creating the platform specific binaries. The backup engine under the hood is Restic [4]. The server code is written in Laravel [5]. All the code is on GitHub [6].<p>I actually really like Backblaze (even use B2 for this offering behind the scenes) so this isn't meant to throw shade their way. Just wanted a private open source alternative. Something like Bitwarden but for backups.<p>[1] <a href="https://backblaze.com" rel="nofollow">https://backblaze.com</a><p>[2] <a href="https://pypi.org/project/PyQt6" rel="nofollow">https://pypi.org/project/PyQt6</a><p>[3] <a href="https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable" rel="nofollow">https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable</a><p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/restic" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/restic</a><p>[5] <a href="https://laravel.com" rel="nofollow">https://laravel.com</a><p>[6] <a href="https://github.com/blobbackup/blobbackup" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/blobbackup/blobbackup</a>
Show HN: I made a little math game named Summle
I made this game for my children to play, as they are heavily into Wordle, and I thought they'd also like something maths based!<p>Every puzzle is solvable and has at least one solution (usually more).<p>There is a kids mode in the settings, plus a hard mode for extra difficulty.
Show HN: I made a little math game named Summle
I made this game for my children to play, as they are heavily into Wordle, and I thought they'd also like something maths based!<p>Every puzzle is solvable and has at least one solution (usually more).<p>There is a kids mode in the settings, plus a hard mode for extra difficulty.
Show HN: I made a web game using emojis and no JS framework
Show HN: I made a web game using emojis and no JS framework
Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface
Show HN: DontBeEvil.rip: Search, for developers (API, expressions, CLI)
I'd like to invite everyone to try out DontBeEvil.rip, an experimental search engine for developers.<p>tl;dr<p>$ alias rip="curl -G -H 'Accept: text/plain' --url <a href="https://dontbeevil.rip/search" rel="nofollow">https://dontbeevil.rip/search</a> --data-urlencode "<p>$ rip 'q=Heartbleed bug'<p>DontBeEvil.rip is a year long experiment to see if a small team can build a developer-focused search engine that is self-sustaining on $10 monthly subscriptions.<p>It works by only indexing high-quality resources that are relevant to developers. You won't get useless listicles because we'll never crawl them. Relevant urls are harvested from HN, StackOverflow, programmer Reddit, and a few others. Page content comes mostly from the Common Crawl project.<p>The limited, but awesome, features in this first release are:<p>- Expressions! Experience the power of Elasticsearch’s Simple Query Strings.<p>- REST API. Just change 'text/plain' to `application/json` in the above alias.<p>- CLI. Just use curl in the terminal. Simple as.<p>HackerNews, StackOverflow, Arxiv abstracts, 2M Github repos, and programmer Reddit (up to 2020) are being indexed right now. There's much more to come in the next few months.<p>I'd love to hear your questions, comments and suggestions in the comments below.
Show HN: Huemint – Machine learning for color design
Show HN: I made a web game called Almost Pong
Hi HN!<p>I made many small web games in the past with Unity or Phaser. But this time I wanted to make something completely on my own. So I coded a basic game framework in plain JavaScript, and used it to make Almost Pong.<p>This was a really fun project that taught me a lot about JavaScript, and I plan to make more minimalist games with this framework. Interesting fact: Almost Pong doesn't load any assets, all sprites and sounds are generated with code.<p>Happy to answer questions, and please let me know if you have any feedback on the game. Thanks!
Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
Hey HN, I know reading books isn’t everyone’s thing, but it’s certainly been mine for as long as I can remember.<p>Unfortunately, I felt like the online book space was missing a platform that does the book community justice. Goodreads is the go-to "social platform", but if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting.<p>So I set out to build what I personally was looking for (but could never find). The goal: to give the book community a more social and streamlined alternative to Goodreads or StoryGraph.<p>We also felt like it was important for Booqsi to be independent of Amazon; we care about supporting local bookstores, so every book in Booqsi links you to Bookshop.org to purchase that book (not Amazon).<p>Here are some of my favorite features launched as part of beta:<p>- A book-focused social feed (finally!)<p>- Beautifully-rendered custom bookshelves to show off to your friends<p>- Streamlined book recommendations to friends<p>- Easily track reading goals and books you've read<p>And many more...<p>It's completely free and easy to use, and we would love your feedback as you explore the platform.
Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
Hey HN, I know reading books isn’t everyone’s thing, but it’s certainly been mine for as long as I can remember.<p>Unfortunately, I felt like the online book space was missing a platform that does the book community justice. Goodreads is the go-to "social platform", but if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting.<p>So I set out to build what I personally was looking for (but could never find). The goal: to give the book community a more social and streamlined alternative to Goodreads or StoryGraph.<p>We also felt like it was important for Booqsi to be independent of Amazon; we care about supporting local bookstores, so every book in Booqsi links you to Bookshop.org to purchase that book (not Amazon).<p>Here are some of my favorite features launched as part of beta:<p>- A book-focused social feed (finally!)<p>- Beautifully-rendered custom bookshelves to show off to your friends<p>- Streamlined book recommendations to friends<p>- Easily track reading goals and books you've read<p>And many more...<p>It's completely free and easy to use, and we would love your feedback as you explore the platform.
Show HN: Messages for Macintosh – a classic Mac iMessage client