The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
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Show HN: Copy React code from any site
I made this because building React components from scratch is super annoying. Most visual elements already exist on the web, and I figured there should be a way to leverage that. I hope it's useful!
Show HN: Copy React code from any site
I made this because building React components from scratch is super annoying. Most visual elements already exist on the web, and I figured there should be a way to leverage that. I hope it's useful!
Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Hey show HN!<p>This course came about as a result of wanting a more targeted way of practicing using new vim commands I wanted to pick up, rather than just trying to use them in my regular code editing sessions.
When I would try to use new commands during code editing, my productivity took a hit because I was trying to do two different things at once: thinking about code vs practicing my muscle memory.<p>So, I made a separate environment for practicing, one that had an interactive editor, progress tracking, and achievement goals to let me see which areas I should work on, like speed and efficiency (# of keystrokes).
When I realized it would be useful for beginners too, I added lessons to go along with it and this course is the result!<p>Let me know what you guys think about it :)
Show HN: I built an interactive course that helps you learn Vim faster
Hey show HN!<p>This course came about as a result of wanting a more targeted way of practicing using new vim commands I wanted to pick up, rather than just trying to use them in my regular code editing sessions.
When I would try to use new commands during code editing, my productivity took a hit because I was trying to do two different things at once: thinking about code vs practicing my muscle memory.<p>So, I made a separate environment for practicing, one that had an interactive editor, progress tracking, and achievement goals to let me see which areas I should work on, like speed and efficiency (# of keystrokes).
When I realized it would be useful for beginners too, I added lessons to go along with it and this course is the result!<p>Let me know what you guys think about it :)
Show HN: RemoteFriendly – A remote job board inspired by HN
Hi HN,<p>I've designed the site based on what I wanted a couple of years ago when I had been looking for a remote job. It's very early and any feedback is appreciated.<p>I've also used this opportunity to reduce some of that front-end framework fatigue by using just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.<p>Edit: I'll add location and salary filters as soon as I wake up tomorrow
Show HN: PocketBase – Open Source realtime backend in one file
Show HN: C3 – A C alternative that looks like C
Compiler link: <a href="https://github.com/c3lang/c3c" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/c3lang/c3c</a><p>Docs: <a href="http://www.c3-lang.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.c3-lang.org</a><p>This is my follow-up "Show HN" from roughly a year ago (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27876570" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27876570</a>). Since then the language design has evolved and the compiler has gotten much more solid.<p>Assorted extra info:<p>- The C3 name is a homage to the C2 language project (<a href="http://c2lang.org" rel="nofollow">http://c2lang.org</a>) which it was originally inspired by.<p>- Although C3 mostly conforms to C syntax, the most obvious change is requiring `fn` in front of the functions. This is to simplify searching for definitions in editors.<p>- There is a comparison with some other languages here: <a href="http://www.c3-lang.org/compare/" rel="nofollow">http://www.c3-lang.org/compare/</a><p>- The parts in C3 which breaks C semantics or syntax: <a href="http://www.c3-lang.org/changesfromc/" rel="nofollow">http://www.c3-lang.org/changesfromc/</a><p>- Aside from the very C-like syntax, one the biggest difference between C3 and other "C competitors" is that C3 prioritizes C ABI compatibility, so that all C3 special types (such as slices and optionals) can be used from C without any effort. C and C3 can coexist nicely in a code base.<p>- Currently the standard library is not even alpha quality, it's actively being built, but there is a `libc` module which allows accessing all of libc. Raylib is available to use from C3 with MacOS and Windows, see: <a href="https://github.com/c3lang/vendor" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/c3lang/vendor</a><p>- There is a blog with assorted articles I've written during the development: <a href="https://c3.handmade.network/blog" rel="nofollow">https://c3.handmade.network/blog</a>
Show HN: PDFs that are readable by human eyes only
Hi, OP here. A friend was involved in a custody battle and was afraid his ex was going to leak all of his discovery documents on the internet and he asked if there was something I could do to make it harder for bots/crawlers to find sensitive information. Originally I was going to turn all of his docs to image based PDFs, but those get large fast and are easy to OCR.<p>So I found a post musing about altering fonts/glyphs so that it <i>looks</i> like english, but the actual character being seen by the pdf reader is a non-english character. As such, when you try to OCR these files, it doesn't see any images and can't convert it.<p>I figured it had some potential uses and maybe you fine folks can identify other use cases. I'll be monitoring this post most of the day.
Show HN: Credentials dumper for Linux using eBPF
Show HN: Copper – A Go framework for your projects
Hey HN! I've been working with Go for the last 5+ years at large-ish companies building products that many of you may use regularly.<p>A ton of people say that Go's standard library is really powerful and usually enough to get by without external dependencies. I think that's true for companies that have the resources to build and maintain packages to reduce code duplication. For everyone else, we're left to finding the right set of packages to build our projects.
So, I built Copper - a toolkit that helps you get your project off the ground with minimal dependencies. It covers everything from routing, html, storage to tooling and more.<p>Check it out, star it, and feel free to ask questions!<p>P.S.
I also have a video demo building an HN clone in the docs<p>[1] <a href="https://gocopper.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://gocopper.dev/</a>
Show HN: Copper – A Go framework for your projects
Hey HN! I've been working with Go for the last 5+ years at large-ish companies building products that many of you may use regularly.<p>A ton of people say that Go's standard library is really powerful and usually enough to get by without external dependencies. I think that's true for companies that have the resources to build and maintain packages to reduce code duplication. For everyone else, we're left to finding the right set of packages to build our projects.
So, I built Copper - a toolkit that helps you get your project off the ground with minimal dependencies. It covers everything from routing, html, storage to tooling and more.<p>Check it out, star it, and feel free to ask questions!<p>P.S.
I also have a video demo building an HN clone in the docs<p>[1] <a href="https://gocopper.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://gocopper.dev/</a>
Show HN: Featureform – An open-source Feature Store for ML
Show HN: UI Filler – placeholders for your designs
Show HN: Brevity 500 – Short games to help you become a powerful writer
Hi folks, I've been experimenting with ways to teach people how to write better for a few years. During this time, I've worked in finance, sales, and software -- and everywhere I went, most people didn't write effectively, even when their job depended on it!<p>Learning how to become a better writer is generally not fun...books, lectures, and videos are passive and boring and tedious. Getting feedback from real people is generally most effective, but difficult and time-consuming.<p>Brevity 500 is my attempt at creating a learning experience that is active, engaging, and NOT tedious. It offers static human-generated advice along with real human feedback for paid users.<p>So far, in early testing, the games seem to appeal most to marketers and salespeople, but as a technical writer and developer myself, I think these games can help anyone build a strong foundation to become better at any kind of non-fiction writing.<p>Try it out and let me know what you think!
Show HN: Brevity 500 – Short games to help you become a powerful writer
Hi folks, I've been experimenting with ways to teach people how to write better for a few years. During this time, I've worked in finance, sales, and software -- and everywhere I went, most people didn't write effectively, even when their job depended on it!<p>Learning how to become a better writer is generally not fun...books, lectures, and videos are passive and boring and tedious. Getting feedback from real people is generally most effective, but difficult and time-consuming.<p>Brevity 500 is my attempt at creating a learning experience that is active, engaging, and NOT tedious. It offers static human-generated advice along with real human feedback for paid users.<p>So far, in early testing, the games seem to appeal most to marketers and salespeople, but as a technical writer and developer myself, I think these games can help anyone build a strong foundation to become better at any kind of non-fiction writing.<p>Try it out and let me know what you think!
Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present
I wanted to share a simple web app I created recently, which lets you estimate income taxes owed in the US: <a href="https://taxsim.app" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.app</a><p>All the calculations occur directly in the browser, and are powered by a Fortran program that has been converted to WASM using emscripten. This calculator was originally developed in the 1970s [1] by the non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER has been maintaining this F77 codebase for the last 50 years, and uses it primarily for academic research on tax policy. The Fortran source code itself is over 1MB of text, because it codifies both federal and all 50 states' tax laws for each of the last 62 years.<p>I first learned about NBER TAXSIM [2] a few months ago via an interesting paper they published "Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Pre-Populated Form 1040" [3]. The Fortran code itself is not open-source, but is available on request for research purposes. I reached out to NBER and proposed compiling it to WASM, so it could be run directly in a browser. With relatively little effort I was able to create a js/wasm version [4], thanks in huge part to previous open-source work [5].<p>This WASM build now powers <a href="https://taxsim.app" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.app</a>, which is my attempt to create an interactive UI to allow for easier exploration of the US tax code. Specific tax scenarios can also be shared easily, by simply copying the browser URL. The code for this webapp is also open-source [6].<p>This was my first time experimenting with WASM, and I am already a huge fan. Not only was I able to take a 60 year old codebase and get it working on every modern browser and device, this work is also now benefiting the academic community. For example, the js/wasm can be run directly in V8, which means it can also now be run locally within R using libv8 [7]. Previously most researchers were uploading their tax scenarios to NBER's servers via ftp/ssh/http.<p>[1] <a href="https://taxsim.nber.org/feenberg-coutts.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.nber.org/feenberg-coutts.pdf</a><p>[2] <a href="https://taxsim.nber.org/" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.nber.org/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w30008" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/papers/w30008</a><p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.js</a><p>[5] <a href="https://chrz.de/2020/04/21/fortran-in-the-browser/" rel="nofollow">https://chrz.de/2020/04/21/fortran-in-the-browser/</a><p>[6] <a href="https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.app" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.app</a><p>[7] <a href="https://github.com/shanejorr/usincometaxes/pull/11" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/shanejorr/usincometaxes/pull/11</a>
Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present
I wanted to share a simple web app I created recently, which lets you estimate income taxes owed in the US: <a href="https://taxsim.app" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.app</a><p>All the calculations occur directly in the browser, and are powered by a Fortran program that has been converted to WASM using emscripten. This calculator was originally developed in the 1970s [1] by the non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER has been maintaining this F77 codebase for the last 50 years, and uses it primarily for academic research on tax policy. The Fortran source code itself is over 1MB of text, because it codifies both federal and all 50 states' tax laws for each of the last 62 years.<p>I first learned about NBER TAXSIM [2] a few months ago via an interesting paper they published "Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Pre-Populated Form 1040" [3]. The Fortran code itself is not open-source, but is available on request for research purposes. I reached out to NBER and proposed compiling it to WASM, so it could be run directly in a browser. With relatively little effort I was able to create a js/wasm version [4], thanks in huge part to previous open-source work [5].<p>This WASM build now powers <a href="https://taxsim.app" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.app</a>, which is my attempt to create an interactive UI to allow for easier exploration of the US tax code. Specific tax scenarios can also be shared easily, by simply copying the browser URL. The code for this webapp is also open-source [6].<p>This was my first time experimenting with WASM, and I am already a huge fan. Not only was I able to take a 60 year old codebase and get it working on every modern browser and device, this work is also now benefiting the academic community. For example, the js/wasm can be run directly in V8, which means it can also now be run locally within R using libv8 [7]. Previously most researchers were uploading their tax scenarios to NBER's servers via ftp/ssh/http.<p>[1] <a href="https://taxsim.nber.org/feenberg-coutts.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.nber.org/feenberg-coutts.pdf</a><p>[2] <a href="https://taxsim.nber.org/" rel="nofollow">https://taxsim.nber.org/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w30008" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/papers/w30008</a><p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.js</a><p>[5] <a href="https://chrz.de/2020/04/21/fortran-in-the-browser/" rel="nofollow">https://chrz.de/2020/04/21/fortran-in-the-browser/</a><p>[6] <a href="https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.app" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tmm1/taxsim.app</a><p>[7] <a href="https://github.com/shanejorr/usincometaxes/pull/11" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/shanejorr/usincometaxes/pull/11</a>
Show HN: We made a fast audio editor for podcasting
Show HN: We made a fast audio editor for podcasting
Show HN: I ranked news websites by speed
I've been working on building "the fastest news website" for a few reasons:<p>1. I got tired of waiting for news websites to load, so I made a text-only news website that only has major news headlines.<p>2. I wanted to demonstrate to the world that if you want to build something really fast on the web, you can do it without loads of JavaScript.<p>3. I wanted to show that you can design something that looks good without having tons of images, etc.<p>I put together the speed page at <a href="https://legiblenews.com/speed" rel="nofollow">https://legiblenews.com/speed</a> to hold my website to be more accountable for speed, but it's also interesting to see how fast other news websites are (or in most cases, are not).<p>Some feedback I'm interested in receiving:<p>1. What's your take both on the speed ranking methodology for Legible News?<p>2. Are my descriptions of the metrics for a non-web developer reasonable? Example of that at <a href="https://legiblenews.com/speed/websites/associated-press" rel="nofollow">https://legiblenews.com/speed/websites/associated-press</a>, and if you click through the links on that table, you see a description like <a href="https://legiblenews.com/speed/audits/cumulative-layout-shift" rel="nofollow">https://legiblenews.com/speed/audits/cumulative-layout-shift</a><p>Sorry ahead of time, but I can't fit all news websites on the speed report. I had to target general news websites, not ones for specific niches like HN for Tech. If there's something you think that's missing please post it, but I can't promise that I'll add it.<p>If you like it, please consider subscribing! Thanks!