The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
Latest posts:
Show HN: I made a website that converts YT videos into step-by-step guides
Hey HN,<p>I've been working on this side project for the past month. It generates a step-by-step tutorial guide for YouTube videos that you can follow along without watching long videos. Best suited for tutorial videos but can work for other videos aswell. No BS. Just straight to the point.<p>The guides are generated from pure transcript so you don't have to worry about it being AI. It's my first project as a total beginner. Something I had to do inorder to get out of tutorial hell.<p>Please let me know if you have any suggestions or if you face any problems or bugs. I would try to fix them to the best of my abilities and as soon as possible.<p>I would appreciate your feedback on this. Let me know what you think!
Show HN: Vapi – Convince our voice AI to give you the secret code
Show HN: Open Source TailwindCSS UI Components
Free Tailwind html UI Components - built to create landing pages and websites. Easyfrontend UI components are free and open-source. Copy paste the components to update your existing site or create a new site from it.
Show HN: Speeding up LLM inference 2x times (possibly)
Here's a project I've been working on for the last few months.<p>It's a new (I think) algorithm, that allows to adjust smoothly - and in real time - how many calculations you'd like to do during inference of an LLM model.<p>It seems that it's possible to do just 20-25% of weight multiplications instead of all of them, and still get good inference results.<p>I implemented it to run on M1/M2/M3 GPU. The mmul approximation itself can be pushed to run 2x fast before the quality of output collapses.<p>The inference speed is just a bit faster than Llama.cpp's, because the rest of implementation could be better, but with a better development I think it can be a new method to speed up inference - in addition to quantization.<p>You could call it ad-hoc model distillation :)<p>You can change the speed / accuracy of a model at will, in real time.<p>Oh, and as a side effect, the data format allows to also choose how much of the model you want to load into the memory. You can decide to skip say 10-20-40% of the least important weights.<p>It's implemented for Mistral, it was also tested slightly on Mixtral and Llama. It's for FP16 for now, but Q8 is in the works.<p>The algorithm is described here, and the implementation is open source.<p><a href="https://kolinko.github.io/effort/" rel="nofollow">https://kolinko.github.io/effort/</a><p>I know these are bold claims, but I hope they survive the scrutiny :)
Show HN: Render audio waveforms to HTML canvas using WebGPU
Hey HN. I built this quick and dirty component to render audio waveforms using WebGPU. I just published it to NPM.<p>It's the first time I use WebGPU and it's been a while since I write shaders. Feedback is very welcome!<p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/mrkev/webgpu-waveform">https://github.com/mrkev/webgpu-waveform</a>
Examples: <a href="https://aykev.dev/webgpu-waveform" rel="nofollow">https://aykev.dev/webgpu-waveform</a>
Show HN: Term Typer – Learn a language by typing
Hey HN! I'm from Brazil and I created Term Typer to help my little brother learn other languages while practicing his keyboard typing skills. We've found it super helpful and fun. Feel free to try it out and let me know your thoughts and feedback. Thanks a lot!
Show HN: Building a GPS receiver
Hi everyone!<p>Shortly after publishing my iOS 4 jailbreak last October[1], I got to work on my next hobby project: a from-scratch homebrew GPS receiver, which can solve the user’s location solely from billions of radio antenna samples.<p>I took a commodity SDR (alongside the Python standard library and numpy) and built a signal processing pipeline that can detect and track GPS satellites over many minutes, drop and pick up satellites as they come in and out of view, and precisely determine the user’s position and clock inaccuracy.<p>All told, gypsum can go from a cold start to a fix on the user’s position, and the precise time, in less than a minute of listening to the antenna. I went on a journey of learning how to detect and track satellite signals that are literally too quiet to hear, and I hope that some of the magic comes through in the posts!<p>After implementing this myself and walking the long road of getting it working, I’m left completely stunned by the brilliance of GPS, across so many axes. I hope you enjoy the read!<p>On a more personal note, I’ll be starting a new job next week which isn’t as amenable to publishing side projects, and therefore this will be my last publicly-published project for some time. I’ve had great experiences making and sharing projects on here, and I’m really grateful for the positive feedback that’s been shared!<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37736318">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37736318</a>
Show HN: PostgreSQL index advisor
This is a Postgres extension that can determine if a query should have an index. For example, for this table:<p><pre><code> create table book(
id int primary key,
title text not null
);
</code></pre>
You can run `index_advisor()` to see if there should be an index on a select statement:<p><pre><code> select *
from index_advisor('select book.id from book where title = $1');
</code></pre>
And it will return (summarized):<p><pre><code> {"CREATE INDEX ON public.book USING btree (title)"}
</code></pre>
It works particularly well with pg_stat_statements[0] which tracks execution statistics of all SQL statements executed on your Postgres database.<p>It leans heavily on HypoPG[1], an excellent extension to determine if PostgreSQL will use a given index without spending resources to create them.<p>[0] pg_stat_statements: <a href="https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.htm...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/HypoPG/hypopg">https://github.com/HypoPG/hypopg</a>
Show HN: PostgreSQL index advisor
This is a Postgres extension that can determine if a query should have an index. For example, for this table:<p><pre><code> create table book(
id int primary key,
title text not null
);
</code></pre>
You can run `index_advisor()` to see if there should be an index on a select statement:<p><pre><code> select *
from index_advisor('select book.id from book where title = $1');
</code></pre>
And it will return (summarized):<p><pre><code> {"CREATE INDEX ON public.book USING btree (title)"}
</code></pre>
It works particularly well with pg_stat_statements[0] which tracks execution statistics of all SQL statements executed on your Postgres database.<p>It leans heavily on HypoPG[1], an excellent extension to determine if PostgreSQL will use a given index without spending resources to create them.<p>[0] pg_stat_statements: <a href="https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgstatstatements.htm...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/HypoPG/hypopg">https://github.com/HypoPG/hypopg</a>
Show HN: I made a tool to clean and convert any webpage to Markdown
My partner usually writes substack posts which I then mirror to our website’s blog section.<p>To automate this, I made a simple tool to scrape the post and clean it so that I can drop it to our blog easily. This might be useful to others as well.<p>Oh and ofcourse you can instruct GPT to make any final edits :D
Show HN: I made a tool to clean and convert any webpage to Markdown
My partner usually writes substack posts which I then mirror to our website’s blog section.<p>To automate this, I made a simple tool to scrape the post and clean it so that I can drop it to our blog easily. This might be useful to others as well.<p>Oh and ofcourse you can instruct GPT to make any final edits :D
Show HN: 5 Years Ago I made the Recovery Kit, I just made the RK2
The Recovery Kit 2 is another cyberdeck that for me is part computer, part backup device, and part functional movie prop. It's been fun to build, and the HN community has been great with ideas- especially around hosting and getting me off Squarespace. I hope you all enjoy!
Show HN: Using Google Sheets as the back end/APIs of your app
Hello everyone!<p>At a company I worked for, we needed to develop an MVP (basically a web page) and apply certain business logic to a Google Drive spreadsheet that was frequently updated by the Sales team.<p>In this case, we had two options:<p>Develop a backend to replace the current spreadsheet and have the sales team use it as a new "backoffice" - This would take a very long time, and if the hypothesis we were testing was wrong, it would be time wasted.<p>Create the web page and use Google's SDK to extract data from the spreadsheet.<p>We chose to go with the second option because it was quicker. Indeed, it was much faster than creating a new backoffice. But not as quick as we imagined. Integrating with Google's SDK requires some effort, especially to handle the OAuth logic, configure it in the console, and understand the documentation (which is quite shallow, by the way).<p>Anyway! We did the project and I realized that maybe other devs might have encountered similar issues. Therefore, I developed a tool that transforms Google spreadsheets into "realtime APIs" with PATCH, GET, POST, and DELETE methods.<p>Since it's a product for devs, I think it would be cool to hear your opinions. It's still quite primitive, but the basic features already work.<p><a href="https://zerosheets.com" rel="nofollow">https://zerosheets.com</a>
Show HN: Mazelit - My wife and I released our first game
Hey folks,<p>About a year ago my wife and I, both closing in on 40, quit our jobs at Red Hat to start a games company and learn game development. Many things happened along the road, and about a week ago we released our first (small) game on Steam.<p><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2816120/Mazelit/" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/app/2816120/Mazelit/</a><p>The demo is free to play up to level 8 (the final game plays up to level 80) and we'd appreciate any feedback you have, whether it's for the store page or the game itself.<p>We made the game in Godot 4.2 in roughly 3 months and I was working full time next to it. Since we ran into a bunch of roadblocks, we decided to also offer the entire source code up as a DLC in case someone wants to go look how we implemented the game, mod the game, or compile it for a different platform. The only thing we can't redistribute with the game code is the Steamworks SDK, which is available for download from Steam. (The game minus integration is fully runnable without the SDK, though.)<p>Cheers and happy weekend!
Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
Here's a "behind-the-scenes" look at my development of a cool sensor during my PhD (electrical engineering). This sensor is only about 1/3 of my total research for my degree and took about a year.<p>I've been on HN for a while now and I've seen my fair share of posts about the woes of pursuing a PhD. Now that I'm done with mine I wanna share some anecdotal evidence that doing a PhD can actually be enjoyable (not necessarily easy) and also be doable in 3 years.<p>When I started I knew I didn't want to work on something that would never leave the lab or languish in a dissertation PDF no one will ever read. Thanks to an awesome advisor I think I managed to thread the needle between simplicity and functionality.<p>Looking back, the ideas and methods behind it are pretty straightforward, but getting there took some doing. It’s funny how things seem obvious once you've figured them out!<p>Oh, I love creating GUIs for sensor data and visualizations as you'll see -- it's such a game changer! pyqtgraph is my go-to at the moment - such a great library.
Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
Here's a "behind-the-scenes" look at my development of a cool sensor during my PhD (electrical engineering). This sensor is only about 1/3 of my total research for my degree and took about a year.<p>I've been on HN for a while now and I've seen my fair share of posts about the woes of pursuing a PhD. Now that I'm done with mine I wanna share some anecdotal evidence that doing a PhD can actually be enjoyable (not necessarily easy) and also be doable in 3 years.<p>When I started I knew I didn't want to work on something that would never leave the lab or languish in a dissertation PDF no one will ever read. Thanks to an awesome advisor I think I managed to thread the needle between simplicity and functionality.<p>Looking back, the ideas and methods behind it are pretty straightforward, but getting there took some doing. It’s funny how things seem obvious once you've figured them out!<p>Oh, I love creating GUIs for sensor data and visualizations as you'll see -- it's such a game changer! pyqtgraph is my go-to at the moment - such a great library.
Show HN: Sonauto – A more controllable AI music creator
Hey HN,<p>My cofounder and I trained an AI music generation model and after a month of testing we're launching 1.0 today. Ours is interesting because it's a latent diffusion model instead of a language model, which makes it more controllable: <a href="https://sonauto.ai/">https://sonauto.ai/</a><p>Others do music generation by training a Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder like Descript Audio Codec (<a href="https://github.com/descriptinc/descript-audio-codec">https://github.com/descriptinc/descript-audio-codec</a>) to turn music into tokens, then training an LLM on those tokens. Instead, we ripped the tokenization part off and replaced it with a normal variational autoencoder bottleneck (along with some other important changes to enable insane compression ratios). This gave us a nice, normally distributed latent space on which to train a diffusion transformer (like Sora). Our diffusion model is also particularly interesting because it is the first audio diffusion model to generate coherent lyrics!<p>We like diffusion models for music generation because they have some interesting properties that make controlling them easier (so you can make <i>your own</i> music instead of just taking what the machine gives you). For example, we have a rhythm control mode where you can upload your own percussion line or set a BPM. Very soon you'll also be able to generate proper variations of an uploaded or previously generated song (e.g., you could even sing into Voice Memos for a minute and upload that!). @Musicians of HN, try uploading your songs and using Rhythm Control/let us know what you think! Our goal is to enable more of you, not replace you.<p>For example, we turned this drum line (<a href="https://sonauto.ai/songs/uoTKycBghUBv7wA2YfNz">https://sonauto.ai/songs/uoTKycBghUBv7wA2YfNz</a>) into this full song (<a href="https://sonauto.ai/songs/KSK7WM1PJuz1euhq6lS7">https://sonauto.ai/songs/KSK7WM1PJuz1euhq6lS7</a> skip to 1:05 if impatient) or this other song I like better (<a href="https://sonauto.ai/songs/qkn3KYv0ICT9kjWTmins">https://sonauto.ai/songs/qkn3KYv0ICT9kjWTmins</a> - we accidentally compressed it with AAC instead of Opus which hurt quality, though)<p>We also like diffusion models because while they're expensive to train, they're cheap to serve. We built our own efficient inference infrastructure instead of using those expensive inference as a service startups that are all the rage. That's why we're making generations on our site free and unlimited for as long as possible.<p>We'd love to answer your questions. Let us know what you think of our first model! <a href="https://sonauto.ai/">https://sonauto.ai/</a>
Show HN: I made a discrete logic network card
Show HN: We built PriceLevel to find out what companies pay for SaaS
Hey HN! Christine and Steven here. As a PM and engineer, we’ve both evaluated and purchased a lot of software. One of the biggest frustrations was figuring out how much it would cost us without having to go through the sales process. When we did have a quote, we had no idea if we were getting a good deal or ripped off.<p>We built a site where you can see what other companies are actually paying for SaaS and enterprise software. Buyers contribute prices via quotes, pricing proposals, and other documentation to ensure quality.<p>We unlocked Talkdesk for Show HN users so that you can use the product without needing to sign in or upgrade. Check it out at <a href="https://www.pricelevel.com/showhn" rel="nofollow">https://www.pricelevel.com/showhn</a>. Would love to hear any feedback, thank you!
Show HN: I open-sourced the in-memory PostgreSQL I built at work for E2E tests