The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
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Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok
I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs <a href="https://octelium.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://octelium.com/docs</a>
Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok
I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs <a href="https://octelium.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://octelium.com/docs</a>
Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok
I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs <a href="https://octelium.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://octelium.com/docs</a>
Show HN: Sink – Sync any directory with any device on your local network
i made sink. it's a simple little tool that continuously syncs folders between 2 devices. no cloud, no email, flash drives, no bs.<p>it just uses your local wifi. run it on your machines, tell them to trust each other, and you're set. and if you manage to edit the same file at once, it handles the conflict and saves both copies.<p>for anyone who just wants to get files from point a to b without the headache. hope it makes your life a bit less annoying.<p>github: <a href="https://github.com/sirbread/sink">https://github.com/sirbread/sink</a>
binary: <a href="https://github.com/sirbread/sink/releases/tag/v0.1">https://github.com/sirbread/sink/releases/tag/v0.1</a>
Show HN: Sink – Sync any directory with any device on your local network
i made sink. it's a simple little tool that continuously syncs folders between 2 devices. no cloud, no email, flash drives, no bs.<p>it just uses your local wifi. run it on your machines, tell them to trust each other, and you're set. and if you manage to edit the same file at once, it handles the conflict and saves both copies.<p>for anyone who just wants to get files from point a to b without the headache. hope it makes your life a bit less annoying.<p>github: <a href="https://github.com/sirbread/sink">https://github.com/sirbread/sink</a>
binary: <a href="https://github.com/sirbread/sink/releases/tag/v0.1">https://github.com/sirbread/sink/releases/tag/v0.1</a>
Show HN: Zenta – Mindfulness for Terminal Users
Show HN: Zenta – Mindfulness for Terminal Users
Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights
Hey HN!<p>Pilots everywhere are required to keep a logbook of all their flying hours, aircraft, airports, and so on. Since I track everything digitally (some people still just use paper logbooks!), I put together some data visualizations and a few 3D globes to show my flying history.<p>This globe is probably my favourite so far: <a href="https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all" rel="nofollow">https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all</a><p>If you’ve got ideas for other graphs or ways to show this kind of data, I’d love to hear them!
Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights
Hey HN!<p>Pilots everywhere are required to keep a logbook of all their flying hours, aircraft, airports, and so on. Since I track everything digitally (some people still just use paper logbooks!), I put together some data visualizations and a few 3D globes to show my flying history.<p>This globe is probably my favourite so far: <a href="https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all" rel="nofollow">https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all</a><p>If you’ve got ideas for other graphs or ways to show this kind of data, I’d love to hear them!
Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights
Hey HN!<p>Pilots everywhere are required to keep a logbook of all their flying hours, aircraft, airports, and so on. Since I track everything digitally (some people still just use paper logbooks!), I put together some data visualizations and a few 3D globes to show my flying history.<p>This globe is probably my favourite so far: <a href="https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all" rel="nofollow">https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all</a><p>If you’ve got ideas for other graphs or ways to show this kind of data, I’d love to hear them!
Show HN: I built an AI dataset generator
Show HN: Scream to Unlock – Blocks social media until you scream “I'm a loser”
Hi all,<p>I kept wasting time on social media, even though I’d promised myself I’d stay focused. Regular site blockers didn’t help.<p>I needed something that felt annoying enough to break the habit. That’s how the idea came up: make the blocker ask me to say something embarrassing out loud before it lets me back in. If I actually have to yell “I’m a loser” into my mic. Even better - the louder I screamed, the more time I’d get.<p>So I put together Scream to Unlock. It’s silly, but so far it’s done its job. My social feeds stay locked unless I really want them.<p>Extension link - <a href="https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-yell-to/pmmikajpbkehhpomkmelipgiafampkah?authuser=0&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-ye...</a><p>Its open source and transparent - <a href="https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock">https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock</a>. No data collection or tracking, Audio processing happens locally in your browser. No recordings saved or transmitted.
Show HN: Scream to Unlock – Blocks social media until you scream “I'm a loser”
Hi all,<p>I kept wasting time on social media, even though I’d promised myself I’d stay focused. Regular site blockers didn’t help.<p>I needed something that felt annoying enough to break the habit. That’s how the idea came up: make the blocker ask me to say something embarrassing out loud before it lets me back in. If I actually have to yell “I’m a loser” into my mic. Even better - the louder I screamed, the more time I’d get.<p>So I put together Scream to Unlock. It’s silly, but so far it’s done its job. My social feeds stay locked unless I really want them.<p>Extension link - <a href="https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-yell-to/pmmikajpbkehhpomkmelipgiafampkah?authuser=0&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-ye...</a><p>Its open source and transparent - <a href="https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock">https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock</a>. No data collection or tracking, Audio processing happens locally in your browser. No recordings saved or transmitted.
Show HN: Autumn – Open-source infra over Stripe
Hey HN, I’m Ayush from Autumn (<a href="https://useautumn.com/">https://useautumn.com/</a>). Autumn is an open source layer over Stripe that decouples pricing and billing logic from your application. We let you efficiently manage pricing plans, feature permissions, and payments, regardless of the pricing model being used. It’s a bit like if Supabase and Stripe had a baby.<p>Typically, you have to write code to handle checkouts, upgrades/downgrades, failed payments, then receive webhooks to provision features, reset usage limits etc. We abstract this into one function call for all payments flows (checkouts, upgrades, downgrades etc), one function to record usage (so we can track usage limits), and a customer state React hook you can access from your frontend (to handle paywalls, display usage data etc).<p>Here’s a demo: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFARthC7JXc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFARthC7JXc</a><p>Stripe’s great! But there are 2 main reasons people use Autumn over a direct Stripe setup:<p>(1) Billing infra can get complex. After payments, there’s still handling webhooks, permission management, metering, usage resets, and connecting them all to upgrade, downgrade, cancellation and failed payments states.<p>(2) Growing companies iterate on pricing often: raising prices, experimenting with credits or charging for new features, etc. We save you from having to handle usage-based limits (super common in pricing today), rebuilding in-app flows, DB migrations, internal dashboards for custom pricing, and grandfathering users on different pricing.<p>Ripping out billing flows etc, really sucks. With Autumn, you just make pricing changes in our UI and it all auto-updates. We have a shadcn/ui component library that helps with this.<p>Because we support a lot of different pricing models (subscriptions, usage, credits, seat based etc), we have to handle a lot of different scenarios and cases under the hood. We try to keep setup simple while maintaining flexibility of a native integration. Here’s a little snippet of the architecture of our main endpoint: <a href="https://useautumn.com/blog/attach">https://useautumn.com/blog/attach</a><p>Currently, the users who get the most value out of us are founders that need to move fast and keep things flexible, but also new/non-technical devs that are more AI native.<p>You can clone the project and explore the repo, or try it out at <a href="https://useautumn.com/">https://useautumn.com/</a>, where it’s free for builders. Our repo is <a href="https://github.com/useautumn/autumn">https://github.com/useautumn/autumn</a>, docs are at <a href="https://docs.useautumn.com/">https://docs.useautumn.com/</a> and demo at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFARthC7JXc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFARthC7JXc</a><p>We’d love to hear your feedback and how we could make it better!
Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser
Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser
Show HN: Luna Rail – Treating night trains as a spatial optimization problem
Hi HN, I'm Anton, founder of Luna Rail.<p>I've always thought night trains are a fantastic, sustainable alternative to short-haul flights, but they're often held back by a lack of privacy, comfort, and poor economics due to low passenger capacity.<p>I became overly fascinated with this puzzle. I view it as a kind of night train Tetris (my wife less charitably calls it "sardinology"). I spent way too much time learning about and sketching various layouts, trying to figure out how to fit the maximum number of private cabins into a standard railcar, while making them attractive for both day and night travel.<p>This eventually led to a physical workshop (in Berlin) and a hands-on rapid prototyping process. We've built a series of full-scale mockups, starting with wood and cardboard and progressing to high-fidelity versions with 3D-printed and CNC-milled parts, with various functional elements.<p>Hundreds of people have come in to test our various iterations, because you can't test ergonomics or comfort by looking at renderings (although we did create a bunch of nice ones).<p>The link goes to our home page showing our approach and some of the thinking behind them. It’s been a lot of fun working on this puzzle, and we're excited to share what we've come up with. We hope you think it's cool too and would love to hear your thoughts.
Show HN: Luna Rail – Treating night trains as a spatial optimization problem
Hi HN, I'm Anton, founder of Luna Rail.<p>I've always thought night trains are a fantastic, sustainable alternative to short-haul flights, but they're often held back by a lack of privacy, comfort, and poor economics due to low passenger capacity.<p>I became overly fascinated with this puzzle. I view it as a kind of night train Tetris (my wife less charitably calls it "sardinology"). I spent way too much time learning about and sketching various layouts, trying to figure out how to fit the maximum number of private cabins into a standard railcar, while making them attractive for both day and night travel.<p>This eventually led to a physical workshop (in Berlin) and a hands-on rapid prototyping process. We've built a series of full-scale mockups, starting with wood and cardboard and progressing to high-fidelity versions with 3D-printed and CNC-milled parts, with various functional elements.<p>Hundreds of people have come in to test our various iterations, because you can't test ergonomics or comfort by looking at renderings (although we did create a bunch of nice ones).<p>The link goes to our home page showing our approach and some of the thinking behind them. It’s been a lot of fun working on this puzzle, and we're excited to share what we've come up with. We hope you think it's cool too and would love to hear your thoughts.
Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI
New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2].<p>I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.<p>I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.<p>Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.<p>The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.<p>The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.<p>Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page" rel="nofollow">https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-reporters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...</a>
Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI
New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2].<p>I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.<p>I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.<p>Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.<p>The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.<p>The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.<p>Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page" rel="nofollow">https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-reporters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...</a>