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dang 1 day ago

Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

Hi all,

Tom Howard is going public as HN moderator today. He has been doing HN moderation work for years already and knows the site and its practices inside-out, so the only new thing you'll see is mod comments from Tom showing up in the threads the way mine do. I'm not going anywhere, so you'll have two of us to put up with going forward :)

I've known Tom since he was sctb's and my batchmate back in YC W09. Many of you know him as the kind and thoughtful community member tomhoward (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomhoward). He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomhow), the same way I switched to dang when I went through this rite of passage years ago.

Below is a bit from Tom about himself. Please join me in welcoming him to this new status which he was crazy enough to say yes to!

---

YC and HN have been a huge part of my life for nearly two decades. I read pg's essay How to Start a Startup in 2005 after my friend (and later, co-founder) Fenn found it on Slashdot, and it opened our eyes as to how to go about building products and companies. I first signed up in late 2007, and since then HN has been the place I come to find interesting news and discussions.

Hacker News gave me a window into the big wide world of technology and startups, that had previously seemed so remote and opaque from where I lived (and still live) in Australia. We were lucky enough to be accepted into the W09 batch of YC, and since then HN has been a place where we could share announcements about the startup, but also where I could share the challenges and struggles I experienced in the startup journey and other aspects of life, particularly to do with health and wellbeing.

From the discussions that have happened about these topics I've ended up making enduring friendships with people all over the world, and have been able to learn many things that have improved my life in profound ways. I love HN's ethos - of being a place people come to engage their curiosity. That's what it's always been for me and what I hope I can help it to be for everyone!

--Tom

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whoishiring 3 days ago

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025)

Please state the location and include REMOTE for remote work, REMOTE (US) or similar if the country is restricted, and ONSITE when remote work is not an option.

Please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no recruiting firms or job boards. One post per company. If it isn't a household name, explain what your company does.

Please only post if you are actively filling a position and are committed to responding to applicants.

Commenters: please don't reply to job posts to complain about something. It's off topic here.

Readers: please only email if you are personally interested in the job.

Searchers: try http://nchelluri.github.io/hnjobs/, https://hnresumetojobs.com, https://hnhired.fly.dev, https://kennytilton.github.io/whoishiring/, https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com, or this (unofficial) Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hn-hiring-pro/mpfal....

Don't miss these other fine threads:

Who wants to be hired? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43547609

Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43547610

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whoishiring 3 days ago

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2025)

Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format:

  Location:
  Remote:
  Willing to relocate:
  Technologies:
  Résumé/CV:
  Email:
Please only post if you are personally looking for work. Agencies, recruiters, job boards, and so on, are off topic here.

Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities.

There's a site for searching these posts at https://www.wantstobehired.com.

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bavarianbob 2 days ago

Tell HN: Camelgate NPM Outage (Cloudflare)

EDIT: Back online?!

NPM discussion: https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/8203

NPM incident: https://status.npmjs.org/incidents/hdtkrsqp134s

Cloudflare messaging: https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/gshczn1wxh74

GitHub issue: https://github.com/sindresorhus/camelcase/issues/114

Anyone experiencing npm outage that's more than just the referenced camelcase package?

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sathackr about 2 hours ago

Why does every site's search now insist on giving me what I don't search for?

Google ignores "must have" quotes

Zocdoc insists on giving me appointments weeks away even when I set a date range

Amazon insists on showing me products that they can't deliver tomorrow.

What happened to deterministic search parameter results? It's like every search function now just take what I ask for as a suggestion and then ignores it.

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david927 4 days ago

Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?

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Brysonbw 1 day ago

Ask HN: How do you make a living contributing to and/or creating OSS projects?

How would one go about being a 'rogue' OSS contributor so to speak? Live off of donations, bounties, hackathons, ect?

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OrbitalShotput_ about 23 hours ago

Ask HN: For the privacy minded, How do you prepare for gadget Border Searches?

This is coming up a lot these days in the news- but Customs and Border Patrol have increased the amount of searches they do for travelers coming to and leaving the US. I find this fascinating- because it feels like an area that should have answers -but that there are only some.

With Laptops, one can do things like dual booting, and basic file or OS encryption -so if you are asked to unlock your laptop, you can show someone your OS- and if they decide to do a advanced search, take it and image it- files and items will still be encrypted. Now, this is the sort of thing Veracrypt's Hidden OS would solve without resorting to individual container and file encryption- however that is not a real option these days as that only works with MBR partitioning, not EFI- and nothing else in that space has appeared.

For phones - the situation is messier.

It appears there is no general encrypted profile app or feature one can do in a similar manner, say with steganography features- Sure one could obtain a Graphene phone or the very latest updated Apple or Android device so the Cellebrite or Greykey device can't break into it if you refuse to unlock your password and they take it to image it. If you cooperate and unlock something for them to do a basic search on and then they take it to image presumably- there's a lack of hidden/profile options that are encrypted or steganographically able to hide files in files which would be enough for this sort of thing.

There also is no whole-imaging solution to make a perfect backup, as current backup methods don't include everything, like if someone has apps not covered by a backup or full settings.

And one does not want to unlock the bootloader or Root a phone to attempt this,that would make them easier from a Cellebrite type attack.

For those of you a bit privacy minded who do like to see how private and secure a setup you can do- How do you handle this? This isn't something totally new, but mobile devices are not as far along as computers it appears- and that is something the general public is fully susceptible to.

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r_singh about 10 hours ago

Ask HN: Best books written on “How to think”?

I feel like talking about how to think is going to be a bigger topic of discussion going forward now that we have AI, and dependence on software is really going to the next level — so since I've always gotten such amazing recommendations on HN, I had to ask this here

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mooreds about 12 hours ago

Tell HN: Effects of the front page on a non-profit

A few days ago I posted Vets Who Code[0] on HN[1]. It got put into the second chance pool and made the front page yesterday.

Not sure how high it got, but I saw it in the teens.

The founder just shared the impact on his organization in a post on LI[2], but I wanted to share it here.

> We now have 12 new mentor volunteers and received a donation.

Thank you, HN community, for helping out with not just attention and comments (though I've found those extremely valuable in the past) but concrete action.

0: https://vetswhocode.io/

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43533124

2: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7313539233317543936/

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sonderotis about 24 hours ago

Ask HN: How to write better tech blogs

I have a blog but it seems most people who are with my content hardly like it. I had a review recently that said I write like a person with ADHD. All I am asking for is a guide. What to start with. Length. I usually blog about vim which I started using 3-4months ago.

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LouisLazaris 2 days ago

Ask HN: Are Squarespace and Wix sites worth it?

I’ve been involved in web dev in different forms for 20 years, but I’ve never done anything with these types of websites.

My questions are:

* When you register a domain with them, is the domain legally yours?

* Are there any SEO penalties for using these apps to build websites? Does anyone own a website or client site hosted on Squarespace or similar that’s ranking high on Google?

I can see the benefit for developers but I’m wondering about the benefits for clients.

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mywittyname 3 days ago

Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with LLM-assisted programing?

Currently, I use Perplexity or ChatGPT via the web prompt for small coding tasks, but sometimes I'll use Ollama. Stuff like writing a shell script perform some task, or maybe a small Python function. I'd like to get to the next level, but I don't know where to start.

What are some good places to get started? What are the tools you use to get work done?

Some background: I mainly do data engineering using Python and Snowflake + MySQL. I use Pycharm as my dev environment, but I'd be open to changing that if there's a better option.

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reimertz about 14 hours ago

Ask HN: How will Trump tarrifs affect remote workers outside US?

I am currently working remotely from EU against US and I wonder how the ongoing and escalating trade wars will affect us.

Anyone already being affected? What are your plans for the future?

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spacebanana7 3 days ago

Ask HN: Why hasn’t AMD made a viable CUDA alternative?

I appreciate developing ROCm into something competitive with CUDA would require a lot of work, both internally within AMD and with external contributions to the relevant open source libraries.

However the amount of resources at stake is incredible. The delta between NVIDIA's value and AMD's is bigger than the annual GDP of Spain. Even if they needed to hire a few thousand engineers at a few million in comp each, it'd still be a good investment.

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warnke about 23 hours ago

Latent Space Guardrails That Reduce Hallucinations by 43 Percent Now Open Source

Heyah,

This is Lukasz. I am running Wisent, a representation engineering company. I created guardrails that allow you to block certain patterns of LLM activations on the latent space level. It is now fully self-hosted and open source. Think stopping hallucination, harmful thoughts of the LLM or bad code generation. Let me know how it works for your use case- happy to help you generate the most value from it.

Check out more at https://www.wisent.ai/ or https://www.lukaszbartoszcze.com/

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unrealizex 1 day ago

We Built an AI Tool to Create High-Quality 3D Models from Regular Videos

Hey HN/Reddit, We're a team of AI researchers passionate about simplifying 3D modeling. We've built an easy-to-use tool that generates detailed, high-quality 3D models directly from regular videos. We are now opening up this tool for preview.

Just upload your video, and we'll deliver a 3D model file that's ready to embed, view, or edit. Our approach is fast, cloud-based, and removes the hassle of complex photogrammetry setups.

Originally, we built this as an internal experiment with neural radiance fields and mesh extraction techniques. However, we noticed people across industries like e-commerce, gaming, digital twins, and virtual production struggling with cumbersome workflows involving multiple tools. So we decided to share our tool to help streamline these processes.

Right now, we're looking to collaborate closely with early users who have compelling use cases. If you're currently spending hours with painful pipelines—or juggling multiple software tools—we’d love to help simplify your workflow.

Try it out here: https://unrealizex.com

To discuss your use case or brainstorm together, book a quick chat here: https://calendly.com/unrealizex3d/30min

Quick Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX_8Sg19PXE

We're eager for your thoughts, feedback, and challenging questions—especially about your ideal use cases or persistent issues in your existing 3D workflows. You can join the AI for 3D discord community at https://discord.gg/c29cY9mbwt.

Ask us anything! — Saurav and Ash Community Builders of UnrealizeX

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frabia 3 days ago

When so much knowledge is produced every day, how do you keep up?

Between newsletters, podcasts, Youtube videos, (tech) news, articles, and (of course) books, how does one keep up with it?

I currently try to read long-form content that requires deep focus in the morning before work (30-45 mins depending on my day). Then during the day I have some breaks and read newsletters and other posts. Videos and podcasts are difficult for me to consume, as they are often a bit too padded with small talk and non-essential conversational information, but I sometimes listen to them when I work out or while I cook. I recently started taking notes when I read, I would like to extend this system into rewriting my synthesis in Obsidian or Notion.

However, despite all, I feel my reading list keeps growing and I'm always catching up with what happens in our field, but as if I'm always a few steps behind. There are many more articles and books that would make me better as a professional, but I simply don't have time to go through them. (Not to mention other topics I'd like to learn aside from my work, or simply read for pleasure.)

So my question is: how do you keep up? How do you stay up-to-date in your own profession?

And I mean it both in terms of your approach/methodology (e.g. when do you read and what, how do you retain information, what aids to reading/bookmarking do you use) but also in terms of the mental aspect/wellbeing (how much is "good enough" for you? How do you keep yourself from being overwhelmed? Do you feel energized by reading?).

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dezzadk 1 day ago

Unfollow accidents on GitHub/notifications is too darn easy

I was looking at https://github.com/notifications when I accidentally pressed the mouse over the [unsubscribe] bell icon twice.

Did github show a confirmation dialog? Nope. It unsubscribed me from 2 random issues I'll never find again.

Is there any way to recall which issues it was? Not a chance.. Not unless you had the browser console open on the Network tab before you did your mistake.

I'm so fed up with Github's aging edgy cringekid javascript webdesign choices and their overridden CTRL+F search. Their site literally screams peak JavaScript/UX terrorism era of 2014-ish.

Its unproductive, you can never find the right button to navigate in commit/PR views compared to the absolutely intuitive alternatives. The 30% viewport width on gist/files on HiDPI 4K screens with a height viewport that looks like an embarrased accidentally shrunken wooly sweater on short files with low line-count is absolutely terrible.

Am I totally wrong about this being tasteless design? It it just me, who feels like Github feels like a time-capsule from the worst era of webdesign?

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magundu 1 day ago

Ask HN: Go libraries for managing Docker container pools and executing commands?

I’m developing a system in Go that maintains a fixed pool of Docker containers (e.g., 10) running a specific image (like ‘node’), where each container remains alive (using a command like tail -f) to be ready for executing arbitrary commands via docker exec. The system tracks the workload of each container, distributes commands to the least loaded one, and monitors container health to automatically restart or replace unhealthy instances.

I’m aware of the official Docker Go SDK (github.com/docker/docker/client) for managing containers, but I’m curious if there are any higher-level tools or libraries in Go that provide additional support for scheduling, load balancing, or enhanced health monitoring of containers in such a setup. Has anyone built or used libraries that streamline this kind of container orchestration and command execution?

Any insights, recommendations, or experiences would be greatly appreciated!

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schappim about 6 hours ago

Ask HN: What's the Most Effective Habit You've Adopted?

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lukejkwarren 1 day ago

Ask HN: What do you use to monitor website security (vulns, uptime, etc.)?

I recently built [PenZen](https://penzen.app). It scans websites for real vulnerabilities (not just SSL checks) using OWASP Zap under the hood and sends prioritized alerts with AI-powered remediation suggestions.

I made it because I was tired of tools that alert me about issues I don't understand or can’t do anything about. Curious: What are you using to monitor website security?

And more importantly: What actually makes you trust a report or take action on it?

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dnpotter 1 day ago

Validating ZenBox – a self-hosted encrypted data vault

I'm toying with launching a secure data vault application. It's designed to be a dropbox-like app but you choose where your box is hosted and can permit apps to access your data under strict, revokable protocols. Curious what you think.

The app would start with simple features like secure notes, file sharing and secure messaging and gradually add more sophisticated features like GDPR compliant data sharing, facebook-like feeds and data monetization. The vision is to develop each feature as a means to evolve open protocols for the secure sharing of private data with decentralised applications, moving towards the web3 vision of controlling your own global data footprint. Developers would be free to build apps on these protocols promoting competition and giving the user a choice of UX for each feature. Each protocol would use specifically designed smart contracts to govern access to the data and to act as a digital service level agreement. This puts the data sharing intelligence on chain where it is fully customizable, programmable, transparent, interactive and auditable under the conditions of the protocol.

What do you think? Is it a concept that resonates? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Here's a bit more info: https://medium.com/@bubble-protocol/what-if-you-owned-your-digital-life-8fe515f5a1a7

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mecHacker 4 days ago

Ask HN: Finding Remote Enterprise SW Consulting Leads: Non-US Resident Edition

Been wrestling with this for a while, figured some of you might have seen similar. The Situation: * 15+ years Enterprise Software - PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) experience, including a stint at Google. * Now based in India. * Strong US network (NY, OH, OK, CA). * Targeting direct client engagements, potentially building a small remote team. * Problem: Most remote PLM roles explicitly state US/UK/EU residency.

The Question: How do you effectively find remote PLM consulting/contracting gigs in the US when you're physically outside those regions? Freelance platforms seem to be a dead end due to the residency requirements.

Initial Thoughts (and Maybe Where I'm Going Wrong): * Leveraging existing network is a given, but feels like I'm hitting a wall. * Direct outreach to companies? Feels like a long shot, especially with the location hurdle. * Is there some niche platform or strategy I'm missing? Something beyond the usual Upwork/LinkedIn grind.

Looking For: * Specific strategies that have worked for others in similar situations. * Experiences with companies that are open to remote PLM consultants outside the typical zones. * Insights on how to navigate the legal/contractual aspects of this arrangement. Anyone cracked this nut? Any and all advice appreciated.

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raj7desai 3 days ago

Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken with several VCs who confidently claim that companies won’t need to hire anyone in the next year or two because AI will handle everything.

Even Bill Gates recently said we might all be out of work soon and won’t need to do anything in an "age of abundance."

How much of this is hype vs. reality?

Which jobs are likely to be completely eliminated by AI and which ones are likely to survive or even thrive?

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wiraashm 2 days ago

A Virtual Whiteboard That Has a Thinking Assistant Baked In

What do you guys think about a virtual whiteboard that has a LLM baked in as a thinking assistant providing insights and suggestions based on what your writing and helps you brainstorm? Is able to also modify your writings and add also add more ideas. Is also able to retrieve information and provide insights in combination with what you've already written on the whiteboard.

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tempcal 4 days ago

Ask HN: How to make money in the new age of AI?

Employed. Unfairly compensated. Old. Love AI. How to capitalize on the new tech wave?

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billconan 2 days ago

Ask HN: Could you help me find an old post?

I remember there was an old but popular post on HN front page about a failed startup project. The project is about distilling biology science. The conclusion was that there is no money in science distillation.

I can't recall any search key word to find it. If you remember its title, please help me.

Thank you!

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tomelliot about 13 hours ago

Ask HN: What's the Point of MCP?

I’ve been messing around with MCP servers to get a feel for the ecosystem. I’m seeing a real issue, and I’m not sure what solutions are possible with the architecture - am I missing something?

The LLM always sits in the middle of any pipeline. That means you’ll always have potentially messy and lossy translation in between every tool call (not to mention incredibly slow/wasteful compared to piping data between processes).

The example I was using: I wanted Claude to orchestrate some analysis on Stripe data for me. I asked it to get all transactions from last month and write them to disk (as a step one, before actually doing anything). Because the data coming out of Stripe goes back through the LLM before going to disk, it completely borked it and wrote only a small fraction of the data.

I'm trying to piece together the puzzle that lets a chatbot do useful things for me in my life. Is there a future-state where this issue isn’t an inherent problem? Some workarounds I've thought of:

- have a python interpreter and have the LLM write code. But then what’s the point of an MCP server when you’d just use the Stripe python library or APIs? - have some kind of inter-MCP-server communication protocol At this point we're writing an OS for the LLM to live inside.

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kinnth 4 days ago

Ask HN: An Android build/skin specifically created for Almost Blind People?

I have an 82 year old friend who I help and care for. She has about 10% of her sight left and she uses and needs her phone on a daily basis.

She particularly needs Whatsapp.

I am having a lot of difficulty finding and installing apps with very large clear fonts, in a way where the operating system doesn't keep having overlays or changing things and keeps getting stuck using her phone?

What are the best options?

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