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I built ZetaShare because I wanted a file transfer service that doesn’t spy on me — no tracking, no data collection. The project was inspired by ToffeeShare, but after seeing it abandoned and being unable to contact the developers, I decided to build my own alternative.

In case you're curious about how the system works under the hood, here’s a simplified explanation of the current architecture:

How ZetaShare works (simplified):

The sender uploads a file on the website. The server doesn’t store the file — After uploading, the sender receives a 6‑digit ID. This ID becomes the identifier for the transfer session.

The receiver opens the link with the ?id= parameter, for example: https://zetashare.com/?id=123456

When the receiver joins the link, the server sends the receiver’s SDP offer to the sender. (This is part of the WebRTC signaling process.)

The sender responds by sending back their own SDP answer.

Both sides then exchange ICE candidates through the server.

After the WebRTC handshake is complete, a direct P2P connection is established between sender and receiver — and the file starts transferring directly between the two devices.

So the server is only used for:

exchanging SDP offer/answer

relaying ICE candidates …and nothing else. No file, no metadata, no tracking.

Once the WebRTC connection is established, all data flows peer‑to‑peer, fully outside the server.

What works now:

WebRTC P2P transfers — files go directly between users.

No metadata collection — unlike other services that send file metadata through signaling servers (like ToffeeShare), our server only handles SDP and ICE candidates.

No accounts required — just drag, drop, and share.

Unlimited file sizes.

Completely free — no ads at all.

What’s missing (in my view):

Only TLS (WebRTC’s built-in), no proper end-to-end encryption yet.

No password protection.

Links will have an expiration option soon.

Mobile file transfer speed needs improvement.

Coming next:

Password protection

File expiration option

Mobile performance improvements

Proper end-to-end encryption

Try it out: https://zetashare.com

These are the features I could think of, but if you have better ideas, I’d love to hear them. I can’t promise to build everything, but I’ll definitely try.

I’m using AI to help me because my English isn’t perfect — sorry if it sounds a bit AI-generated!

I work mainly in energy market communications and systems that facilitate energy trading, balancing and such. Currently most parties there take minutes to process messages and I think there could be a lot to learn from financial systems engineering. Any good resources you can recommend?

When you let the market rip, you are tapping into the most powerful distributed computing system in the universe: the collective desires and needs of billions of people. No central planner, no matter how many degrees they have or how many supercomputers they run, can ever hope to outsmart the swarm intelligence of the crowd. In a free market, prices aren't just numbers; they are signals, distinct packets of information wrapped in incentives that tell the world exactly where resources need to go. When you try to manipulate that with price controls or subsidies, you aren't just tweaking the economy; you are blinding the very mechanism that keeps society from starving. You get shortages, you get waste, and you get the gray, soulless stagnation that defines every controlled economy in history.

Hi HN,

I hope you're doing well. I'm reaching out to ask if anyone has a PC or laptop they're no longer using and would be willing to donate. I'm trying to get started with freelance work, but unfortunately, I can't afford to buy a computer at the moment, which is making it really hard to take on projects.

If you have an old device you no longer need and are willing to donate it, I d be incredibly grateful. I'm happy to cover shipping costs if needed. Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this. Any help would mean a lot.

I polished a Markov chain generator and trained it on an article by Uri Alon and al (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7963340/).

It generates text that seems to me at least on par with tiny LLMs, such as demonstrated by NanoGPT. Here is an example:

  jplr@mypass:~/Documenti/2025/SimpleModels/v3_very_good$
  ./SLM10b_train UriAlon.txt 3
  
  Training model with order 3...
  
  Skip-gram detection: DISABLED (order < 5)
  
  Pruning is disabled
  
  Calculating model size for JSON export...
  
  Will export 29832 model entries
  
  Exporting vocabulary (1727 entries)...
  
  Vocabulary export complete.
  
  Exporting model entries...
  
    Processed 12000 contexts, written 28765 entries (96.4%)...
  
  JSON export complete: 29832 entries written to model.json
  
  Model trained and saved to model.json
  
  Vocabulary size: 1727
  
  jplr@mypass:~/Documenti/2025/SimpleModels/v3_very_good$ ./SLM9_gen model.json

Official numbers say the U.S. isn’t in recession—does real life feel different?

Considering with AI an experienced engineer can build anything much faster and we had a discussion around "single person unicorn". How are you balancing your love for the craft and creativity. I see copycats of copycats generating decent $ per month, sometimes I wonder I should I also do the same and leave my job to pursue the unicorn dream? As every 2 years there is layoff, AI taking over... not sure if this make sense or this is just me bored on a weekend.

I'm currently interviewing for roles in another language and it's so difficult. I'm wondering if this is universal? I'm struggling to even imagine the daily work in a company. Handling meetings, understanding requirements, standing up for my solutions... I sound like a child. Anyone lived through this? How?

https://winterx.github.io/laser-eyes-simulator/

Needed a break from my main project, so I threw together this Laser Eyes Simulator. It's a silly little thing that adds laser beams to your eyes using your webcam. Downloadable images. Hope you enjoy!

Gemini 3 Prompt: - Use the computer's front-facing camera - Use `mediapipe` lib to capture facial landmarks - Use `threejs` to apply a LASER EYE effect to the face captured by the camera based on the real-time 3D landmark information provided by `mediapipe`

I've been meaning to set up an airgapped NetBSD 1.6 computer for playing music and writing but am unable to find any packages or source code for programs at the time. archive.netbsd.org only has packages from release 7 onwards.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) cancelled the October CPI report and delayed several other releases. Key series such as CPI, real earnings, state JOLTS, and county wage data now have gaps or shifted timelines.

Independent analysts note that missing a full month breaks continuity in the most widely used inflation signal in the United States. Forecasting models lose a key input. The Fed will make its December decision without two consecutive inflation prints.

My assumption is that we should not depend on a single centralized (potentially untrusted) source for something this important.

Private data sources already track groceries, rent, CPG pricing, energy, e-commerce, shipping, and wages in near real time.

---

What would it take to build a community-driven, open CPI alternative that is transparent, reproducible, and tamper-resistant?

Some starting points:

  * Multiple contributors could publish item-level price feeds (groceries, rent, utilities, services).
  * Weighted baskets could be open and versioned.
  * Methods could be fixed, auditable, and stable over time.
  * Aggregation could be public code using public data where available.
  * Licensed private datasets could be added for specific categories.
  * Output could be monthly, weekly, or daily depending on the data.

I'm looking for practical approaches: data sources, weighting schemes, methods, and any existing open projects that are doing this today.

I used to pay $220 USD for 50,000 credits. That was entirely reasonable for my usage.

Today I noticed something different: I was charged $33 USD for 1,041 credits. For context, I can burn through the 1,500-credit / $20 package in a single day, so these numbers matter.

Breaking it down: • 50,000 ÷ 1,041 ≈ 48.03 • 48 × $33 USD = $1,584 USD • Converted, that’s roughly $2,060 CAD

So the same volume that was previously $220 USD is now effectively 10× the cost.

I’m not sure what assumptions or models justify this tier for Canadian individual users, but this is the kind of pricing that pushes non-enterprise customers away. I’d maybe tolerate $300 for 50k credits, but a 10× jump is simply not viable.

At this point I’ll be waiting for a competitor. Curious if other Canadian users are seeing the same multiplier or if this is an early-stage rollout glitch.

Does anyone know which Android phones besides Pixel 6 and newer support CDC NCM USB tethering?

I tried few Samsung phones (S21 - S25), Xiaomi Redmi 13 and they only support RNDIS.

Also, I compiled a list of my findings, and if anyone is interested, it’s open for contributions: https://github.com/namesarehard0/android-usb-tethering

I was readin about AMEX architecture (some blogs, LLM's discussion...) and was wondering if AMEX still uses z/TPF or not. I am not able to find any clear info about this online, the most I got is from a decade year old discussion. So if anyone can help me around this it would be great!!

I'm honestly shocked at how bad the current Facebook interface has become. I’m trying to delete a Page I own, and the platform basically makes it impossible. The options have moved or disappeared, the Page Settings menu leads to the wrong profile, Business Suite doesn’t show the Page, and the “Access and Control” section doesn’t list it at all.

Facebook keeps bouncing me between: – personal profile settings – business portfolio settings – Meta Business Suite – classic Page UI

None of them give the actual option to delete the Page. It’s like the platform actively hides the feature.

And here’s the worst part: I AM the admin. I can publish on the Page. I can edit it. I can manage everything… except delete it.

I get that Meta wants to keep pages alive for engagement and ad data, but blocking users from removing something they own is straight-up abusive UX. No user should have to waste hours navigating four different interfaces to do something basic like “delete a page.”

If anyone has figured out the REAL way to delete a Page in 2025 with the new Facebook UI (which keeps changing), please share. Meta’s documentation is outdated, and their support is nonexistent.

This shouldn’t be this hard.

www.shouldabought.com

A calculator that shows how much you saved by NOT buying crypto (or how much you missed!)

I ran across one of these warnings the other day while working with a government website, "For best results, we suggest using Internet Explorer".

That warning was so common during the 2000's. Nowadays, it is like cat nip to me when I run across one. Does anybody still need to interact with one of these types of websites? Are you able to interact directly with it or do you need to utilize a virtual machine? I'm so curious.

I'm tasked with building a private AI assistant for a corpus of 10 million text documents (living in PostgreSQL). The goal is semantic search and chat, with a requirement for regular incremental updates.

I'm trying to decide between:

Bleeding edge: Implementing something like LightRAG or GraphRAG.

Proven stack: Standard Hybrid Search (Weaviate/Elastic + Reranking) orchestrated by tools like Dify.

For those who have built RAG at this scale:

What is your preferred stack for 2025?

Is the complexity of Graph/LightRAG worth it over standard chunking/retrieval for this volume?

How do you handle maintenance and updates efficiently?

Looking for architectural advice and war stories.

I'm talking about greater than 5 TB in size. Rclone looks really good because I can just give it a bandwidth limit, point it at google drive and fire and forget. But I'm curious if that is the best way to do this? What does HN think?

Lately, I’ve noticed a new trend on X: Devs (and indie hackers in particular) are ditching cloud providers and jumping straight to bare-metal servers like Hetzner.

Honestly, I think the big cloud companies just haven’t kept up. Their services feel clunky compared to the standalone alternatives. Just try comparing Vercel’s dev experience to Amplify’s, and you’ll see what I mean. On top of that, AWS has gotten way stingier with startup credits.

Put those two together, and it’s no surprise fewer people are hosting their MVPs on AWS. It’s tough to stay under $150/month with a database and a server, while on bare metal you can grab 16 GB RAM for around $20/month.

- Do you think the cloud is actually losing ground? - And for those using bare-metal: how do you handle DB backups, CI/CD, and pulling logs? - Would you scale something using bare-metal servers?

[Carlos](https://github.com/clostao)

I had played with Cursor/Claude Code a bit but would like to see the result of other people's work using these tools, bonus point if you can share the source.

If it matters, I'm asking this to gather information to make a decision, I received an offer to work in a company that requires all code to be crafted this way.

I already have a good job and I'm happy with it, so besides a much bigger/trendier name in my CV and more pay there's not a lot in this opportunity for me. I'm also aware that if I were to leave my current position my team could be heavily affected since I usually play a key role in helping us deliver work on time (not that my company would do the same for me, but at the end of the day I don't want to willingly screw my coworkers' chance of success/stability).

As for this new opportunity: What concerns me is that I'm worried about the scale/size of the applications and if current SotA LLMs are capable of building something that's maintainable in the long run. They're a big name company and this work isn't for any of their main products, so I fear that this might just be a pet project for them and if it doesn't work they will scrap everyone involved in the project in a few months.

Sorry for asking this on a public forum, unfortunately I don't have folks in my circle that could help me w/ this question, so all I can say is thanks in advance for your help :bow:!

PS I tried googling and didn't find conclusive results to this question (this is a polarized topic!), it doesn't help that most links I found in popular reddit threads on this subject are dead, the most notable app I found was WithAffluent