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Show HN: I built a tool to expand your network (that introverts will love)

As someone who struggles with social anxiety, expanding my network through traditional means has always been challenging. I found existing networking apps either too spammy (LinkedIn) or too much like professional dating (Bumble Bizz), and they just didn’t work for me.<p>About a year ago, I developed a matching system for a local startup accelerator. This system connected founders, mentors, and investors based on industries, skills, and job functions, facilitating over 5,000 meetings that led to some amazing outcomes. Inspired by this success, I enhanced the system to focus on email introductions. Here’s how it works: - It analyzes backgrounds and interests. - It sends intro proposals to each person. - If both respond, it makes the intro.<p>My goal is to help people meet interesting contacts without the stress, using email to keep the process simple and integrated into daily routines. I’d love for you to try it out and share your feedback. Your thoughts and suggestions for improvement are greatly appreciated!

Show HN: I built a tool to expand your network (that introverts will love)

As someone who struggles with social anxiety, expanding my network through traditional means has always been challenging. I found existing networking apps either too spammy (LinkedIn) or too much like professional dating (Bumble Bizz), and they just didn’t work for me.<p>About a year ago, I developed a matching system for a local startup accelerator. This system connected founders, mentors, and investors based on industries, skills, and job functions, facilitating over 5,000 meetings that led to some amazing outcomes. Inspired by this success, I enhanced the system to focus on email introductions. Here’s how it works: - It analyzes backgrounds and interests. - It sends intro proposals to each person. - If both respond, it makes the intro.<p>My goal is to help people meet interesting contacts without the stress, using email to keep the process simple and integrated into daily routines. I’d love for you to try it out and share your feedback. Your thoughts and suggestions for improvement are greatly appreciated!

Show HN: I built a tool to expand your network (that introverts will love)

As someone who struggles with social anxiety, expanding my network through traditional means has always been challenging. I found existing networking apps either too spammy (LinkedIn) or too much like professional dating (Bumble Bizz), and they just didn’t work for me.<p>About a year ago, I developed a matching system for a local startup accelerator. This system connected founders, mentors, and investors based on industries, skills, and job functions, facilitating over 5,000 meetings that led to some amazing outcomes. Inspired by this success, I enhanced the system to focus on email introductions. Here’s how it works: - It analyzes backgrounds and interests. - It sends intro proposals to each person. - If both respond, it makes the intro.<p>My goal is to help people meet interesting contacts without the stress, using email to keep the process simple and integrated into daily routines. I’d love for you to try it out and share your feedback. Your thoughts and suggestions for improvement are greatly appreciated!

Show HN: Lisp in C#

Show HN: Briefer – Multiplayer notebooks with schedules, SQL, and built-in LLMs

Hi HN! We're Lucas and Lucas from Briefer and we're building better notebooks.<p>Our notebooks are kind of a mix between Notion and Jupyter with extra features, like the ability to schedule notebooks, turn them into dashboards and apps, and write SQL queries whose results turn into data frames automatically.<p>We're building better notebooks because we think they're a great idea poorly executed - for three reasons.<p>The first problem with notebooks is that they're difficult to share. Non-technical people don't want to download docker containers and install Python libraries to see what the data team is doing. Then, the data team takes screenshots of their work and pastes them somewhere else. The issue with this approach is that the data gets stale, and the output is not interactive, so it's difficult to get feedback and iterate.<p>The second problem with notebooks is that they get too messy too quickly. One morning you have 10 blocks, and by the end of the day you have 192, but only six of them are meant to be seen by other people and the rest is just you jiu-jitsuing with the data. Consequently, even if non-technical people could see your work, they'd have a hard time figuring out what's happening.<p>The third problem with notebooks is that it takes too much work to do simple things like when you want to query a database. In that case, you need to have the database credentials in your machine, and you have to write a bunch of wrapper code. Calling APIs, plotting simple graphs, and adding interactive components is equally as annoying.<p>We're solving the sharing problem by bringing notebooks to the cloud (so you can schedule them) and using CRDTs to manage their state. Whenever you edit a Briefer notebook, we reconcile that using Yjs, and then propagate it to everyone else who's editing that notebook. Regarding compute instances, each workspace gets its own, and we provision them on demand.<p>By the way, we manage the execution state of your blocks using Yjs too, which makes it much more stable and responsive across all clients. When you click "run", for example, we don't immediately send a request to run the block. Instead, we change the block's state to "execution-requested". Then, the observers in the back-end react to the change and update the block's state with the results. In other words, the front end and the server communicate with each other through the notebook's state. One side updates the state, and the other reacts.<p>To solve the "messiness" issue, we've invested a lot of time in designing clean notebooks and allowing you to organize blocks in ways that make them more presentable. In Briefer, you can group multiple blocks into tabs and decide which blocks appear in the published version of your notebook. That way, you can hide all that data wrangling and focus on results. We also know that a vertical format is not always the best way to display results, so you can use your notebook's outputs to build dashboards too.<p>Last but not least, we're reducing friction in simple tasks like plotting graphs and querying databases. In Briefer, you can plot graphs using a click-through interface, and if you need to plot something more intricate like a Sankey chart there's also a built-in AI assistant that you can prompt to generate code. When it comes to queries, we turn their results into dataframes automatically, and you can use SQL to query uploaded files too (we use DuckDB for that).<p>We're really happy we get to show this to you all, thank you for reading about it! Please let us know your thoughts and questions in the comments.

Show HN: Briefer – Multiplayer notebooks with schedules, SQL, and built-in LLMs

Hi HN! We're Lucas and Lucas from Briefer and we're building better notebooks.<p>Our notebooks are kind of a mix between Notion and Jupyter with extra features, like the ability to schedule notebooks, turn them into dashboards and apps, and write SQL queries whose results turn into data frames automatically.<p>We're building better notebooks because we think they're a great idea poorly executed - for three reasons.<p>The first problem with notebooks is that they're difficult to share. Non-technical people don't want to download docker containers and install Python libraries to see what the data team is doing. Then, the data team takes screenshots of their work and pastes them somewhere else. The issue with this approach is that the data gets stale, and the output is not interactive, so it's difficult to get feedback and iterate.<p>The second problem with notebooks is that they get too messy too quickly. One morning you have 10 blocks, and by the end of the day you have 192, but only six of them are meant to be seen by other people and the rest is just you jiu-jitsuing with the data. Consequently, even if non-technical people could see your work, they'd have a hard time figuring out what's happening.<p>The third problem with notebooks is that it takes too much work to do simple things like when you want to query a database. In that case, you need to have the database credentials in your machine, and you have to write a bunch of wrapper code. Calling APIs, plotting simple graphs, and adding interactive components is equally as annoying.<p>We're solving the sharing problem by bringing notebooks to the cloud (so you can schedule them) and using CRDTs to manage their state. Whenever you edit a Briefer notebook, we reconcile that using Yjs, and then propagate it to everyone else who's editing that notebook. Regarding compute instances, each workspace gets its own, and we provision them on demand.<p>By the way, we manage the execution state of your blocks using Yjs too, which makes it much more stable and responsive across all clients. When you click "run", for example, we don't immediately send a request to run the block. Instead, we change the block's state to "execution-requested". Then, the observers in the back-end react to the change and update the block's state with the results. In other words, the front end and the server communicate with each other through the notebook's state. One side updates the state, and the other reacts.<p>To solve the "messiness" issue, we've invested a lot of time in designing clean notebooks and allowing you to organize blocks in ways that make them more presentable. In Briefer, you can group multiple blocks into tabs and decide which blocks appear in the published version of your notebook. That way, you can hide all that data wrangling and focus on results. We also know that a vertical format is not always the best way to display results, so you can use your notebook's outputs to build dashboards too.<p>Last but not least, we're reducing friction in simple tasks like plotting graphs and querying databases. In Briefer, you can plot graphs using a click-through interface, and if you need to plot something more intricate like a Sankey chart there's also a built-in AI assistant that you can prompt to generate code. When it comes to queries, we turn their results into dataframes automatically, and you can use SQL to query uploaded files too (we use DuckDB for that).<p>We're really happy we get to show this to you all, thank you for reading about it! Please let us know your thoughts and questions in the comments.

Show HN: Zerox – Document OCR with GPT-mini

This started out as a weekend hack with gpt-4-mini, using the very basic strategy of "just ask the ai to ocr the document".<p>But this turned out to be better performing than our current implementation of Unstructured/Textract. At pretty much the same cost.<p>I've tested almost every variant of document OCR over the past year, especially trying things like table / chart extraction. I've found the rules based extraction has always been lacking. Documents are meant to be a visual representation after all. With weird layouts, tables, charts, etc. Using a vision model just make sense!<p>In general, I'd categorize this solution as slow, expensive, and non deterministic. But 6 months ago it was impossible. And 6 months from now it'll be fast, cheap, and probably more reliable!

Show HN: Zerox – Document OCR with GPT-mini

This started out as a weekend hack with gpt-4-mini, using the very basic strategy of "just ask the ai to ocr the document".<p>But this turned out to be better performing than our current implementation of Unstructured/Textract. At pretty much the same cost.<p>I've tested almost every variant of document OCR over the past year, especially trying things like table / chart extraction. I've found the rules based extraction has always been lacking. Documents are meant to be a visual representation after all. With weird layouts, tables, charts, etc. Using a vision model just make sense!<p>In general, I'd categorize this solution as slow, expensive, and non deterministic. But 6 months ago it was impossible. And 6 months from now it'll be fast, cheap, and probably more reliable!

Show HN: A source-available billing system I've spent 18 months building

Show HN: A source-available billing system I've spent 18 months building

Show HN: Sendune – open-source HTML email designer

Demo: <a href="https://designer.sendune.com/" rel="nofollow">https://designer.sendune.com/</a> Code: <a href="https://github.com/SendWithSES/Drag-and-Drop-Email-Designer">https://github.com/SendWithSES/Drag-and-Drop-Email-Designer</a><p>HTML for email is probably the hardest code to write. Even a teeny-tiny deviation from the rules will break the email in untold combination of os/desktop/mobile clients.<p>It's mid 2024. Almost 50 years since email was invented and 35 years since HTML was born. A 'basic-open-source-HTML-email-designer' must be a solved problem, right? We thought so too.<p>Sadly, that's not the case.<p>There are a few decent open source email designers but they carry dependencies that make them cumbersome to embed within your app. That's why we decided to open source our HTML Email Designer.<p>The SENDUNE email designer focuses on simplicity and ease of use. It is light-weight. It does pure HTML - no intermediate code wranglers like mjml. There is no lock-in of any kind. Save HTML output as a template and use with ANY email service provider.<p>Feel free to fork the repository, make improvements, and submit pull requests.<p>AMA: hello at sendune dot com

Show HN: Product Hunt for Music

Show HN: Magic-cli – A copilot for your command line

Blog post: <a href="https://guywaldman.com/posts/introducing-magic-cli" rel="nofollow">https://guywaldman.com/posts/introducing-magic-cli</a>

Show HN: I quit my job and made an automatic time tracker

Hey Hacker News!<p>This is my first post here. About 5 months ago, I left my job because I was completely burnt out. After taking some time off, I started freelancing. But I found tracking my time to be a real hassle as I kept forgetting to start or stop the timer and often had no idea what I’d worked on.<p>So, I decided to build Taim as a side project, while also working now on some freelancing gigs. Taim is going to be automated time tracking tool for freelancers and teams. It’s designed to make tracking time effortless and accurate, so you can focus on your work and not worry about the clock.<p>I’m excited to share this with you all and would love your feedback! Currently planning to launch it to the public in a few months.

Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

Hey HN, I'm James, a 17-year old full-stack engineer from Canada with a strong passion for building software. During the day, I work for a California-based startup, and in the evenings, I enjoy working on side projects[1][2].<p>For the past 3 years, I've been building and iterating on a product I called Horizon Pics, which is a file hosting service, similar to mainstream services, like Imgur. Horizon allows you to quickly upload and store all types of files, from images and video, to PDFs and other documents. The biggest differentiating factor is that Horizon's incentives are much more aligned with you, the end-user.<p>Unlike Imgur, Horizon has absolutely no ads, doesn't sell your data, has built-in security and privacy controls, and is fully focused on your file sharing needs. No social media or other bloat.<p>This past week, I've launched a rebrand of Horizon which features a brand-new desktop app called Alpine[3], which serves as a local companion to Horizon. With it comes the capability to auto-upload screen captures and upload your clipboards as shareable pastes. For extra privacy, clipboard sharing can be automatically deleted after one view, or end-to-end encrypted with AES-256-GCM client-side. The desktop app is completely free to use! It's powered by Tauri using TypeScript, SvelteKit, Sass, and Rust.<p>Horizon offers a free plan with limited storage and upload sizes, while the paid plan offers higher limits.<p>Let me know what you think about the landing page[0]. Does it provide enough information as a new user?<p>[0]: <a href="https://horizon.pics" rel="nofollow">https://horizon.pics</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://httpjames.space" rel="nofollow">https://httpjames.space</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://github.com/httpjamesm">https://github.com/httpjamesm</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://horizon.pics/alpine" rel="nofollow">https://horizon.pics/alpine</a>

Show HN: I generated 70k audiobooks with OpenAI Text-to-Speech

Hey HN. I’m Ivan, hacker from Ukraine.<p>For about a year, I was working on Listenly — an app to listen to text content with OpenAI's natural-sounding text-to-speech model.<p>At some moment, I realized that it would be cool to take all the public domain e-books and create audio versions for them. So I did it... kind-of.<p>It would cost an immense amount of money to generate all the audio right away (OpenAI TTS costs approximately $0.84/hour of audio; 11labs, for comparison, is 10 times more expensive). So, I took a more gradual approach.<p>I took all the metadata from the Project Gutenberg catalog (it's about 70GB of dirty XML), cleaned it, put it into my database, and created a browsable catalog. When the first user visits a book page on Listenly, I download the full text of the book, save it in my cloud storage, and calculate the price for audio generation based on the book's length. Then, if the user decides to purchase it, we generate the audio.<p>I know it’s not perfect.<p>I've burned out a couple of times already while doing it.<p>But still, I need to show it to the world. And I’ll be glad to hear your feedback.<p>Peace.

Show HN: I built a Jeopardy game maker with buzzer support

Sometime in early 2022, my wife and I started watching Jeopardy! regularly, almost by accident. Inspired, I thought it would be fun to create and host my own games with family and friends.<p>By September 2022, I debuted Buzzinga at a family reunion. Back then, it was just a website running locally on my MacBook. It was a total blast, and I knew this was something the world should enjoy too.<p>I launched Buzzinga.io in December 2023 and have been rolling out regular updates for our 2000+ users ever since.<p>Features:<p>- Built-in buzzer support (phones and physical buzzers) - Automatic scorekeeping - User-friendly host controls - Highly customizable - Supports multiple clue types: text, image, audio, and video<p>The site does not require sign up to play around with, only to create your own games.

Show HN: I built a Jeopardy game maker with buzzer support

Sometime in early 2022, my wife and I started watching Jeopardy! regularly, almost by accident. Inspired, I thought it would be fun to create and host my own games with family and friends.<p>By September 2022, I debuted Buzzinga at a family reunion. Back then, it was just a website running locally on my MacBook. It was a total blast, and I knew this was something the world should enjoy too.<p>I launched Buzzinga.io in December 2023 and have been rolling out regular updates for our 2000+ users ever since.<p>Features:<p>- Built-in buzzer support (phones and physical buzzers) - Automatic scorekeeping - User-friendly host controls - Highly customizable - Supports multiple clue types: text, image, audio, and video<p>The site does not require sign up to play around with, only to create your own games.

Show HN: I made a drag and drop CSS grid generator

Show HN: Resurrecting a dead Dune RTS game