The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past week
Latest posts:
Show HN: WebApp to Create 3D Plants
Show HN: WebApp to Create 3D Plants
HelloInbox – Ultimate email deliverability checklist and toolkit
120k SVG logos, also available in PNG format
Show HN: Natural Language Processing Demystified (Part One)
Hi HN:<p>I published part one of my free NLP course. The course is intended to help anyone who knows Python and a bit of math go from the very basics all the way to today's mainstream models and frameworks.<p>I strive to balance theory and practice and so every module consists of detailed explanations and slides along with a Colab notebook (in most modules) putting the theory into practice.<p>In part one, we cover text preprocessing, how to turn text into numbers, and multiple ways to classify and search text using "classical" approaches. And along the way, we'll pick up useful bits on how to use tools such as spaCy and scikit-learn.<p>No registration required: <a href="https://www.nlpdemystified.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nlpdemystified.org/</a>
Show HN: Open-source Firebase Alternative? It's here
Show HN: AI generated Magic The Gathering cards
Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner
Bike’s most original feature is the “fluid” text editing. Lots of text editors have animated some interactions (cursor movement, insert newline, etc), but I think Bike is the first designed from the ground up to support fluid editing.<p>Give it a try, it feels different. (movie on home page if you don't have Mac)<p>Other Features:<p>• In text mode Bike works like a normal text editor. In outline mode rows are constrained to outline hierarchy.<p>• .bike file format is HTML subset, so files are easy to parse and manipulate. Bike also supports .opml and .txt.<p>• Scriptable via AppleScript. Javascript plugin API also expected in future, though no timing on that.<p>• Architecture needed to support fluid editing also makes Bike faster/more scalable than most (all?) outliners and many text editors. I test performance using the Moby Dick Workout[^1].<p>Implementation Notes:<p>• View is built using CALayers[^2].<p>• Animations are performed by Core animation and Motion[^3] lib.<p>• View performance is determined by visible text, not document size.<p>Model representation is interesting in that it’s just a flat list of rows. Each row has a `level` property, outline structure is determined dynamically. View implementation requires that each row has a unique ID.<p>I’m using OrderedDictionary from Swift Collections[^4] to store rows. This is Bike’s performance bottleneck for large outlines. Eventually I may change to augmented b+tree and then should be able to work with gigabytes worth of outline. That will be fun, but not sure it’s actually needed. Already probably fast enough for 99% of use cases as is.<p>Hope you find Bike interesting. I’m happy to answer any questions.<p>[^1]: <a href="https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/" rel="nofollow">https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/</a><p>[^2]: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/quartzcore/calayer" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/documentation/quartzcore/calayer</a><p>[^3]: <a href="https://github.com/b3ll/Motion" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/b3ll/Motion</a><p>[^4]: <a href="https://github.com/apple/swift-collections" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/apple/swift-collections</a>
Show HN: Fruits – Sell digital products via your website, newsletter, etc
Hi HN!<p>Whilst trying to build an online community for content creators, we failed!
Taking the learnings and stripping down our product to a true MVP, we now started working on "fruits", which allows creators to sell files such as ebooks, designs, checklists, music and online coachings online in less than two minutes.<p><a href="https://fruits.de/en" rel="nofollow">https://fruits.de/en</a><p>It works as simple as this:<p>1. upload a file at "fruits" & set a price
2. you will receive your individual fruits-sales-link
3. share the link wherever your customers are (e.g. website, newsletter, social media)<p>In addition, we also take care of the tedious office work such as invoicing and VAT collection for you, and this is completely automated.<p>What do you think? We are looking forward to your feedback!
Show HN: A Full-Stack Web Framework for Go
Hey HN! I want to share my side project with you. It's called Bud and it's a full-stack web framework for Go.<p>I created a short video to show you how to create a minimal Hacker News clone with Bud: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA</a>.<p>The framework is free, open source and MIT Licensed. You can find it on Github: <a href="https://github.com/livebud/bud" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/livebud/bud</a>.<p>I started working on Bud 2 years ago after watching the introductory Laracast videos about the Laravel web framework. I was just blown away by how productive you can be in Laravel. However, like many of you, I've been so spoiled by Go. I didn't want to go back to writing PHP, so I decided to try creating Laravel for the Go ecosystem.<p>At this point, I just had the following goal:<p>• Be as productive as Laravel in a typed language like Go.<p>I got the first version working in 6 months and tried building a blog from it... It fell flat. You needed to scaffold all these files just to get started. If you're coming from Rails or Laravel you may shrug, this is pretty normal. Unfortunately, I've also been spoiled by the renaissance in frontend frameworks like Next.js. What I love about Next is that it starts out barebones and every file you add incrementally enhances your web application. This keeps the initial complexity under control.<p>With these newly discovered constraints, I started working on the next iteration. Bud should:<p>• Generate files only as you need them. Keep these generated files away from your application code and give developers the choice to keep them out of source control.<p>• Feel like using a modern JS framework. This means it should work with modern frontend frameworks like Svelte and React, support live reload and have server-side rendering for better performance and SEO.<p>With these new goals, the Bud you see today started to take shape. But along the way, I discovered a few more project goals:<p>• The framework should be extensible from Day 1. Bud is too ambitious for one person. We're going to need an ambitious community behind this framework.<p>• Bud should be able to provide high-level APIs for developers while compiling down to performant low-level Go code for production.<p>• Bud should compile to a single binary. With platforms like Fly.io and Heroku, these days it's easy to not care about this, but I still cherish the idea that I can build a single binary that contains my entire web app and secure copy it up to a tiny server that doesn't even have Go installed.<p>It's still super early days. You can find the the Roadmap on Github: <a href="https://github.com/livebud/bud/discussions/9" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/livebud/bud/discussions/9</a>. I encourage you to contribute your thoughts.<p>And here's the current documentation for what's already in Bud: <a href="https://denim-cub-301.notion.site/Hey-Bud-4d81622cc49942f9917c5033e5205c69" rel="nofollow">https://denim-cub-301.notion.site/Hey-Bud-4d81622cc49942f991...</a>. Comments are enabled for anyone to chime in.<p>I have big plans for the framework. I hope you'll join me on this journey to build ambitious websites faster with Go!
Show HN: A Full-Stack Web Framework for Go
Hey HN! I want to share my side project with you. It's called Bud and it's a full-stack web framework for Go.<p>I created a short video to show you how to create a minimal Hacker News clone with Bud: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA</a>.<p>The framework is free, open source and MIT Licensed. You can find it on Github: <a href="https://github.com/livebud/bud" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/livebud/bud</a>.<p>I started working on Bud 2 years ago after watching the introductory Laracast videos about the Laravel web framework. I was just blown away by how productive you can be in Laravel. However, like many of you, I've been so spoiled by Go. I didn't want to go back to writing PHP, so I decided to try creating Laravel for the Go ecosystem.<p>At this point, I just had the following goal:<p>• Be as productive as Laravel in a typed language like Go.<p>I got the first version working in 6 months and tried building a blog from it... It fell flat. You needed to scaffold all these files just to get started. If you're coming from Rails or Laravel you may shrug, this is pretty normal. Unfortunately, I've also been spoiled by the renaissance in frontend frameworks like Next.js. What I love about Next is that it starts out barebones and every file you add incrementally enhances your web application. This keeps the initial complexity under control.<p>With these newly discovered constraints, I started working on the next iteration. Bud should:<p>• Generate files only as you need them. Keep these generated files away from your application code and give developers the choice to keep them out of source control.<p>• Feel like using a modern JS framework. This means it should work with modern frontend frameworks like Svelte and React, support live reload and have server-side rendering for better performance and SEO.<p>With these new goals, the Bud you see today started to take shape. But along the way, I discovered a few more project goals:<p>• The framework should be extensible from Day 1. Bud is too ambitious for one person. We're going to need an ambitious community behind this framework.<p>• Bud should be able to provide high-level APIs for developers while compiling down to performant low-level Go code for production.<p>• Bud should compile to a single binary. With platforms like Fly.io and Heroku, these days it's easy to not care about this, but I still cherish the idea that I can build a single binary that contains my entire web app and secure copy it up to a tiny server that doesn't even have Go installed.<p>It's still super early days. You can find the the Roadmap on Github: <a href="https://github.com/livebud/bud/discussions/9" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/livebud/bud/discussions/9</a>. I encourage you to contribute your thoughts.<p>And here's the current documentation for what's already in Bud: <a href="https://denim-cub-301.notion.site/Hey-Bud-4d81622cc49942f9917c5033e5205c69" rel="nofollow">https://denim-cub-301.notion.site/Hey-Bud-4d81622cc49942f991...</a>. Comments are enabled for anyone to chime in.<p>I have big plans for the framework. I hope you'll join me on this journey to build ambitious websites faster with Go!
Show HN: A Visual IDE for React
I made this because building UIs in a lexical medium like code is super annoying. I have to pre-render what I’m making in my head, and then jump between the browser and IDE to test. I was inspired by the developer console in chrome and safari since I end up editing css there because it’s ironically more convenient. Hope it’s useful!
Show HN: A Visual IDE for React
I made this because building UIs in a lexical medium like code is super annoying. I have to pre-render what I’m making in my head, and then jump between the browser and IDE to test. I was inspired by the developer console in chrome and safari since I end up editing css there because it’s ironically more convenient. Hope it’s useful!
Show HN: Paperd.ink – an open-source e-paper development board
paperd.ink (<a href="https://paperd.ink" rel="nofollow">https://paperd.ink</a>) is an open-source e-paper development board. We wanted to build something with e-paper given its low-power nature and beautiful, high contrast display which complements your environment and is easy on the eye. Thus, we started working on something to be developed along the lines of Arduino, Raspberry Pi’s open-source ecosystem.<p>paperd.ink has a 4.2” e-paper display comes mounted on the PCB which we have designed to be a general-purpose development board suitable for your projects and applications. You can sync calendars, set up your home IoT dashboard, get to-do lists, and notifications, display art, etc. We have used an ESP32-based microcontroller with WiFi, Bluetooth, and microUSB connectivity. The board can be programmed in Arduino IDE, micropython, or ESP-IDF, you can check out the documentation at docs.paperd.ink. paperd.ink is designed to be low power so you can charge the battery once and go on for months on it depending on the refresh rate. It’s suitable to display low to medium latency or static information. Every paperd.ink comes with a hand-polished, 3D-printed external enclosure.<p>The first paperd.ink prototype was first posted on Show HN (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340398" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22340398</a>) and other related communities (Reddit, Hackaday, etc) a little more than 2 years ago. We had a landing page, a short video of the prototype, and a user survey form asking a couple of questions along with a “Would you like to be a part of the waitlist?” question in the end. We got quite an interest from everyone on it so we decided to move ahead.<p>After receiving a positive response to the prototype, the next step was to figure out how to actually bring the product to the real world. We had no upfront capital required for manufacturing so we decided to do a crowdfunding campaign (finding a platform supporting our country India was another issue). At the same time, the pandemic happened which delayed everything because of unfeasible component prices, supply chain issues, and lockdowns everywhere. After researching thoroughly and formulating a production plan and figuring out unit economics, we launched the crowdfunding campaign roughly last year and had the 2nd Show HN post (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27331311" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27331311</a>). In the course of promoting the campaign, we got in contact with FOSS United which is a non-profit foundation that aims at promoting and strengthening the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ecosystem in India. FOSS United offered us a grant and that’s how we survived despite failing to achieve our crowdfunding target goal (we had ~40%).<p>After accepting the grant, we tweaked the PCB a bit and redesigned the external enclosure to make it ready for production. Scouted for manufacturers, suppliers, and shipping agents. Samples were ordered and tested. Test criteria and SOPs were exchanged. Vacuum casting (or any other method of manufacturing) of the enclosures was out of the question given the high NRE cost and high quantity needed to be manufactured, so we 3D printed them. Finally, the first batch was ready in the inventory to be shipped. All the orders received until now have been shipped and users should start receiving them shortly. Thanks to the HN community and our early supporters for everything. And special thanks to Daniel (moderator) for helping with the post. We plan to get feedback on the first batch and then decide on how to move forward. Please feel free to ask any questions!
Show HN: Mitmproxy2swagger – Automagically reverse-engineer REST APIs
Show HN: 1,900 remote company profiles with tech stacks and employee benefits
Show HN: Oldest Search – Search for the oldest result on internet
Oldest Search is a custom google search that specifically targets the oldest entries available. I'm always curious about the first entries for certain data on the internet, it's a valuable perspective builder.<p>I personally like news articles that have been digitized that were written in the pre-internet era. Unfortunately some results don't always work well because pages have been dated incorrectly. For example, searching "Covid" shows recent results.<p>I launch new projects like this daily: small tools to increase human agency. I'm also very open to suggestions to improve!
Making a falling sand simulator
Show HN: Weron – A Peer-to-Peer VPN Based on WebRTC Written in Go
Hey HN! I just released weron, a P2P VPN that uses WebRTC for transport which I've been working on for the last couple of months. It can create both layer 2/Ethernet and layer 3/IP overlay networks, and the underlying transport layer can be easily embedded to write your own P2P apps with Go. Compared to for example Tailscale, WireGuard and ZeroTier, its much harder to block on a network level and also significantly easier to set up, while not sacrifing much performance.<p>I'd love to get your feedback :)
Show HN: I made a browser-based RTS game
I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc).<p>Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I think making a game like this is quite easy with the browser performance/features nowadays. The game server and client side JavaScript are around 5000 lines of code each.<p>If you have any questions about the tech I'm happy to answer them.