The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
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Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods
Right, here's the thing: If you are using AirPods(or any Bluetooth headphones with a mic in fact) on Mac and something activates the mic(i.e. you Shazam a song), the sound will be interrupted momentarily and will return in very low quality. This is happening because Bluetooth can't handle both way high quality streaming and the bandwidth is decreased to make it work.<p>It's a known issue and here's what Apple recommends to fix it: <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-hk/102217" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/en-hk/102217</a><p>Most of the time(unless you are on a Mac Mini/Studio/Pro), you have much higher quality microphones built in, so in most use cases, you want to hear from your AirPods but be heard from your internal microphone, which means if every time you connect your AirPods and go into the settings and set the default input device as the internal mic, you won't have sound quality degradation on mic activation, and if you use your mic to talk to people or record something, you will have better sound quality too.<p>Based on this observation, first I tried to create a script or some automation that can do it for me but found out that it can be clunky or needlessly complex.<p>Here's someone who used this approach to fix this issue: <a href="https://www.dermitch.de/post/macos-force-microphone-when-using-airpods/" rel="nofollow">https://www.dermitch.de/post/macos-force-microphone-when-usi...</a><p>Anyway, I decided to take the "build your app for that" route and created this app and called it CrystalClear Audio which doesn't involve any technical setup to use. Making it was also not as easy I hoped, I was expecting this to be a half an hour project but ended up filing bug reports with Apple because some API wasn't behaving as expected or mysterious things were happening when using it(like phantom device changes).<p>After spending that much time with all this, I decided to publish it on Mac AppStore and after too many rejections(all my mistakes) I got it published: <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crystalclear-sound/id6695723746" rel="nofollow">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crystalclear-sound/id669572374...</a><p>The app is not free but comes with a free trial. I decided to go with a very cheap subscription model because I suspect further development might be needed as bugs emerge or API behavior changes. I know its a hated business model but IMHO it's better than ads or tracking of any sort to justify the work done. It's not free because supporting a free app is just as hard as supporting a paid one and it's not one time payment because I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it.<p>I hope other people find this useful and if you do, you can support by upvoting on Producthunt so even more people can find it sueful: <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crystalclear-sound" rel="nofollow">https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crystalclear-sound</a><p>PS: the app is also useful for quickly switching between giving the sound out of the laptop speakers and the headphones, I ended up using that quite often.
Show HN: htmgo - build simple and scalable systems with golang + htmx
Hey all, I just wanted to share a project I've been working on for the past month.<p>After years of heavy frameworks, I really like the idea of using htmx, but it’s a little too low level for me and needs a thin layer above it to facilitate things like components, better syntax with complex JS inside of an attribute, etc<p>To try and solve this problem with a very minimal stack (golang + htmx) that I've been really enjoying, I'm building this project to cater to my needs and was thinking it would be useful for other developers.
Show HN: King Thirteen: 2048 with chess pieces, in under 13 KB
The game is vanilla JS, with SVG for graphics. Written for the js13kGames coding competition.<p>Notes on the game design: <a href="https://mvasilkov.animuchan.net/king-thirteen" rel="nofollow">https://mvasilkov.animuchan.net/king-thirteen</a>
Show HN: King Thirteen: 2048 with chess pieces, in under 13 KB
The game is vanilla JS, with SVG for graphics. Written for the js13kGames coding competition.<p>Notes on the game design: <a href="https://mvasilkov.animuchan.net/king-thirteen" rel="nofollow">https://mvasilkov.animuchan.net/king-thirteen</a>
Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server
Show HN: Hosting my website using my C web server
Show HN: JSON For You – Visualize JSON in graph or table views
After two years of improvement, I think it's time to share it with you all. Here’s a quick overview:<p>- Common features include validation, formatting, minification, and more.<p>- Visualize JSON in a graph or table view.<p>- Structured comparison with fallback to text comparison.<p>- Navigate though JSON using JSON pointer.<p>- Supports jq.<p>Would love to hear the community's questions, thoughts and comments!
Show HN: JSON For You – Visualize JSON in graph or table views
After two years of improvement, I think it's time to share it with you all. Here’s a quick overview:<p>- Common features include validation, formatting, minification, and more.<p>- Visualize JSON in a graph or table view.<p>- Structured comparison with fallback to text comparison.<p>- Navigate though JSON using JSON pointer.<p>- Supports jq.<p>Would love to hear the community's questions, thoughts and comments!
Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
Hi HN,<p>After 9 years of running my own OpenStreetMap tile server infra for MapHub (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389989">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389989</a>), I've open-sourced it and launched OpenFreeMap.<p>You can either self-host or use our public instance. Everything is open-source, including the full production setup — there’s no 'open-core' model here. Check out the repo (<a href="https://github.com/hyperknot/openfreemap">https://github.com/hyperknot/openfreemap</a>). The map data comes from OpenStreetMap.<p>I also provide weekly full planet downloads both in Btrfs and MBTiles formats.<p>I aim to cover the running costs of the public instance through donations.<p>Looking forwards for your feedback.
Show HN: OpenFreeMap – Open-Source Map Hosting
Hi HN,<p>After 9 years of running my own OpenStreetMap tile server infra for MapHub (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389989">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11389989</a>), I've open-sourced it and launched OpenFreeMap.<p>You can either self-host or use our public instance. Everything is open-source, including the full production setup — there’s no 'open-core' model here. Check out the repo (<a href="https://github.com/hyperknot/openfreemap">https://github.com/hyperknot/openfreemap</a>). The map data comes from OpenStreetMap.<p>I also provide weekly full planet downloads both in Btrfs and MBTiles formats.<p>I aim to cover the running costs of the public instance through donations.<p>Looking forwards for your feedback.
Show HN: I Wrote a Book on Java
<a href="https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-java" rel="nofollow">https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-j...</a><p>This book is a distillation of everything I’ve learned about what effective development looks like in Java (so far!). It's about how to organize programs around data "as plain data" and the surprisingly benefits that emerge when we do. Programs that are built around the data they manage tend to be simpler, smaller, and significantly easier understand.<p>Java has changed radically over the last several years. It has picked up all kinds of new language features which support data oriented programming (records, pattern matching, `with` expressions, sum and product types). However, this is not a book about tools. No amount of studying a screw-driver will teach you how to build a house. This book focuses on house building. We'll pick out a plot of land, lay a foundation, and build upon it house that can weather any storm.<p>DoP is based around a very simple idea, and one people have been rediscovering since the dawn of computing, "representation is the essence of programming." When we do a really good job of capturing the data in our domain, the rest of the system tends to fall into place in a way which can feel like it’s writing itself.<p>That's my elevator pitch! The book is currently in early access. I hope you check it out. I'd love to hear your feedback.<p>You can get 50% off (thru October 9th) with code `mlkiehl`
<a href="https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-java" rel="nofollow">https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-j...</a>
Show HN: I Wrote a Book on Java
<a href="https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-java" rel="nofollow">https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-j...</a><p>This book is a distillation of everything I’ve learned about what effective development looks like in Java (so far!). It's about how to organize programs around data "as plain data" and the surprisingly benefits that emerge when we do. Programs that are built around the data they manage tend to be simpler, smaller, and significantly easier understand.<p>Java has changed radically over the last several years. It has picked up all kinds of new language features which support data oriented programming (records, pattern matching, `with` expressions, sum and product types). However, this is not a book about tools. No amount of studying a screw-driver will teach you how to build a house. This book focuses on house building. We'll pick out a plot of land, lay a foundation, and build upon it house that can weather any storm.<p>DoP is based around a very simple idea, and one people have been rediscovering since the dawn of computing, "representation is the essence of programming." When we do a really good job of capturing the data in our domain, the rest of the system tends to fall into place in a way which can feel like it’s writing itself.<p>That's my elevator pitch! The book is currently in early access. I hope you check it out. I'd love to hear your feedback.<p>You can get 50% off (thru October 9th) with code `mlkiehl`
<a href="https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-java" rel="nofollow">https://www.manning.com/books/data-oriented-programming-in-j...</a>
Show HN: PDF to MD by LLMs – Extract Text/Tables/Image Descriptives by GPT4o
I've developed a Python API service that uses GPT-4o for OCR on PDFs. It features parallel processing and batch handling for improved performance. Not only does it convert PDF to markdown, but it also describes the images within the PDF using captions like `[Image: This picture shows 4 people waving]`.<p>In testing with NASA's Apollo 17 flight documents, it successfully converted complex, multi-oriented pages into well-structured Markdown.<p>The project is open-source and available on GitHub. Feedback is welcome.
Show HN: Time Flies
A visualization of the passage of time using flies. Written in JavaScript with some HTML & CSS in one index.html.
Show HN: Time Flies
A visualization of the passage of time using flies. Written in JavaScript with some HTML & CSS in one index.html.
Show HN: Time Flies
A visualization of the passage of time using flies. Written in JavaScript with some HTML & CSS in one index.html.
Show HN: Put this touch sensor on a robot and learn super precise tasks
We just released a very excited touch sensor that finally simplifies touch sensing for robotics.<p>Our most exciting result: Learned visuotactile policies for precise tasks like inserting USBs and credit card swiping, that work out-of-the-box when you replace skins! To the best of our knowledge, this has never been shown before with any existing tactile sensor.<p>Why is this important? For the first time, you could now collect data and train models on one sensor and expect them to generalize to new copies of the sensor -- opening the door to the kind of large foundation models that have revolutionized vision and language reasoning.<p>Would love to hear the community's questions, thoughts and comments!
Show HN: Put this touch sensor on a robot and learn super precise tasks
We just released a very excited touch sensor that finally simplifies touch sensing for robotics.<p>Our most exciting result: Learned visuotactile policies for precise tasks like inserting USBs and credit card swiping, that work out-of-the-box when you replace skins! To the best of our knowledge, this has never been shown before with any existing tactile sensor.<p>Why is this important? For the first time, you could now collect data and train models on one sensor and expect them to generalize to new copies of the sensor -- opening the door to the kind of large foundation models that have revolutionized vision and language reasoning.<p>Would love to hear the community's questions, thoughts and comments!
Show HN: Put this touch sensor on a robot and learn super precise tasks
We just released a very excited touch sensor that finally simplifies touch sensing for robotics.<p>Our most exciting result: Learned visuotactile policies for precise tasks like inserting USBs and credit card swiping, that work out-of-the-box when you replace skins! To the best of our knowledge, this has never been shown before with any existing tactile sensor.<p>Why is this important? For the first time, you could now collect data and train models on one sensor and expect them to generalize to new copies of the sensor -- opening the door to the kind of large foundation models that have revolutionized vision and language reasoning.<p>Would love to hear the community's questions, thoughts and comments!
Show HN: Container Desktop – Podman Desktop Companion